Kathy hesitated for a moment, then said, “Everybody was too screwed up to think straight. And only you and I knew about the numena. By the time I got back to the farmhouse, it was too late to get up to the attic.”
“So they’re all gone,” Isabelle said. “He got them all.” She turned an anguished face to Kathy. “He got John,” she said.
Kathy held her more tightly.
“Was … was I here?” Isabelle asked. “When it was burning?”
“I don’t know,” Kathy told her. “It was craziness. Everybody was stoned and …” She shrugged helplessly. “I looked for you,” she said. “I’ve been looking for you all morning. But I didn’t see you last night – not when the farmhouse was … burning.”
Isabelle turned to regard the charred remains of the farmhouse once more. Her hands were closed into fists at her side, fingernails making half-moon indentations in her palms.
Think, she told herself. For once just think, don’t hide the memory away.
She forced herself to remember, but all that came was old truths that she’d hidden away, from herself perhaps more than from the world: John hadn’t walked out on her, she’d sent him away. She hadn’t been mugged by street punks, Rushkin had beaten her. Tangled up in those two major truths was the real story behind a hundred and one of the other lies she’d told herself over the years, told herself so convincingly that she’d actually believed them. But of last night she could remember only one thing: Rushkin pressing the matches into her hand.
I will make you destroy them.
Could anyone have that much control over another person? Could they make them do something so evil?
Your hand will feed the fire that will feed me.
She looked down at the soot that was ground into her palms and fingers, then pressed her face against Kathy’s shoulder. The coldness that had entered her earlier was a part of her now, burrowed deep inside her, and she knew she would never be free of it.
XXVII
Newford, May 1980
It was a week after the fire before Isabelle felt strong enough to confront Rushkin. She went to his studio with Kathy, but of course he denied any involvement whatsoever, denied even being in the area that night. He claimed to have been in New York at the time and even had the airline boarding passes and hotel receipts to prove it.
Isabelle stared dumbly at him, unable to believe that she’d hallucinated the entire encounter with him and his numena, but unable to prove that he was lying as well. She only half listened to his condolences for the loss of her home and her paintings. All she could do was remember waking up with the soot on her hands and clothes, and feel sick. Eventually, she let Kathy lead her away, back to Kathy’s apartment on Gracie Street, where the two of them were staying.
Isabelle never returned to Rushkin’s studio.
XXVIII
June 1980
Isabelle came to a decision after the night of the fire. It was too late for her own numena. They were gone now, except for the very few whose paintings had not been at the farmhouse and so had survived the fire. Rosalind and Cosette, both hanging in the Newford Children’s Foundation. Annie Nin in Alan’s apartment. A handful of others, given away or sold to people other than Rushkin’s lawyer. But that was it. So few survivors out of the almost hundred numena she’d brought across.
There would be no more. She couldn’t stop painting, but she vowed to open no more gateways for others to cross over. She didn’t care if they made the decision, she was still responsible. If she didn’t open the door for them, they wouldn’t come through and die. She’d miss painting them, she knew, but that was the price to pay – a small enough price considering what her art had cost the numena. She would only lose a part of her art; they had lost their lives. To stop herself from even being tempted to render another numena, she turned her back completely on her previous work and embraced abstract expressionism.
But that didn’t solve the problem. There were others who could open those gates.
Just before dinner one night, she left the studio she was sharing with Sophie until the renovations on the island were completed and made her way across the Kelly Street Bridge to the art department at Butler University. There was a students’ show on in the arts building, and she paused for a long time in front of the two paintings by Barbara Nichols that hung in it.
They were both Ferryside street scenes. The detailing, the use of light, everything about them was stunning. Looking at these examples of Nichols’s work, Isabelle could easily see what had attracted Rushkin to the young artist. In fact, she could already see elements of Rushkin in the two paintings – not in the style, so much, but, as Tom had once pointed out to her, in the way Nichols viewed her subjects. She approached the street scenes in the way that Rushkin would have. In the way that Isabelle herself would have, had she been painting these particular cityscapes.
After a while, she turned away and went looking for someone who might be able to help her find the artist. She talked to a number of people who knew Nichols, but no one seemed to know where Isabelle could look for her at the moment until she chanced upon a young artist working in one of the second floor studios. He was a tall and somewhat gangly boy in his late teens, straw-colored hair cut short in a buzz cut, shoulders already stooped. She stood in the doorway for a few moments to watch him work, admiring the vigor of his brushstrokes, until he suddenly became aware of her presence and turned to look at her. His eyes were pale blue and bulged slightly, giving him a birdlike look of constant surprise.
“She mentioned something about putting in a little study time at the library,” he said in response to Isabelle’s question. “If she’s not there, try Kathryn’s Café over on Battersfield. It’s where everybody hangs out.”
“I know the place.”
Some things never changed, Isabelle thought. Kathryn’s had been the university art crowd’s hangout when she’d gone to Butler U., as well.
“Okay. Well …”
His body language was so obvious. All he wanted was for her to leave so that he could get back to work. Isabelle knew just how he felt, but she had one more question.
