Dead Artist

by Ivan Jenson

  Sunday, and cooling weather outside hints of what normally comes in September and October. Milo and Samantha walk Moon though a park where boys are playing touch football on a field. A perfect cool summer afternoon for Milo's favorite pastime, wandering.

  Milo had to take some time off from the misery. After all, he is not the one who is dying. Sometimes it felt like his mother was pulling him like a rip tide, leading him away and out to sea, he had to keep reminding himself that he was not dying. Not yet.

  Milo believed that each person has a North star they follow during lost times in their lives. And just as Vincent had Theo, Milo had his once headstrong, capable and omnipresent mother. Perhaps Samantha was becoming a newly prominent figure in his life, maybe a candidate for a replacement North star.

  His mother blew his ego out of proportion from the very start. At age nine, she sat him down and told him two things: One, that if he wanted to be great in his life, that indeed he could do it. “If you want someday to be a great poet, or a great singer, or dancer, or artist, you can!” And two, “You have been touched by the gift.” This rocketed his self esteem into the stratosphere, and from then on Milo felt himself to be beyond mere lowly school work, and the annoying black hole of history facts that teachers attempted to drill into him. Instead he lived in haphazard bliss and at the age of thirteen, both wrote his first novel and later that year modeled in clay a Rodin-esque bust of his grandfather. And so he spent his youth with buzzing, unstoppable confidence, and with foaming-to-the-brim arrogance. This creative underage intoxication kept him “high flying” for years. His whole life he felt like he was holding a flag, a flag that said, “watch me, hear me, caress me, read me.”

  And New Yorkers did, they really did...at least for a while.

  Then during these past ten years when fame began to distance itself from him and then to completely sever their relationship, it left him standing alone, leaving him hanging until he came crashing to the ground of suburban anonymity. He blamed his mother for having falsely coerced him into believing that he was beyond education, structure, or the “yawn inducing” academic machine. And so he spent four years in hibernation, living in that government-sponsored room, near family, unsure of his future. But now that a powerful force of a man named Nick was putting his investment guns behind him, he could once again love his mother for all she had instilled in him. But it was too late now. She was fading.

  His mother had been positively psychic in her ability to know and sense all that Milo was up to at all times. It was as if he was not his own person, ever. It was as if he belonged to her.

  Milo stood forth proudly on each and every New York street, as customers snatched up his paintings, sometimes in minutes, he always knew he was onto something with his art. And his mother assured him through the years that, “some day, some how it will all come together for you.”

  The first fellow street artist that Milo stood next to on West Broadway was a man in his sixties who looked weathered and much older, his skin was like a wood carving in a cigar shop. And this man, in his equally wrinkled gray suit, upon hearing this was Milo’s first day of selling on the street, had confided in him that years of street selling had brought him great happiness but it also had brought him to the abyss of two nervous breakdowns. The two of them often chatted on the street. He was once offered an exclusive contract in a gallery, the man rambled, “But I told em, nuthin fuckin doin unless you slap the gold and silver into my palm. That’s right, I’s got to see dat money honey, or nuthin doin. But you Milo, I promise you that one day, what that shit dat you do, dat real cool colorful shit, well mark my words, and mark them well because I can see the future baby and someday, somehow, somebody is going to come along and they are going to take you all the way there. Because what you got there, is what it takes.” Then he turned and muttered to himself, “Mother fucker.”

  These were the only two times Milo had ever heard that phrase, “someday, somehow, some one...” Once from his mother, and the second time from the street worn man.

  Milo's journey to this prophetic moment in time, was also soured by a nervous breakdown. He found himself in a week-by-week rental hotel. All he had was a simple white room, some posters from the Museum of Modern Art, his dog Moon that shaggy bohemian beast, and two artistic giants from the other world. And now he had Samantha too. But she was sleeping, always sleeping.

