She stares out the window to fields lined with rickety fences and sagging wires. A familiar uneasiness settles in her, a familiar boredom. They live in Lancaster County, next to a dairy farm. “All that grass,” she once told Raulp, after he was transferred from the city to work as manager at the local bank in town. “Who needs so much lawn unless you have twenty children?” It’s the openness of the landscape that often leaves her strangely somber—a feeling she attributes to the region as a whole—but today, considering the unmowed grass shot through with dandelions and milkweed, she feels a crusty annoyance as well.
“Our yard looks like Wild Kingdom,” she says. “I know you’re busy with your art and everything, but I feel I’m waiting for the cows to come and graze.”
Raulp opens a tube of burnt sienna and smears it over his palette. He dips a camel-hair brush into the paint and makes a solitary stroke that looks to Sylvia like the start of a landscape, the jagged line of earth as it hits the sky.
“Hey,” she says. “I’ve got an idea. Maybe you could paint cows mowing the grass.”
Raulp swirls his paintbrush in deft, short strokes. “Sure,” he says absently. “Why not.”
ON WEDNESDAY EVENING, Raulp comes home from art class and stands in the kitchen, his yellow slicker still dripping rain. He announces that for his final portfolio he has decided to paint a nude. “I think it’ll really stretch my imagination,” he says. “I mean, what’s more complicated than the human form?”
A slight alarm shoots through Sylvia as she scrapes the last bits of lo mein from her dinner plate and into the trash. “What happened to the landscapes?” she ventures. “You know, cows, caribous, whatever. Look around you. Inspiration abounds in cow country. It’s so serene my brain frequently wants to split open, and oh my God, the smells! I’m throwing you zinger suggestions here, guaranteed A’s in class, and you’re talking nudity. It’s obscene.”
Raulp takes off his slicker, hangs it on the back of the door. He grabs a beer and sits down at the table. “I just feel like I need something new, Sylv. I’m landscaped out, and that’s the truth.”
“I’m landscaped out, too, but nudity is nothing new. Nudity is the oldest thing in the book. Have you read the Bible lately?”
He nods in a way that lets Sylvia know he’s simultaneously acknowledging and dismissing her arguments. “Crenshaw suggested something in the style of Ingres. He told me my landscapes are stiff and limited.”
“He said that—‘stiff and limited’?” She waves this off with her hand. Lee Crenshaw is a man Sylvia only met once before deciding that any more meetings were neither warranted or desired. He’s an elderly, cantankerous man of bow ties and banter. At the cocktail party Crenshaw threw at the start of the semester, the man’s hands glided over Sylvia as she squeezed by him on the way to the kitchen. “Excuse me,” he said, all while he groped her ass in a determined, robust way.
“You remember the party, don’t you?” she asks now. “I’m not posing naked and having Lee Crenshaw see it. The man of course would love nudes. Of course!”
“Liking your ass doesn’t make him a pervert,” Raulp says. “It makes him a man of good taste.” He folds his arms then and considers his next move. She recognizes the look—it’s strained, as if Raulp has popcorn caught between his teeth. “Actually,” he says, finally, “I was thinking of hiring someone.”
“Oh.”
“That’s it? Just ‘oh’?”
“Oh, great?”
“It’s not meant to be a slight, Sylv. It’s just that I know you too well. Familiarity would cloud my vision of you, and what I see.”
“What, like that I’m round, for instance?”
“You’re beautiful,” he tells her. “But there’s also the fact that Crenshaw knows you, and you just said you’re uncomfortable with him.”
Sylvia can’t help but feel rebuked by all this. Though she doesn’t worry about affairs necessarily, she still feels the effects of marriage and the worry that can accompany fifteen pounds of weight gain and the effects of countless ice creams on her thighs. “Okay,” she says again, nodding.
“I knew you’d say that.”
“What? I didn’t say anything.”
“Exactly.”
“I like the caribou idea,” she says. “But, fine, if you want to paint a nude, hey, go for it. What else do you sign on for in marriage except to be supportive when your spouse needs it, right? Why else marry unless you form a mutual admiration society, or at the very least a support group?”
