Art Lessons

by Katherine Koller

  When Babci comes out, she says, he goes to the arms of his mama.

  While she speaks to the nurse, I go to the bed. The flowers scatter the floor. I pick them up. His eyes are closed.

  Mama, he whispers.

  I don’t think I should say anything. I hold the flowers near his nose, so he can let the scent of them take him home.

  Babci brings a vase of water for the flowers and sets it on his bedside table, and lets me arrange the flowers so none of the colours are bunched up and we leave him, his face smooth, breathing lightly but steadily in sleep.

  In the winter, Mom drives Babci and me to Dr. Kowalewski’s funeral. On the way we watch some school children walking on top of the crusty snow in their schoolyard at recess. The kids are light enough so they don’t plummet through the surface. They have oversized toques that warm the oval of air above their heads, so they look like gnomes who skate-walk on crystallized water. We all giggle, even Babci.

  We dress in black, but we laugh, she says, to keep up our hearts.

  I think, to keep hearts from sinking in snow, in sadness. Hearts want to rise, like trees.

  After the service, at the very small reception, the son from Don Mills comes over to speak to us. His name is also Dr. Kowalewski. He has a deep crease in his forehead between his eyes and a penetrating stare, as if he’s wearing contact lenses that hurt. I wonder if he’s going blind, too.

  Babci must have told the elder Dr. Kowalewski about my art. Now I wish I’d thought of drawing him. I could have even done it without him, being blind, even knowing. But I would have asked, first. If I didn’t it would be sort of like taking away his pillow.

  He left instructions for me to have his art books. His son provides proof.

  Edmonton, 1995

  Dear Kasia,

  My art books are for you. Choose those you wish. Take even those not in English, for it is the paintings that matter. You must go to Europa to see them for yourself, and then they will be yours forever, even if (God forbid) you go blind like me.

  Dr. Konstanty Kowalewski

  His books, protected from harm. For me. His arms stretched wide like an opera singer, eyes blank in anger at his very own son. The son supervises as I select them, at his urging, that very day. The art books may have originally belonged to his mother, because later I find some sketches by her, signed Jana, inside some of the books. By the dates, they are of old Dr. Kowalewski when he was young, when his eyes were alive. I ask the son if he would like to keep any books for himself, and he whispers at me to hurry up because the Goodwill truck is coming to take the rest away with the furniture, so I don’t mention the sketches.

  Instead I say that his father often talked about him.

  Really, he says. And it punctures his briskness for a moment.

  I wonder if Dr. Kowalewski really was a bad father. I suspect his son grew up without knowing him. Imagine not knowing the story of the pillow.

  Inside his old pillow, we found flower seeds from his mother, I say, and we planted them in the back by the steps.

  From Poland?

  We washed the pillow. You could put a different cover on it.

  The son doesn’t answer me, but he listens to all I say. The feathers are from far away and long ago, from his own babcia that he maybe never met.

  As I open the first book and make my selections, he gets his boots and goes to the back door.

  I pack two boxes full of gorgeous heavy books in various languages.

  René Magritte: L’essai de l’impossible. He makes me feel like anything is possible.

  Maitre de l’imaginaire: Marc Chagall. His dreams come true.

  Auguste Rodin: Sculptor of Everyman. A realist, like Dr. Kowalewski.

  Gustav Klimt: Das Graphische Werk. Ornate, detailed, mythic.

  Op Art: Victor Vasarely. So cool and modern.

  Jean Arp: Dessins, Collages, Reliefs, Sculptures, Poesie. This one, too.

  Amedeo Modigliani, Angelo della Tristezza. Those elongated figures, I don’t know, but I’m curious.

  Aubrey Beardsley, Slave to Beauty. There are stories here.

  Henri Matisse: Radical Invention. My favourite.

  Leonardo da Vinci: Maestro del Rinascimento. Leafing through, I find Babci’s The Last Supper!

  Pablo Picasso: Une Vie. He knew he was a genius, but I like that he says he stands on the shoulders of the artists of the past.

  Dziękuję, Dr. Kowalewski. Thank you.

