Anna dropped onto the couch. “Nothing for me just now.”
“I’ll take a beer if you have it,” Finn said.
“I want a drink,” Chloe cried.
In the kitchen, Seline pried the cap off a bottle and a waft of cool air curled out. In the back of the cupboard she found a plastic cup, filled it halfway with orange juice, and placed everything on a tray. She thought of Finn, and the knack he seemed to have with the child, despite having been an only. Seline had been an only, too, but unlike Finn, she’d been a defiant child, one who was made to stand in corners, who peered through the narrow cracks of closed doors, who lied and cheated as though it was her right. She’d never cared to please adults, let alone entertain them, and knew at a glance who had something to offer and who didn’t. Perhaps Chloe saw her in the same way.
“Pacifico,” Finn observed, taking the bottle. “Thanks, Seline.”
He passed Chloe the juice. “What do you say?” he asked, but the child only looked blankly at Seline.
“I hear you’re going to a party,” Seline said, thinking that might engage her. The child smiled to herself, a secret smile that said she found the attention pleasing. “I bet you have a new dress.”
“She does. From Mom,” Finn said.
“Delivered personally,” Anna added.
“Oh?”
“She’s been up a few times. To see clients in Sunnyvale.”
Seline didn’t mind discussing Eva, her art consulting trips north, or the birthday party she was throwing for herself. From the start, Seline had to cultivate a good relationship with Jonathan’s first wife. On weekends when Jonathan was on deadline for an exhibit, Seline was the one to drive Finn back, making the long return trip to Santa Monica.
“Annie,” he said, nodding in the direction of the shelves. “Some of Dad’s pictures.”
“I saw. They’re amazing. So realistic.”
The comment was the sort that, for Seline, could be trying. An outsider’s view, as though realism were nothing but a contest of appearances. Jonathan believed not in factual accuracy, but the visual experience of texture and surface, an interest not in exactitude but the way light moved through layers of underpainting and glazes. Finn had never expressed much interest in his father’s work, but he knew something of its technique and demands. And like his father, Finn knew the foothills of San Fernando and Big Tujunga Canyon—the orange groves and ravines beyond the first ridge, Little Tujunga Creek running full and fast in winter—that served as the landscapes in his Northern European–inspired pictures.
It was puzzling, why Finn had chosen this young woman who appeared to know little about art and the place he’d grown up. Seline took note of the way Finn distracted the child with another toy, the way Anna seemed to rely on his patience and good nature, and saw already how involved Finn had become. Whether Anna proved temporary or not, Seline told herself the field journals would remain, something of Jonathan’s that could belong to Finn, that Seline was at liberty to give. She needed only a moment with him to explain. I found something, she would say, in the studio. You’ll remember these.
“It smells great in here,” he said.
“That’s the capon. The thyme and oregano.”
At that moment, Anna and Finn looked at each other.
“Lunch,” Anna said, in a way that struck Seline as odd, even evasive.
“There’s no hurry,” Seline put in. “We can eat anytime.” Then she understood. The wrappers on the dash. It would have been early when they left San Francisco, and they couldn’t have made the trip without stopping. And there the capon sat in its serving dish, the ornate rub trumpeting her effort, her anticipation.
“Sorry,” Finn said. “We ate on the road. Junk, mostly.”
Anna added, “But I’m sure we’ll be hungry again soon.”
The table was visible in the shadows of the dining alcove. The olives, drizzled with lemon, glistened in a shallow bowl. It was a trick of Jonathan’s, doctoring store-bought olives to resemble ones he’d eaten in Rome. Seline had added parings of the rind, something he never bothered with, and of course there was the cake in the refrigerator, the cold preserving its impossible shape. The madras cloth hung with dread formality; the flatware was marked by scattered flashes, the goblets with shining hairlines at their rims. Sandwiches, she thought, would have been better, but nothing could be done about that. Seline had set the table. She’d prepared the meal. Whether it would be consumed or not, there it was.
