The Cheese Monkeys: A Novel in Two Semesters

by Chip Kidd

  “SHLAAAARRGGAAHH! GRRAAAAG!”

  “Oh, Spew! You never did go in for PLAID! Sorry Midge! 'Bye kids!!” It changed to green and we were off.

  I spent the rest of the night in a Mifflin Hall lav (two floors below mine, for discretion's sake), making deposits into the porcelain every hour or so, until all I could do was wretch tortured breath. I promised God I'd never drink again if He'd just let me stop heaving, but He didn't get my call until late the next morning.

  • • •

  i i i .

  A R T 1 0 1. I N T R O D U C T I O N

  T O D R A W I N G.

  ( c o n t ' d )

  Wherein we measure the merits of gestural studies.

  Over the next day and a half I slowly, slowly returned to the world. The singing pain in my head was backed by a chorus of terrible guilt—a sense that the entire school's reputation had been irrevocably marred by what I had done. When I was able to go out, I couldn't help but feel everyone I passed knew I'd yawned in Technicolor all over Main Street. I missed half my classes and told Thenson I came down with stomach flu. I decided I would keep my promise to God and never touch a slurp 'n' burp again—not the hardest declaration to make. How Himillsy could put away two jars of that hemlock and stay as sober as a straight line was something I was going to have to ask her at Dottie's next class. If I had the nerve.

  I was on the cusp of whether to be furious with her or apologetic in the extreme (God, her car!).

  And then of course, there was that matter of the—jeez, it hurt just to think of it—the thing in her glove compartment. Surely I imagined it. Demon rum.

  • • •

  “You look a little under the weather.” Maybelle adjusted her easel. “If I do say. Are you ill?”

  “Um, I'm getting over a little stomach flu. I think the worst of it's behind me. But it's been a rough couple of—”

  “Oh! That's just too awful. My Uncle Langdon (Lanky, we used to call him— such a great dancer) once ate a tired oyster at a low bar in Charleston and didn't see the outside of his commode for almost a week—”

  “Is this seat taken?”

  Himillsy: in a little boy's navy sailor suit, complete with white cotton canvas cap, brass buttons, and a khaki knapsack. I thought I was hallucinating.

  “Hi!” I was already pulling the stool next to me out for her. I introduced her to Maybelle.

  “Charmed. That's such an interesting name.” Mabes tried to pronounce it.

  Himillsy corrected her. “Accent on the ill, dear. Yes. It's Lithuanian for ‘Tiny, Ugly Failure.’ Mums and Dad were quite the prophets.” She went about unpacking her art supplies.

  Maybelle couldn't decide if she was serious or not. It wouldn't be the last time. “Oh, that's—”

  Dottie swooped in, carrying a canvas bag and a good-sized cardboard box poked with holes.

  “Hello, everybody! Today we're going to do Gesture Drawings. Do you know what that is?”

  Hims eyed her with suspicion.

  “Gesture drawings are very quick studies, an exercise to keep your minds and fingers nimble. Very immediate. Visceral. Not labored.” While she was saying this, Dottie removed a leash made of chrome chain and a glass pitcher from the bag. She affixed the handle end of the chain to a rail spike driven into the center of the wooden platform where Mr. Peppie had stood only a week ago. Then she opened the lid on the box and removed an enormous tortoiseshell cat. She hoisted him chest level.

  “Everyone, this is Colonel Percy Boomer. He's just a little kitten. Say hello, PB.” She rapidly wagged his right paw up and down. Percy looked a little, well, used, shall we say. And he was thirty pounds if he was an ounce—his kitten days were a bygone era. He seemed exhausted by life, and his left eye couldn't open all the way. “He's our subject today.” To his weary indifference, she kissed the top of his head, then set him down and attached the leash to his collar. He couldn't go more than a yard or so in any direction. She picked up the pitcher and trotted into the hallway.

  “It won't be uninteresting.” Himillsy's tone was grave. “I've heard about this, but I never believed it.”

  “What?”

