Not a word of which surprised Celia one bit. Why hadn’t she thought of heaven as a potential topic for the poems springing from a painting titled Beyond? Knowing that Elizabeth was a churchgoer, she should have known there would be others in the group. It would be the most natural thing in the world for someone wired together like Eldeen to interpret the painting this way. Celia glanced back at Eldeen, who was smiling at her hopefully, and revised the sign on Eldeen’s carnival exhibit: Huge Funny Old Religious Woman.
She thought again, as she had that other time at Al’s house, of how much her grandmother and Eldeen could have found to talk about—two women totally different in temperament but standing on the same unshakable bedrock. Celia let herself imagine for a moment what it would have been like if Eldeen had been one of their neighbors in Dunmore, Georgia, if she and Grandmother had visited back and forth and traded recipes with each other. Maybe she would have rubbed off on Grandmother a little, could have eased the lines around her grim mouth and made her laugh once in a while.
“See, here’s how my poem starts out,” Eldeen said, showing Celia her spiral notebook. “There’s a song we sing at church with almost the same words, except it says, ‘When we all get to heaven,’ but I left out the all because, sad to say, we’re not all going to get there.” She patted Celia’s hand, quite hard. “But I hope you are, honey, I sure do. I can talk to you during refreshments and tell you how to get there if you want me to, that is, if you don’t already know.” She squeezed her hand, again quite hard. “You sure are a pretty little angel of a thing. You look like you belong in heaven, like you’re just down here amongst us on loan!” She let go of Celia’s hand. “You know, I keep thinking I’ve met you somewhere before, but I just can’t put my finger on it.” Celia let it pass. She didn’t want to bring up Al Halston’s name. Eldeen turned around and moved back to her seat on the sofa.
Celia looked back at the painting and immediately thought of something. She recalled that she had played “When We All Get to Heaven” on her clarinet at Bethany Hills Bible Tabernacle one Sunday for an offertory. It had been her grandmother’s special request. That would have been twenty years ago now.
She knew she would never be able to look at Ollie’s painting the same again. Now it would always be a depiction of heaven. Even as she looked at it now, she was assailed by phrases from the song: “In the mansions bright and blessed,” “Soon the pearly gates will open,” “Not a shadow, not a sigh.”
From the sofa came the sound of Eldeen’s laughter. She was bent over saying something to her daughter—or trying to. She had changed from a sheepy sort of laugh now to a gooselike one, a goose whose honking mechanism seemed to be stuck. Celia knew she would hear Eldeen’s laughter for the rest of her life. One more thing to weave into her nighttime dreams. And her voice, too: “All this here’s the reflected glory and majesty and splendor of the Almighty God!”
17
Frail Children of Dust
On the last day of May, a Tuesday, Celia was preparing to close up the gallery at five o’clock when Elizabeth Landis walked in. With her was the woman named Margaret, the leader of the poetry club, whom Celia had met at Elizabeth’s house two weeks earlier. Margaret was one of the few middle-aged women who, in Celia’s opinion, could truthfully be spoken of as beautiful in a physical sense without having to pad the word by including character, wisdom, experience, and all that, although, by all appearances, Margaret Tuttle seemed to possess those attributes, as well. You wouldn’t have to qualify the adjective with any kind of concession for her age: “beautiful for a woman of fifty,” for example. One glance at Margaret and the word beautiful sprang to mind with nothing tacked on. At least that’s what Celia thought, and she had always considered herself a good judge of looks.
“I know it’s closing time,” Elizabeth said, “but we were driving by, and I wanted to show Margaret that one painting—you know, the gardenia one.” Celia knew you didn’t just happen to drive by the Trio Gallery. They must be headed to or from Greenville.
“Help yourself,” Celia said. “I’m just trying to clear off the desk a little.” The state playoffs started at the end of this week, and she wanted to leave things in good order for Tara and Ollie, who would take turns filling in for her at the gallery. She held up a handful of notes, all sizes, scribbled on scraps of paper. “Ollie’s always leaving me reminders about things he wants me to check on, then I forget to throw them away afterward.” She had often wondered what it said about her that she was so fastidious at home yet could tolerate an amazing amount of clutter on her desk at work.
