The Italian Teacher

by Tom Rachman

  Upon the breathless arrival of the prospective father, a nurse tries to calm him: “Don’t look so worried, my dear. Once the baby arrives, you’ll fall in love.”

  “Hopefully with the baby,” Barrows quips, earning a stifled laugh from Pinch, a frown from the nurse.

  On their way out, Barrows grabs Pinch’s hand, slaps it to her hip. They proceed down the hospital corridor, her flank purposely bumping against him every second step. “Wondering if I could suggest something,” he says.

  “I’m all ears.”

  “Go to bed with me?”

  “I need your application essay and proposed topic of study.”

  “In my defense,” he says, “romantic spontaneity is a bit tough given our present location.”

  “How about this location?” She hip-checks him into a visitors’ bathroom and locks it after them. Pinch kisses her neck and breasts, struggling for passion in this setting. When he glances up, her hand is clapped over her mouth, eyes giggling. She strokes the back of his neck, looks into his eyes. He presses his forehead against hers. Barrows hugs him. “We need to stay together,” she whispers.

  30

  When Marsden is fired for giving away too many drinks at the Pilot Tavern, a customer hires him at an edgy Yonge Street gallery, where his first assignment is babysitting the artist Temple Butterfield, a strapping Californian ex-marine so polite that no one can tell if it’s humility or sarcasm.

  Temple’s exhibit opening is packed, the sizzling disco beat punctuating crowd babble. Women in floppy hats wave to friends, purses smacking into displays, while mustachioed men slurp from beer bottles, admiring each other. Now and then, someone notices the art, points a pinkie, and explains as those around nod gravely.

  Through this sweaty throng, Pinch and Barrows edge, intrigued because Marsden—normally scornful of contemporary art—raves about Temple. The first piece they encounter is Moment O’ Mori, a pink vanity mirror in which the viewer is supposed to look and ponder death. Next is Beethoven, a whoopee cushion on a chair. There are a couple of performative works too: one featuring male strippers who offer fruit punch from pitchers labeled “Urine”; the other is two nude women covered in blue paint doing interpretive dance, first bunny hops, then dropping to their knees and humping the floor. Temple’s most celebrated piece, however, is Piss Shit Fuck, a large electric freezer. The artist statement explains the title as a tribute to Duchamp and Manzoni, the former having signed a urinal in 1917, the latter having canned his feces in 1961 and sold them for their weight in gold. Temple joins such esteemed company by offering frozen vials of his semen for $500 each, encouraging collectors to inseminate someone with his seed. He has pledged to sign any resulting offspring.

  Pinch reads this to Barrows, widening his eyes at her, shaking his head. He adds over the pulsing music: “From politeness to Marsden! Let’s say nothing too mean until after we leave!”

  “Agreed!”

  Marsden approaches with a man of thirty, blond hair to his shoulders, wearing train-engineer dungarees: Temple Butterfield himself. Marsden looks at his two friends. “So?”

  “Isn’t it incredible what one can do with art!“ Barrows says ambiguously.

  “Hey, man,” Temple responds gratefully, raising his hand before her. “Gimme five.”

  With an ironically soft slap, she obliges. The artist holds on to her fingers, adding, “Your support means a lot.”

  “Do you even know who I am?”

  A stoned smile. “I do now.” He speaks as if watching each word float to the ground, belatedly releasing her hand. “My practice is still so young, you know? So that means a lot.”

  “Don’t be so modest!” Marsden tells the artist, explaining to his friends that Temple was already a huge star while studying at CalArts.

  “What’s it like there?” Pinch asks. “I always wondered about those famous art colleges.”

  “CalArts? It was an experience.”

  “What kind of experience?” Barrows presses.

  “If I had to say in one word, I’d go with ‘pretty unreal,’ actually.”

  Pinch joins the hunt, he and Barrows dogs on the scent of stupidity. “Unreal how?”

  “Like, I don’t know. Pretty trippy.”

  It occurs to Pinch that, unless someone takes control, they risk exchanging vapidities for the next half hour. “We’d like to hear how it was studying there. Could one learn, say, how to paint? Is that possible?”