  And though she is with you, you still feel so alone. Especially now at this bewitching hour of 3:00am, when the lonely must at least attempt to sleep. In this room with no damn air conditioning, no relief. Just a fan buzzing, blowing hot air around.

  So you call him, the old night owl Dr. Hyatt. He takes calls twenty four hours a day.

  But all he seems to say is the same repeating refrain, “I hope you do get rich, I really do.”

  You tell Dr. Hyatt that you have not heard from Nick in days. What is Nick doing? What’s next? Nick had promised you, with a rather mysterious air, that he would be enlisting the help of certain VIPs to further your career.

  Milo often wondered in the late night hours what would become of the thousands of paintings he made over these twenty years of paying his dues. Did they all still exist? Would all his hard work and dedication create a boomerang effect, and project good Karma back to him?

  When the money finally came and Milo could fulfill his fantasies he planned to be a burly and bearded Rodin-like sculptor, working, molding monumental masses of clay that would be cast into bronze that would rust green in the elements of passing seasons. Huge muscle bound men, roughly rendered, bumpy, and women, young and gaunt, like heroin chic fawns, emerging from mounds of clay hillsides. Milo imagined that cranes would have to be employed to transport these giant bronze-toned odes to humanity. They would be landmarks, parked and poised in cities like Dallas, Toronto, St. Louis, Newark, Chicago. Bold bronzed, unschooled, untutored testaments to shape, contour, and silhouette.

  “I’m not a painter,” Milo said. “I will be a sculptor.”

  Pablo was smoking by the window, his hand no longer able to create in the after-life, “Tell me about it, I felt the same way.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Over the past ten years, I have kept accounts of certain expenditures,” his mother said, laying in her deathbed. “The breakfasts, the lunches, the small incidental petty cash loans. Those times that I rescued you when you couldn’t pay your rent, your electric, your phone, the times when I bought you art supplies because you were broke, those times when I lent you twenty dollars to rescue your clothes from the cleaners. Well, I want you to know that I added it all up, and as you can imagine it is an astronomical figure.”

  “But things are happening now and the way it looks, I will be able to pay you back and then some.”

  “I just want you to know I have all these years visualized all that will happen for you. And even though I won’t be alive to really see it, sometimes I can picture it in my dreams, I see you living on the French Riviera in a villa just like your second father Picasso. I can see it at night, in immense rooms with twenty foot ceilings and there you are working into the morning light. Just don’t worry about thanking me for all that I have done for you all these years. Always remember you don’t owe anybody anything. Life is not about paying people back.”

  Milo felt like he was knee deep in clay-like karmic debt. The big muddy.

  There was Shelby, the Jewish accountant girl, he owed a lot to her. They had once been lovers in New York. She had run into him during a particularly dire summer dry spell, when he was so broke he could only afford to buy a knish for lunch. There he stood on Fifth Avenue, she was walking by with her sister. Shelby took pity on him by buying one of his large paintings right there on the spot. Then she took him on like a pet project. She made sure his rent was paid, “so you can feel like a human being,” is how she put it. She hired him to create an artsy poster for her accounting firm. She paid another month's rent, took him out to dinner, movies, and to the Gap and Old Navy to get je
ans, shirts, sweaters, socks and briefs. Milo continued to make love to her as long as he could, that is, until he was out of his financial mess. And then Shelby gave Milo an ultimatum, she told him to give up his studio and to move into her Murray Hill apartment. “I will take care of everything for you,” she said. She was petite but had a tremolo voice that carried. “All you have to do is give up one thing....other women. Or should I put it more succinctly, girls. Now I have a surprise for you, I bought us tickets to see Rent on Broadway, I bought three tickets, we can take your mother.”