“What does she look like?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Short dark hair, narrow features, very intense eyes. Kind of scrawny.” Isabelle had to smile; he wasn’t exactly Mr. Universe himself. “She was wearing cutoff jeans and a T-shirt with a print of Monet’s lilies on it when I saw her this afternoon.”
“Thanks. You’ve been a lot of help.”
“Whatever.”
He was back at his painting before she had a chance to turn around and leave the studio. She found herself envious of him as she retraced her way out of the building. What muse drove him? she wondered, although what she was really asking was, what would it have been like for her if she’d never met Rushkin? Or what if she’d just said no to him that day on the steps of St. Paul’s, or hadn’t gone to his studio? Where would her art be now? Who would she be?
Silly questions, she thought, because in some ways she didn’t feel as if she’d ever had any choice in the matter. She’d already been enamored with his art long before she met him. It was part of what had set her to taking a paintbrush in hand in the first place. When the opportunity arose for her to study under him, it often had seemed to be simple fate. A magical gift. But then, just like in those fairy tales that Kathy loved so much, there was always a price to be paid for accepting magical gifts, wasn’t there? Too dear a price.
With her informant’s description in mind, she found it easy to spot Nichols. She matched the boy’s description perfectly, except Isabelle wouldn’t have called her scrawny. Trim was the word that came to Isabelle’s mind. And certainly attractive. Her eyes were almost the same intense blue as Jilly’s. Isabelle wondered if Rushkin had made her strip down for him on her first day in the studio, too, and felt a surge of sympathy for the girl.
She was leaving the library at the same time as Isabelle was coming up the stone steps. The chill that had yet to
leave Isabelle deepened for a moment as she realized the significance of where they were meeting. She touched the cloth bracelet she’d taken to wearing again, trying not to think of John as she continued up the steps and called Nichols by name.
“Oh, please,” Nichols said. “Call me Barb. ‘Ms. Nichols’ makes me think of my mother.”
Isabelle smiled. When she introduced herself, Barb’s eyes softened with compassion.
“I heard about the fire,” she said. “You must have been devastated.”
Isabelle glanced at the space beside the stone lion where John had once stood and talked to her from the shadows. She could almost feel his ghost there, could almost hear his voice again. Her fingers were turning the bracelet around and around her wrist without her being aware of doing it.
“I still am,” she admitted.
“This is so weird,” Barb said. “I mean, standing here, talking to you. You’re one of my heroes.”
Isabelle could feel the heat rise in her face.
“I just love your work,” Barb went on, “and when I think of what happened to it, it just makes me feel so sick that –” She broke off. “I’m sorry. You’re probably trying to forget, and here all I’m doing is reminding you about it.”
“It’s not something you can forget,” Isabelle told her. When she thought of how she’d failed her numena, she added, “I don’t think it’s something one should forget.”
Barb gave her an odd look, but Isabelle didn’t explain what she meant. She didn’t know how to explain.
“I wanted to talk to you about Rushkin,” she said. “I don’t know where to begin, but ever since I heard that you’ve been studying with him I felt I should warn you …”
Her voice trailed off at the dismissive look that settled on Barb’s features.
“Rushkin,” she said bitterly. “I was so excited when he first approached me to work with him.” She gave Isabelle a knowing look. “You’re probably the only person besides me who would understand just how thrilling it felt to be walking down that laneway and then climbing the stairs up to his studio.”
Isabelle nodded. “So, what happened?”
“Probably the same thing that happened to you. I mean, I could tell right off that he was a control freak, but I thought, Okay. It’ll be worth it to put up with some weird shit if I get to paint like him – or like you.”
Isabelle tried to ignore the compliment. She wanted to ask about numena.
What had Rushkin told her about them? How many had Barb brought across? But before she could start to frame the question, if only in her mind, Barb went on.
“The first time he hit me, I let it pass.” She looked away, across the campus, and wouldn’t meet Isabelle’s gaze for a moment. “I didn’t like it,” she added, her voice pitched low, “but he put on such a good show, he was so bloody sorry that I was stupid enough to buy what he was saying and stay.”
“Until it happened again,” Isabelle said.
Barb nodded. “I couldn’t believe it. I mean, I really couldn’t believe – that’s how stupid I was – but I was mad, too. I hit him back. I picked up the canvas I was working on and just laid it across the side of his head. And then, while he was lying there trying to make me feel sorry for him, I packed up my stuff and left.”
A great admiration for her companion rose up in Isabelle. Where had her own anger been when Rushkin had struck her? Swallowed by her greed to learn from him, she realized. Her anger and her courage and her integrity had all been put aside by greed. Or was it also part of a pattern that she’d learned from her mother? The way her mother had always sat by helpless through all the verbal abuse Isabelle had to endure from her father?
“I haven’t been back since,” Barb said. She finally looked at Isabelle and gave her a wan smile. “Was that what you were going to warn me about?”
She doesn’t know anything about the numena, Isabelle realized.
“I wanted to tell you as soon as I heard you were studying under him,” she said. It was only partly a lie. Her first concern had been for the numena, it was true, but she had been thinking about Barb as well. She’d wanted to spare Barb the pain she’d gone through herself.
