Or maybe it wasn’t fate. Maybe it was like the security guard had said: the two of them had gotten caught up in one of Kathy’s stories and his keeping these parcels for her was just a part of the story that had been hidden until now—the way the winter hid the ongoing story of the fields and woods under a blanket of snow.
How long would it take for the whole story to be laid out for her? she wondered. But then she thought of Rushkin, and of Jilly having seen John Sweetgrass downstairs from where she was standing at this very minute, and she wasn’t so sure she wanted to know the whole story. Not all ofKathy’s stories had ended with their protagonists happy, or even surviving.
Isabelle wasn’t even sure she believed in fate. Coincidence, surely. Perhaps even synchronicity. She liked to think there was such a thing as free will and choice, but there were times when events seemed to be the work of fate, and only fate: that Kathy should be her roommate at Butler U. Her first meeting with Rushkin. The arrival of yesterday’s letter and the claiming of today’s parcels.
Her gaze dropped down to the bag on the windowsill. What did fate have waiting for her in here?
She had lived this long, not having what was in this bag. There was nothing to make her open the packages. No one knew she had them, except for those two security guards and she wasn’t likely to run into them again.
There was no one to whom she would have to answer if she simply put the bag in the back of a closet and carried on with her life.
No one, except herself.
She sighed then and tried to shed her fear. For it was fear, plain and simple, that made her want to hide Kathy’s legacy and pretend it had never been delivered into her hands. It was still not too late, she thought, to escape the demands of the story to which the security guard had alluded, the story into which she could feel herself stepping. It waited like massed clouds on a far horizon, dark and swollen with events over which she would have no control, a storm that might easily sweep away all she held dear.
But she could do this much, she thought. If the story was there waiting for her, she could at least make the choice as to whether or not she would allow herself to step into it. She could wrest that much control from fate.
And so she sat down in the bay window and pulled the bag to her. She took the contents out and laid them beside her on the window seat. Book and painting. She chose to open the painting first. The tape was brittle and came easily away from the paper. She unwrapped the paper, but then she couldn’t move.
All she could do was stare at the familiar painting and feel the storm clouds leave that distant horizon to come swirling around her.
Paddyjack lay on her lap.
Her painting.
But it couldn’t be here. It had been destroyed in the fire with the others. She had seen it bum.
Unless memory had played her false and that had been the dream.
There was a knock on her door, but she didn’t answer it. She didn’t even hear it.
Like Gypsies In The Wood
Every work of art is an act of faith, or we wouldn’t bother to do it. It is a message
in a bottle, a shout in the dark. It’s saying, “I’m here and I believe that you are
somewhere and that you will answer if necessary across time, not necessarily in my lifetime.
—Attributed to Jeanette Winterson
I
Newford, December 1974
As the year wound to an end, Izzy could see her life spinning more and more out of her control.
There were just too many things to get done, and trying to juggle them all left her in what felt like a perpetual state of bewildered frenzy. There were the preparations for her first solo show at Albina’s gallery. She had her studies at both the university and with Rushkin. She was trying to maintain some vague semblance of a social life—or at least see John more than once a week and not be so tired when they did get together that she didn’t either fall asleep on him, or feel too cranky to properly enjoy his company.
She had no idea how she kept everything in balance or managed to get anything done at all. Still, by the end of December, not only was she keeping up with everything, but she’d still squeezed in the time to finish three paintings at the studio in back of Professor Dapple’s house.
The studio had originally been a greenhouse, but the professor had converted it into studio space for the use of those gifted students who, for one reason or another, didn’t have any other facility in which to work. At the time that Izzy started going, Jilly was the only other artist using the place. Since it had its own outside door, they could work in there at any time of the day or night without disturbing the professor. Jilly was the one who had christened it the Grumbling Greenhouse Studio after the professor’s cranky manservant, Olaf Goonasekara, who would glower at them through the greenhouse windows whenever he happened to be passing by.
Money being at a premium for both herself and filly, they worked with very limited palettes and tended to share brushes and other equipment when they could, but even then it was tight. Still they managed, working in monochrome when they were down to their last tube of paint.
At first Izzy had thought she would find it too frustrating to create in such conditions. She’d been spoiled at Rushkin’s studio, where everything she could possibly need was provided for. But while the opposite held true in the green-house studio, Izzy discovered that those same limitations were very freeing in terms of her art. Most of the time she had to rely on her own wits to get the effects and colors she needed, and while she soon appreciated just how much she had learned from Rushkin to allow her art to flourish as it did in these limited working conditions, she also came to realize that the painting she did here was allowing her to step out from under the broad shadow that Rushkin cast upon her art.
In that sense, she found it to be a very empowering experience. Less successful was her attempt to use her art to bring otherworldly beings across from their world to her own.
