– She gets the letters from there. Watch how she does it when I ask.
Ben talks as he does at parties back in New York, behind a thick smile, in a lowish tone under his breath.
We are the only ones here aside from Orla, having waited at the door on the dot of nine for her to open, and still he speaks this way; a permanent sense of caution governing his habit. That he should be so charming yet always discreet in his actions and never overheard. Orla will be hard-pushed to catch any of our conversation, however much she may want to. Ben asks for airmail envelopes, which sends her running into the back room, and once again, when he also remembers postcards. His smile is ample to negate the resentment that would ordinarily rise in her chest, so that when she returns her cheeks are still pale and not flushed with annoyance. Her mouth is smoothed out from the tight pursed lips I’m accustomed to seeing on those occasions I visit the store alone. In the time we have the place to ourselves, I gaze at the cages and then the metal box without having her eyes on me. It’s here that you collected your letters from Ben; missives casually slid between the milk cartons and the heavy cream bought from the general store across the street. Did Orla wonder at the nature of the letters, at why they could never be packaged with the others and left to the mailman to deliver? Or did she count it as one eccentricity among many radiating from our house? You can be forgiven this quirkiness, carrying boxes of envelopes to the back of the storeroom without being asked and unloading pallets to her instruction when her afternoon boy fell sick. I could never be granted the luxury of breezing into the post office and asking for the held letters without being judged. It never would have remained a secret anyhow. One way or another, you would have been told. It’s a reality I rarely think about, but being either here or in the general store always puts me in this frame of mind: petty and defensive. Tightness pulls the entire length of my spine. As I raise my chin to meet her stony eyes, I feel it all the more. The store does not make me nervous, but there is something I can’t identify that sits in the base of my stomach, bringing back memories of Father’s farm and its plane trees, and the steps leading up to the clapboard church where we had been baptized and schooled; a place where I felt small and prone to past failures being commented upon. Orla doesn’t do this herself; she simply allows the other customers to speak their mind without intervention. Ben is gallant but he is not the protector you were – are. With you there is no other way I could feel but safe, and guarded. Ben’s interjections would mean nothing if one of the girls from the mill rounded on me for one of the paintings that had made the newspapers.
– You had her legs splayed like she was fowl bound for the oven. Where’s the art in that? Art is the trees around us, the beauty of our land. You made that woman look fallen. There was no life in her. That wonderful woman who cooks and cleans for you and takes all our criticism of her employer with good humor and a degree of feigned ignorance. This is how you repay her work – making her look like that? That a newspaper should print that image, let alone someone buying it for all those dollars is a disgrace. I’m ashamed that you live here. That our town is associated with the sickness in your eyes.
You nodded sharply after she had spoken, before you talked her down. Your words indicated that you respected her right to have an opinion about the painting, but that a personal attack of this sort was not the way to express it. That in nature you could witness all manner of things that had little to do with beauty, but to do with the seasons, the food chain and the need to procreate. How this painting was part of an ongoing project with Vishni. That she had already been the study of many paintings and would continue to be so, much the same as yourself. That it is not the responsibility of Art to draw our attention to beauty, for our eyes are drawn to it anyway, in a myriad of forms.
The woman’s mouth continued to open and close in protest. She did not want to be treated as a pet that needed to be tamed. But as you spoke her face involuntarily knotted in concentration as her anger abated. Your words were leading her back to the paintings most often talked of – you standing in the barn doorway – a politician’s wife had bought on behalf of one of the public libraries. How the pride of the community was based on the strength and honesty in your face; only to be forgotten, because it was what happened in the day-to-day that mattered, not a slab of dried oil on canvas that hung in a far-off hallway or reception room. It was amazing how you managed to bring her through that cycle so that once you had finished she was chastened and ready to apologize, but only to you, because she was ashamed of your gentle disappointment. A curt nod in my direction was meant to clear things.
