Fast Start, Fast Finish

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  It was queer how foreign a city New York could become after just a few years’ absence from it. Coming out of the subway onto 78th Street, he found that everything was alien to him, nothing was familiar. All the familiar landmarks had been stripped away while he was gone, and new ones had been imposed by this city which constantly consumed itself, and Charlie Lord found himself without a point of focus, and walked half a block before he realized he was going in the wrong direction. The violence of the way the city had changed exhilarated him. The fierce beauty of the new buildings, glittery in the afternoon sun of a spring day, filled all his senses at once; they seemed to dangle overhead and rock in the sky, and he was overcome with a feeling of buoyancy. He felt a part of the buildings’ upward spurt.

  Two gratuitous kindnesses had been paid him on his way here. First, standing in line at the subway-token booth, with his dime and nickel ready, a young boy had walked by, turned, and said, “Need a token, mister?” and had tossed him one. “Let me give you the money!” Charlie called, but the boy just grinned, shrugged, called back, “Be my guest,” and hurried on. Such things, he knew, never happened in New York. Then, taking his seat on the train, a young woman next to him had said to him, “That’s a good combination you’re wearing, that shirt and that tie. Looks real good on you. I admire a man who knows how to dress. Want part of my paper?” She had handed him a section of the Post. He had thought that she was trying to pick him up, but as soon as he accepted the paper she returned to the man on the other side of her, with whom she was holding hands, and continued talking to him in a low, soft voice. She did not look at Charlie again.

  That was not like New York either. The whole city and the subways beneath it seemed to have been struck with some strange, sudden love, and his feeling intensified that he was not really here, that he was dreaming and this was a dream. No, this was not the real city, and that had not been the real subway; they were all parts of some witty, good-humored invention of the heart.

  The Myra Mirisch Gallery occupied two floors, the eleventh and the twelfth, in one of the older buildings on East 75th Street, just off Madison Avenue. The lower floor contained the gallery itself. The upper was taken up with storerooms and offices. The walls of the gallery floor, where Charlie got out of the elevator, were painted a stark white, hung with an exhibition of abstract-expressionist paintings, vividly bright ones. A young woman—a Radcliffe type with long black hair, wearing a large copper necklace and huge horn-rimmed glasses—sat at a small table in one corner reading a paperback copy of The Second Sex. She was all in black—black flat-heeled shoes, black skirt, black pullover sweater. While he waited for her to acknowledge him, Charlie looked around at the paintings. He could certainly not be uncharitable today. But in this extraordinary city it was not hard to feel, seeing this one, that his own show would be better. This painter was clearly interested in linear forms, columnar shapes—even the recognizable human elements in the paintings were elongated and columnar—but the pictures all together began to look like representations of so many upright broken pencils. Still, they were good, technically very good. Charlie approached the girl at the desk, who looked up at him, smiled rather bleakly, and returned to her paperback. “Pardon me,” he said. “Is Miss Mirisch in?”

  She cleared her throat and marked her place in the book with a paper clip. Without looking at him she said, “Who’s calling?”

  “Mr. Lord. Charles Lord,” he said. “I have an appointment.”

  She seemed to rise unwillingly from her chair and stood for a moment smoothing the front of her skirt with hard, aggressive slaps of her hands. Flecks of cigarette ash came floating out of the black wool. Then she started away from him across the room, toward the stairs. “I’ll see if she’s in,” she said. “Wait there.” As she started up the stairs to the upper floor, Charlie saw a gold ankle bracelet glint under the web of one of her dark stockings.

  It was several minutes before she returned. When she did, she came partway down the steps and said in a flat, unpleasant voice, “Look. She’s tied up on the phone. Long distance. Talking to Paris. But I guess you might as well come up.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “Thanks very much, dear,” and started up the stairs. But he was no more than halfway up the stairs when the feeling of high self-confidence which had come upon him so suddenly departed from him utterly. He felt his breath go and his mounting steps grow heavy. He gripped the handrail. Passing her, he tried to smile, and she gave him a sullen look.

  “Wait in the outer office,” she said.

  And he was glad to have a place to sit. He waited, hearing beyond the closed door of the next room a woman’s voice that he supposed belonged to Myra Mirisch. “Mais oui, mon cher, je t’assure …” she was saying, “Mais oui … mats certainement … ah, tu es très gentil, mon cher …” He waited, perspiring, hands clasped together between his knees, on the hard leather bench, glad to have to wait because it gave him time in which to try to collect himself, wondering what had happened; where had it gone? That enchanted mood of just a few minutes ago.

  They had decided to keep it a secret from the children that Nancy was visiting a psychiatrist. That had been Charlie’s idea, the secrecy part, and Nancy had agreed. Dr. Seligman, in California, had also agreed, which settled it. She scheduled her visits during the hours when the children were at school. During school vacations she manufactured little excuses—she had to do some shopping, had to see the dentist, something. So far it had worked very well, and after two years none of the children had an inkling. Not that there was anything wrong with analysis—Charlie and Nancy just didn’t want the children to think there was anything unusual about their home, that was all.