  Milo seriously considered the proposition of being a kept man, protected from the rigors of street life by this lovely Jewish, high strung and extremely capable woman of thirty. He thought about her taut body, firm and flat chest. And then he took into consideration the appeal of the unknown. The unknown fortune to be made, the unmet women. And he knew very well that he had to be out in the streets, mingling on the edge and selling his art through the ever shifting temperaments of the art buying community and the changing seasons. He had to admit it, he was addicted to chance and there was a part of him that was also hooked on the extreme sport of loneliness. He wanted out of the sheltering relationship with Shelby and so one night he declined to make love to the sweet girl who was so good with numbers and she knew he was addicted to sex, and not the monogamous kind. She threw a dining room chair across her kitchen and watched him walk down the narrow railroad apartment halls of her fourth floor Murray Hill walk up and exit her front door.

  Milo thought about Shelby and what might have been as he made a phone call to his brother from the hallway of his mother’s house.

  “Hey, it’s Milo, how are you?”

  “Pretty good, I just leased a new car. And they delivered it to my house forty five minutes after I made my down payment. It came as fast as a pizza delivery.”

  His brother Ray sounded unusually cheerful considering his mother was so close to death.

  “That's good, glad you have a new car Ray... Well, it looks like the end of an era over here, so I am going to cut to the chase and ask you, are you going to fly out here or what?”

  “Well, let me think about this for a moment. My wife and I are having a dinner party this week. We are having some dear friends over, and we are going to have an informal poetry reading afterward. I just don’t see what the point of flying out there would do. Not sure if I am in the mood to bask in all that morbid negativity that I am sure is living, for now, in Mom’s house.”

  “Nobody is basking in anything here. Mom is dying. So do you want to spend some time with her or not? She is still conscious and would very much like to see you.”

  “To be honest it sounds to me like a drag.”

  “Visiting your mother when she is dying is supposed to be a drag. I thought you knew that already. No, visiting your dying mother is not a trip to Disneyland, and it’s not nearly as fun as your annual outings to Spain. But it is something that people do. Sons do it.”

  “But I am here doing interesting things with interesting people.“

  “Your mother is an interesting person and she happens to be dying. If I were you, I would find that pretty interesting.”

  “But...”

  “But nothing. You didn’t show for grandma’s death or for Dad’s. I thought maybe there might be a place in your heart to try to make it this time. But it seems very clear to me now, that you are a heartless fuck,” Milo said, quite pleased with himself.

  “Look, I don’t want any more tragedy in my life. I have a life you know. A real life. My wife and I made a conscious decision years ago that we were going to do our own thing and that we weren’t going to let the family be a distraction.”

  “And you have succeeded in turning your back on your family. What I am wondering here is if you can make a small concession in your routine to at least say goodbye to her. This is your only mother. You only get one.”

  “Okay, how 'bout this, I will think about it.”

  Milo’s sister Luna was only two days into a vacation on the West Coast when she decided to cut her trip short and return to Gold Haven. Milo immediately embraced her and asked her about her trip. There was a flight cancellation and they were stuck in LA and Ray lived minutes away from the LAX so despite what happened last time, they called him and asked if they could stay in his new home overnight, till their 7am flight departure and again, he said no. And she told Milo frankly that she had had it with Ray. She said her youngest daughter cried profusely at the airport all night. Milo told her that Ray was trying to decide whether he would fly out to see their mother and Luna said, “You know something, I hope he doesn’t come and I bet he won’t. It would require him to have a heart and some human emotions and he doesn’t have either.”

  They brought groceries from the supermarket and Luna served up a complex extravagant salad and iced coffee. It was a sticky hot summer day and it hardly seemed like appropriate dying weather. He remembered how Grandmother Sonas’ life flickered out during the spring. But then again death has never been known to calibrate with appropriate seasons, and it didn't care about the weather.

  Summer weather does not always mean summer cheer.

  “Your brother is an ass,” Vincent said. “There are no two ways about it.” Vincent was sitting on the porch with the others, but they could not see him. He continued, “Your brother certainly doesn’t compare to mine. Theo supported me financially my whole life, sending me all the art supplies that I needed, that’s what made me feel the worst. It pained me to be such a burden to him.”