The painting Elizabeth was talking about, the “gardenia one,” as she called it, which was actually titled Writing Table, had sold on opening night. Celia had never before seen the woman who bought it, which was unusual. Most often she knew the buyers by name, had dealt with them before. Sometimes a friend of the artist, someone from out of town, might buy a work, but Lenny Bullard hadn’t known this woman, either. She carried herself with the air of someone long accustomed to buying expensive things, however, and Celia had no doubt that she would make good on her commitment. She had left her card with Celia before driving off in a white Mercedes. The card identified her as “Justine Cunningham, Designer” at a place called Mercado Custom Interiors in Greenville.
“We won’t be but a minute,” Elizabeth said now. She and Margaret went into the central gallery, and though they were hidden from Celia’s view, she could hear them. “That’s it,” she heard Elizabeth say, after which there was a pause before Margaret replied, “Yes, I see what you mean.” Another pause, then Margaret again: “What arresting colors.” A longer pause, then, “What a marvel that an artist can achieve such an elevated tone with such whimsy and buoyancy of style. I can see why you are struggling to keep the tenth commandment, Elizabeth.” They both laughed.
Margaret hadn’t talked much at the poetry club meeting, but Celia remembered wondering that night if she had written out her comments ahead of time and memorized them. She had never heard anyone speak extemporaneously with such formal grace. Most of the people she talked to on a regular basis didn’t use words like arresting, whimsy, and buoyancy in a normal conversation.
“Yep, too bad that’s somebody else’s red dot,” Elizabeth said with a sigh, referring to the fact that it was marked as sold. “But there’s no way I could have bought it,” she went on. “I’ve already overspent on art. The way I figure it, though, if I visit it enough times before the show comes down, it can be mine in a certain sense. I have this special gallery in my mind.”
So Elizabeth had another hankering. Celia could have guessed it, though they had never really talked about it. Elizabeth had come to the opening of Lenny Bullard’s show several weeks ago and had hung around longer than usual after Lenny’s brief artist’s talk, walking around slowly from painting to painting. Celia had seen her standing at length in front of the one titled Writing Table with something like anticipation written all over her face, looking like a ship coming into harbor, drawing nearer and nearer to a wondrous landmark on shore.
Celia had seen the look many times before on the faces of true art lovers. It was completely different from the that-would-match-my-new-wingback-chair look. This emigrant-gazing-at-the-Statue-of-Liberty look was the soul-hungry look of someone who didn’t care one whit about using the painting for decoration, whose mind and heart were fixed on beauty as an emblem of goodness and hope.
Writing Table wasn’t Celia’s favorite piece in the show, but she could see how it would appeal to the likes of Elizabeth and Margaret, both of whom loved poetry. The perspective was interesting—the writing table was seen through a bedroom window, yet quite close up, as if the observer were a voyeur hoping to get a peek of something on a very different order. In front of the window there was a gardenia bush in bloom, so the writing table was actually forced into the background, though it was the title of the painting.
Lenny Bullard had outdone himself with the gardenias. They were gorgeous—
sensuous full-blown blossoms with white petals smooth as buttermilk, others starting to open, some still spiraled up tightly in long creamy buds, all nestled within clusters of glossy dark green leaves. The brushwork on the open petals was exquisite, three or four strokes per petal, in colors ranging from the whitest white to the palest tinge of buttery yellow. You could spend a long time just reveling in the gardenias, practically smelling them, before you moved past them to the window and then inside to the writing table.
