There would be no more. She couldn’t stop painting, but she vowed to open no more gateways for others to cross over. She didn’t care if they made the decision, she was still responsible. If she didn’t open the door for them, they wouldn’t come through and die. She’d miss painting them, she knew, but that was the price to pay—a small enough price considering what her art had cost the numena. She would only lose a part of her art; they had lost their lives. To stop herself from even being tempted to render another numena, she turned her back completely on her previous work and embraced abstract expressionism.
But that didn’t solve the problem. There were others who could open those gates.
Just before dinner one night, she left the studio she was sharing with Sophie until the renovations on the island were completed and made her way across the Kelly Street Bridge to the art department at Butler University. There was a students’ show on in the arts building, and she paused for a long time in front of the two paintings by Barbara Nichols that hung in it.
They were both Ferryside street scenes. The detailing, the use of light, everything about them was stunning. Looking at these examples of Nichols’s work, Isabelle could easily see what had attracted Rushkin to the young artist. In fact, she could already see elements of Rushkin in the two paintings—not in the style so much but, as Tom had once pointed out to her, in the way Nichols viewed her subjects.
She approached the street scenes in the way that Rushkin would have. In the way that Isabelle herself would have, had she been painting these particular cityscapes.
After a while, she turned away and went looking for someone who might be able to help her find the artist. She talked to a number of people who knew Nichols, but no one seemed to know where Isabelle could look for her at the moment until she chanced upon a young artist working in one of the second-floor studios. He was a tall and somewhat gangly boy in his late teens, straw-colored hair cut short in a buzz cut, shoulders already stooped. She stood in the doorway for a few moments to watch him work, admiring the vigor of his brushstrokes, until he suddenly became aware of her presence and turned to look at her. His eyes were a pale blue and bulged slightly, giving him a birdlike look of constant surprise.
“She mentioned something about putting in a little study time at the library,” he said in response to Isabelle’s question. “If she’s not there, try Kathryn’s Cafe over on Battersfield. It’s where everybody hangs out.”
“I know the place.”
Some things never changed, Isabelle thought. Kathryn’s had been the university art crowd’s hangout when she’d gone to Butler U. as well. “Okay. Well ...”
His body language was so obvious. All he wanted was for her to leave so that he could get back to work. Isabelle knew just how he felt, but she had one more question.
“What does she look like?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Short dark hair, narrow features, very intense eyes. Kind of scrawny.” Isabelle had to smile; he wasn’t exactly Mr. Universe himself. “She was wearing cutoff jeans and a T-shirt with a print of Monet’s lilies on it when I saw her this afternoon.”
“Thanks. You’ve been a lot of help.”
“Whatever.”
He was back at his painting before she had a chance to turn around and leave the studio. She found herself envious of him as she retraced her way out of the building. What muse drove him? she wondered, although what she was really asking was, what would it have been like for her if she’d never met Rushkin? Or what if she’d just said no to him that day on the steps of St. Paul’s, or hadn’t gone to his studio? Where would her art be now? Who would she be?
Silly questions, she thought, because in some ways she didn’t feel as if she’d ever had any sort of a choice in the matter. She’d already been enamored with his art, long before she met him. It was part of what had set her to taking a paintbrush in hand in the first place. When the opportunity arose for her to study under him, it often had seemed to be simple fate. A magical gift. But then, just like in all those fairy tales that Kathy loved so much, there was always a price to be paid for accepting magical gifts, wasn’t there? Too dear a price.
With her informant’s description in mind, she found it easy to spot Nichols. She matched the boy’s description perfectly, except Isabelle wouldn’t have called her scrawny. Trim was the word that came to Isabelle’s mind. And certainly attractive. Her eyes were almost the same intense blue as Jilly’s. Isabelle wondered if Rushkin had made her strip down for him on her first day in the studio, too, and felt a surge of sympathy for the girl.
She was leaving the library at the same time as Isabelle was coming up the stone steps. The chill that had yet to leave Isabelle deepened for a moment as she realized the significance of where they were meeting. She touched the cloth bracelet she’d taken to wearing again, trying not to think of John as she continued up the steps and called Nichols by name.
“Oh please,” Nichols said. “Call me Barb. ‘Ms. Nichols’ makes me think of my mother.”
Isabelle smiled. When she introduced herself, Barb’s eyes softened with compassion.
“I heard about the fire,” she said. “You must have been devastated.”
Isabelle glanced at the space beside the stone lion where John had once stood and talked to her from the shadows. She could almost feel his ghost there, could almost hear his voice again. Her fingers were turning the bracelet around and around her wrist without her being aware of doing it.
“I still am,” she admitted.
“This is so weird,” Barb said. “I mean, standing here, talking to you. You’re one of my heroes.”
Isabelle could feel the heat rise in her face.
“I just love your work,” Barb went on, “and when I think of what happened to it, it just makes me feel so sick that—” She broke off. “I’m sorry. You’re probably trying to forget, and here all I’m doing is reminding you about it.”