Raulp gets up from the table and moves to where she stands at the sink. He circles his arms around her waist. He says, “Thanks, Sylv. And just so you know, I’ve always admired you.”
“Oh, and I support you,” she says.
“Good,” Raulp says. He squeezes her sides. Then he goes and gets the paper. He opens to the classifieds.
“You’re advertising?”
“How else do you get someone?”
“I don’t know. Pick up a tall hooker?”
“That’s not very supportive.”
“I am supportive,” she counters. “I never complain about the smell of turpentine and paint drifting through the house. You know that stuff can cause brain damage.” She sticks out her tongue and makes a face. He would prefer, Sylvia believes, the same steadfast encouragement he displayed throughout their marriage when she decided she wanted to study macramé, or when she decided that, come pad thai or disaster, she was going to cook some exotic cuisine, at least once. He would prefer that she smile politely and just shut up.
“You’re weird, Sylv.”
“Some admiration,” she says.
WEIGHT GAIN and porker thighs aside, it isn’t totally an outlandish thing to think she’d be the subject of Raulp’s painting. First, Sylvia reasons, they are married, for Christ’s sake. And second, he painted her once before, in graduate school, back when she was a slimmer and tighter version of the Sylvia she is today. She’d first met Raulp when he was designing the set of A Doll’s House and Sylvia, then a wayward theater major, was learning the part of Nora—the backbreaking dialogue, the repetition of lines. In the end, she was only assigned the part of Helene, the Helmers’ maid, and after the cast assignments she came backstage to where Raulp was painting stage windows that revealed wispy clouds, tranquil cerulean skies. She sat down on the Helmers’ emperor chair, rubbed her temples, and moaned. “You know, it’s because the professor is sleeping with the lead,” she said.
Raulp stopped painting and stepped back to view his work. “I heard that rumor. But, hey, I’ve always thought the heart of the story was the person who makes the beds and orders the house.”
“Right,” Sylvia said. “I’m a domestic goddess.”
Raulp sat down next to her. He touched the tip of Sylvia’s nose with his brush, leaving a dab of blue paint. “It looks good on you.”
“In clown school,” she said, wiping her nose, “maybe.”
He stared for a moment longer than he should have, and she felt herself blushing. Sensitive Raulp. Beautiful, brown-eyed Raulp. Dylan-esque Raulp who, really, all the girls, and a few of the guys, had noticed. After that, he’d come in early to watch rehearsals, and, when they ran late—which they almost always did—he’d offer to walk Sylvia back to her dorm. On their way across the quad, Raulp would often request that she perform mime routines, soliloquies from Shakespeare, musical numbers. Sylvia sang songs like “They Can’t Take That Away from Me” or “I Got Rhythm” despite the fact that she sounded a bit like Ethel Merman on speed. When she finished, she took long, swooping bows for Raulp, who would always offer a standing ovation.
“I’m awful,” she said, moaning, but she was secretly pleased by Raulp’s attention.
“So,” he asked her after a performance. “Are you dating anyone? An actor? A tree? A movie star?”
“Me?” she asked, surprised. “No. Why?”
“I’m auditioning right now,” he said. “To be your boyfriend.”
“Oh,
that!” she said, laughing. “Well, you’re hired.”
After they started dating, he confessed that he’d been attracted to her angular jaw, her almond-shaped eyes, her thick, almost masculine eyebrows. Sylvia was surprised; she had always considered herself homely, her eyes set too far apart, her hair too thick and unruly. “You’re sweet to compliment the eyebrows, especially,” she said, though it frightened her, really, to so suddenly fall in love. There wasn’t anything Sylvia wouldn’t have done for Raulp, really, so when, after dinner one night, he invited her back to his dorm room and asked to paint her nude, she agreed. They hadn’t even slept together yet. Still, she stripped down naked and sat on the bed. She flushed with excitement as Raulp studied her. When she fidgeted, embarrassed, he sang his own, slightly off-beat version of “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?”
They were married by the end of their program. Sylvia became pregnant shortly after that. It was unexpected, and though she worried, though she’d never thought of herself as a “natural” sort of mother, Raulp took it in stride. “It’ll be a change,” Raulp said. “But I’ve always wanted to be a father.”