It was strange how the coolness of the gardenias in the foreground could temporarily block your attention from the bonfire of colors behind them. On the writing table, obviously a woman’s, were scattered the accouterments of what looked to be a leisure poet. These included several sheets of bright yellow paper fanned out, a chunky uncapped fountain pen striped in all the colors of the rainbow, a pair of eyeglasses with wild chartreuse and pink polka-dotted frames, a peacock blue teacup with only a sip of raspberry-colored tea left in the bottom, two orange crackers lying in the matching saucer, a small banker’s lamp with a green shade, a slim volume of poetry with a white cover, titled Night Poems, and a lady’s wristwatch with a bracelet band of red scarabs like miniature stoplights strung together. The table itself was a shocking shade of lavender, with a chair of dark purple. Concerning the use of color, Margaret’s word arresting was quite mild. If using color were a crime, this artist would be locked up for life.
Incongruously, however, a black-and-white picture with torn edges appeared in the midst of all this color, propped up against the base of the banker’s lamp. And this was where the painting got really interesting, for it seemed that the poet, departed from the scene temporarily, perhaps to go brew another pot of tea, was in the process of composing a poem about this photograph. She had already completed two stanzas and started a third, all written in a tiny, delicate cursive, which could be read by twisting your neck and looking at the yellow paper sideways. The title was simply “Yellow”:
The hottest yellow I know
Ignites the October page
Of a calendar: a black
And white photo of birch trees.
Against the bass monotone—
Trunks stretching off the page, wide
Mouth of dark behind, then gray
Hills—those leaves play piccolo.
That white should turn to yellow
Doesn’t follow logic, yet . . .
These were the words she heard Elizabeth reading aloud to Margaret now. She read them slowly, seeming to taste every word. Since Celia herself didn’t really know what to think of the poem as poetry, she listened carefully for Margaret’s response. Maybe it would be something she could use if anybody asked her about it.
Margaret laughed softly. “Well, the artist is clearly having fun with his audience, is he not?”
“And with his subject, don’t you think?” said Elizabeth.
“Oh, to be sure. In the midst of a profusion of color, he seems to be praising the absence of color. Yet the title of his poem is ‘Yellow.’”
“Written on yellow paper no less. And the title of the book on the table is Night Poems, but it has a white cover, which goes along with the black-and-white photo, I guess.”
Celia turned off the computer, rose from her desk, and walked into the exhibit room. The painting was on the far wall, and the two women were standing side by side, their backs to her.
Elizabeth bent forward and pointed. “I can’t get over that little picture of the birth trees. Look at how lifelike it is. I mean, this guy takes all kinds of liberties with realism—all these distorted angles and funky colors—and then he sticks in this little cameo, all tidy and precise. It almost looks like it’s in a different medium, doesn’t it? Like a pencil etching or something.” She moved back again and shook her head. “Interesting. So, so interesting. You’re practically beat senseless by all this color, but in the end your eyes land on that one little spot of black and white.”
“Seven syllables per line,” Margaret said.
“Yes, I saw that. It’s not bad, really, though he probably shouldn’t give up painting to write poetry.”
Again they both laughed. “Perhaps someone else wrote the poem,” Margaret said.
“Maybe so,” Elizabeth said. “Maybe his wife did.”
“Is he married?” Margaret asked. She sounded surprised, as Celia herself had been surprised upon learning that Lenny was a family man. He even had grandchildren. That wasn’t something you expected out of a man who consistently chose such feminine subjects to paint.
“Not anymore,” Elizabeth said. “He talked a little about his wife on opening night. Said she died ten years ago of cancer. That’s when he started painting her things—her dresser, her desk, her jewelry box, her closet—”
“And the places she used to go,” Celia added. “The beauty shop and all.” She was standing slightly behind Elizabeth now.
Elizabeth turned and smiled at her. “I really enjoyed his talk that night,” she said. “He seemed like such a nice man.”
Celia nodded. “He really is.” She had noticed the first time she met Lenny Bullard, at his home a year or so ago, that he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, which didn’t prove anything, especially in the art world. Still, it piqued her interest. He was a compact man but muscular, built like a wrestler, and it was easy to imagine him not breaking a sweat as he carried a bride over the threshold, even toted her around the whole house.