“It’s not something you can forget,” Isabelle told her. When she thought of how she’d failed her numena, she added, “I don’t think it’s something one should forget.”
Barb gave her an odd look, but Isabelle didn’t explain what she meant. She didn’t know how to explain.
“I wanted to talk to you about Rushkin,” she said. “I don’t know where to begin, but ever since I heard that you’ve been studying with him I felt I should warn you ....”
Her voice trailed off at the dismissive look that settled on Barb’s features.
“Rushkin,” she said bitterly. “I was so excited when he first approached me to work with him.” She gave Isabelle a knowing look. “You’re probably the only person besides me who would understand just how thrilling it felt to be walking down that laneway and then climbing the stairs up to his studio.”
Isabelle nodded. “So what happened?”
“Probably the same thing that happened to you. I mean, I could tell right off that he was a control freak, but I thought, Okay. It’ll be worth it to put up with some weird shit if I get to paint like him—or like you.”
Isabelle tried to ignore the compliment. She wanted to ask about numena.
What had Rushkin told her about them? How many had Barb brought across? But before she could start to frame the question, if only in her mind, Barb went on.
“The first time he hit me, I let it pass.” She looked away, across the campus, and wouldn’t meet Isabelle’s gaze for a moment. “I didn’t like it,” she added, her voice pitched low, “but he put on such a good show, he was so bloody sorry that I was stupid enough to buy what he was saying and stay.”
“Until it happened again,” Isabelle said.
Barb nodded. “I couldn’t believe it. I mean, I really couldn’t believe—that’s how stupid I was—but I was mad, too. I hit him back. I picked up the canvas I was working on and just laid it across the side of his head. And then, while he was lying there trying to make me feel sorry for him, I packed up my stuff and left.”
A great admiration for her companio
n rose up in Isabelle. Where had her own anger been when Rushkin had struck her? Swallowed by her greed to learn from him, she realized. Her anger and her courage and her integrity had all been put aside by her greed. Or was it also part of a pattern that she’d learned from her mother? The way her mother had always sat by helpless through all the verbal abuse Isabelle had to endure from her father?
“I haven’t been back since,” Barb said. She finally looked at Isabelle and gave her a wan smile.
“Was that what you were going to warn me about?”
She doesn’t know anything about the numena, Isabelle realized.
“I wanted to tell you as soon as I heard you were studying under him,” she said. It was only partly a lie. Her first concern had been for the numena, it was true, but she had been thinking about Barb as well.
She’d wanted to spare Barb the pain she’d gone through herself. “I just didn’t know how to approach you. I thought you’d think it was sour grapes, that I was jealous because you’d taken my place in his studio.”
Barb nodded. “I don’t know what I would have thought before it happened. I knew from the first day that he was wired a little wrong. But I could deal with his yelling at me. My father used to yell at me all the time. He only ever hit me once. I left home that night and I’ve never been back.” She gave Isabelle a puzzled look. “Weird, isn’t it? I gave Rushkin more of a chance than I did my own father.”
“My father used to yell at me, too,” Isabelle said. “He was always picking away at me—when he wasn’t giving me the cold shoulder. But he never hit me. Not like—” Her mind’s eye filled with a vision of that winter day in the studio, Rushkin kicking her and beating her, then finally throwing her down the stairs to make her own way home. “Not like Rushkin did.”
“I still don’t get it,” Barb said. “He’s responsible for some of the most ten-der, moving works of art that anyone has ever produced. How can he also be the way he is?”
“I guess we expected too much,” Isabelle said. “We didn’t separate the work from the man who created it.”
“How can you? When the work is so heartfelt, how can it be separated from the artist?”
Isabelle didn’t have an answer for that. It was a question she’d often asked herself. She’d come no closer to answering it than Barb had.
“Listen,” Barb said. “I don’t mean to be rude, but talking about all of this—it’s been good, you know to share it with someone, and I really appreciate having had the chance to meet you, but I feel a little screwed up thinking about all that shit again. I’ve got to go.”
“I understand,” Isabelle said. “But before you go ...”
She asked for Barb’s phone number, explaining how she wanted to give it to Alan, how it might generate some work for her. Barb scribbled the seven digits down in the back of her sketchbook, then tore out the page and handed it to Isabelle.
“I can’t promise anything,” Isabelle said.
“I understand.”
“But I’ll give it to Albina Sprech, as well,” Isabelle added. “She owns The Green Man Gallery.”
“Really? That’d be great. I haven’t been able to get my foot in the door anywhere. It’s really an old boy’s network out there.”
“Maybe we can change that,” Isabelle said.
Barb laughed humorlessly. “I guess we can try.”
“Look, I’m sorry about bringing this all up for you again. I never realized you’d already stopped studying with Rushkin. If I had, I wouldn’t have come bothering you.”
“Don’t be sorry. It gave me a chance to meet you, didn’t it?”