  “Painting is repetition at this point, right?”

  “Are there life-drawing classes?”

  “Maybe. But it’s more free-flow. It’s about finding your own subversion, right? You bring work in for crit, and see what gets born. But nobody’s judging. It’s pretty antifascist that way.”

  Pinch glances at Barrows, then at Marsden, as if to ensure that both are registering this gobbledygook.

  Barrows asks, “Sorry, Temple, just to be clear, what do they teach?”

  “Well, you can’t teach art. You either fake it. Or you fake it. Right?”

  “Temple’s mentor was John Baldessari,” Marsden notes. “He’s the one who did that video piece Teaching a Plant the Alphabet.”

  “Does the plant get its MFA at the end?” Pinch asks.

  Temple claps, laughing. “I dig that question.” Other revelers are pulling at him, and he allows himself to be led off, with Marsden hurrying after. An adoring crowd closes around the new genius.

  Pinch gapes at Barrows.

  She shouts over the noise, “At least he’s cute!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m not allowed to admire another man’s looks?”

  “If you must. But can’t you have better taste?”

  “Jealous?”

  “Can’t hear you!”

  The next afternoon, Pinch delivers a hot mug of coffee to Marsden in bed, needing to denounce everything about yesterday night. “How,” Pinch asks, “did you not fall over laughing at that horseshit?”

  Marsden sits up. “You didn’t like anything?”

  “You can’t tell me, Mars, that it was good.”

  “Who’s defining ‘good’?”

  “You, usually.”

  “I still need to understand Temple’s work better.”

  “Understand what? That’s such a cop-out.”

  “It was an amazing crowd. And those weren’t dumb people.”

  He’s right: It was a cultured group. “It makes me lose hope in mankind,” Pinch says. “But you have to admit, Marsden: That was not art.”

  “There’s no doubt it was art. Like there’s no doubt this is coffee. But is it good coffee?”

  “How’s the coffee, by the way?”

  “Dreadful. But still coffee.”

  “No way Temple’s work actually moved you.”

  “It made me laugh.”

  “Since when is that a criterion? And why would anyone laugh? It’s for morons.”

  “Thanks.”

  Pinch withdraws the charge but not his overall claim. To proclaim Piss Shit Fuck as art? It pisses on the dedication of his parents, shits on the art Pinch venerates, and fucks everything he ever studied. “Or am I the idiot here? Am I that guy who, a hundred years ago, was saying modern art isn’t art?” Pinch asks, trying to see the other side—yet only growing more incensed. “No, it’s not like those days. This is different. There has never been a period like ours. Because yesterday was a hoax. Obviously so. My only explanation is you’re so in love with that jerk that you can’t see.”

  “Barrows thought he was juicy too.”

  “Don’t be an idiot. Barrows saw him as a sociological study.”

  “Finding him cute was sociology?”

  Pinch lights his pipe, puffing in anger, needing to cloud over his housemate’s claims. He stirs up a growing recent contemp
t for Marsden, comparing him with Barrows: that she came from nothing and is hurtling toward accomplishment, whereas he—raised in luxury, ski trips to Aspen, vacation home in Muskoka, museum visits across Europe—passes his afternoons watching $3 double features at the Coronet. I can’t respect Mars anymore.

  Pinch’s indignation, he decides, is not envy of Temple Butterfield, whom nobody will even remember in a few years. It’s that Marsden isn’t the same. Ever since Pinch got together with Barrows, Marsden has seemed sillier. To be flighty is charming when you’re young. But eventually, you must attain something. Barrows and I are going to. He never will.

  Marsden must have perceived the shift in Pinch’s manner, for he repeats a pledge made only as courtesy in the past: that he wouldn’t want to outstay his welcome in this house. After all, he’s not even a student anymore! “Maybe I shouldn’t be hanging around. If I’ve become a drag.”

  “I never said that.” Pinch steps into the hallway. “I never told you to leave.”

  “No, no. I see that; thank you.”

