The Art Lover

by Carole Maso

  I hand the poor old woman who sits on the park bench a bag of plums.

  I eat the peach. We are eating to live.

  We are in a disco, Steven. We are dancing for our lives.

  We dare to write it down, to make a mark on a page, to utter something.

  I love you.

  We are speaking for our lives.

  The Lady Fern

  There were so many different kinds of ferns, and now they were on the verge of fern season again.

  The seeds ordered in January from catalogs had arrived. The names they dreamt of all winter long now had shape. Alison took packet after packet out of the box, a small weight in her hands.

  The Maestro Peas. The Champion Radish. The Jubilee Sweet Corn. The Early Wonder Beets. The Ace Pepper. The Hungarian Hot Wax. The Young Beauties. The Ruby Perfection. They had all arrived.

  The garden shed was cool. They collected the tools and put them in the wagon: hoes, shovels, rakes and the pitchfork. Slowly they climbed the hill to the large patch Alison had covered several weeks earlier with manure.

  “What shall I do?” Maggie asked.

  “I’ll show you, Mother. It’s not so hard to grow things. I’ll teach you everything I know.”

  It was a warm day, really the first warm day of the season and already their NYU sweatshirts were off. “Let’s turn over the earth first, take out any big rocks. We should probably just get a feel for it. It seems like it’s been such a long time.”

  “My farmer,” Maggie said. From her back pocket Alison took out the map of the garden she had planned on paper.

  “How did you decide what goes next to what?”

  “Oh, it’s very well thought out.”

  “I’m sure,” Maggie smiled.

  “I put the root crops together because they use a lot of potash. Leafy greens, cauliflower and cabbage use more nitrogen, so I decided to put them next to the peas and beans, which put nitrogen in the soil. If you keep moving plant families around, the bugs and disease will have to travel. Mostly they’re not up for the trip. Last year the root vegetables were there. The peas and beans there. It’s best to rotate.”

  “We’ve lived through almost a whole year without him. I think we’re going to be OK,” Maggie whispers.

  Alison opened the first packet of seeds. The Early Wonder Beets and the Black-Seeded Simpson Leaf Lettuce. Maggie watched Alison’s tiny fingers make the first row, indenting the earth and then emptying the seeds into it. “Alison,” she said.

  “What is it, Mom?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Come on. Why don’t you help me? Here, start another row. Right here next to me.”

  Maggie lightly pressed her finger into the earth and let out a small sound.

  “Are you all right, Mom?”

  She pressed her hand into the soil and let out another sound.

  “Oh, Alison. It’s so dark. It’s so very dark. And warm. I didn’t expect it to be this warm and dark.”

  “It’s kind of nice, isn’t it?”

  “It’s very nice. No wonder you’re always up here.”

  Alison smiled.

  “We’re going to be OK, aren’t we?”

  Alison nodded.

  “Candace, too?”

  “Sure, she’ll be OK.”

  “Do you miss him, Ali?”

  “All the time.”

  “I thought so.”

  “Candace has seen him.”

  “Really?”

  “She’s bumped into him a few times.”

  “Was he—”

  “Yes, he was with Biddy.”

  The name sounded ludicrous to Maggie, but she did not allow herself to focus on the woman. It was Henry. She did not complete the sentence even in her mind. But it was Henry she hated. She stood up straight on the dark, turning earth, felt dizzy, lost her balance and then regained it. The world seemed to open up with emotion and she marveled at the breadth of her sudden rage. There was no other word for it. She shouted into the open earth, “I hate you for what you’ve done.”

  Alison quietly moved down the row, bending over the plot, gently covering over the seeds she had just sown.

  “Candace says she despises him. She says she always will and that she’ll never forgive him.”

  How oddly this moment of hate, Maggie thought, however fleeting, made her capable of a different sort of love as well. She looked at this daughter and loved her with an intensity she had never before felt.