  Nancy had not mentioned the secrecy aspect of it to Dr. Harding, this new man in Westmount; there would be plenty of time for things like that. Besides, she first wanted to see how she liked him, whether he was a man with whom she could feel at ease. Now, after a little more than half an hour, she had decided that she was going to like him enormously; he was going to be perfect, better than Seligman. He was a nice-looking man, a few years older than she, and he was calm—that was the thing she liked best about him. He seemed calm, and gentle, and kind, and he had calm gray eyes that never seemed to blink and yet never seemed to stare. Also he didn’t have Dr. Seligman’s habit of looking annoyed with her whenever, as she had been today, she was a little late. If she were late, Seligman would merely look annoyed at the beginning of the visit; then, toward the end of it, he would say something to remind her that he considered punctuality important, an essential part of self-discipline. This Dr. Harding, though, was so much more relaxed. Why, she felt she could be fifteen, twenty, even twenty-five minutes late with him and he would never be cross with her—not that she ever would be that late with him. Not deliberately, anyway. She was busy thinking these pleasant thoughts about him when he pushed a sheet of printed, paper slowly across his desk to her and said in his calm voice, “This is a standard release, Mrs. Lord, to authorize Dr. Seligman in California to release your records and history to me so I can have them to look over. If you’ll just sign it here, where I’ve checked.”

  “Oh, certainly,” Nancy said and picked up the pen he offered. She was about to sign her name in the blank when she stopped. She put down the pen. “No,” she said. “Please, I’d rather not.”

  “I’d like to have your file, Mrs. Lord. I can’t get it without—”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “You have some objection?”

  “I’d like—” she began, “I’d like to start my record fresh.”

  “Fresh?”

  “Yes,” she said, growing surer of herself. “Dr. Harding, this is a whole new life for me. I’ve said good-bye to everything in California, and I want to say good-bye to Dr. Seligman’s records too. I want to start my record fresh.”

  He smiled. “You make it sound like a prison record,” he said. “Really, the point is just to save me several months’ work.”

  “I�
��m willing to spend the months if you are,” she said. “My point is that I don’t want anything—not anything—haunting me from California.”

  “Don’t you think you’re being a little romantic?”

  “Well, perhaps I am. But that’s the way I feel—so strongly.”

  “I’m awfully sorry—”

  “If you won’t take me on that condition, Dr. Harding, I’ll just have to look further for someone who will,” she said. And she added hastily, “Which I’d be awfully sorry to do because I like you very much, Dr. Harding.”

  “You really feel that strongly about it?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  He looked at her for a moment with his calm gray eyes. “Very well,” he said, “as you say, Mrs. Lord.” He withdrew the paper.

  “Thank you!” she said.

  Myra Mirisch was small, a woman of perhaps fifty, perhaps a little over, with short gray hair brushed simply back and deep-set green eyes. She had a pleasant, wrinkled face that looked as if it had been sunburned often and which wore not a trace of makeup. Her fine-boned, almost delicate hands were ringless and without nail lacquer. She was dressed very simply, too, without jewelry, in a gray skirt and a white cotton blouse. She stood up from her desk when Charlie entered the room, smiled, and held out her hand. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Lord,” she said. “Come in, sit down. I’m so glad to meet you.” She studied his face. “No, you don’t look anything like any of your pictures, but what painter ever does?” She settled herself comfortably behind her desk, and Charlie sat in one of the deep chairs opposite her. “Except I had a painter once, a young woman who was Chinese, and simply could not paint Occidental faces. It was so hard to point it out to her, and be tactful. I couldn’t really say to her, ‘But, Gloria, all human beings simply do not have slanted eyes.’” She smiled at him. “Well, how is California?” she asked.

  “It was fine the last time I saw it,” he said. “Which was several weeks ago.”

  “Oh?” she said. “Then this is a long visit you’re making. That’s nice. So many people seem to just fly in and out again.”

  “Actually,” he said, “I’ve moved here. We sold our house in California. We’re here to stay.”

  “Oh, wonderful!” she said. “Good for you. Where are you living?”

  “We bought a house in Westmount.”

  “A good spot. Not too far from town, not too close either. Well, that is nice.” She paused. “Now, what can I do for you?” she said.

  “Well,” he began, “you wrote me—I know it was several months ago—about my pictures.”

  “Oh, I certainly remember. You sent me seven oils. I looked at them very carefully. I remember them very well. I asked you if you had more, but you didn’t answer.”

  “I’ve been working on more. But you see—”

  She leaned forward and rested her arms on the smooth top of her desk. “How do you have the time? It seems to me that when you first wrote me you were working for an advertising agency out there, as an art director. Are you doing something like that here?”

  “No,” he said. “I gave all that up, Miss Mirisch.”

  “Really? Why? Weren’t you any good at it?”

  “I wasn’t bad at it. But—well, there are several reasons why I gave it up, why I had to give it up. The main reason was that it was just too limiting.”

  “Limiting? Why?”

  “Because everything I did had to be scaled to the shape of the printed page.”

  “But so many of you people do so brilliantly within those limitations. I have the greatest admiration for those of you who do. You see, I’m one of these outlandish creatures who does not think advertising is whoring. It’s nonsense to think it is.”