She finished the third of her paintings in the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. They were all three portraits of beings that were partly of this world, but partly of some other: a strange gaunt scarecrow figure with twigs and vines and leaves for hair. A tiny woman that seemed to be a cross between one of the bohemians from Waterhouse Street and a ladybug. An alley cat with wings and a tail like a rattlesnake’s body, complete with the rattle at the end. Not one of the strange beings followed the laws of nature as laid out by Darwin. And not one of them manifested itself beyond its two-dimensional existence on her easel.
And that was because such creatures were impossible, she thought as she sat on the edge of one of the long tables in the greenhouse that had originally bent under the weight of the professor’s potted plants and flowers. She looked at her odd cat, crouching on a fire escape as though it was about to take flight, then let her gaze drift away from the easel to the professor’s backyard. It was snowing again, big lazy flakes that glistened in the light spilling from the professor’s house and the greenhouse studio.
Hopping off the table, she collected the other two paintings and stood them up on the easel beside that of the winged cat. There was just enough room for all three of them on the long piece of wood that served as the lower canvas holder.
She’d done other pieces here—monochromatic studies and various sketches—but these three were the only completed works to date. She knew she was biased, but she believed they had spirit. She was sure that they had as much heart as did her Smither’s Oak or The Spirit Is Strong, but they weren’t going to come alive because their subjects didn’t exist, except in her head. There was no bringing them across from some otherworld with her art because there was no otherworld, the creatures didn’t exist, and neither did the magic that was supposed to bring them over.
How could she have been so stupid as to think it could be otherwise?
Because she wanted to, she realized. It was partly because she wanted to believe that magic could exist in the world. But it was also be
cause she didn’t want to believe that Rushkin had been lying to her.
It was disheartening to realize that for all his artistic talent, he really was quite mad.
She smiled. Maybe it was because of his artistic talent that he was mad.
After a while, she put her paintings away and cleaned up. She paused at the door, looking back before she turned off the light. The experiment had been a failure in some ways, but at least it had reminded her that she did have her own individual talent. It wasn’t all borrowed from working in Rushkin’s shadow. And one thing she knew. She wasn’t going to give it up. So long as the professor let her work here, she was going to share the Grumbling Greenhouse Studio space with Jilly and continue to stretch her own artistic muscles, free from Rushkin’s influence, for she’d come to understand over the past few weeks that she couldn’t do otherwise and still consider herself her own woman. And besides, the hours she spent here seemed to be the only time she ever felt any real peace. The only coin she had to pay in was lost sleep.
She turned off the light and the studio plunged into darkness. Locking the door, she pocketed the key and then trudged off through the snow for home.
II
Newford, February 1975
The show at The Green Man Gallery didn’t do as well as Izzy had hoped. Of the fourteen paintings available for sale, only two sold. Both were street scenes of Lower Crowsea: competent, but indistinguishable from those painted by the many other artists who used the same locale as their own source of inspiration.
“You’re going to have to put your own stamp on your work” was how Albina summed it up.
Izzy gave her a glum nod. The two of them had retired to the back of the gallery to commiserate over a pot of tea after taking the show down. In the pocket of her black jeans Izzy had a check worth a grand total of a hundred and fortyfour dollars—her share of what the two paintings had sold for, minus the gallery’s cut. She did better at The Green Man, she realized, when she didn’t have her own show, when her paintings were just scattered here and there throughout the gallery, tossed in among the works of all the other artists that Albina represented.
“What you’re doing is lovely,” Albina went on. “It’s beautifully rendered, but it doesn’t tell me anything about you. The lack doesn’t show up so much when you only have one or two pieces hanging, but it becomes quite plain over a whole show. The viewer wants more from you, Izzy. They might not be able to articulate it, but they want a connection to you. They want to know what you feel about your subject and that’s simply not coming across with your work.”
“I’m getting the picture,” Izzy said.
The In the City review had said much the same thing. The city’s daily papers hadn’t even covered the show.
Albina smiled sympathetically. “But don’t be too discouraged. January’s not the best time for a show, what with everybody starting to realize just how much they spent over Christmas. Why don’t we think of doing another one in the fall?”
“You’d do that even though this one was such a disaster?”
“It wasn’t a complete disaster.”
Izzy pulled out her check. “No, we really had some big sales, didn’t we?”
“Actually, there were a couple of other offers,” Albina said. “I was just getting around to telling you about them.”
“There were? What do you mean, like commissions?”
Albina shook her head. “I’m talking about the two paintings that you wouldn’t sell. I’ve had inquiries on both—serious inquiries for The Spirit Is Strong.”
“What do you mean by serious?” Izzy asked.
“Someone’s offered us five thousand dollars for it.”
“You’re kidding. Who’d pay that kind of money for anything I’ve done?” Albina shrugged. “I’ve no idea. The offer was made through a lawyer. Apparently the buyer wants to remain anonymous.”
“Five thousand dollars,” Izzy repeated.
It was a phenomenal sum. The most one of her paintings had ever gone for to date was a tenth of that amount.