“I just didn’t know how to approach you. I thought you’d think it was sour grapes, that I was jealous because you’d taken my place in his studio.”
Barb nodded. “I don’t know what I would have thought before it happened. I knew from the first day that he was wired a little wrong. But I could deal with his yelling at me. My father used to yell at me all the time. He only ever hit me once. I left home that night and I’ve never been back.” She gave Isabelle a puzzled look. “Weird, isn’t it? I gave Rushkin more of a chance than I did my own father.”
“My father used to yell at me, too,” Isabelle said. “He was always picking away at me – when he wasn’t giving me the cold shoulder. But he never hit me. Not like –” Her mind’s eye filled with a vision of that winter day in the studio, Rushkin kicking her and beating her, then finally throwing her down the stairs to make her own way home. “Not like Rushkin did.”
“I still don’t get it,” Barb said. “He’s responsible for some of the most tender, moving works of art that anyone has ever produced. How can he also be the way he is?”
“I guess we expected too much,” Isabelle said. “We didn’t separate the work from the man who created it.”
“How can you? When the work is so heartfelt, how can it be separated from the artist?”
Isabelle didn’t have an answer for that. It was a question she’d often asked herself. She’d come no closer to answering it than Barb had.
“Listen,” Barb said. “I don’t mean to be rude, but talking about all of this – it’s been good, you know to share it with someone, and I really appreciate having had the chance to meet you, but I feel a little screwed up thinking about all that shit again. I’ve got to go.”
“I understand,” Isabelle said. “But before you go …”
She asked for Barb’s phone number, explaining how she wanted to give it to Alan, how it might generate some work for her. Barb scribbled the seven digits down in the back of her sketchbook, then tore out the page and handed it to Isabelle.
“I can’t promise anything,” Isabelle said.
“I understand.”
“But I’ll give it to Albina Sprech, as well,” Isabelle added. “She owns The Green Man Gallery.”
“Really? That’d be great. I haven’t been able to get my foot in the door anywhere. It’s really an old boy’s network out there.”
“Maybe we can change that,” Isabelle said.
Barb laughed humorlessly. “I guess we can try.”
“Look, I’m sorry about bringing this all up for you again. I never realized you’d already stopped studying with Rushkin. If I had, I wouldn’t have come bothering you.”
“Don’t be sorry. It gave me a chance to meet you, didn’t it?”
Before Isabelle had a chance to get flustered all over again by the young artist’s admiration for her work, Barb fled as though chased by the ghosts that had been called up by their conversation. Isabelle stood alone on the library steps, lost in thought, until the press of her own ghosts made her leave, as well.
She didn’t go as quickly as Barb had, but she walked briskly all the same. And she didn’t look back.
Journal Entries
Everything’s got to be someplace.
– Anonymous
Sometimes I wonder if everything is already known and each of us simply selects the facts that work for us. Is that why we all go through life so disconnected from one another? Not only are our minds these singular islands, each separate from the other, but we’re not even necessarily operating in the same reality. There’s a consensual no-man’s-land that we pretty well agree on, but beyond the basic reference points that we’re given as children, we’re on our own. We run into trouble communicating, not because we lack a common language, but because the facts I’ve selected don’t usually fit wit
h the ones you have. Lacking common ground, it’s no wonder we find it so hard to communicate.
Take art, whether it’s visual, music, dance, writing, whatever. Art is one of the things that’s supposed to break down the boundaries between us and give us some common ground so that the lines of communication can stay open. But the best art, the art that really works, is also supposed to be open to individual interpretations. No one wants specifics in art except for academics. No one wants their work put into a box that says, it means this and only this. So we go floundering through galleries and books and theatre presentations, taking what we can, always looking over somebody else’s shoulder to compare it to what they got, readjusting our own interpretations, until somewhere along the line we end up having processed entirely different experiences from the same source material. Which is okay, except that when we talk about it, we still think we’re referring to the same thing.
No one really knows what you’re thinking; it’s that simple. They can guess the reasons behind what you’re doing, but they can’t know. And how can we expect them to, when we ourselves don’t even know the reasons behind the things we do.
I mean, I know why I took Paddyjack from the farmhouse – to save it from the fire. What I don’t know is why I kept it. Why I never told Izzy that I had it. I think it might be because she went so strange afterwards, turning her back on her gift and the numena the way she did. She went so distant. Understandable, I guess, considering all she’d been through, but still … I think I was afraid that she would do something to it herself – sell it, perhaps, or worse, deliver it to Rushkin. And then there were those people who said – never to her face, mind you, but word gets around – that she’d started the fire herself.
I know that’s a terrible thing to even consider, but while she saw Rushkin on the island, he had that proof that he was in New York City at the time. I believed Izzy. I really did. I really tried to. But I couldn’t silence that stupid little uncertainty sitting in the back of my head that kept asking, What if I gave her the painting back and then she did destroy it? Paddyjack’s not just some painting she did. He’s real. I wrote about him. I wrote his story before I ever knew she’d done the painting. I guess I felt, even though I knew it wasn’t true, that I was instrumental in making him real, too.
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