  Luna, her husband, and even their child seemed to just stop speaking and let the light and the heat surround them. Milo headed upstairs to his mother's room.

  You gave up all your friendships. You fought with all your girlfriends. You lived on quarters and sacrificed an education just because you have this knack with color and line.

  You have taken some big chances all right.

  You have always had a love for old people. You were so close with your grandparents who were Mexican and who spoke English as broken as an old ox cart. Growing up in LA, your grandparents lived across the backyard swimming pool from you. And you often joined them for arroz con pollo. You used to watch bull fights with them in black and white on TV, and the Merv Griffin show, Lucille Ball, the Price is Right, the Dating Game. You have always been an old soul. Maybe that's why you like to spend your August afternoons in your mother’s room.

  With her head propped up against at least four pillows she says, “Milo, you have been mine all my life, my baby, but I am setting you free now. You haven’t always known it, but I have been watching you all your life, like an angel. If Ray ever comes to see me, and I do doubt he will, don’t let him think that the things he does affect you, don’t let him bully you. Don’t let him destroy you now. Not now that you are living on the cusp of your Picasso fantasy.”

  “Mother I hate to break it to you, but I don’t think he is coming.”

  And then his mother frowned, that famous Sonas frown, which makes it feel like the angels were a no show.

  Chapter Nineteen

  That night Ray called. “I have done some thinking,” he said to Milo, “and I am going to make the scene after all. Yes I am going to come out and visit Mom. I have a week vacation due me, I’ll come out for the weekend. Don’t worry about putting me up. I will stay in a hotel just to keep my sanity. I have already booked my flight. I arrive on July seventh.” Ray said arrive as though his appearance equated with the second coming of Christ.

  And with these words the dynamic of the family would change.

  Already, Paul, the all around sportsman, was on his way, and so were cousin Adina with her husband and two kids. It seemed as though Mother Sonas was hanging onto life just long enough for everyone's flights to arrive safely.

  “Mother, “ Milo said sitting on her bed. “Everyone is flying out to see you. And yes, Ray is coming.”

  “Ray has decided to come?”

  “Yes, Mom. Yes.”

&
nbsp; As his mother smiled, blood flowed to her cheeks flushing them with color like the last brush stroke of life’s vitality. Once again his mother was experiencing a resurgence of strength, she was like a Phoenix rising. She suddenly longed to escape the confines of her bed, and she began to do the one thing that was her form of self expression, her release and her salvation; she began to vacuum the house. The suction sound of the vacuum, and the vibration on her hand brought her great joy. The parallel lines she forged on the old carpeting gave her satisfaction. But she soon tired, and then sat on her living room couch, just trying to steady her breath.

  Meanwhile Milo never felt more vital, young and full of bubbling possibilities than when he was in the proximity of his dying mother. Her room's only light came from sunshine pressing yellow against the white curtains. There was a pitcher of water on the night table next to prescription medication jars which huddled like chess pieces. The TV was on with the volume down, two bronze tanned Latin lovers were quarreling in a Spanish novella on cable, and unread hardcover classics were sandwiched together on the bookshelves. They were thick books, which she, at this point would never have time to finish, books like The Magic Mountain, Look Homeward Angel and Ulysses. Consuelo, the Costa Rican nurse with her constant smile, timid, short, and stocky, dusted the books and swept the floor, and was always insisting that Mrs. Sonas halt her attempts to clean her own house. Sonia's bedroom was air-conditioned, cold as Christmas and the air was moist as a fern gully and musty as a used book store. It felt as though time had her cornered. Death has found this place. She could not hide. And after Milo broke the news that Ray was on the way, she seemed relieved. She thought about all of the perfectly healthy happy times he could have visited, yet he chose to come now, to pay homage to her... the tired half-self she had become.

  “When he comes,” she said to Milo, “I just hope that you two don’t fight. I just don’t have the strength to watch that.”