“But what about painting?” Sylvia asked. He had just gotten a gallery showing, and he’d managed to sell a few pieces at what Sylvia had considered a good, promising price.
“I’ll still paint,” he told her. He also took an entry-level job at the bank. “To supplement,” he said. “Until things take off.” She, too, applied for work. They needed health insurance, and, even with their small house, for which Raulp’s parents had generously cosigned, there were mortgage payments, water bills, trash removal, prenatal doctor visits. It was simple to trace, Sylvia knew, how one thing got in the way of another, and then something else followed, until another life—one you never dreamed of—suddenly was yours for the keeping.
They painted the spare room yellow. They rearranged furniture, picked out bedding. When she delivered, Raulp was there, helping her, urging her to push so hard she felt as though she might split open. Their daughter was born and taken right to intensive care. A respiratory complication, the doctor explained. In the days that followed, Raulp and Sylvia approached the baby’s incubator with all the hopeful trepidation of parents who wanted only for their sick child to be well. They reached through tiny holes and held their little girl’s hands, coaxing her to get better, to scream, to cry—anything—but after two days, the baby died.
They rarely discuss the baby now, though in the first years following her death Raulp periodically brought up the idea of having another child. When he did, Sylvia told him there was time, that they were still young, but really, she wasn’t sure if she could go through it all again. She reminded him that they were still paying medical bills from their first pregnancy—Raulp’s insurance didn’t offer full coverage until after a year at the bank—and that for all the worry and all that time, they had nothing. But she still sometimes thinks about the baby, and how fragile things can be in the world, how there is, in everything, a desperate struggle to survive.
THE MODEL SHOWS UP the next Monday evening, a newspaper tucked under her arm. Sylvia guesses the girl is no more than twenty-two. She has a smooth, round face and a full mouth, and she’s very slender. She brushes back a wisp of long brown hair. “I’m Reese,” she says. “I spoke with your husband on the phone?”
“Is that a question?” Sylvia asks, thinking that there’s still time to tell this girl that she’s got the wrong address, the wrong husband, the wrong look. She lets out an embarrassing laugh before opening the door wider. She feels as if she has suddenly become transparent glass. “Can I get you something?” she asks. “Water, tea, bourbon?”
“No thanks,” Reese says. “I’ll just wait in the hall.”
“Of course.” Sylvia calls for Raulp. Reese slides awkwardly by, and it’s then that Sylvia notices the clubbish, sullen limp in the girl’s left foot. In the hallway, Reese stops at one of Raulp’s paintings, a moonlit landscape done in the style of the Romantics. She inspects it with interest. “This is good,” she says.
“I support my husband in his brilliance.” Sylvia closes the front door. She doesn’t have the faintest idea what to talk about that wouldn’t involve the subject of both her husband and nudity, but she doesn’t want to leave this girl alone, either. She could be a scammer, Sylvia thinks. Anyone can answer a newspaper solicitation. So much deception can lurk under a clear complexion. So she stands next to Reese and pretends to admire the painting, and she’s relieved when Raulp eventually appears from his studio, shakes Reese’s hand, and introduces himself in a way that is much too exuberant for Sylvia’s taste. “Well, great!” he says, and shoves his hands anxiously in his pants pockets. “We can discuss payment in the kitchen.”
“Perfect.” Reese follows along behind him. “I’m in college, so I always need a little extra cash.”
“Raulp’s in night school,” Sylvia says. She trails after them both, listening, hoping in vain that Raulp will say he’s sorry but the gimpy leg is a deal breaker, though this, of course, does not happen. In the kitchen, instead, he pours them all iced tea while he and Reese work out schedules, payment, and sitting times. They talk about Raulp’s vision for his project—a series of sketches, then a painting. “Are you okay posing nude?” he asks. “I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable,” he says.
Reese leans toward Raulp in a confiding way. “To tell you the truth, I was nervous, because I’ve never done this before.”
“Right,” Sylvia says. “A modeling virgin.” She opens the kitchen cupboard and peers in, looking for something to eat. She pulls out a bag of chips and opens it.
“Like I said,” Reese continues, “I was nervous, but when we were talking on the phone I started to feel really comfortable with the idea. I thought, People get naked every day, so what’s the big deal, right? And I love painting. I’ve always wanted to paint, too, since I was a child.”
