by John Farris
"I'll put the coffee on," Barry said, holding back a yawn. "Great to see you, Dal. Why don't you come home more often?"
Dal and Tinker were nearly twenty minutes in his bedroom, long enough for Tom to start nodding off again as he waited with Barry in the family room. It was almost an hour past his usual bedtime. But he perked up, as Barry knew he would, when he laid eyes on Tinker. She did a poor job of concealing her hero-worship of the artist. Dal sat with his ankles crossed and drank whiskey. He grinned and said little and ran a hand nervously through his hair, already thinning drastically though he was just twenty-five. He was smaller and brawnier than his father, with a much more difficult psyche: he could be as dark and forbidding as a cave in the woods, a bad drunk, prickly with nerve endings. At his best he soared with the poetry of his kind. He came from a long line of schemers and deluders, saints and crackpots. Sometimes after an hour with Dal he'd have you believing he could turn dogshit into stars. He was a natural ladykiller.
"I did my art history thesis on Pieter Brueghel the Elder," Tinker said to Tom. "The parallels between your work are amazing. I don't think anyone's ever noticed. The sense of historical mystery in the mise en scene just knocks me for a loop. Were you influenced by Brueghel?"
"Hunters in the Snow is one of the pictures I keep going back to."
"I knew it!''
"He may be the best painter of winter scenes who ever lived. I've tried to get that light of his, but I think he must have been divinely inspired."
"A genius."
"The rest of us," Tom said modestly, "just work at it. More coffee?"
"Oh, no, sir, thank you," Tinker leaned forward intently in her chair, high color in her cheeks; she moistened her lips and clasped her hands between her knees. She was talking Art with a Major Figure. This was serious business. Barry wondered if Tinker was going to have to run to the bathroom again. Dal sat back, his body relaxed from the heavy drinking, his eyes half-lidded, a courteous smile that no longer seemed to fit his mood still on his lips. Tinker said, "Brueghel was obsessed with man's essential lack of freedom. There's so much space in many of his landscapes, but it's forbidden space. His people are constantly circling back on their lives, going nowhere."
"It was a brilliant age, the Renaissance," Tom said. "And there have been few periods in history so filled with human suffering. The Hundred Years' War. The Peasants' War. Religious persecution. So he painted The Blind Leading the Blind."
"And The Fall of Icarus. You've painted your own Icarus. Do you know which one I mean?"
Now she was just plain hitting on him, Barry thought. Barry was both amused and infuriated. An hour from now Tinker would be in bed dutifully and no doubt strenuously screwing Dal and wishing it was Tom, and both men already knew it. Another cross for Dal to drag around, but he should have known better than to bring her home with him.
"Umm, well. No," Tom said, responding to Tinker's question.
"Edgar Valence. That wonderful old black man sitting in his chair in the back of that pickup truck. His head tilted, just a little gleam of sun on his forehead as he looks at the sky. His eyes, God! Like he's traveled through time, seen all there is to see of the universe. My father has six of your watercolors, but that is one painting of yours he would literally kill for."
"He'll have to work his way through the entire board of directors of the Met," Barry advised her.
"I used to go there every Saturday, without fail, just to see Edgar Valence. Then I'd leave."
"Tinker," Dal said affably, "I'm pooped and I need to talk to my old man for a few minutes. Why don't you let Barry show you around the rest of the house?"
Thanks a lot, Dal.
"I don't suppose I could see your studio?" Tinker asked Tom.
"Sure." Tom waved Barry to her feet. Tinker got up too.
"It's really been a revelation, talking to you like this. I feel just like I did the first time I walked into the cathedral at Chartres."
"We're just plain folks," Barry assured her. "Descendants of bog trotters. We want you to make yourself at home, Binky."
"Tinker."
"Tinker," Barry said, beaming. "I forgot."
Tinker was predictably impressed with the three-story studio pavilion, the northwest wall of which was mirror glass. Fins and shutters on the inside could be adjusted against the summer's glare. For now, despite the snowstorm, the studio was comfortable from stored solar heat. Tom hadn't been in to straighten up for a day or two, and nobody else was allowed to touch anything. The sketches and watercolors that had been the models for Greene House still littered the tops of tables, cabinets, and even the floor around his easel.