  His son returns from outside, cheeks pinked. He shows me his palm, covered with seeds.

  They’re Evening Scented Stocks. From my babcia. The seedheads were peeking out of the snow. I’ll dry them and plant them in a special pot in my garden. Glad you mentioned them.

  So am I.

  He transfers the seeds to an envelope, folds it carefully into a square and tucks it in his breast pocket.

  The abundance of the gift of books almost stops me from going back for the second box, but the son has already hauled them out on the front step for me. I hurry to get there before the Goodwill truck driver, slowing to a stop. The son props open the screen door with a box of dictionaries in many languages, and the Goodwill man takes bags and boxes and everything away. I wonder where that pillow is. Maybe it’s with Dr. Kowalewski in his coffin. Oh, I hope so.

  I spend the rest of the afternoon creating a thank you note, guiltily telling about the sketches I found, but two weeks later when Dad and I come by, my note is still there, and the For Sale sign is up, so I take my card out of the mailbox and burn it with one of Babci’s beeswax candles. Dad makes me do it outside in the snow. I let the smoke rise up, an offering to my angels, including old Dr. Kowalewski now. Like the little white feather, the sketches of him now belong to me, but I keep them tucked in their books so only I know.

  Evergreen

  Get those dirty clothes off the floor. It’s disgusting in here!

  I give Mom my pity look: eyes wide open, staring her down. Seriously? I’m actually sorry for her, because if my bedroom is all she has to think about, it’s pathetic. I close my door and lock it, but she has to finish.

  Cassie, clean up!

  As if. Cleaning up is for when you’re worried or stressed or someone is coming over. That’s when she cleans, anyway. Each time she comes home from the hospital, like today, she cleans. Babci’s getting a pacemaker to help her heart pump. To keep up her heart.

  I stay busy, too, so I don’t think about it, but I don’t clean. Forget that. I like my room the way it is. Piles of clothes on the floor comfort me. I can see my entire collection at once, and find anything in a sec. Colours love to be jumbled up. I don’t mind a rough mix of clean and dirty; somehow it all evens out. And when something surfaces in a different place in the drift, the colour changes depending on what’s next to it. I love that. Serendipity. I love that word, too, the surrender in it. I pity those like Mom who don’t get it.

  My aubergine T-shirt looks great with my indigo jeans.

  The lemon one is perfect with the tree frog green underlayer.

  My forget-me-not faded blue jeans go great with a sunset pink tank top.

  I get ideas by seeing how the colours fall together on the floor. How do you get inspired to dress for high school with stuff neatly folded in a drawer or hanging in a closet? Clothes need to circulate! When they’re floating amoebas they flow, find each other, generate new outfits.

  Mom’s the one who showed me when I was three that, to put a puzzle together, you have to see all the pieces at once.

  A pacemaker is a piece that is extra. The extra piece isn’t supposed to be there, but it has to fit in.

  I open the window telling myself it’s the oil paint that’s smelly, not the floordrobe, which is so not the same as the one in the boydom of Charlie and Tom, who are slobs. Everything on their floor is beyond dirty, and when the smell star
ts wafting in the hall, Mom makes them wash it all. Outside, Stella swings a stick, jumping over benches and slashing the air. I yell to her.

  What are you doing?

  I’m defencing myself!

  Stella shows me some twirling moves, landing on crouch feet, stabbing like a lunatic. Mom goes out to watch. She’s actually amused. Good for her. She and Stella hang out a lot. She lets Stella get away with anything.

  She’s got a weapon, Mom, I call out.

  She’s dancing.

  Defencing, says Stella.

  What happened to the weapon-free zone?

  Fencing is a sport.

  Fencing, yells Stella.

  Different rules for every kid.

  She looks up at me, but doesn’t reply.

  The boys and I were never allowed to use sticks or stones or even finger guns. We had to go to friends’ houses for water fights.

  Guns are for killing, Mom always said. No violence on my watch.

  Ha. Didn’t she see Charlie and Tom at each other?

  Playfighting, she’d say. They’ll grow out of it.