* * *
—
At lunch, her guests poked at the food. The capon lay snipped apart and heaped on a platter, its anatomy jumbled and untidy. The bread and cheese were broken into but scarcely eaten, and the Spanish wine taken in sips, as though by invalids. The food was not sustenance, but diversion, and when it was apparent the novelty had been exhausted, Seline gathered the plates and took them to the kitchen. She couldn’t bear to serve the sacripantina, fearing it would be left to melt, and in its place she brought out a plate of dried figs and walnuts, a nutcracker that was to be used in turn.
“I want to try!”
“Here,” Anna said to Chloe. “I’ll start one for you.”
Seline passed the plate to Finn. “How’s school going?”
He shrugged. “I may take a semester off. It won’t be an academic hiatus. Just a hiatus hiatus.” He smiled wearily. “I’ll probably take more shifts at the restaurant.”
The news was unsettling. “But why? There’s your father’s gift.”
“It’s not that—”
“I want to do it,” Chloe cried.
“No,” Anna said. She’d been passing a handful of nutmeats to Chloe when the child grabbed the nutcracker from the table. Before Anna could take it away, it slipped from Chloe’s hand and crashed against a dish. A chip the size of a quarter flew from its rim.
“Chloe!” Anna cried. “I’m sorry. Your plate.”
“It’s nothing,” Seline said. “Really, nothing to worry about.” The chipped plate wasn’t from the Portuguese set, and in fact, now that it had happened, she felt relief—as though the inevitable had finally occurred.
Finn plucked the chip from the cloth and grimly set it aside. “She’s been sitting too long.”
“Let’s go play,” Anna said, helping the child from the chair. They settled on the living room carpet amid the scattered toys.
He leaned back, took the nutcracker from the table, and studied it. “Sorry about your plate.”
“It’s nothing. It’s not easy, adapting to a new place.”
“Ha. For Chloe it is. She’s too adaptable.”
“How do you mean?”
“Everything’s easy for her. Nothing fazes her.” He shrugged. “Anyway, I think a little discomfort keeps you in check.”
The observation was one of those odd theories Seline had herself contrived at that age—youthful philosophy that explained nothing. That was the problem with being twenty-two. You did things for reasons that were temporary, like take a semester off to wait tables. And he’d been so anxious to finish school, to begin teaching.
Like Finn, Seline herself had abandoned her studies when pursuits seemed more vital than her courses. Yet Finn’s character was nothing like Seline’s at that age. She’d been rebellious for the sake of it—she had taken off not just one, but two semesters, skiing and traveling—eager for the grand gesture, to show she could be unexpected and cocksure. Finn, on the other hand, had always been a thoughtful student—never one to be rushed or put off course. Even when he was young, she’d seen that quality in him. She liked to think she’d seen him as a peer might, or the colleague who glimpses promise others can’t yet see.
“Where’s Chloe?” he spoke to Anna, who was sitting cross-legged on the living room floor. At that moment, the child appeared from the shadows in the hall and stuck her tongue out.
“See?” Anna said, holding up the doll. “I peeled off the stickers.”
The child came forward and examined the doll’s arm. “She’s not pretty anymore.”
Seline knew well that response. Back talk. Lip, her parents used to call it, as in, Don’t give me any lip. But the way that Chloe pushed away the doll suggested a heartlessness that was both unnerving and electric. This child was her own person, Seline knew, and unafraid.
“Hang on, Seline,” Finn said, and stood to speak to Anna. “Maybe you should take her outside.”
“Come on,” Anna said, standing as well. “Birds like nuts. You can give the birds some nuts.”
Chloe bounced on her toes. “You don’t feed them, I’m feeding them!” And as she continued jumping, Anna led her outside, onto the deck. Finn followed them as far as the slider and closed the door behind them.
Only then did it occur to Seline that Chloe had appeared from the shadows outside Seline’s bedroom door. Where had she been? Fearing the notebooks had been tampered with, Seline crossed the living room. Looking into the bedroom, she saw the box on the bed just as she’d left it, apparently undisturbed. She was still at the open door when Finn came to where she stood on the landing.
