“Like what?”
“Like if I gave it away to anybody but you, you’d walk out of my life.”
“Izzy. You don’t have to—”
“I was offered five thousand dollars for that painting, but I turned it down.”
“Five thousand dollars?”
Izzy nodded.
“And you turned it down?”
“Well, what was I supposed to do? You’re like this big mystery in my life. I don’t know where you came from and I don’t know where you’re going. All I know is I painted this piece and you walked into my life. I can’t help but think that you’d walk right out again if anybody but you or I owned it.”
“You know that’s not going to happen. I’m not going to leave you because of some painting.”
Izzy shook her head. “No, I don’t know that. All I know is that I love you, but then I get all screwed up because I don’t even know who you are.”
“I’m what you see—nothing more or less.” He turned to face her, dark eyes serious, and put his hands on her shoulders. His gaze held hen. “There’s no mystery here.”
“I guess.”
John smiled. “But I have to tell you. Nobody ever thought I was worth anything before—and they certainly wouldn’t have given up five grand for my sake.” Keeping one arm around her shoulders, he leaned back against the bench once more and drew her close. “I appreciate it, Izzy.”
They looked out over the lake, watching the crowds at the concession stands and strolling along the boardwalk. The ferry made its return from Wolf Island, landed to exchange one load of passengers for another, then started back out across the water again.
“Tell me something about your past,” Izzy said.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Anything. You tell me about the reserve and your people, but never anything about yourself “
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“There’s got to be something.”
John shook his head. She had turned to look at him, but his gaze remained on the distant horizon.
“Were you so bad?” Izzy asked. “Is that it? I wouldn’t think the less of you, you know, because you’re so good now. I could only admire the turnaround you’d made in your life.”
“I wasn’t bad or good,” John said finally. “Before I met you, I was nothing, Izzy.’
“Nobody’s nothing.”
“That depends upon your perspective. Let’s just say I was in a different story from the one I’m in now.”
“And how does this story end?”
John shrugged. “That’s not something we can know. We have to live it through and find out, just the way everybody else does.”
Only everybody else has a past, Izzy thought, but she knew there was no point in trying to take this particular conversation any further. There never was. Sighing, she snuggled against him and tried to put the questions out of her mind and be happy with what she had.
IV
Newford, March 1975
“Did you read those new stories yet?” Kathy asked when she got home.
Izzy looked up from the art-history book she was studying and felt a twinge of guilt. Even with her show over, she still never seemed to have enough time to do half the things she wanted to do. She had two papers due at the end of next week; she was behind in her studying, which was not good considering she had finals coming up in less than a month; John was beginning to complain about how little time she had for him; her other friends were starting to tell her that they were feeling neglected; and then there was Rushkin. He was working her so hard that she could barely keep her eyes open in class after leaving his studio. She hadn’t been to the greenhouse studio in weeks.
“I feel so bad,” she said. “I just haven’t had the time.”
“That’s okay.” Kathy hung up her coat and then settled into the pile of cushions by the window. “I understand.”
“No, really. I feel like my life went insane last December and it’s never recovered.”
Kathy nodded. “We should get a cat,” she said. “A big scruffly tomcat with a chewed ear and an attitude.”
Izzy blinked. For all that she was used to the way both Jilly and Kathy switched topics almost in the middle of a sentence, it could still catch her off guard sometimes.
“Whatever for?” she asked.
“I think we need some male energy in here.”
“You could get a boyfriend.”
“I don’t think so. They’re too much responsibility.”
“Oh, and a cat isn’t?”
“Not in the same way,” Kathy said. “I mean, look at you, juggling a million things in your life, and then having to worry about what John’ll think if you can’t get together with him this night or that. A cat’s not like that. They’re much more easygoing.”
Izzy laughed. “You’ve obviously never owned a cat.”
“But am I that wrong? I think men are like dogs, always in your face about something or other, while women are like cats, just content to take things as they come.”
“I think a man would say just the opposite.”
“But it wouldn’t be true. Or at least,” Kathy added, “it would only be true on the surface. The stronger a woman gets, the more insecure the men in her life feel. It doesn’t work that way for a woman.
We celebrate strength—in our partners as well as in ourselves. Do you want some tea?”
Izzy shook her head. “I just made myself a cup.”
“Yes, well. I’m parched.”
Izzy watched her roommate make her way into the kitchen. A few moments later she emerged with a beer. She gave Izzy a vague wave before going into her bedroom, closing the door behind her. Izzy looked down at her book, then sighed. Time enough to study tomorrow. She got up and collected the loose sheaf of manuscript that consisted of Kathy’s latest stories and settled back in her reading spot. An hour later she was tapping on Kathy’s door. She opened it wide enough to poke her head in before Kathy had a chance to respond.
“Are you awake?” Izzy asked.
Kathy was sitting crosslegged on her mattress, doing nothing so far as Izzy could tell, merely sitting there, the empty beer bottle lying beside her on the blanket.
