The Art Lover

by Carole Maso

  Your parents called often: “Is he better or worse? Is he eating? Is he coherent? Carole, you must be tired. How are you doing?”

  I tell them that all summer my friend Louis has sent the daily revisions of his poems to me. I have watched a word move from one line to the next, watched a comma appear or disappear, seen a stanza rearranged. It’s helped a little, I said.

  Sometimes I close my eyes, I tell them, open my eyes and you are whole. Not coughing. Not skinny. Just you. Painting. Out for a walk. Or having dinner somewhere in the city you loved.

  In your obituary they wrote you died as a result of AIDS. They were not ashamed. They would have loved you just as much if they had known you were gay. You doubted that and kept it from them until you got sick. It hurt them that that was the case.

  I talk to your parents now long distance and it reminds me of talking to my own parents, both on the line at the same time. One upstairs, one downstairs. One listening, one talking, then an interruption and they are talking simultaneously. It’s how they talked to you those days we sat in the hospital and then to me in the hospital after you couldn’t talk anymore.

  I am in Provincetown now and it is freezing cold. There’s more snow here than there’s been in thirty years. You arrive between thin cardboard that once held pantyhose. The Bloomingdale’s b-line, sheer-to-the-waist sandalfoot. This I know would amuse you. Your mother has sent me two photos: in one you are posing in a studio, a professional shot; in the other you are sitting in the brightest sun on a beach somewhere.

  Gary, I’ve got a studio here near the water. There’s a lot I’d like to tell you. I’ve been seeing more of that woman you met at my book party.

  There are some nice people here. I think you’d like Scott, the photographer, a lot. Helen is well. It is snowing again. There’s more snow this year on the Cape than in the last thirty years. I’ve said that.

  At the very end, with great effort, you moved your hand over mine and patted it, not because you knew who I was anymore, but simply because you saw someone in deep distress and you were so kind—comforting a stranger even as you were dying.

  One more minute, Gary.

  We thought we had all the time in the world.

  I’ve got your dishes from Paris. Your champagne glasses. Your green watch is now mine. I’ve got your copies of Calvino’s Folk Tales and Mr. Palomar. Your bunny plate.

  A rabbit chases a carrot forever across a plate that lies on my bureau in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

  I have a recurring dream. You are walking down a long boarded walkway to my studio at the Fine Arts Work Center. You are wearing your St. Vincent’s pajamas and slippers. You’ve got a three-day-old beard. You’re attached to your IMED. You’ve got a little spiral taped to your chest.

  You slowly pass Studio One, Studio Two. I am in number three. It’s winter. The ocean is rising behind you. Sometimes you stop and disappear into the water. Sometimes I walk with you into the water. Nothing makes this dream stop. Sometimes you point to the spiral and say, “It goes directly into the heart.” Sometimes you say nothing. Sometimes you put your hand out to stop me. Sometimes you motion for me to come.

  Nothing has made it stop. Not the ocean, not the dunes, not the screams of the seagulls. Not the Slovak poet and his moody translations of Trakl. Not the Dewars or the Absolut. Nothing makes it stop, Gary. Nothing. Not the writing of this. Not the writing of The Art Lover.

  You are telling me to come. You are telling me not to come. You are dead. You are not really dead. You are walking to my Studio, it is winter, you are in your pajamas, the V over your heart. You are dragging your bag of blood. You are so thin.

  It means: I miss you.

  It means: I can’t believe this happened to you.

  Spring 1986

  First Signs of Whirligigs and Hiblinkas

  It’s still March, but today is the first genuinely springlike day and I am in sitting in your park—Washington Square Park, which you walked through so often to get from home to office and back again, a stack of books and papers under your arm. Dear Father.

  People seem happy by this intimation of spring, its mere suggestion. Two lovers sit on a bench, genuinely moved by the warmth in the air. Or is it some little love song that has made them believe this is their time, the spring, on a park bench.

  A radio goes by. Madonna sounds so perky. “You must be my lucky star, ’cause you make the darkness seem so far.”