  Colonel Percy, tethered, was pacing groggily, in a kind of fearful anticipation. Dottie returned, hoisting the pitcher—filled with tap water. She put it down and donned an old smock.

  “Okay. Gesture drawings, as their name suggests, must be done with great speed. You have to try and capture the moment—let your fingers do the thinking. Get out your black conte crayons, everyone. Are you ready? Focus on Colonel Percy. He is poised at the ready. Colonel, may I?” She picked up the pitcher.

  No. She wouldn't.

  “Here we go!”

  With that, she raised it and turned it over onto the cat. Percy made a noise like a baby being boiled alive and bolted in five directions at once. I wanted to cover my ears, but I was too busy scribbling. The miserable animal flailed, jerked, and shrieked. Pins of water shot everywhere and dribbled down the sides of the platform.

  “Are you all getting that? Don't be frightened. He's having the time of his life! Fill a page and then rip it away. Not more than ten seconds on each one. Nothing's precious! Discipline yourself!”

  Maybelle was at first frozen by the spectacle, but soon thawed and got down to business.

  Himillsy: fascinated.

  “Oh my God, it's brilliant.” Her hand was dancing over the page. “Dottie's insane. The chain will snap and Percy Boomer will kill us all. His vengeance will be swift and terrible. Many will die—look at him.”

  I did. We all did. It wasn't easy. Everyone worked like mad.

  Dottie trotted out to fetch another pitcher of water.

  At break, Maybelle got up to stretch and went to the ladies'. Colonel Boomer lay breathing heavily in a sopping heap, probably working out the details of his merciless war on mankind. Hims and I were as alone as we were liable to get. She sat and studied her work—a furious cacophony of lines which mapped out a vision of the mental state of the animal in a truly disquieting way. And, I suspected, a little too insightful. So much better than mine, which looked like discarded storyboards from a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

  “Um, I'm sorry about the other night. I mean, your car . . .”

  “No sweat. It needed a new paint job anyway,” she glanced over and grinned, “Spewy.”

  “Oh, God. Listen, I have to tell you. I've never been drunk before—''

  “Really.”

  “I mean, I only remember . . . less than half of it. But I wanted to ask you . . . ”

  “Yes?”

  “When I, opened the glove compartment, in your car, by mistake, I thought that—”

  “You saw this.” She leaned down and opened her knapsack. There it was. Yeek.

  “Oh. Oh.” The familiar nausea was awakening. She zipped it up again. In pain, I asked “W-What is —?”

  “Later,” she whispered sharply, nodding to someone behind me.

  “How's our little Colonel Boomer?“Maybelle walked up to the platform and put her hand out towards the furious pile of sodden fur. Percy looked at her and issued a low, weighty growl.

  “Um, I'd back off there, Maybelle,” I said.

  “He's a furry ball of cold, soggy hate, dear,” chimed Himillsy, in a perfect Dottie voice. “Unless you'd like to wake up in intensive care trying to remember your name, you'd best retreat.”

  “I suppose you're right.” She reluctantly backed away. “Poor thing . . . ”

  “Oh, he's having the time of his life,” Hims went on, “why, by tonight he'll be wearing his special wig and dancing over red coals while we poke him with sticks —he's such a card! All he ever cared about was our happiness. So giving, the darling.”

  Dottie returned with a fresh pitcher and we went back to work.

  I soon found there's nothing quite like a knapsack at your feet with a dead baby in it to cramp your drawing style; to say nothing of trying to put pleasing marks on paper with the suspicion that the person next to you is
really a fiendish ghoul in the guise of the illegitimate off spring of Popeye and Betty Boop. Add Percy's infantine screams and I had the makings of forty-five minutes that seemed to go on for weeks.

  When class was finally over, I very cautiously trailed Himillsy outside.

  “That was too much,” she said, waiting for me to catch up. “Maybe Dottie's got a trick or two left. Let's go to the Creamery. Today's caramel.”

  “I . . . have to get to Art History.”

  “It'll wait.” She was on her way, her pull irresistible, tidal. “It's not like it's going anywhere . . .”