  “Candace is coming home,” Alison said. “Back for the summer, soon as school is out.” Maggie thought of Candace again, her angry, passionate daughter, the fierce child of fire born in July under the sign of the lion. She had decided to paint. Who would have thought?

  Alison thought of the three of them here for the summer.

  “It’s all so wonderful.”

  “What, Mom?”

  “The world. All this dirt everywhere. And cow shit. My God.”

  Maggie breathed in the warm air. Alison moved to another plot of land, plot #2 on her plan.

  From this place in the garden Maggie could see now how grown-up Alison had become in this last year. Her body catching up with the rest of her. If love had a body, she thought, it would take Alison’s shape.

  Such a sight. Her daughter. And the painting she could now see in her mind’s eye. Mary Cassatt, she said. Why had she never thought of Mary Cassatt before? Or any of the others? Vanessa Bell, she said to herself. Frida Kahlo. Sonia Delaunay. Georgia O’Keeffe.

  There was Rosa Bonheur, Paula Modersohn-Becker. Florine Stettheimer and Käthe Kollwitz. She thought she had barely known their names, but now they all came back, in an instant.

  Alison turned to her and whispered, “She’s much better now. Candace is, since she’s made the decision to paint. She seems much better.”

  “My hunch,” Maggie said, slowly getting up, “is that she’ll be very good.”

  “She wants us to come to New York and go to some galleries with her. She wants you to see Barbara Kruger.” But who, she wondered, was Barbara Kruger? “Georgia Marsh. Louisa Chase. Nancy Graves. Ida Applebroog.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “She’s sure to run us ragged. You know Candace.”

  But did she know Candace any more than she knew this girl/woman laughing now, rolling in the dirt?

  “I’m so happy it’s finally spring. And it’s here early. Soon there’ll be fiddleheads again. And Candace will be here. Aren’t you happy, Mom? Spring!”

  “I’m not sure. It will mean it’s been a whole year.”

  “We’ve done all right, Mom.”

  There are wildflowers that live only for a week, Alison thought. You must love them while you can.

  “When is Candace coming?”

  “Soon as she finishes her final project.”

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know, she’s being pretty mysterious.”

  “Why hasn’t she told me anything, Ali?”

  “I guess she thought you just wouldn’t be interested. She wants to be a Guerrilla Girl.”

  “Does that mean she’s a lesbian?”

  “Mom, don’t you know what a Guerrilla Girl is? They’re ‘the conscience of the art world.’ A group of women artists demanding attention.”

  “Really?” She had neglected them all.

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself, professor.”

  “I’ve been absent a lot. I’ve nearly missed you girls growing up completely.”

  “I never held it against you.”

  “And Candace?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Alison looked far out at the dark-green edge where the field met the forest. She thought about those spirals of green about to curl from the earth. “Fiddleheads,” she said. She had read that those miraculous ferns were brought by the French Canadians who could not live without them. “Let’s go check the asparagus bed.”

  For the first time, it seemed, Maggie realized the beauty of her surroundin
gs—the gorgeous spot this garden was in, high on the hill overlooking the barn and the garden shed. The apple trees and the field. Past that, the forest. And the bluish Berkshires far in the distance, an ocean in this light. She allowed herself over and over again the pleasure of simply bending in the dirt. She felt the tender tips of the young asparagus on her palms, her wrists. Those purple patterned heads. She felt the pleasure of simply sitting in the dirt with a view like this on a lovely spring day with Alison. For a moment she did not try to name or arrange anything. Side by side, they weeded the long bed of asparagus in silence. It was getting late.

  “I love when the ferns come,” Alison murmured, rubbing her eyes the way Maggie remembered she did when she was a little girl. They packed the garden wagon and slowly, one step at a time, went down the steep hill.

  “The ostrich plume fern,” “the maidenhair fern,” she said with their steps. “The lady fern.”