"I'd give anything to watch Tom work on a painting," Tinker said wistfully.
Barry shook her head. "He just finished one—probably won't do another for a while. Anyway, he doesn't like having anyone around. Even me. He draws a magic circle around himself when he's working. Step inside that circle and he turns into a werewolf."
"Oh. I see." Tinker tugged at a couple of cabinet drawers, which were locked. There were several such cabinets, at least fifty drawers in all. "'What are these?"
"Where Dad keeps all of his working drawings. From way back."
"They must be worth a fortune."
Barry shrugged."We have enough money."
"Does Dal have a studio here?"
"Before he bought the loft, he worked in a room off the barn. Too much snow tonight, or I'd show you."
Tinker wandered around, examining props and curios: bleached animal bones, a bull-shaped weather vane, a collection of birds' nests, an antique marionette stage and a forties-model pinball machine.
"Does this work?"' Tinker asked of the pinball machine.
"Sure. Dad likes to bang around on it when his painting isn't going so well." Barry plugged in the machine and ran a couple of balls. "We picked this up along with some other stuff from an amusement park down by the Sound that went bust. We have an old, popcorn machine in the kitchen, a nickelodeon—you name it. Most of it's stored away. We drag a few things out for parties, but we haven't had any parties since Dal moved to SoHo."
While Barry was using body English on the pinball game, Tinker approached another machine, partly concealed behind a drop cloth, in one corner of the studio.
On the front of the machine, a scuffed scarlet box about five and a half feet high, there was printed, in jaded white glitzy script, LET MRS. PRYE TELL YOUR FUTURE. The box had an electronic numbered keyboard below a transparent but badly scratched glass dome. Tinker saw what looked like a shadowy human head inside the dome. She cautiously pulled the drop cloth aside. There was a film of dust on the glass. She brushed some of it away.
"What's this?"
Barry looked around and frowned.
"Oh, that's Mrs. Prye. She doesn't work."
Tinker cupped her hands against the dome and peered inside.
Mrs. Prye was done up as a Restoration-era medium. There was a jewel in the middle of her forehead. She wore a luxurious tête, had a beauty spot on one rouged cheek, and thick sable eyelashes. The whole of her head was about the size of a marmoset's, or a large man's fist. The head was tilted forward slightly, as if in repose. The eyes were closed.
"God, she's spooky! What does she do?"
Barry, annoyed, abandoned her game and unplugged the pinball machine.
"She's just an illusion. And she doesn't talk anymore. Maybe you'd better get away from there, Tinker."
Tinker was a little surprised by her tone, but she dutifully walked away from the machine.
"And cover her up," Barry instructed, adding softly, "please."
Tinker studied Barry's face. Her lips had thinned. She appeared to be looking, not at Tinker, but at some place considerably beyond the walls of the studio. Tinker shrugged and turned back, grasped the drop cloth on which paint had run and hardened. She glanced again at the head under the glass, gasped, and jumped away, letting the cloth fall across the machine.
"What's the matter?"<
br />
"Her eyes were open! She was looking at me!"
Barry shook her head and said scornfully, "I told you, she's just an illusion."
"Oh, you mean—it's like a three-dimensional sort of thing, and it depends on where you're standing, right?"
"That's it," Barry said. She smiled, but she seemed preoccupied. "Come on."
"I really love this house,"' Tinker said as they left the studio. "What do you call it?"
"The farm is named Tuatha de Dannan. The Tuatha ruled Ireland a long time ago until they were conquered and became fairy people. They were great magicians and artists. Still are, I guess."
"Still are?" Tinker dimpled. "You don't believe in fairies and leprechauns, do you?"
"Yes," Barry said in a no-nonsense tone.
"Have you seen any?"
"No. They stick close to home. They don't travel well. But I've seen a few ghosts." Tinker's eyes widened. Barry was bored and tired, and decided to torment her. "Ours is named Enoch. He was killed in the Revolutionary War, but nobody's been able to convince him of that. If he comes around looking for Abigail, tell him to go out on the road and wait for the stagecoach. That always gets rid of him for a few days."