Another time, at the store, someone threw an apple from the crate on the porch. A woman who had read something in the paper and took against what she saw. Always women. The temptation to make her displeasure physically known was too great. The first apple hit a can of macaroni on a shelf above my shoulder. The second one was caught in your hand. Ben has the athleticism and the reflexes, but I wonder about his urge to protect; how vital it is. Would he be liable to duck, or act as you did, as quick as a shot, opening your palm in front of my face to protect me from the missile? A gush of air passed through your fingers as they grabbed the apple, creating a sucking, vacuous sound. Your body was hungry for trouble. Your nervous system bristled with it. If it had been a man, you would have chased them down the street and given them a hiding, for the force of the throw was malicious, anything but child’s play. But no man in town would do such a thing, for they had too much respect for you. They respected me too, in a muted, unknowing way. They respected where and with whom you lived, knowing you were too wise to shack up with a fool. That whatever went on in that house must have had a purpose because you would not be there otherwise. Your gift was too great. It was the women of the town, some of them, who had their own ideas and resentments; who felt the weight of our property rest heavily on their mind, though we were far out of their eyeline and off the beaten track. The nudity in the pictures bothered them greatly, and this was the line of argument they pursued with their husbands and others. But if pressed, those points would have crumbled because they had some memory of the beauty of their younger bodies. What they objected to was, to their perception, a life lived by whim and without any of the traditional responsibilities. On those rare times when our paths crossed, they did not seem to notice that I was as tired as they were, how my hair was similarly streaked with gray; the algebraic lines that underscored each eye. They did not hear how I stumbled over my words at the counter, only that the grocery box being filled held next to nothing beyond stationery, rice and two small bottles of liquor. The freedom held in those bottles of Kentucky rye started an acrid burning in their chests. Their faces choked on it. The countenance of the woman who threw the apple held a similar sourness. She was a cousin of Orla’s sister-in-law, whose husband Edwin was a farmer up the hill. We were not strangers. Still, an object hurled with impact toward my head was more preferable to her than voicing her disgust. In their yard, stones were thrown at foxes and raccoons who scratched at the grain sacks. I too was vermin and so given the same treatment. The air between us was loaded with silent recrimination. I remember the thickness of her breath as her lower lungs wheezed into action with the exertion of the throw. She was getting older, the last of her children now helping their father on the farm in a role that was once hers. Everything she had went into the throw. With its impact nullified by a catch she had foreseen, she had nothing left. She looked to Orla across the street to pass comment. Her face was barren of feeling, deflated that the missile had not reached its target, but there was relish in her tone as she spoke. The same words she speaks now as a bundle of letters is pulled from the strongbox and handed to Ben.
– Thems above being criticized can ask for no help from the Lord when their time comes. Stands to reason. They have too many sins in their mind.
THERE ARE NO LETTERS to speak of. One packet after another fills that space behind the post office desk, but not one has come from your hand. Ben
’s confidence is shaken a little each time he returns from the store. Spots momentarily cloud the brightness in his eyes, until he remembers himself and works to control it. This is how families with money are raised: to put on a show. Even with me he feels the need to pretend that everything is as planned. You are out in the world having a wild time and will mail a postcard when you are ready. He knows husbands who have sailed halfway across the world before remembering to settle their wives’ wits. Men who have come to their senses while their legs are wrapped around a Corsican girl; something in her mannerisms restoring the lost image of an abandoned wife. Ben is on familiar territory once the story takes hold. His uncertainty vanquished, he returns to the dealer’s gentle swagger as he waves his fork at the breakfast table.
– Of course we know that isn’t what’s happening with him. He’s not the type to do those sorts of things. His impulses lie somewhere different. He’s not just going to be with somebody. He’ll be out looking at a blade of grass somewhere, or riding the plains as a cowboy. You see, there’s something about the weather that may be to blame, Anna. The clouds shifting in an unfamiliar pattern wherever he is; a lack of strong sunlight or rain.
– So we’re waiting for clouds?
– We’re waiting for clouds. Or winds. He’ll be following the trail of several natural disasters, abseiling into the center of volcanoes in Hawaii. That’s the kind of thing I see him doing.
The angle of his fork droops before being hastily left on the plate. He has been thinking out loud; had his thoughts catch up with him. He has never before entertained the possibility of you being in company with someone else for a prolonged period of time. He had never thought of you being worried about and cared for elsewhere. This image of you is one that we have cultivated. You are not a solitary person, not always. It has simply suited our ends to see you this way. When I think of how you are when you work on the farm, the way you greet people along the road or in the store, it is not the reticent behavior of a loner. So why would you be on your own now? Even if you have not actively sought company, you will still have it. They gravitate toward you, those who wish to be loved.
We fall silent, needing to be lost in the food. Imagining syrup to swamp our jealousy; that a bowl filled to the brim with porridge oats can hide all that we fear. It is difficult not to be wary of the other’s thoughts. Each of us is unable to predict who will unearth and articulate the worst fear: that you have consciously settled down with someone else in a place not dissimilar to here; that you are not coming back. I have yet to tell Ben about your visit to St Peter’s. I am not secretive by nature, but something in me holds this back. Ben keeps secrets from me, why shouldn’t I do the same? Only, the preoccupation it fosters becomes a burden. Mulling over secrets hinders the work. It is why I paint what I see, what can be drawn out. Secrets are for people like Ben, loveable people whose currency is endless words, gossip. One secret revealed while a fresher one is held. He sits at the table, upright and unmoving as a mother hen, incubating secrets.
YOUR FACE IS THE FIRST to be whitewashed from the canvas; then Ben’s. Less of a wash, more a series of aggressive dabs, wanting to score the canvas with my wide plasterer’s brush as it pushes back and forth. For all my pounding, its shape still holds. It always amazes me how the stretched skin seems to absorb my aggression. Once I set his pose to how I want it – tighter, less exaggerated, and closer to yours – layers of paint can be built up until I will be the only one aware of your outline beneath. That you haunt the painting from the very fibers of the canvas through to the finished pose is what drives me to pick up the brush. I stare for a long time at Ben’s face, knowing that it will be diminished from the weight of his mimicked pose. That although it will be the truest representation of Ben, all anyone will talk about is you. But this is still weeks away; months. For now, I wish to eradicate everything. The air in the studio is close, grown thicker like the paint. It’s only outside of here that I’m conscious of having trouble breathing; the weight that sits on my chest as I lie awake in the dark. Shallowness is all that I am capable of, lapping for air the way a dog attacks a bowl of water, only here where I’m not marooned it feels easier to do so. The draft from the open door rushes across my legs and feet; a sliver of freshness from the crack in the skylight cools my forehead and the tops of my ears.