  Alison’s Dream

  Despite a long Saturday in the garden with her mother, Alison had a hard time falling asleep. First she thought of the day’s work and wondered whether she had done the right thing putting the early potatoes so close to the peas. Her father had always done the garden plot arrangements. Plant sage among cabbages because it gives off camphor that repels the cabbage moths. He was good at it. He enjoyed it. He always said it was a rather musical task.

  Since the garden slopes from dry to moist, the celery and cukes should go below and early veggies go on the warm upper level. In the spots that don’t receive the full sun put cabbage, peas, spinach, lettuce, radishes. In the open sunny areas put the heat-loving tomatoes, eggplants and peppers. Of course, pole beans and corn should not be placed on the south end of the garden because they will cast shadows on the rest of the plants.

  She missed him. His jokes, his lightness, his love. He must not have loved them. How could he love them and do what he had done? She worried about the garden. Had she done things properly?

  Her confirmation was in two weeks. She recited the things she had learned until she fell asleep.

  “See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For the Son of Man came to save what was lost. If a man had a hundred sheep, and one of them stray, will he not leave the ninety-nine in the mountains, and go in search . . .”

  And there were many stars, but the path was still dark. She walked a long time in darkness, not knowing where she was. Someone took her hand. She hurt so badly. “Dad,” she said finally. “Is that you?” She thought she recognized him but she wasn’t absolutely sure. And he was not holding her hand, as she first thought, but someone else’s. Or wait. He was holding her mother’s hand and her hand too, she thought. And Candace was huddled around his feet. “It’s the bear,” Candace whispered. “Shh shh.” But it was too dark somehow for Alison to see, floating, yes floating as she was in some strange and wonderful shape. It was so dark. “Daddy, the bear,” Candace said. Alison saw nothing. But the feeling of her father there protecting them against bears and then the absence of the father made Alison shiver. Hearing her father say now, “Do not worry, I will take care of you forever,” as he was saying now, “even against bears,” made her shudder with sadness.

  “Where’s the bear, Candace?” Alison whispered. “Where?”

  “Higher,” Candace said. “Look higher.”

  She looked up. “Where?” She saw her mother’s full breasts.

  “Higher,” Candace said.

  She looked up and saw her mother’s enormous head, like a globe on her shoulders.

  “Higher.”

  Past the universe of her mother’s head, Alison saw lights. Beautiful lights in the sky.

  “That’s right,” Candace said, helping Alison slowly navigate her way. They found the Big Dipper, tipped, and with their infinitesimal fingers they connected the stars. In the handle now she saw the tail and in the bowl, the back. She heard her father’s voice louder, clearer. “I will protect you forever. I will keep you safe from all bears.” And baffled and angered and aching, Alison continued. “I will never leave you.” There was the giant head, the body, the paws. And finally, with great effort, she cast it into the sky, Ursa Major, the family bear, and cried.

  Jesus, Dancing

  Jesus dances among the lilies of the valley. He pats the lambs on their heads. He picks a jeweled fruit from a tree. Someone is playing a lute. He hears a cock crowing; he doesn’t think much about it. He thinks he would like to learn how to cook. Maybe he’ll be a chef, he thinks—he forgets for a minute. He imagines the day he will feed the multitudes and it makes him smile. He’s whirling, twirling, a young man in the years before thirty, when no one knows exactly what he’s doing. He looks up to the perfection of sky. He says it to himself; he tries it out—I am going to rise.

  Reading Steven to Sleep

  “‘The last spacecraft to encounter the comet will be the European Giotto mission. It is to fly closer to the comet than any of the others.

  “‘The actual encounter will take place between 13 and 14 March 1986 and will only last 4 hours at a possible flyby distance of only 310 miles. At this time the comet will be 90 million miles from Earth and the flyby velocity will be 42 miles per second. If the spacecraft encounters any cometary debris at this speed, the result can only be catastrophic.’”