“You didn’t have to read them right away,” Kathy said when she saw the manuscripts in Izzy’s hands.
“Have you been rAlking to Jilly about what I’ve been working on at the Grumbling Greenhouse Studio?” Izzy asked.
“Are you kidding? Sometimes I think she’s busier than you are.”
“I haven’t been around much, have I?”
“Try not at all. Sometimes I think I should file missing persons reports on the both of you.”
“And you haven’t been to the studio either?”
“What’s this all about, Izzy?”
Izzy left the doorway to sit on the end of Kathy’s bed. “It’s this story,” she said, tapping the top manuscript, which was the last of the three Kathy had left for her to read. “Where did you get the idea for the character you call Paddyjack?”
Kathy looked embarrassed. “What makes you think I had to get the idea from somewhere? Maybe I just made it up.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I suppose.”
“C’mon, Kathy. This is important.”
“Why’s it so important?”
“You tell me first,” Izzy said.
“But you’re going to think I’m crazy.”
Izzy shook her head. “If what I think is true, that’s the last thing I’ll think. Trust me on this.”
Kathy gave her a look full of curiosity.
“Where did he come from?” Izzy asked.
“It’s ...” Kathy began; then she started over. “I was coming home from Perry’s Diner one night. You were at the studio and I didn’t feel like cooking just for myself, so I went out. It was kind oflatc going on to eleven—and I was just walking along, thinking about this new story I’d been working on ....”
�
��And?” Izzy prompted her when she fell silent.
“And I saw him. I just happened to glance down the driveway of number twelve and there he was, sitting on the steps that lead down to Bernie’s apartment. I saw him as plain as day. All skinny and weird looking, in his ragged scarecrow clothing and that funny hair poking out from under his hat that looks like a bomb exploded in a bird’s nest.”
“It’s not hair,” Izzy said.
“I know.” Kathy paused. “How do you know? Have you seen him, too?” Izzy shook her head. “I called him over.”
“Say what?”
Now it was Izzy’s turn to feel embarrassed. She knew just how Kathy had felt relating her story, because what she had to tell Kathy was even more preposterous. But she went ahead and told her all the same, from Rushkin’s theories to how she’d gone to paint at the Grumbling Greenhouse Studio with the express purpose of putting them to the test.
“What a neat idea,” Kathy said when she was done.
“But don’t you see?” Izzy said. “It’s not just an idea. It actually worked!”
“But—”
“Wait a sec and I’ll prove it.”
She dropped the manuscripts onto the mattress beside the empty beer bottle and went back into her own room, where she fetched a couple of the preliminary sketches for her painting from out of her knapsack. When she came back into the room, she handed them to Kathy.
“Is that your Paddyjack?” she asked.
Kathy nodded slowly, her eyes widening. “This is totally amazing. What do you call him?”
“I didn’t give him a name. I haven’t named any of the pieces I’ve done there yet.
“This is exactly like what I saw. I mean, I know it could have been just some weird junkie, dressed up funny, but he was too skinny. And that face—there’s nothing really human about that face.”
“I know. I did it on purpose. I didn’t want to do another person, because that wouldn’t prove anything.”
Kathy laid the drawings down. “You don’t really think you brought John over, do you?”
“What am I supposed to think? He just appeared in my life—right after I finished the painting.”
“Yeah, but he’s ...”
“Real?”
Kathy nodded.
“So’s Paddyjack,” Izzy said.
“This is too weird.”
“But he’s here, isn’t he? I painted him. I called him up out of my mind and now he’s real. Just ...” She gave Kathy a pained look. “Just like John.”
“You don’t know that.”
“It happened exactly the same way,” Izzy said. “I painted him, and then he showed up outside the library—exactly the same as in my painting. Right down to the earring. I can still remember meeting him by Rushkin’s studio last autumn and lending him the money to buy a jacket because all he was wearing was a T-shirt and it was cold. But he said it didn’t bother him. Maybe they don’t have the same kind of feelings as we do.”
“I’ve seen guys wearing T-shirts in the middle of the winter.”
Izzy gave her a look.
“Okay,” Kathy said. “Maybe not quite the middle of winter. But some people are like that. The cold just doesn’t bother them.”
“He’s got no past.”
“That you know of. You told me a few weeks ago when you tried to give him that painting that you’re sure he doesn’t tell you anything just so he can seem mysterious.”
“Nobody knows him.”
“Everybody knows him.”
“But only because I’ve introduced them to him. I don’t know where he lives. 17
“You told me he lives with his aunt.”
“Who doesn’t like white girls, so I’ve never been over. I don’t know the address. I don’t even have a phone number for him. I never contact him. He just shows up—and it’s always when I happen to have some free time to spend with him. How does he know?”
“So what are you saying? That he’s got no life except for when you’ve got time for him? For God’s sake, Izzy. I’ve run into him myself dozens of times.”