Tinker had a surprisingly robust laugh." Baloney. Barry, you have a wonderful sense of humor."
Barry leaned against a cabinet, her arms folded.
"I hope you do. Us Brennans can be hard to take sometimes."
Chapter 6
Tom Brennan's study was the smallest room in the house; the door and single window were enclosed by walnut bookcases with glass doors. The other two walls were painted a warm cream color and contained a few paintings by those artists Tom most admired: Durer, Homer, Hopper, Andrew Wyeth. There were two framed posters of Tom's first important shows, a pen-and-ink sketch of Edie at twenty-one, and a blowup of a Time magazine cover that featured a self-portrait of the artist. Tom's reading chair, near the fireplace, was a Barca lounger. There was a magazine rack beside it that Dal had made for him as a birthday present when Dal was fifteen, a standing lamp, and a refurbished peanut dispenser that had seen a tour of duty in the Times Square BMT station before World War II.
Dal got up from the arcade-style Space Invaders game he'd been playing, helped himself to a handful of peanuts, and swished melting ice around in his glass. He slumped on the small sofa in the room, which was printed with autumnal hunting scenes: pheasants on the wing and barking bird dogs.
"Barry looks like she's taking it all right."
"Nobody in his right mind could say the accident was her fault. She's worried, though."
"Check with the hospital? How is he coming along?"
"I called. They aren't giving out information. But he's in Intensive Care. Somebody there was worried about the bills since he's a John Doe. I said I'd take care of it."
"How's Barry been acting?"
"Okay. She keeps to herself—you know how she is. Tells me she's composing a pop opera. She works at her keyboard nearly every day."
"Does she talk about Ned?"
"Once in a while," Tom said.
"That's good. But not good enough."
Meanness scratched at the door and whined. Dal reached out to open the door and let the bloodhound in.
"Do you think she would have married Ned?" Dal asked his father.
Tom smiled. "I don't think there's any way we could have stopped her."
"He was a good guy. Steady. But she was too young to get married—she doesn't have any idea of her potential yet. It's been—what?—a year? Barry's just not reacting normally, Dad. I mean, first love and all that, and a tragic end to it. But she should have recovered. She ought to be in school with girls her own age, dates."
"I can't force her, Dal."
"Well, she has to be damn lonely around here, and you know how off-the-wall she is—anything can happen."
"I think she has all that under control,"' Tom said evenly.
Dal shrugged. "Look, she could come down to New York and live with me, go to school at NYU. It's the best town in the world to party in, and the intellectual stimulation wouldn't hurt."
"Did you ask her?"
"Ask her? I've twisted her arm. She comes for a weekend, she loves it, then she zips right back to the farm. Dad, you know it's up to you.
Tom was silent. He poked at the fire on the small hearth. Sparks flew crackling like a flight of bees to one flanneled arm. He shook them off moodily.
"I don't think I'm one of those possessive fathers. Remember, she's only eighteen. Some girls can be on their own at that age, others need another year in the nest."
Dal got up a little unsteadily, searched the bookshelves, took down a rare copy of Arthur Conan Doyle's The Coming of the Fairies, signed by the author to Edie's father, who had been a devout folklorist. Dal leafed through photographs of small people, some with gossamer wings and pointed ears, taken by two young girls in a glen in Yorkshire, England, with plates Doyle himself had marked and provided to preclude fakery.
"Doing any work, Dal?" Tom asked.
"Yeah. I've been working. Trying to. It's hard."
"If you're serious about what you do, it never gets any easier.
"I can't focus," Dal admitted. "'I—my ideas are bad. I feel washed up. Isn't that a bitch?"
"Critics can do that to you. For years they almost had me convinced I wasn't good for anything but magazine covers."
"The critics still don't buy you, but the museums do. And everyone who cares anything about art in this country." Dal looked at his empty glass, struggled with himself for a few moments, then helped himself to whiskey. Tom watched him pour, and pour, and looked away.
"I guess you were right when you said I wasn't ready for a show. I should have listened to you."