  • • •

  Dairy farming was practically a religion at State and Ice Cream the sacrament. Only two blocks away from the VA building, the Creamery provided an altar for all those shuddering udders. Milk products I didn't even know existed lined its refrigerated cases (cheese curds, anyone?—only a dime a bag!) but it was the twenty-cent cones that had kids lined up out the door—even in January. A sign over the counter boasted “only four days from cow to cone!” Lucky for us it was before the lunch rush and practically empty. Hims ordered two scoops of caramel and I got one of vanilla. We planted ourselves at one of the tables along the edge and lapped away. Hims started to giggle.

  “What,” I asked. Her gurgling intensified. “What?” She settled down, but her voice was a singsong.

  “You should have seen everyone on the sidewalk—they were just mortified! It was fabulous.” She tittered some more.

  “Jeez. Thanks a lot.”

  Finally, I just had to: “Himillsy. Um, what is . . .” I looked at her knapsack. She thought a moment, then set her cone in one of the holders mounted on the table. She checked to see if anyone was paying attention. Satisfied, she unzipped.

  “This,” she lifted it out, “is Baby Laveen. He's a Republican, but I love him.”

  I was flooded with relief. It was a doll—a breathtakingly realistic replica of an infant, made out of soft, flesh-toned rubber. Baby Laveen was frozen in that stage (what—one?, two weeks?) when babies don't look quite as horrifying as they do in the very beginning, but still have at least a month to go before being adorable. I had only seen his head in the glove compartment and assumed that Himillsy had . . . well, no point in thinking about it now.

  He was dressed in a man's gray flannel suit— superbly tailored to his body—with a tiny white oxford broadcloth shirt accented by a maroon tie, knotted in an impish four-in-hand. A campaign button on his minuscule left lapel beamed “I like IKE!” He looked like a postfetal board member of Babies Corp. Beguiling black leather wing tips the size of matchbox cars housed his feet. She wagged his right arm like Dottie and the Colonel. An eerie image—the parent and the child had switched clothes.

  “Daddy's a big fat pediatrician. Teaches at Yale.” She set Baby Laveen on her knee. “When I was three, my baby brother, DeVigny, was born. He was named for the French poet.” She became quite serious. “I adored him.” She adjusted the doll's collar with expert care. “He died, very soon after. Infantile paralysis. I was inconsolable.” Hims looked out the window. “They make these replicas to use in the classroom. For professional instruction. Daddy gave me him to play with and take my mind off things. I called him Laveen—I never could pronounce his name right. He's been my best buddy ever since.” She turned him to face her. “Haven't you?” she asked him soberly, as if she wanted to borrow a quarter.

  A million questions were born in my mind: Why would a responsible father—a presumably respected child care specialist, no less—provide and foster this sort of artificial and flimsy emotional compensation for his daughter? And why hadn't she outgrown it? What was Mr. Garnett, the Architect's take on BL— if he even knew about him? Was I supposed to find it amusing?

  I did, by the way. He broke me up. I guess that answered that.

  “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Laveen.” I tugged his clammy little hand. Ha ha. I got up. “I have to get going. To class.”

  “See you Wednesday?” she asked, picking up her cone. I looked for a little hope in her eyes and found it—just barely.

  “Of course.” Then I added, touched that she'd care,“It's not like I'm going anywhere . . .”

  The three of us—Hims, Maybelle, and I— formed something of a de facto alliance in Dottie's class during the next few weeks, though it existed strictly inside the classroom. Once the session was over, Hims would skitter away like a sand crab— alone or with me bobbing in tow. But it was clear that socially she wanted nothing to do with Maybelle, whom she saw as the oil to her water.

  No—her vinegar.

  But three continuous hours of drawing things such as a petrified legless frog in a miniature wheelchair holding pennants that said “Rib” and “Bit!” in either webbed hand just begged for conversation, and Hims took what she could get. Upon realizing that Maybelle's upbringing clearly did not allow for sarcasm, she began to enjoy it.