Izzy sighed. Leaning back, she lay full length across the end of the bed. She turned her head to look at Kathy, the blanket rasping against her cheek.
“I don’t know what I’m saying,” she said. “I can’t believe that Paddyjack is real, but he is. And because he’s real, because I know now that I did bring him across, I know that I did the same thing for John.”
“There is such a thing as coincidence.”
Izzy shook her head. “I know.”
“Then you should talk to him.”
“I do. But he’s a master at changing topics or just not answering questions that he doesn’t feel like answering.”
Kathy leaned her head on her knees and looked down at her. “Even if you did bring him across ...
what’s so wrong about that?”
Izzy shrugged. “It doesn’t seem healthy.”
“Whoa. Where’s that coming from?”
“Think about it. How would you feel if you wrote a story about some great guy and then he becomes real?”
“I’d be careful who I wrote about.”
“I’m serious, Kathy. Don’t you think being responsible for his existence would put a strain on your relationship? I mean, it’s like I’m John’s mother or something.”
Kathy shook her head. “Sorry. I can’t buy into that. I’ll grant you that if it’s true, if you really can paint people into life, it would make you feel pretty weird. But think about it beyond John. You’ve tapped into something magic. You’ve proved that there is more to the world than what we can normally see of it. You should be filled with awe and wonder. I know I get all kinds of little tingles running up and down my spine just thinking about it.”
“But you don’t have John to think about.”
“That’s true. Maybe you could paint somebody for me.”
Izzy sat up. “You’re not being much help.”
“Sorry.”
“I’m being serious.”
“I know you are. So talk to him, ma belle Izzy. What else can you do?”
V
The next evening Izzy made her way to the Silenus Gardens, that part of Fitzhenry Park which was dedicated to the poet Joshua Stanhold. Guided by the pools of light cast by a long row of lampposts, she walked through that silence peculiar to winter. This far into the park the only sound she heard was her own muffled footsteps. A dusting of snow had fallen earlier in the evening, but the clouds had moved on now, leaving behind a sky deep with stars. Her breath frosting in the air, Izzy brushed the snow from the wrought-iron bench that stood directly below the tall bronze statue of Stanhold. She tucked the back of her jacket under her to insulate her from the cold metal and sat down. And then she waited.
She’d thought long and hard about where she wanted to meet John. It had to be somewhere relatively private, so that they could talk without being interrupted, but she also wanted it to be someplace that gave her a sense of empowerment because otherwise she didn’t think she’d be able to muster the strength she was going to need to sustain her through what was to come. The Silenus Gardens was perfect on both counts.
The first collection of poetry she’d ever owned had been Stanhold’s The Stone Silenus. She’d bought it on Kathy’s recommendation, a month or so after they began rooming together at Butler U., and then went on to get his collected works. The images of satyrs and fauns that pervaded his work spoke directly to the heart of the somewhat animistic country girl she’d been when she first arrived in the city—not so much because they reminded her of the lost countryside of her youth as that the images in his poetry seemed to lend a certain approval to the feeling she’d always had in those woods around her home: that they were full of spirits and, moreover, that they were communing with her, if she could but make out what they were saying.
Here in the shadow of Stanhold’s statue was the only place she’d ever found away from Wren Island that gave her an echo of that magical s
ense that otherwise she only retained in memory. So what better place to meet with a piece of magic that she’d called into being herself?
She didn’t have long to wait. It couldn’t have been more than five minutes after her own arrival that she saw John’s familiar figure come ambling down the path toward her. At least she didn’t have to wonder how he always knew just when and where to find her anymore, she thought. Since she’d brought him into this world, how could there not be a strong, if one-sided, connection between them? She certainly never knew where he was at any particular time unless he’d told her in advance.
John paused on the path in front of her. He regarded her for a long moment before he finally sat down beside her. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jean jacket, impervious, as always, to the cold, but now Izzy knew why that was as well.
“It won’t be long before spring returns,” he said after a few moments of their sitting together in silence. “You can feel it lying under the snow, waiting and expectant. Ready for its turn upon the stage.”
“Have you ever seen a spring before?” Izzy asked. She’d called him across in the autumn of last year.
John turned to look at her. “What makes you think I haven’t?”
“I know, John. I know all about how you came here. I don’t know exactly where it is that you came from, but I do know it wasn’t anywhere in this world.”
His eyebrows lifted quizzically, but he didn’t reply.
“I brought somebody else across,” Izzy went on. “I haven’t seen him yet myself, but Kathy did. She wrote a story about him without ever having seen my painting, so that’s how I know he’s real. She described him exactly like the weird little man I painted.”
John nodded slowly. “The treeskin.”
“The what?”
“That’s what we call them—part tree, part manitou. Little mysteries made of bark and vine and bough.”
“So you know about him?”
“How could I ignore him? The poor little fellow’s been lost and scared ever since he arrived.
Someone had to look after him.”
“I never thought of that.”
John shrugged. “No one can think of everything.”
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