“How many years would that be?” Sylvia asks, shoving a few chips in her mouth, chewing too loudly. “Two?”
“Oh, forever,” Reese says, musing.
“Well, no time like the present to get started,” Raulp says. “We could do some preliminary sketches tonight if you have time.”
“No time like the present. I was telling your wife that the painting in the hallway is so good. Like Constable during his Barbizon days.”
“Actually, it’s a bit more like Rousseau,” Raulp says, flushing. Sylvia almost gags, seeing her husband so obviously taken with the idea of this girl. He looks like a man who has found some precious commodity in his backyard—gold, oil, a T. rex skull, a rare Picasso buried under the bushes. At this moment, Raulp looks the most inspired Sylvia has seen him in years.
WHILE SYLVIA SITS AT the kitchen table, finishing her iced tea and the last of the chips, she eavesdrops as Raulp, in his studio, does preliminary sketches of Reese, clothes still on. “Until we get to know each other a little better,” Raulp says, a comment that sends Sylvia’s heart thumping wildly in her chest. She listens as Reese discusses her “youth” and the time she spent sketching with charcoals mostly. “Faces,” she says. “I never get tired of looking at people.” She even took a year off after high school and traveled, alone, to Europe, for inspiration, but when she came back home, she enrolled in a nursing program at the college. “More job opportunities,” she said. “At least that’s what my mother told me.” Yes, she tells Raulp, she does think she’s going to like posing because the whole idea of it is actually quite liberating. This, in response to Raulp’s repeated inquiries. Oh, get over it already, Sylvia thinks. And it’s then that Reese tells Raulp about the accident after she’d come back home from Europe, when she decided, impetuously, to take a road trip with her girlfriend to New York City. “A car just sped into oncoming traffic and crushed my compact,” she explained. “My foot was shattered. Six days in the hospital.”
Sylvia cannot remove her ear from the kitchen door. She waits for how Raulp will respond to all this, and what she hears in response is
her husband’s conciliatory tone, his saying that tragedies can only make a person stronger. Sylvia’s stomach sinks. Everything within her turns brittle. She imagines Raulp taking in Reese’s form, the shared moment, the thrill of new disclosures. She also imagines other, more disconcerting things, such as her husband and this young woman having wild decathlon sex in the sunroom/studio, and for the first time in their entire marriage she wonders, too, what it would be like to find herself entirely alone.
THAT NIGHT IN BED, Sylvia says, “Well, I think it’s great. She seems nice, really nice.” Raulp lies next to her, his eyes half closed in a dreamy way. “Tired?” she asks.
“A little. But mostly happy. It felt so good to work tonight.”
Sylvia turns off the light. “Work,” she says. “I’m sure the painting will be lovely. Not pornographic at all.”
“It’s not like that, Sylv.”
“What is it like, then? Because I’m thinking work never looked so good.”
“Oh, stop it,” Raulp tells her. “You know I hated my job. And what about you? You can’t like the bookstore much. What happened to saying you’d act again? There’s still the community theater. It’s not Broadway, but it’s something.”
Sylvia lets out an irritable laugh. “I couldn’t live with success. I love the bourgeois thing. I mean, it’s not Broadway either, but, hey, it has its charm; marriage is still America.”
“Sometimes I think you just don’t care about anything anymore.”
Sylvia says nothing. After the baby, she did take on theater roles, one of which resulted in a brief write-up in the paper. She also took up some gigs, early on, one-liners in TV ads for cough medicine, and hay-fever relief.
Thinking about this all, Sylvia breaks into an involuntary grimace. “I gave up trying, is that it? Well, let me recap for you, since your memory is so very clearly going to pot. We were young. Then I got pregnant, with your help, I might add. Then the baby died. Then we were broke and had bills. Then we grew up and I didn’t think as much about art anymore. I thought about things like getting a car, and cable. I’ve always thought it was something of a virtue to be happy with what I have, and it turns out I like pricing books. And anyway, has it occurred to you that with all your newly found inspiration we haven’t had sex in about three solid weeks?”
Everyone but You Page 4