  Pinch makes his exit—and Marsden decides to do the same, soon scouting for new lodgings. Around the house, they avoid each other. Pinch, gnawed by guilt, assures himself that success requires hard breaks sometimes. This isn’t coldness. It’s maturity. Marsden fell too far back. He’s part of my past now.

  On his last day, Marsden goes upstairs to offer farewell thanks. Pinch avoids eye contact, mentioning regrets about Marsden’s departure—and suddenly he means it. Yet he neglects to ask for a forwarding address, and Marsden fails to offer it.

  31

  Barrows rips open a thick NYU envelope full of registration forms. “And so it begins!” They celebrate at the Blue Cellar Room, then march victoriously home, talking too loudly on his street, shushed by a neighbor peeping from a darkened window. Barrows is unable to sleep, eyes wide to the ceiling, chattering about next year. Pinch endorses every idea, exerting himself to appear normal. But days more pass before he can tell her. Actually, he can’t. He just shows her his NYU envelope, which is small, containing a single page: “Thank you for your interest, but we regret . . .” He rushes through the ways that this isn’t a disaster—there might be a waiting list.

  “What about other colleges?” she says.

  “I thought we were going there.”

  “But where else did you apply?”

  He can’t look at her.

  “What? Nowhere else, Charles? Why?”

  He takes a furtive glance at her and witnesses something dreadful: She is pulling away, watching him recede in the rearview. Her preparations must go ahead. She sends forms and references to the Institute of Fine Arts, confers with future professors. Pinch sits by the phone in his room, needing help. He has no idea what to tell Bear, but now believes NYU was correct to turn him away—it confirms what Barrows hinted—that his doctoral interest (Caravaggio) lacked inspiration, that he is out of step.

  When he calls, Natalie is overjoyed to hear his voice yet senses something amiss. “I know you.”

  “You used to, yes.”

  “That’s a painful thing to hear.”

  “Ignore that. It’s not true.”

  “No, I think it is,” she attempts brightly. “All the more reason to catch up. Actually, Pinch, I’ve been wanting to ask. Might I tempt you to pop over here before you disappear off to New York? I don’t want to pressure you, but I can help with your flight.”

  “You don’t have money for that.”

  “I’ve been saving up, hoping you might want to drop by,” she says bravely. “You’d be so welcome. And bring your friend, provided you and she don’t mind roughing it at mine! I’d be so happy to meet her. Or,” Natalie hastens to add, “if it’s easier, I could come there to Toronto? I might even see Ruth. She’s been so generous to you.”

  “Not sure this is the time. I’m so busy right now.”

  “Yes, I feared that. Must be lots to do.”

  His breathing feels constricted, a rope cinched ever tighter around his ribs. I couldn’t be an artist, and now I won’t even be a critic. I’m a pretender, a fake. Pinch’s worst fear rushes at him: I’ll never become my father, because I’ve always been my mother.

  “If something is the matter, Pinchy, I could come out there. Is there?”

  He finds an excuse to end the call and immediately phones Bear. Pinch’s voice transforms, upbeat and inquisitive. But he is unable to admit to his mess, eyes tightly shut as he prompts his father to talk and talk. Fortunately, Bear wanted to discuss something: the French cottage once owned by Cecil Ditchley, where the potter went bankrupt in the 1960s, at which time Cecil had offered it at a discount to Natalie, including his pottery studio. She was far too poor (and too unstable) then. But when Bear heard, he mailed a check, purchasing the place for his ex-wife’s use, sentimental about “old Natty,” as he called her. She has never once visited, the location being too remote. Nor has Bear. Which is why—between wives, at a loose end—he is off-loading the place this summer. Problem is, he can’t speak more than menu French. “Which is where a certain multilingual son comes in handy.”

  Bear is sending travel expenses, including money for a first-class flight. Curiously, it’s this detail—first class—that moves Pinch, like the squeeze of his shoulder that Dad gave when boasting of his son at the Petros Gallery. If only Barrows grasped that he isn’t just another art history grad student but has actually dwelled in that world, was raised in it, lived among artists, could introduce her around. To hang on to Barrows, he must show her his most dazzling feature: Bear.