  People seem more willing to talk to each other. Really. Something relaxes in this false spring. In this spring.

  The music in the park today is loud, celebratory. And why not? The temperature near seventy. The sky a sky blue. “Lived in a brownstone, lived in a ghetto, I’ve lived all over this town,” David Byrne sings. Turn your head another angle and you can catch Grand Master Flash saying, “I am somebody!” What a day!

  The police car is making its endless slow rotation but finds no trouble.

  It’s spring, regardless of the date. There’s a lot of dancing. People are carrying cameras of every size and shape.

  “I know you,” someone says, snapping my picture.

  There’s a lot of dancing and why not? Soon the fire-eaters will be returning. The sword swallowers, the jugglers, the three-card montes, people to draw your picture. There are bicycles galore. Roller skates, skateboards, shopping carts, wagons—every variety of wheel. It’s the shopping-bag ladies who have the shopping carts. They are the most grateful of all for spring, I think.

  You can see bits of green on the boughs of the trees if you really concentrate.

  No matter how nice the day I still do not like pigeons, though what you have heard is true, Max, I have become a bird watcher.

  People open their lunches on the benches. Small, modest picnics of sorts. People lift a can of this or that to welcome spring.

  The police have found someone to tell to turn down their radio.

  Lots of sunglasses.

  Lots of hats.

  Some babies.

  How lovely the townhouses bordering the park look. It is 1:15 p.m., March 11, 1986. They look like red-and-white checkerboards in this light. Like flags.

  And the rosy NYU library you came out of so many times. Muttering mostly. I remember that librarian you were seeing for a while. By this time of course we had stopped asking, “Will she be our stepmother?” We had gotten the idea. I remember you walking across the park with her, she in her business suit, you in your sweater. Later she told me, as if I were her friend, she thirty when I was twenty, “We liked it best on my large desk. We would lock the door, during lunch hour. He liked taking me from behind. He said I had lovely earlobes.”

  The man next to me has one wish for his life. Lots of people are talking to each other today. He wants to die in Brazil. He says it’s the country this country could have been.

  It’s 1:50. The light looks like a flag from a country this one could have been.

  It’s 2:02 by the digital. The light looks like a tablecloth at a picnic.

  There are winos still. Beer bellies. Over the years you developed quite a belly yourself, Max. I remember it crossing the park, your arm crooked to hold those papers and books. Muttering, mostly.

  There are a lot of students here. Students in love. Students in love with life, each other, the sweetness, the warmth in the wind. With art.

  An NYU film school crew is out making a film. Moving the tripod from here to there. Getting out the trusty Ariflex. Soundman with headphones carrying the Nagra. And how is Laslo doing these days? I wonder. Nice weather for filmmaking. “Light. More light!” the director cries. The aperture opens. The director, just a big kid, passing, says, “Hey, you’d be perfect for this one small part. Do you want to be in my movie?” “Maybe,” I say. “Call,” he gives me his number. It would be for next week. “Great face,” he says. “Thanks,” I say.

  The dinner is tonight. I must not forget the champagne on the way home. Tonight, only the best champagne. We’ll be drinking the stars, as the litt
le monk Dom Perignon said.

  People are smiling and dancing. They are glad Halley’s Comet is back. There’s still a chance we might actually see it.

  Children in the distance going up and down on the swings make a pretty pattern. Children going down slides. Children on seesaws. It’s the motion that’s so pleasing. Children playing on things I have no real names for—doughnut-shaped objects that twirl. Whirligigs, you’d call them, zephyrs, hiblinkas. You were not so old to have to die, especially when I think of you sitting on one of those benches with me and saying, “Look at that kid riding a hiblinka.”

  They have found an empty spacesuit from the Challenger, I’ve heard. Slowly the ocean gives up the heroes.

  Some very professional-looking bike riders pass, with all the equipment—helmets and pads. Yes, this is a dangerous place, there is no doubt, even in spring.

  Drug dealers whispering cocaine, cocaine, cocaine. Police circling.

  A few girls in short skirts, tee-shirts, the styles of spring. Lots of pinks and yellows. Some probably art history students. I can’t believe all the girls you’re missing.