He was probably in his late forties or early fifties, but a nice-looking man. She had barely had time to wonder about his marital status, however, before he pointed to a crayon picture of a farm on his refrigerator and spoke proudly of his grandson, who had drawn it and who wanted to be an artist like his grandpa someday. And a little later he talked openly about his wife. Anyone could tell he was still deeply in love with her, that remarrying was clearly not something he was likely to do anytime soon.
The discovery of Lenny Bullard made a great story. Tara had run across one of his paintings hanging behind the cash register in a small mom-and-pop restaurant over near Mount Chesney, and she made some inquiries about the artist, who turned out to be a brother of the mom or pop. She got his name and address, and a few weeks later, after a phone call, Ollie and Celia had driven to Yemassee to visit him, which was the start of it all. Lenny had been shocked and overwhelmed that a real gallery wanted to do a whole show of his work. He had shown his stuff mainly at regional arts and crafts festivals and local flea markets. He had no idea he was as good as he was, nor, evidently, did anyone else down around Yemassee. Of course, it didn’t usually happen that way at all. Artists weren’t usually plucked out of obscurity. It made almost as good a story as Macon Mahoney walking in out of nowhere.
“So you think it’s a pretty good poem?” Celia asked Elizabeth.
“Not bad,” Elizabeth said. “Not bad at all. He’s got a ways to go, you understand. It’s not finished. But he’s got a kind of interesting thing going.”
Celia nodded. “Seven syllables in a line,” she said, then deciding to be honest, added, “I really hadn’t noticed until I heard Margaret say it.”
“Well, I promised we wouldn’t stay long,” Elizabeth said, looking at her watch. “It’s past five now.” She glanced at Margaret, then back at Celia. “Okay, now for the second reason we stopped by.” Celia felt her neck go tense. It had surprised her somewhat that Elizabeth had been so quiet about her religion since they had been on the tennis team together. She sensed now that the silence was about to be broken. “I really did want to show Margaret the painting,” Elizabeth continued, “but we were also wondering if we could talk you into joining us for supper.” She explained to Celia that they were on their way to Greenville to eat at a place called Aunt Cassie’s Kitchen. Judy Howell on the tennis team had told Elizabeth about it. “Good country cooking and cheap—that’s how Judy described it,” she said. She went on to say that their husbands were both busy tonight, so they were having a ladies’ night out.
&nbs
p; The idea instantly made Celia nervous—eating out with two married women, trapped in an unfamiliar place, not knowing where the conversation might go. She knew Elizabeth, of course, but not Margaret, and to tell the truth, Margaret intimidated her a little. Her eyes had the wise, penetrating look of someone who could extract secrets you never intended to yield. Her beautiful face, her scholarly speech, her quiet dignity—they could hypnotize a person. She had a way of studying you that went beyond just friendly interest. It seemed that she knew.
“You would honor us with your company,” Margaret said to Celia.
And right then, as if to demonstrate Margaret’s hypnotic effect, though Celia’s mind was waving a thousand red flags, though sirens were screaming in her ears, she heard herself say, “Well, okay, I guess so. I was just going to fix a sandwich at home.”
They waited out on the sidewalk while she adjusted the air conditioning, activated the alarm, and turned off the lights. As she was flipping the sign to read Closed, the phone rang. She had no intention of answering it, but she waited nonetheless to see if someone would leave a message. Within seconds she heard Craig’s voice, clearly exasperated. He didn’t have to identify himself. No one else talked that rudely on the phone. “So you’re gone already,” he said. “I needed something,” and then he hung up. Celia wasn’t about to call him back. It was ten minutes past closing time. It irritated her that he made it sound like she had skipped out early.
She stepped outside and locked the door. Boo Newman, several doors down at the gift shop, was locking up, also. She hadn’t stopped by the gallery in over a week, which pleased Celia just fine. But she cried out merrily now, “Hello, Celia! I’m coming down to see you tomorrow. Have I got a story for you!”
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