"You were running too high. Yours. Everyone else's. Lousy reviews are a risk you run when you exhibit."
Dal exploded. "Sure! I still paint like you! What do they want from me? I learned here, right here. But I'm not a clone—that was about the best thing any one of those sons of bitches had to say."
Tom tried to appease him. "I went through a few bad years before I felt that something unique was happening. You absorb from others, you use what you can, and one day there's a breakthrough. It's like putting on corrective lenses when you've been nearsighted all of your life."
"O happy day," Dal said mournfully.
"Dal, you're wasting your time in New York. You may think you're working, but you're not. I know the routine: saloons, lofts, openings, hoopla. There's always something diverting around. It's the same old mob down there. Everybody gets into a feeding frenzy when the bait is juicy enough. You get a better class of groupies nowadays, that's all. Put a padlock on your place and come home. You have more talent than anyone I've ever taught. But technical proficiency alone won't get you anywhere."
"I just can't be as sure as you are that there's anything to reach for." Dal smiled at his father. But his eyes simmered with frustration and anger.
"You're afraid of the pain," Tom suggested. "But believe me when I say you can't succeed without
Chapter 7
Barry. How do'st thou, mistress?
The only light in Barry's room was from the television console in one corner. The "Tonight" show was winding up in fine style, with the acerbic Don Rickles, sweating quarts and grimacing like a frog, breaking Johnny up. Barry had snuggled down under two comforters half an hour ago and drifted off to sleep with the sound low, the voices of the comics indistinct, only the laughter audible.
Let me come back, my angel, Mrs. Prye wheedled. I fancy not this purgatory you have cast me into.
Barry thought she must be dreaming. But she couldn't be dreaming the Carson show and Mrs. Prye simultaneously. She stirred and groaned and pulled a pillow over her head.
"Go away, Mrs. Prye."
Talking back to her was a mistake; it only gave her confidence.
Nay, you're too severe. Let's have no more hasty temper. For my part, I vow I'll not be sly, nor u
nfit for the company of your friends.
Barry tried burrowing deeper into the bed. "You talk too much. You tell people things they shouldn't know. Then everyone blames me. You can't come back. I mean it."
The TV picture disappeared suddenly, hopelessly scrambled. Barry felt the emanations from the screen as a tingling on the back of her neck. She knew she was licked. She sat up. Outside it was still snowing.
Don't despise me, my dove. Is it the young man who has you in such a bitter passion? Sure, he's vastly handsome. Let me tell you more of the matter. I know his name.
Barry looked at the TV screen, where Mrs. Prye had materialized, simpering, batting her long eyelashes. "You don't!" Barry said hotly.
Well, well, may I serve thee now? Art thou yet in the proper spirits? Back on speaking terms with her mistress, Mrs. Prye was well pleased with herself.
"You don't know anything about him. You just think you do."
Impudent cub! I have the gift of prophecy. You know IT IS SO.
"You're not getting me into any more trouble!" Barry said, too loudly. She was afraid she'd wake up the rest of the house. If her father came in he'd be upset. She had assured him that Mrs. Prye wasn't going to be a problem ever again. Barry lowered her voice but said threateningly, "I can make you go away."
Mrs. Prye prudently turned the other cheek.
Ay, you can. But fetch me away now and you may ne'er know more of his soul and bones.
Barry studied the face on the TV screen, her heart beating faster. The young man in the hospital had been on her mind as she dozed off; no denying she was curious now.
"All right. Tell me your big secret. Who is he?" Mrs. Prye unexpectedly let loose a peal of laughter. NedKramerNedKramerNedKramerNedKramer.
"That's the dumbest thing I ever heard!" Barry said, and began to sob, her face twisted in indignation.
Immediately the medium's image was replaced by the "'Tonight" show; not so much as a whisper of her delighted laughter remained. Johnny, however, was convulsed, nearly falling out of his chair. The sound was louder on the TV. Rickles displayed a goblin's grin. The drummer in the band was dealing out sardonic rim shots. Ed McMahon, as familiar an artifact of Americana as Uncle Sam, appeared to sell dog food.