  An empty spacesuit. This year’s model.

  The camera crew is looking through the lens at the bouncing and bobbing children. There’s lots of wild sound. The light meter is out. Light readings are being taken.

  A flag draped over the remains.

  People wear buttons, but I can’t really read them. “Victim of the press” is a popular one.

  Often I feel like I can’t quite see in. Never really a part of things. “Ah, Caroline,” you’d say. “Never underestimate the gene pool. It’s the luck of the draw. Your mother often felt that way.”

  Grey feels that way, even more often than I do. Though he digs and digs, he can’t seem to get dirty enough.

  “Ah, the luck of the draw.”

  David called to say that Grey has checked into a hospital for depression in the south of France. Van Gogh’s hospital, peut-être? Spring was always hardest for him.

  The light comes and goes. It’s time for home. Must not forget to see if your librarian is still there one of these days. It’s something she should know about you, if she doesn’t yet. Nearly a year already now.

  If you really concentrate, the light in the trees at 4:30 in Washington Square Park on the 11th of March looks like the first leaves, tiny hands, stars.

  Right now Giotto moves toward the nucleus of the comet. Right now Giotto is drinking the stars.

  Tonight we will drink bottle after bottle of champagne. Tonight there will be stars in our mouths.

  Jesus in the Garden

  “Transplant seedlings in the evening, Caroline. If you put them in during the heat of the day they will wilt,” he says, walking up to the garden at dusk. “They may not survive the shock.” He pauses. “Or you can plant them on a cloudy day. Or just after rain.”

  He holds the first seedling in his hand. “Careful not to break the delicate roots,” he says.

  “All winter, collect toilet paper cores and small orange juice cans. Gently slip them over the plants and press them into the ground. They should be snug around the plants because at night the worms come up close to the stems.

  “Protect my beauties, my firstlings, my primeurs, from the frost. My asparagus and artichokes. My tender sweet peas, green beans, early spinach. Sorrel, carrots, beets. Take along newspaper hats, fruit baskets, burlap blankets. Anything to hold the warmth from the earth around the foliage through the night.” He touches my hand. “This is the word of God.”

  Jesus Among the Trillium, Weeping

  He is sitting on a rock. He is surrounded by scarlet trillium. He picks one. Three petals, three perfect leaves. He’s inconsolable.

  “Why are you weeping, Jesus?” Candace asks.

  “Because soon I will have to die and still I do not know why.”

  She nods.

  “Nothing is finished or put away,” he whispers.

  “I know.”

  “I’m going to miss the columbine this year.”

  “How terrible. Never to see columbine again,” Candace says.

  He looks up. “I’ll see it again.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Oh yes,” he says. “I’m sure.”

  The Beating Leaves

  Monica has lost her ferret. I picture it running wild through this city, its small ferret eyes darting here, there. Monica crying out in the night, inconsolable. Where is my ferret?

  “Oh my. Poor Monica,” you’d say, with a certain tenderness and cruelty.

  I understand now, Max, that you were heartbroken. I understand there were no suitable words for you to speak, given the enormity of your pain. Given your line of vision. It’s my problem too. How to continue at all, how to speak, given everything.

  “Yes, but it is the pursuit that is beautiful, my dear. You yourself have said.”

  Sometimes I’m not sure anymore, Max.

  “My darling daughter.”

  One of Cézanne’s last letters. It was to his son: “Finally I must tell you that as a painter I am becoming more and more clear sighted in front of nature but that with me the realization of my sensation is always very difficult. I cannot sustain the intensity that is unfolded before my senses. I have not the magnificent richness of color that animates nature.”

  Edward Snow on Degas: “The pathos of nearness and distance that one still feels before a Degas—the lingering desire of the artist not so much to possess as to prolong, to be there where the vision is.”

  Psalm 44: “We have been faithful to you, O God, yet you have broken us in the place of jackals.”

  I will bring lilacs to him because it is spring. Each leaf, heart-shaped, perfect. I am so filled with sorrow and love. How to begin to say this?