  “How many brilliant ways can you show a woman applying a deodorant?” he asked her. “That was my problem.”

  “Oh, but I can think of many, many ways!” she said. Then she smiled again. “But I admit that some of them are vulgar. Well, so you gave it up. What do you intend to do now?”

  “I intend to paint seriously,” he said, leaning forward in his chair, “full time.”

  Her smile faded. “I see,” she said. “Well, are you rich?”

  “Not rich,” he said. “But we have some savings, and we sold our house in California at a nice profit. We have enough to tide us along for quite a while.”

  “They say the East is more expensive than the West, particularly in Westchester, where you are,” she said. “But I don’t know. And, Mr. Lord, I still don’t understand why you made the move from one coast to the other. You could still have quit your job, couldn’t you, but stayed where you were.”

  “Frankly, Miss Mirisch, I felt that a lot of things were crowding in on me in California. I felt—”

  She laughed. “I feel everything crowds in on me in California,” she said. “I can’t stand the place—particularly your part of it!” She paused. “But did it have to be such a big move for you? I’ll tell you frankly, I’m thinking in terms of dollars and cents, the way I always think of painters. It must have cost you a fortune.”

  “Well—”

  “You know something?” she said quietly. “I’m beginning to have a perfectly horrid sensation that you moved back here because of me.”

  “Frankly, yes I did,” he said.

  She looked at him for several moments. “I’m sure I didn’t ask for this responsibility,” she said finally. “Though I seem to have it now, don’t I? Mr. Lord, I certainly didn’t urge you to move east.”

  “Of course you didn’t.”

  “Then what did I do or say—to suggest it to you?”

  “You mentioned a show of my work.”

  “Mr. Lord, I didn’t.”

  Charlie sat forward in the chair and clenched his fingers tight against his palms. “You did,” he said in a choked voice. “You did!”

  She patted her fingertips on the top of her desk and stood up and faced the window. “Now, just a minute, Mr. Lord,” she said. “I wrote you a letter—”

  “Yes, and it said—”

  “I’m not a very businesslike woman, Mr. Lord, but I’m sure there’s a carbon copy of that letter somewhere in this office. Shall I ask Nadia to see if she can find it for us?”

  “Oh, perfect!” he laughed a little wildly. “Oh, absolutely perfect!”

  “What’s perfect?”

  “Nadia! What a perfect name for that—that—” He waved his hand in the air. “Oh, never mind calling Nadia. I remember very well what that letter said—”

  “And so do I, Mr. Lord.” She turned and faced him. “I remember pretty well. I believe I said, ‘Who knows? Someday, if you get enough of your work put together, we may be able to talk about putting a show together.’ Wasn’t that it?”

  “Yes,” he said quietly.

  “That wasn’t a promise, was it? Just as long as we have that clear. I mean, I couldn’t have promised you anything, could I? Not on the basis of seven pictures. And I gather there are only—seven.”

  “I told you I’m working on more!”

  “Yes, but there are still only the seven. I couldn’t do a show of any seven pictures—particularly not your seven. Which brings us to your seven pictures.”

  He had a terrible desire to jump up and run from the room, leaving her standing there framed in the window. But he said, “Yes … it does.”

  “I’m being brutal, I know,” she said in a softer voice. “But remember what they say about me in this crazy art world: they say, ‘Myra Mirisch knows everything about art, but she doesn’t know what she likes.’ On the other hand, I’ve never taken on a client about whose work I was not completely enthusiastic. What did you think of my show downstairs?”

  “I thought it was—very nice,” he said.

  “I think it’s terrible. He is a mauvais jeune-homme. He is painting very badly these days, but he’s done better, and he will do better. Now you—” she looked at him closely again. “You have something. I think. It’s so hard to tell, fr
om such a small amount of work. But you may—just may have something. That’s why I wrote you that letter. You need work. You also need—call it direction, though I hate that word. At the moment you’re all over the lot. You’re trying to be everybody at once, everybody who’s fashionable. Do you know that you showed me seven different paintings in seven different styles?”

  “I was trying to show versatility—”

  “Well, yes,” she said. “But where are you? One of the standards by which I judge a painter is whether, after seeing two or three pictures, I can recognize his work again instantly, wherever I encounter it. Whenever I come into a room, I can see a picture I’ve never seen before and, in it, see some kind of signature. But you? You don’t have that signature yet. Of the seven, the five abstracts—and they’re five different styles of abstracts, of course—are terrible.”

  “One of those won a first prize in a show!”

  “The show in Pacific Palisades? Yes, you wrote me about that. Mr. Lord, please don’t talk to me about prizes. I’m not interested in artists winning prizes. I’m in the business of selling pictures.”

  “Very well,” he said evenly. “Five are terrible. That leaves two.”

  “Yes, a still life and a child’s head.”

  “And you think those are good enough?”

  “The child’s head was the one that intrigued me—the little girl’s head. That was the one that made me write my letter, Mr. Lord. That girl’s face. The still life is—well, it’s just a decent still life.”