“Seline, while Chloe’s outside, there’s something I need to tell you.” She couldn’t bear it if he asked for money. Please, she thought, don’t ask.
But then, the expression on his face was altogether different, astonishing in its openness—as though he were about to confess some long-held secret. “Anna’s pregnant,” he said. His voice was light and clear, animated. “We just found out. I could have told you over the phone, but I wanted you to meet Anna. And Chloe.”
Seline’s hand was still on the doorknob. She’d been about to show Finn the notebooks, but now felt frozen. He meant the news to be good, she knew, but she kept thinking of the irreversibility, the obligation it would mean, taking responsibility for Anna and her child. The wine thrummed at her temples. “It’s unexpected news.”
“Yeah,” he laughed. “But it’s okay. We’re glad.”
Seline’s mind was blank, and she grasped at what to say next. “Your mother must be thrilled.”
“She’s getting used to the idea.”
“It won’t take long.” All of a sudden, Finn’s future played out clearly in her mind. “Soon she’ll be flying up all the time. Or asking you to move down.”
“I doubt that. Anyway, we need to be in San Francisco. Her parents are there.” He glanced back to the sliders, where through the glass doors Anna could be seen leaning on the rail. Nearby, Chloe was saying good-bye to eucalyptus leaves as she dropped them through the redwood slats.
In the silence it came to Seline, a clearer sense of what this all meant. “Your father would be so pleased.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Dad told me to have kids young. Not to put it off like he did.”
“I don’t follow.”
“You remember. He’d say that being an older parent sucked. Not those exact words, but something like that.”
She’d never heard Jonathan say that. True, he was fifty-six when Finn was born, but Jonathan had always been a person of focus and energy, who loathed sleep and vacations, the kind of person who did the things he wanted, regardless of where or when.
“He was so hardworking.” Even as she said this, the words seemed beside the point, yet there was a connection, a vital one, between her husband’s work and the son he bore in middle age. “He never stopped his hiking, until nearly the end, and even then he had his notebooks with him, always making entries.” Finally, she’d somehow broached the subject.
“I meant to ask…” Finn’s tone changed in color, more somber, less assured. “Do you still have the foxtail painting?”
The question caught her by surprise, hearing the name they’d used when Finn was small.
The title was in fact Hare with Green Glass, painted the summer Finn was nine. Jonathan had exhibited the picture frequently since, and it was one he always intended to keep. A model of his late style, a still life set on a rough-hewn table, the picture featured a cluster of wild barley, a glass globe, and the carcass of a rabbit. Foxtails were what they called the awns on the barley tips, bristles that turned barbed and sticky in the dry months of summer and fall.
“Yes, of course. It’s here.” The painting had hung in the dining room until this summer, when Seline moved it to her studio. She spent most of her time there now and liked looking up from her work and seeing it on the wall.
“I remember those stickers got caught in my socks.”
Seline remembered that, too. Though she hadn’t explained it to Finn, Hare with Green Glass wasn’t going to the institute, not yet. Jonathan had wanted Seline to have the picture. It was one of his most personal, and meant more than any of those that posed technical challenges of subject or color or composition. Simpler in design yet more intimate, with objects that referenced their life in this place: The pale grass that covered the hillsides of the northern San Fernando Valley, the glass globe they’d bought one night they spent drinking bad margaritas on Olvera Street. The weathered table Seline moved with her through the places she’d lived before Jonathan, despite its loose joinery and splintered surface. Finn knew those things, the pieces of family lore. But he didn’t know she was keeping the painting. When they’d discussed Jonathan’s gift to the institute, she’d left out that part.
Finn glanced at his phone. “We’ve got a little time. Do you think I could see it?”
* * *
—
Originally, Seline’s studio was a walk-out basement overlooking level ground that quickly descended to a slope of oleander and pampas grass. The space had been dank and unfinished, but Seline painted the exposed framing and concrete floor white, covered the two small windows in Tyvek to soften the south-facing glare, and installed lighting of a wattage and temperature identical to that of the gallery that annually showed her work.