  My editor, carrying the first copies of Delirium, visits me in my apartment. “Here,” he says, proudly. We are in this together. I hold the book for the first time. It’s the most beautiful book I have ever seen and I tell him so. “You must sign one,” he says, “for me.”

  Nothing unusual. A lovely afternoon, a little wine, the sun shining brightly. I pick up my pen and open his book, not knowing at all what I will say; I let my hand just go and I write, “For John, with my ultimate respect and love.” There is something deeply shocking in this. I was unaware of how I felt until it was written. I trust you. I love you. But I had not realized it.

  We talked about the next book. Drank a little more wine. He had to go. He left his cigarettes.

  There was the package of cigarettes. We were talking. We were talking about art. He had to leave. He was gone. But he left his Camels behind.

  And here he is now, in an image of a single Camel walking through a desert with pyramids on a glass table in New York, ten years ago.

  It’s such a strange life, Max.

  Many years later in Massachusetts, lying on a beach, I look up across the Swift River into the center of a single pine tree and miss her. Her face does not come back, nor her figure. Not a single fragment of her voice or anything she ever said. But I miss my mother, looking at a tree. It is only a tree. A lake. A sound of a body moving through water, a wave.

  Sometimes, Max, it feels too sad to have to go on.

  Steven gasping for breath, some months from now.

  “Feel appalled, Caroline. Feel like Picasso.”

  In Picasso’s by-now-famous last self-portrait, the artist resembles an old Roman warrior. One eye seems in this world, almost popping out of his head in its eagerness to see. The other eye is a beady dot that appears to have glimpsed something that does not allow itself to be seen. His expression as a whole is one of stupefaction. When we arrive at this painting, we are as scandalized as he that even the old warrior, who in his late work seemed to have devoured nature itself, would one day have to say good bye.

  “Oh my, I don’t mean to tell you how to feel. The absurdity of it. How queer. You know what death looked like, Caroline? A young man in a shower cap and a bathrobe leaning over me a
nd reciting numbers.

  “Who the hell is this guy? I wanted to ask. The whole world disappearing.”

  Sometimes I think we live in an unbreakable code. The world refusing to give up its logic. As much as I turn it, it remains indecipherable, a cloudy bowl of blue water half-filled. A New York winter. And I am afraid of all that is opaque, viscous. It’s so difficult to really see.

  The starburst was the shape of your death, of so many things. I know that now, but to be truthful, at the time I thought it was only the shape of pleasure, the shape of orgasm.

  To mistake glass for ice.

  “That’s OK. All you have to do is keep looking,” says Max.

  And to keep feeling, Max, regardless of the consequences.

  Steven, here, now, still.

  I love you.

  Because he was saying I love you, something he had never said to them before, they thought he was saying good-bye.

  Because it is spring I think of lilacs. I think of bringing you lilacs, of inhaling them deeply as the elevator rises up to the Coleman Wing where you sleep. The leaves shaped like hearts. Each one beating for you.

  I pass the Korean grocer. Everything feels heightened. Each vegetable and fruit, they’re greener, rounder, riper. I look at the Korean grocer’s old face. I am afraid. Everything feels over. I hand him an avocado. It’s greener. A peach. It’s rounder. I hand him the world. I can feel its delicate skin. Its softness. A plum. A pear. A melon. Its infinite variety, smell, shape. I begin to cry. He had no language for me. We were from opposite sides of the earth. But it’s over. Everything feels over.

  One more minute, I beg.

  I open the avocado. I put the apple in my mouth. I would bring parsnips to your lips, tender raspberries, asparagus. I eat oranges and figs. I devour all the things of this world.

  I dream everything. There is nothing I do not dream. I dream of a shining city rising up from an island if only for one moment in the history of the world. Steven, I dream of your blood in my bloodstream, which is death, and I dream of the lilacs I bring. I dream of the way to speak of all of this. First, we are seven, you are drawing my picture in class, and then you are dying on the fourteenth floor of St. Vincent’s Hospital. We are on a beach. We are moving our hands through water. There is a camel. A stone cross. A sunburst.