  She is so deep in NYU prep that it’s hard to discuss anything. “I’m going to France this summer,” he begins.

  “Great.”

  He nearly flares at her unconcern. Whenever he probes into their relationship status for next year, she is casual, vague, as if this were not the moment. Perhaps that’s right. After all, he doesn’t know what he’ll be doing then or even weeks from now. “Sorry, Charles, I’m really busy right now.”

  He cringes at this belittlement but persists with talk of France. Barrows knows Europe only from reading and in art; the sole flight of her life was Edmonton to Toronto. As he knows, she longs to find her way there someday.

  “You have a ticket already,” he says.

  “I’m not understanding you.”

  “With me. My father insisted,” he lies.

  “Bear Bavinsky wants to meet me?”

  “He sent money for both of us to go.” Pinch has calculated this: If he splits the first-class flight money, they can both travel, provided they do everything cheaply. “We’ll stop in London first because Dad wants me to visit my mom. Hey, Barrows?” With false confidence, he adds, “You’re going to Europe.”

  London

  32

  Natalie stands apart from the pedestrians parading down Carnaby Street, her hair close-cropped and gray, bifocals dangling from a purple-silk ribbon. She mutters to herself, gaze tracking every approaching lone young man, briefly observing a bunch of catcalling punks, chains around their necks, wilting spiked hair. She has lost weight, seems rickety at her height, a loose T-shirt dotted with dried clay, jeans smeared with muddy hand streaks.

  As Pinch approaches, he is unable to suppress a loving grin. “Mom.”

  She slips on her bifocals, nudges them off again, takes his arm. Without a greeting, Natalie leads her grown-up son a few steps—then halts midway across the crowded walkway and embraces him, fingers impressed into his back. She holds a second too long, looking at Pinch as if to conserve the image. Embarrassed, he chuckles and pushes back. And she’s off again, leading him toward a vegetarian restaurant, informing him that she chose this because she didn’t know what he eats nowadays.

  “Maltesers,” he answers as they step inside.

  She looks back, a slow ripple of a smile. “I’m not eating. Just mint tea.”

  �
�Make it two.”

  At the counter, she knocks over their pot of hot water, then insists on cleaning the puddle, grabbing handfuls of the restaurant’s paper towels despite the waitstaff telling her it’s quite all right: “Really. Just leave it. Please.” Natalie won’t. The queue lengthens, everyone glowering at this kook on her hands and knees, wiping the floor. Pinch urges her to join him at a table. Finally, she obliges—only to realize that she left her plastic bag behind. She barges to the head of the queue again, pestering the staff, who rescue her bag from the bin—they had assumed her papers and notes were rubbish. Finally, she rejoins him, shaking her head. Pinch is exhausted already.

  “You have to tell me,” she says, toying with the teapot lid, “if everything is right with you. I’ve been worried.”

  “I’m fine. Tell me about you, Mom. You’re selling at three craft shops now—let’s hear.”

  After a pause, she concedes, “I’m all right.”

  “Your pottery?”

  “What can I tell you? If you saw a ceramics fair these days, Pinch, it’s such a muddle. You wouldn’t know what you’re looking at. Everybody’s so bloody English—determined to be small, droning about salt-glazing and fiberglass. But I’m producing my sculptures, as I always wanted. Sometimes I think they’re good. Except when I think they’re god-awful. Depends which day. Which hour. Which second!” Flushing, she laughs, hand over her throat, twisting a chunky red plastic necklace.

  “What are these new sculptures? I don’t have a picture in mind.”

  “Calling them ‘sculptures’ is a bit rich of me.” She shakes the salt dispenser onto a fingertip, tastes. “They’re mashed lumps of clay, Pinchy. Gestural craziness from your crazy mother. Un pasticcio, a garbled mess.”

  “Don’t make yourself sound so inept. People will believe you.”

  “Well, I believe me. No, I’m joking. You’re right. I think they are decent, this batch. They’re brilliant! How about that?”