Before Isabelle had a chance to get flustered all over again by the young artist’s admiration for her work, Barb fled as though chased by the ghosts that had been called up by their conversation. Isabelle stood alone on the library steps, lost in thought, until the press of her own ghosts made her leave as well.
She didn’t go as quickly as Barb had, but she walked briskly all the same. And she didn’t look back.
Journal Entries
Everything’s got to be someplace.
—Anonymous
Sometimes I wonder if everything is already known and each of us simply selects the facts that work for us. Is that why we all go through life so disconnected from one another? Not only are our minds these singular islands, each separate from the other, but we’re not even necessarily operating in the same reality. There’s a consensual no-man’s-land that we pretty well agree on, but beyond those basic reference points that we’re given as children, we’re on our own. We run into trouble communicating, not because we lack a common language, but because the facts I’ve selected don’t usually fit with the ones you have. Lacking common ground, it’s no wonder we find it so hard to communicate.
Take art, whether it’s visual, music, dance, writing, whatever. Art is one of the things that’s supposed to break down the boundaries between us and give us some common ground so that the lines of communication can stay open. But the best art, the art that really works, is also supposed to be open to individual interpretations. No one wants specifics in art except for academics. No one wants their work put into a box that says it means this, and only this. So we go floundering through galleries and books and theatre presentations, taking what we can, always looking over somebody else’s shoulder to compare it to what they got, readjusting our own interpretations, until somewhere in the process we end up having processed entirely different experiences from the same source material. Which is okay, except that when we talk about it, we still think we’re referring to the same thing.
No one really knows what you’re thinking, it’s that simple. They can guess the reasons behind what you’re doing, but they can’t know. And how can we expect them to when we ourselves don’t even know the reasons behind the things we do.
I mean, I know why I took Paddyjack from the farmhouse—to save it from the fire. What I don’t know is why I kept it. Why I never told Izzy that I had it. I think it might be because she went so strange afterwards, turning her back on her gift and the numena the way she did. She went so distant.
Understandable, I guess, considering all she’d been through, but still ... I think I was afraid that she would do something to it herself—sell it, perhaps, or worse, deliver it to Rushkin. And then there were those people who said—never to her face, mind you, but word gets around—that she’d started the fire herself.
I know that’s a terrible thing to even consider, but while she saw Rushkin on the island, he had that proof that he was in New York City at the time. I believed Izzy. I really did. I really tried to. But I couldn’t silence that stupid little uncertainty sitting in the back of my head that kept asking, What if I gave her the painting back and then she did destroy it? Paddyjack’s not just some painting she did. He’s real.
I wrote about him. I wrote his story before I ever knew she’d done the painting. I guess I felt, even though I knew it wasn’t true, that I was instrumental in making him real, too.
But the bottom line is I stole that painting from my best friend. I stole it from the one person I love more than anyone else in the world and I can’t explain it. And I would have taken all the others, too, but they were stored up under the eaves in the attic and I just couldn’t get to them so those numena died. All of them. Except for John. I don’t know how his painting survived the fire, but I do know it did because I saw him two days ago. I was on a northbound bus on Lee Street. I don’t know if he saw me, but by the time I could get off and run back to where I’d seen him, he was gone.
I never told Izzy that either.
I think I would have told her everything, except she closed herself off to all of us. She was still friendly, but something shut off inside her when the numena died and I never felt close to her again.
Having Paddyjack was the closest I could come to her after that damned fire.
I’ll tell you one thing, though. I don’t believe she set it. I know there’s some people that do, but I’
m not one of them. She could never have killed the numena like that.
But if I really believe that, then why haven’t I given Paddyjack back to her yet?
* * *
I saw Dr. Jane today—she hates it when I call her that, but I can’t help it. The name got stuck in my head and I can’t stop using it. She didn’t say anything, she never comes right out and says anything, but I think she’s disappointed in me. In my lack of progress. I want to tell her I’ve got a whole screwed-up life to sort through, my life is still screwed up. How am I supposed to deal with it when I don’t even know what it is I want?
Though that’s not really true. I know what I want. Some of it I’ve got, some of it I’ll never get. My problem is that the nevergets loom over everything I do have; I think about them all the time, instead of appreciating what’s here.
What’ll I never get?
Izzy’s never going to be my lover.
And kids are never going to be safe.
One personal, one universal. They both hurt in a way I’m never going to be able to explain. Instead, I go see Dr. Jane and we talk about the Mullys, we talk about alienation, we talk about all sorts of crap, but we never get into what really matters. It’s not Jane’s fault. It’s mine. I’m a writer, but the words I need to explain what hurts simply aren’t in my lexicon. Those words got buried under a few miles of rubble when the Tower of Babylon fell and no one’s been able to access them since. Not in a way that would allow them any real meaning. Not in a way that would allow them to heal the pain.
* * *
I had a good day today. I didn’t do anything special and to tell you the truth, I don’t really feel like running through what I did do because then I’ll probably think of something depressing that happened which’d just stay forgotten if I don’t think about it. So I won’t.
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