  “I think that frog is Jewish. It's trying to say ‘Rabbi.’ ”

  “What?!” Maybelle returned, incredulous.

  “Maybe you're right. S'probably Episcopalian— ‘Ribeye.’ ”

  • • •

  By October Hims insisted I audit her graduatelevel Contemporary Art History class because she was tired of having constantly to explain who and what she was talking about.

  “You can't possibly enjoy being so ignorant. It's not bliss. Bliss is putting a lit match to every fart of Art Dogma this gassy century has seen fit to squeak out. And learning how. Divine.”

  State's Art History Department actually had a half-decent reputation. AH 401 was taught by Dr. Mistelle, an annoyingly authoritative middle-aged man with a hairless jug head who had published a book on someone called the Blue Rider and spoke and gestured as if he hadn't achieved a successful bowel movement in weeks. Mistelle seemed to know what he was talking about, but his tone implied he had the inside scoop on what each of the artists was trying to do— whether they realized it or not.

  My AH class, 101, was a tepid introduction to pre-Renaissance painting and sculpture, with a lingering eye on one-point perspective and endless flattened Marys scowling at the fidgets of their dwarfish, petulant savior.

  But I'm forever indebted to Hims for making me sit in on 401, as I had no official knowledge of “Modern Art,” and without her guidance my introduction to it would have been far more perplexing. During what was to become a pivotal moment for me at State, Misty put one of the silliest paintings I had ever seen up on the screen. It was of five . . . figures. You could tell that they were supposed to be people because they had eyes. At least three of them were female, sporting pointy boobs the shape of horizontal midget dunce caps. The one farthest to the left apparently started out as a Negro, but the artist changed his mind when he got to the neck and made the rest of her white, pink, apricot, and deep rust.

  These she-things looked stunned, as if they'd just been told they all had cervical cancer. And the two on the right were racked with skin problems the likes of which I prayed I'd never know. The whole thing appeared to have been abandoned far from completion, the artist having come to his senses and taken up something less ghastly, like infanticide. Compared to this, Dottie was Picasso.

  “This,” Mistelle announced, “is Picasso's Les Damoiselles d'Avignon. 1907.”

  Oops.

  “After half a century it remains one of the most disturbing paintings in the history of Art. ”

  Now there he had a point.

  “Its convulsive revelation—that the classical nude could attack and transfix the eye at the same time—was unprecedented and has yet to be surpassed. Despite outward appearances to the contrary, its debt to traditional painting is unquestionable. The trio of women on the left form a reference to the Three Graces, a favored theme of the Renaissance, while the two on the right are a nod to the attenuated forms of El Greco, with a touch of Goya's ferocity. Nonetheless, an undeniable sense of organic unity is achieved through the use of blue, harkening back to, and in transition from, the misréabli
sme of the artist's Blue Period a few years earlier. But he manages to merge it all into a continual membrane of ambiguous declaration—just what is the positive space, and what is the negative? The very problems that Art was traditionally meant to solve are presented here as what they truly are and always have been—problems.”

  Something strange was happening to me. I was starting to feel ashamed . . .

  “If you are shocked by Les Damoiselles d'Avignon, that's because it is New, even after fifty years, and anything truly New is always unsettling.”

  . . . ashamed and stupid.

  “This painting,” he concluded, “is proof that some new ideas are too fundamental, and too culturally encompassing, to be ignored or dismissed.”

  I had to admit—as a lawyer for ugly, ham-fisted paintings, Misty was Perry Mason. By the time he was done I was convinced that not only was I an idiot, but this “work” was the product of an unknowable and very real genius.

  “Any questions?” Misty always asked this after a tirade, but never meant it. He was really asking, “Can anyone believe how brilliant I am?” Himillsy raised her hand. He reluctantly nodded to her.

  “Why is he so afraid of women?” Her tone was civil and intelligent, not blowsy and pronounced like when we'd blab at the Skeller. I came to know that when Mills really wanted to make a point, she could can the Evil Imogene Coca act and present herself seriously.

  Misty was dumfounded. “Picasso? Afraid of women? Do you know what you're saying?”