  A Letter from Henry

  The letter she had composed hundreds of times over in her head through the past year arrived quite unexpectedly one day. In the past few weeks she had let down her guard, entering the garden with Alison and staying there. In fact, she had not thought of the letter at all since that first day in the garden. Yet here it was. She recognized the handwriting at once.

  She knew any word from Henry would arrive in the form of a letter. Henry had always conveyed all really important news in writing. Would you marry me? he had written on a cream-colored card, bordered in gold. And who could have resisted such a man, sending out a formal invitation to live a life together? Over the years she would learn that his proposal was no one-time romantic gesture but just the beginning of a series of notes he would write to her. “I want to have a child.” “Bless us with another daughter.” It was the one truly odd thing about him. She remembered the morning she woke up to an envelope he had placed next to her on his pillow. “Mother is dying. I must leave for Vermont.” He was there in the room dressing, putting on his tie and jacket; he could have spoken to her. In the mirror he watched her open the envelope. He could have said something; he was right there. But writing was his way of coping with the most intense of experiences. Ordering them. Perhaps it made them seem more real. “I’m sorry,” she said, kissing him as he left the room.

  She should have known that the letter she had waited for would be as simple as those earlier ones had been. Will you marry me? Mother is dying. I have fallen in love with another woman. Not elaborate, as she had fantasized, not filled with explanations, rationales, testimonies. No paragraphs about his new life in New York, pages about what went wrong. She opened it slowly. It was a brief note, and as she read it she could picture him writing it, and she did not know how she could have imagined the note any other way.

  She grew angry for a moment. She imagined him writing “I love you” to her on a napkin in a cafe. He had said he loved her. “I have fallen in love with another woman.”

  She looked at the handwriting she knew so well and grew calm again. The handwriting of good and bad news. “I want to come home.” That was the line that stood out, though there were others around it. “Terrible mistake,” “miss you,” “the children.” “I want to come home.” “I want to come home”—but she did not know what she thought about that anymore. Her hands were trembling. “I love you. I miss you. I want to come home. Forgive me.”

  But certainly he did not expect her to forgive him just like that, did he?

  She tucked the letter into the pocket of the cardigan sweater she was wearing.

  “I love you.”

  But she did not know if she loved him anymore.


  Her response, she thought, might be, Why didn’t you ever teach me how to make a fire, Henry? But why hadn’t she ever thought to ask? she wondered.

  How could he have left her when she loved him so much?

  “I love you. I want to come home.”

  She had come to love not only the names of the trees but gradually the trees themselves. The white bark of the birch. The smell of pines.

  “Was I shocked into the world by you or do I still give you more credit than you deserve? I can’t say. But things have changed here, and I don’t know if I love you anymore.”

  She looked out the window into the meadow where the cowslip and bloodroot had begun to bloom. She watched a figure out of the distance come nearer, grow bigger.

  “There are fiddleheads for lunch,” Alison said with delight, entering the kitchen. “And the first asparagus.” She got out the steamer, singing. “Oh Mom, please, can’t we go out in the boat tonight?”

  The Last Dream on Earth

  In the last dream I ever have this is what I hope would happen: we are all there, Max and Mom, David and Grey, Steven. We’re somewhere far away in a large room. “It’s so dark,” Steven whispers. “Don’t be afraid,” I say. “The dark is not so dark.”

  I put Steven where David usually is—it’s surprisingly easy. I can’t get him out of his pajamas, though, so I guess his pajamas will have to do. But he is not skinny and he is not coughing. He puts his foot on the first rung of the ladder. He climbs up slowly, one rung at a time. Grey speaks. “We’ve saved this for you, Steven,” he says, and he hands him a scalpel, a tweezers, some solvent, a brush. Grey dozes off. I cannot press him into a life he does not want. David sits down and looks at this remote image of himself. They are Castor and Pollux and one day they will be together forever in the sky. Made of light. But for now—David gets up and moves away from his silent twin. “The restoration,” he tells me, “reveals the colors are radiant, like Vasari said.”