I instruct Vishni to put the box in the cellar – the crate that holds the oxygen tank and the trolley, its paraphernalia of oppression and addiction. Her eyes make a judgment all of their own, but she does as I ask. Going down there later, I see that the box has been sealed and covered with newspaper and plastic sheeting, the closest I could get to the thing being buried. They said it would make things easier, and I believed it at first, the novelty of taste and sensation telling me so, but now I know that not to be true. All relief is temporary; to look forward to that relief, to beg and watch the clock for it, subtracts a crucial element from my thinking. I’ve shied away from crutches throughout my life, believing that the body must survive purely through its will. The cylinder might take the pressure away from the lungs, but it would only reassert itself elsewhere, impeding my work. No one seems to understand that; it’s everything that happens in this room which must take priority. I cannot paint with that thing over my mouth. If it hurts to breathe, from the closeness of the air with the omniscient fug of the oils wrapped within it, I have the kitchen to escape to, or the meadow. If life is slower, the function of my organs taxed by the effort of standing at the easel for however many hours each day, then so be it. This is what I need to do.
Pea shoots in the kitchen garden grow high as the windowsills. Their tips rustle and speak as you lift the blinds; movements intended to lure me outside. There are days when I answer the call, gathering these and zucchini flowers for use in the studio. Props to distract your wandering eyes, which roam impatiently around the debris in the studio and finally onto me; that mixture of curiosity and hunger you have, that latent energy which governs everything. The vegetation pleases you. You wave it around the easel and the upturned chair where you have been meticulously placed. We inhale the sweetness of the leaves. Their freshness momentarily dominates the staleness of the room, the age of the materials around us, the natural stink of our bodies, working as we have with scant breaks for the past few days.
– You’ve forgotten that the outside exists. I can see it in your eyes. This is a reminder.
You know that freedom is imminent, have recognized that my tiredness allows you this detour into the garden; that sooner or later, I will perch on the couch and succumb, sleep my exhaustion away.
Time passes differently in your head. At the moment of release you are back outdoors with no memory of what has gone on before. Your face draws none of it. A series of muscle stretches are the only sign. Your concentration is elsewhere, with Vishni or the garden. Laying on your back and drinking beer in the long grass, goddamn hickory banjo music blaring from the record player, studying the formation of the blades without seeming to study them at all. No fret in your eyes. No pain or lack of comprehension at what you see (where my faults lie). On some days what I have asked you to do appears no more taxing or significant than taking out the trash; a fly on your shoulder needing to be waved away. You make everything look easy.
– We’ve finished for the day. You can stop being angry.
– I’m not angry.
– You are. Or you were. I thought I was going to be murdered every time I moved. I felt the heat coming from your face.
– Sit still then, if you want to avoid the heat.
– I didn’t mind so much. It was getting chilly. The draft was tickling my feet.
You snap me out of it with a laugh. The entire house lifts when you are in the mood to make it so. Only when you turn your back do I return to a half state, the weight of the unfinished painting always present in my mind until it is finished, however many months it will be.
– Where are you disappearing to? Get back here and taste these peas.
– Look at you, attacking the plant like a locust. Vishni will need them for dinner.
– There’s plenty. These shoots keep growing, that’s the point of it. If you’re not going to lie down, stoop at least. You need to taste them straight from the plant.
– I’m familiar with peas.
– Not how they are here, right now, in this air, from this soil.
The freshness we smelled in the studio was tainted with something, the fug from the oils, my disappointment with your concentration. It sucked the brightness from the leaves and made the firm pods become limp under my touch. Didn’t you notice how they didn’t stay cool for long, how they wilted almost immediately? Killed by the warmth of your hand.
– Tug the pod from this stalk here, the one that’s thicker than a sausage. Bite into it. Tastes alive, doesn’t it? As if last night’s rainwater is plumping up its fibers. How do you think that the perfume from the flowers at the top of each stalk, which Vishni has neglected to prune, has worked its way into each pea? It’s sweet and crunchy and perfumed; everything I feel about the meadow as I walk through it. Don’t you feel the same?
– All I can taste is … raw. These need to be cooked and have some butter and salt cut into them. That’s the ambrosia you’re looking for.
– You still surprise me. All that sight but no sense of taste. There’s so much that you don’t notice. As if someone took with one hand and gave with another.
You’re rarely critical of me, but this is one of those times. Normally you leave all that to Ben and the women in the village. You allow Vishni her gossip when she is disgruntled. The studio is too far away to hear the words, but the tone is clear and unvarnished in its dissatisfaction. Her criticism is seldom, because she is not the kind to keep her feelings hidden, though such moments have occurred.
All the Days and Nights Page 6