  Okay, so maybe they have. But it’s not fair that the boys’ room has been a disaster since the beginning of time and Mom never bugs them about it. Well, maybe once a year. I’m getting her grief every week, as if she has nothing else else to say to me.

  Now she’s cleaning up her clay pots. She usually leaves them out all winter. This year they’re getting their dirt dumped out and then stacked up in neat upside-down columns in the old playhouse.

  The pacemaker is even picking up Mom’s pace.

  I drift back to my desk, to get away from her and her hassles.

  Terra cotta will look great with the evergreen I’m looking for. What’s in my head is always better than what I get, but nothing captures colour like oil paint. Acrylics clean up easily but oil, oil intoxicates. Not that I know what it’s like to be drunk, but I’ve seen the boys come home sick and strange after team parties. Charlie and Tom always make sure one is less out of it than the other, and one gets the other one in and away from Mom’s eagle eye and supersonic ear which, come to think of it, have not been up to speed lately. I’m up way later than Mom. I draw at night before bed. Especially when Dad’s away, I make sure the boys are home before I turn off my light.

  Dad’s been travelling more than usual. Mom’s definitely less steady when he’s away. Like he’s a windbreaker for her. She doesn’t yell when he’s home.

  The tree I’m drawing is in wind. It’s fall, and there are trees losing leaves around it, but this one is a lone pine. It’s about to be noticed by everyone because soon it will be the only tree still clothed, in true green. A true green that changes with the weather. That’s what I want. This wanting, and finding, is that floating feeling I’ve felt so many times before. I keep at it, in pursuit. More yellow, a little purple, even a drop of orange. The green is working. I try it in different corners of the room, different lights, and I’m surprised how true it is, in sunlight, lamplight and closet dark. It’s a beauty, and I hope I’ve made enough green to do a couple versions of the tree.

  I ignore the calls. I can’t stop even though I’m getting hungry. This tree needs more branches, and I have only a little paint left. I don’t want family lunch. Dad’s not home anyway. I pretend I’m still cleaning my room by knocking around some laundry baskets and letting a new array of clothes spill on the floor. I take a moment to appreciate tangerine and deep purple sweaters tangled up, which makes my true, true green on my practice canvas even more shocking.

  The paint is so smooth, so luscious. Like Italian gelato. I wonder if the colours taste how they look. With the tip of my sable paintbrush, poised like I’m doing lipstick for Elle, I test the red, leaving a tiny clot on my front tooth. I look in the mirror, and my tongue spreads the red over the white of my teeth. The taste is sharply toxic. But I breathe it out and go for the green. Creamier in texture, the green dot goes off centre on my lip where I one day want a piercing when I get up the guts. Tastes like gasoline. My mouth fills with saliva, ready to swirl with the paint. But I can’t swallow.

  I run to the bathroom, trying not to gag. My mouth is a volcano, spewing puke red and green goo and alarming brown strings of spit. I swish with water, but it doesn’t help. I brave boy germs and gargle straight from my brothers’ bottle of questionable green Listerine.

  You used to have a moustache of coloured dots from sniffing your felt pens, says Mom.

  I cough in the sink. She reaches behind me for a Kleenex, holds my chin and removes a dot of green from under my nostril. She bunches up the tissue, cleans out the sink in one swipe, but catches me at the top of the stairs and guides me down to the kitchen.

  Everyone else has gone to the park or Saturday afternoon practices. Mom keeps her distance, as if chat might scare me away. To her, the first law of life is nutrition, so that comes before room cleanup or I’m sorry and immediately after poison control. She flicks on her French CBC and serves me tomato soup and toast, with spinach salad on the side. She quilts quietly while I eat. She wears her glasses like Babci does, a little low on her nose.

  The red soup is plain today, no basil leaves floating in it. The salad is verte, with none of the usual red and orange peppers or purple onion rings, with a clear vinaigrette that gives les épinards a slight gloss. I slurp and munch to Montreal jazz, my mind on my painting, my true green pine. Terra cotta red energy radiates from its trunk.

  Blossoms

  Why don’t we ever have any Band-Aids?