“If we accept the offer,” Albina said, “it’ll put you on a whole new plateau in terms of what you can ask for your work. The buyer might be anonymous, but word still gets around. If you can produce more works of a similar quality, I can guarantee that your next show will be far more successful.”
“And somebody wants to buy Smither’s Oak as well?”
Albina nodded. “I have an offer of seven hundred dollars in on it.”
“Another anonymous buyer?”
“No. Kathryn Pollack wants to buy it.”
Izzy gave her a blank look.
“She owns Kathryn’s cafe, over on Battersfield Road. She said she knew you.”
“Oh, you mean Kitty. We met through filly, who’s got a part-time job there.” Izzy paused for a moment before adding, “She wants to pay that much for it?”
“Well, I’m sure she’d offer less, if that’s what you’d prefer.”
“No, no. It’s not that. I just wouldn’t expect her to pay that kind of money for one of my paintings.”
“She used to go to Butler U.,” Albina explained, “and that oak behind the library was one of her favorite places to sit and study. And probably to do other things as well. In my time we called it ‘the Kissing Oak.’”
“We thought of it as a part of what we called ‘the Wild Acre.’”
“It’s that, too. Doesn’t it bring back the memories.”
Izzy smiled. “As if you’re that old.”
“It was over thirty years ago,” Albina said, returning Izzy’s smile. “Truth is, I’ve some fond memories of that old tree myself. I think your painting’s worth every penny of that seven hundred dollars, if not more.”
“I just feel weird, selling certain paintings.”
“Because they feel like your children?”
Izzy nodded.
“I would think you’d be more pleased to have them hanging somewhere where they’ll be loved and appreciated, rather than piling up in the back of your cupboard.”
Izzy thought about Rushkin’s studio and all the breathtaking work that was in it, hidden from the world: hanging frame against frame, stacked in corners, piled up against the walls, five or six canvases deep.
“You’re right,” she said.
“So I can go ahead and complete the deals?”
“On Smither’s Oak,” Izzy said. “But I can’t sell the other one.”
“Five thousand dollars is a great deal of money,” Albina told her. “It buys a lot of art supplies.”
“I know. And it’d pay my rent for a year. It’s just ...”
She didn’t know how to explain it. Her experiments at the Grumbling Greenhouse Studio had proven to her that her art couldn’t magically transport beings from some otherworld into this one, but even knowing that, she couldn’t quite shake the conviction that John’s presence in her life was tied to the existence of The Spirit Is Strong; that as long as she kept it, everything would be fine between them.
“If you don’t want to sell it,” Albina said, “I’m not going to pressure you.”
Not on purpose, Izzy thought, she wasn’t. But it was five thousand dollars. And hadn’t Albina just finished saying that selling one of her paintings at that price would raise the selling price of all of her work? Who knew when that opportunity would arise again? Who knew if it ever would? But if she weighed her career against friendship, there was simply no contest.
“I can’t sell it,” she said. “It doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to the fellow who—” Little white lie time. “—sat for it. I just had the loan of it for the show.”
“Then that’s that,” Albina said. “Do you want to leave any of the other pieces here, or do you have something new you want to hang?”
Izzy thought of the paintings at the Grumbling Greenhouse Studio, but she wasn’t sure she was ready to give them up just yet. She also wasn’t sure what Rushkin’s reaction to them was going to be, since he’d made it
quite plain that any work she did he wanted done in his studio. Their relationship had been going so smoothly of late that she didn’t want to throw a kink in the works. Rushkin was so quick to take offense at even fancied slights, she couldn’t imagine what he’d do if he found out about the paintings she’d done in the green-house—especially when she tried to explain why she’d done them there, not to mention the freedom she’d discovered working away from his studio in the coach house. She supposed she’d have to tell him at some point, but she planned to put that off for as long as she could. Hanging them in The Green Man Gallery was not the way to go about keeping them secret from him.
“Nothing at the moment,” she said, finally. “Do you really think any of these will sell now when no one wanted them in the show?”
Albina nodded. “They’re still good, Izzy. They’re just not as good as what you’re capable of. They may sit here for a while, but I guarantee we’ll have sold them all by the summer.”
“Really?”
“Really. So you’d better get started on some new pieces for me.” Albina laid her hand between her breasts. “But envision them from here. Put your heart into them, the way you did with Smither’s Oak and The Spirit Is Strong.”
III
That night, while they were sitting on a bench down by the Pier, Izzy tried to give John The Spirit Is Strong, but he wouldn’t take it.
“Where would I put it?” he asked. “It’s not like I’ve got my own place and I can’t really see it sharing the same wall as my aunt’s black velvet Elvis and her crucifixes. I’d rather you stored it for me.
I’d feel safer that way.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He looked blankly at her.
“Why would my storing the painting for you make you feel safer?” Izzy asked.
“Because if I kept it at my aunt’s place, she’d probably throw it out. Why? What were you thinking?” Then he laughed. “Are you still wondering if I’m real or not?”
“I can’t help feeling that if something happened to the painting it would happen to you as well.”
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