She stepped inside first and switched on the lights. Traces of turpentine and stand oil hung in the air. The large table was covered with sketches and notes; an old clay pitcher held her bristle brushes. Three glass palettes lay where she’d left them last night, gleaming with dark orbs of pigment: burnt umber, lampblack, alizarin crimson. When Seline was still Jonathan’s student, he’d showed her his method for organizing a work surface, how to arrange the tubes of paint in rows of warm and cool colors, to use sable brushes only in a work’s final stages, and how to wash them properly, with soap in her cupped hand.
The child ran in from outside and went straight to the table, to one of the glass palettes. “No,” Anna said, following her. “That’s not for you.” Calmly, for Seline knew the lay of her worktable, the location of each stray cap and lid, she closed the tubes and jars. With large sheets of newsprint, she covered the palettes of still-wet paint.
Standing beside the drafting stool, Chloe asked to be lifted up. Seline obliged, surprised by the child’s weightlessness and the bony column of her ribs. Chloe settled on the seat and Seline saw her up close for the first time. She took in the child’s sleek complexion, the color of tea with milk, and the pale floss at her hairline. Her coloring is so like Finn’s, she thought. They must often be mistaken for father and daughter. Just then, Chloe reached forward to Seline’s necklace. She examined the glass beads, fingering one, then another. As she did, Seline took in the miracle of her hands, perfectly formed miniatures; her extravagant eyelashes; and the flecks of blue in her hazel eyes.
“Pretty,” Chloe said.
From a drawer, Seline took another sheet of newsprint and a red lithography pencil. With a fingernail, she pried away a section of the cedar wrapping, and a ringlet unwound to reveal the nub of red crayon inside. “I want to paint,” Chloe said.
“I know,” Seline said. “Here.” She held out the pencil. Entranced, the child took it and began to draw
.
Last night, Seline had preemptively turned her pictures to the wall, leaning canvases against tables, chairs, and along baseboards. Only the pigment-stained back of the linen was visible. There were two dozen pictures in all, each the size of a picture book. It was new work, solemn and enigmatic, and none of it was ready to be seen. Each painting depicted a tiny figure rendered with heavy impasto strokes. She herself didn’t know what to make of them, but had kept on, sometimes adding the suggestion of a door or window—not quite an interior, but an askew portal by which the figure might enter, or exit, to some equally ambiguous place. The only picture on display was Jonathan’s, hanging on the wall above her desk surrounded by postcards, photos, and memos pushpinned to the wall.
“This is the one,” Finn told Anna. “I pictured it bigger, somehow.”
“A collector in New York wanted it,” Seline added, coming to stand beside them. “But Jonathan felt he should keep it.”
Anna moved closer. “Look at that rabbit fur.” To render the hare’s coat, Jonathan treated the pale underfleece with dry brushwork, and for the outer bristle coat, set down hundreds of strokes with a one-hair brush.
“He got those foxtails right,” Anna said. “They grow on Diamond Street. In summer, they’d get stuck in the cats’ eyes and have to be pulled out with tweezers.”
Finn turned to Seline. “Is this going to the institute?”
“Of course. With the others.” The picture would be going there, eventually. But standing with Finn before his father’s painting, it occurred to her that the notebooks would seem small by comparison. In Finn’s eyes, she might have used her executor’s power to see that Finn got something more significant—this painting, for example—but she hadn’t.
“If it were me,” Anna said, “I’d keep it. I love the fur on that rabbit.”
Finn studied the picture and Seline watched him, aware now that the picture must have been on his mind. He stepped close to the surface. There was so much tactile in it: the animal’s fur, the twiggy quality of the grass, the grain of the table, all of which stood in contrast to the smooth expanse of sky. Did Finn notice, she wondered, the redwood in the distance? The tree was invented. No redwoods grew on these hillsides, and the detail was one Seline loved, a glimpse into Jonathan’s mind. The hills and the foxtails, the sky and the landscape. The picture spoke not just to her own life, but to a part of Finn’s, too.
The O. Henry Prize Stories 2018 Page 24