  I’m snarling on a Monday morning, super peeved. Everybody noticed my hand last week at school and I’m not going today without covering it up. Ugh. Why me, why now? I consider wearing gloves all day. I have Art first, and I can wear my white cotton gloves with the fingers cut off, because we’re drawing today, so I’m safe there. Can I leave them on all day? A fashion statement? They’re so sweaty and dirty, I don’t think so. I hunt around the back hall for my old grey hoodie with the extra long sleeves. It will cover right down to my knuckles. If I hunch all day.

  Mom says, I’ll buy a box of Band-Aids when I get groceries this week.

  She takes a look at my right hand, my drawing hand, and there they are: one large and six small gross warts.

  When this week?

  You know they go away if you forget about them.

  As if.

  I answer the doorbell. There’s only one person who shows up at eight in the morning, our neighbour who is ninety-five years old and reminds you of that every time you see him.

  Hello, my beauty! Look how you blossom before our eyes! Is your charming mother at home for a ninety-five-year-old gentleman?

  He takes my right hand in his, which is leaf-dry but Superman-strong, and kisses it smack on my warty knuckles!

  He whispers in my ear, I’m not flirting, I’m French!

  I hide my plague hand away and watch his lips for possible wart growth, then usher him in to my Mom, who now has a surprise early morning coffee guest. They like to speak French together. Monsieur Gérard, or The Old Gent, as Mom calls him, gets up at five every morning, does his rowing exercises to “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees until six, dresses and eats breakfast until seven, then writes correspondence on his typewriter with two fingers and is ready for French conversation at eight. He’s like a hip Dr. Kowalewski, an unsick and unstoppable version of the pillow man.

  When I ask Monsieur Gérard how he keeps up his schedule, he points to his double-knotted high-tread new white running shoes.

  You know the advertisement for Nike? Just do it!

  I zip up my grungy hoodie and hope no one notices my dive in the style department. Being invisible has never been my thing. But that’s all I want, today.

  I try not to draw attention to my right hand all week. I resist looking at it, which totally works in Art because of the drawing gloves. I need them so I
don’t smudge the graphite because my hands sweat on the page. I even sprinkle cornstarch inside the gloves to soak up the sweat. I thought the sweating was from excitement, but Mom thinks it’s hormones and, like the warts, will go away. Her nonchalance is maddening. Her belief in the benevolence of the universe, of the future, is ridiculous. The sweating is getting worse.

  You notice it more because you’re drawing more in high school, she says. Every lunch hour in the art room.

  The gloves she found me help, a lot. I don’t wash them. I like that they’re covered in ink, in charcoal, in paint. And that no one else in my class has them.

  I’m okay in Gym, too, because we’re long-distance running. I run by myself and gaze at the trees that ring our school ground. I take wide long breaths for beneficial, hopefully anti-sweat, hormones. The fresh cut grass smells good, too, but since I found out it’s actually a distress reaction from the plant, pure anguish, I don’t get off on it anymore.

  At lunch, it’s impossible not to look at your hands when you eat. I consider not eating, but I’m too hungry. I eat with my left hand. No problemo. Then I try writing lefty in Social. Wow. I can do it, and I get faster as the class goes on.

  I’ve heard of ambidextrous people. Dad told me my grandpa was one. His teachers forced him to write with his right hand. It’s cool to know I’ve got something of him in me, because I never knew him.

  My right hand sits in a different ’roo jacket pocket all week, having a good old rest. I wonder if the reason for the rotten warts is because I write and draw so much in class. Some days my hand feels like it will fall off. I take constant notes to keep awake. If I don’t, my mind wanders out the window to the trees and I miss out. When I’m not taking notes, I make diagrams and charts and pictures of what the teacher is saying on rough, recycled paper, which is all Mom buys. My right baby knuckle rubs nonstop.

  But no more. From now on I’m using two hands. I’ll alternate each class, that is, if the warts ever go away. What if I end up with warts on both hands? Then I’ll get wooly black gloves with the fingers cut off like the Little Matchstick Girl. I’ll drop past grunge to the dumpster look.