Art on Fire (39 page)

“Oh, that's nice. LeeAnn, are those bare feet I see?”

“Yes,” LeeAnn hopped back and forth faster, self-conscious now under Vivian's watchfulness. She excused herself and slipped back through the hedges, turning once more as she opened the front door to the yellow house for a glance at Francesca, rewarded by the sight of Francesca doing the same.

The sisters emptied the car of the remaining paintings, making several trips more through the kitchen and into the basement. Francesca hoped, over and over again, that Vivian would ask what it was they were carrying with such care, but she never did. Rather, Vivian, preoccupied by recent events—her mother's death, her daughter's return—put on a pot of coffee and sat at the kitchen table, smoking and staring off at the cold, frozen yard.

In a 1990 article in
Genetics: The Journal of Science and Humanity
, entitled “The Inexplicable Painting: The Phenomenon of Sororal Symbiosis as the Basis for Stylistic Inconsistencies in the Final Work of Francesca deSilva,” Psychiatrists May Jones and Ann Particip advance their theory of “metaphysical attachment”
⁸⁵
between the d(D)eSilva sisters. The authors challenge the authenticity of the painting
This is How She Looked in the Morning
, considered to be deSilva's final work, found in the garage the morning after the fire. They question whether the painting might have been the work of Isabella DeSilva. The majority of scholars, however, dismiss this hypothesis as absurd and, further, insulting to the artist's legacy.

The oils still wet when it was discovered,
This is How She Looked in the Morning
is an intimate portrait of the DeSilvas' next door neighbor, LeeAnn Frank. Though all scholars agree that this painting is contradistinct from deSilva's known body of work, the majority assert that the painting bears certain, definitive marks of the artist. Most fundamentally, the size, four feet by three feet, is consistent with deSilva's work, though
This is How She Looked in the Morning
was painted on a scrap of wood taken from a pile at the back of the garage; thus the size might have simply been the result of a lucky find. Other imprints: the subject of the painting is, as always, female; there is the almost obligatory window; and, too, a seamless intimacy exists between subject and artist.

No one argues that
This is How She Looked in the Morning
isn't a sharp departure from the decadent and lustful environ of
Woman Reclining on a Blue Couch
or the tension of
What She Found
, or the alienation and social commentary of
The Lisa Trilogy
. The mood is wholesome, unbesmirched. White sun bathes the subject clean; the window is dusted in a fine powder; and while the subject is clad in only a white v-neck T-shirt, she seems to have inspired in the painter a chaste admiration, resulting in a portrait that transcends carnality.

Half-reclining, the subject rests on her soft, naked hip, her weight supported by an outstretched arm at the end of which her strong hand spreads like a crest. Each digit is long, separated, concluding in a clear, pearly fingernail. Her face is generic, as if it is not quite recalled, and she is naked but for her shirt, her legs curled beneath her. The strong line of her quadriceps is painstakingly depicted. A glimpse of her feet is provided, it seems by accident, the toe-nails painted a radiant orange. Cynthia Bell notes that this tiny detail rescues the painting from “utter innocuousness. It is a mark of lust, an embellishment that depraves the subject just enough to make her compelling.”
⁸⁶

While the torment that marks deSilva's body of work is conspicuously absent from
This is How She Looked in the Morning
, deconstructionists seem allergic to the notion that the artist might have felt, albeit briefly, lighthearted and hopeful, not to mention altered by her unusual circumstances. Lucinda Dialo exhorts, in an editorial in ArtNews, “It's absurd [for Jones and Particip] to attribute the final work of one
of our greatest painters to her mentally ill older sister, who, as far we know, had never so much as dabbled in the visual arts! It infuriates me, frankly, that scholars have given this cockamamie theory consideration enough to bother debating its merits. What psychologists fail to recognize, and what psychologists have never understood about art, it seems, is that art is mystery. It descends from somewhere uncharted and it surprises even its creator. Thus tenderness can emerge from a hardened soul, happiness from a wretch. And there is no psychological basis for this anomaly; its only reason is art.”
⁸⁷

Argues Bell, “The temptation to attribute this painting to Isabella DeSilva is the result of rampant cultural homophobia. The artistic and psychological community can't accept that this relationally impaired artist might have experienced, however fleetingly, a higher love, one that transcended the insufficient and superficial liaisons attributed to lesbians and homosexuals. Hasn't history shown that mature love alters one's view of the world? The need to eliminate the possibility that love softened deSilva's vision is the need to deny the viability of lesbianism.”
⁸⁸

Though one can easily find the mark of deSilva's artistry in
This is How She Looked in the Morning
Jones and Particip do raise intriguing questions. They point out, for example, that the painting is haphazardly executed, as though the artist were rushing
⁸⁹
(perhaps, the psychologists suggest, Isabella was hurrying to finish the painting before her younger sister returned from the neighbor's house and caught her mucking with the art supplies). Why, they ask, would Francesca deSilva paint a nude portrait
of the next-door neighbor, whom she hardly knew? Further, when did she have the opportunity to view LeeAnn Frank in the morning? Naked!

Any of these irregularities can be reasonably dismissed—and have. Only one small detail of physical evidence is difficult to discount: A small spiral pad was found near the painting, atop Alfonse's old lawnmower. On the first page of this tiny tablet is scrawled the title of the painting. It is impossible to dismiss that Isabella, known to do her writing on these miniature pads and perpetually obsessed with the beautiful neighbor, is a plausible source of this artifact. Experts who have analyzed the piece of paper report it could have been the work of either sister, so alike was their handwriting.

One final note
: While only a naif could characterize the life of Francesca deSilva as happy, or find in this story a cheerful ending, it is, perhaps, small comfort to consider that on the night of the fire, the members of the DeSilva family seemed, for the first time, at peace with one another. It is therefore odd that the academy persists in its cynicism, its need to steal from deSilva's legacy a ray of hope, and in so doing to rob the public of the heartening notion that exceptional talent and inspiration can thrive even after an artist's torment and suffering have abated.

The funeral was brief, held under gray skies with ashy clouds blowing past. The coffin was propped on three green canvas strips that were attached to a metal structure, the entire contraption floating over a cavernous, symmetrical hole. The family stood bunched together like shrubs, several feet from the hole, on the blanket of synthetic grass the funeral home had unfurled. Alfonse turned away to stop himself from imagining, in gory detail, poor Evelyn crashing into the deep cavern and spilling forth from her tidy coffin. He hated funerals. And the idea that his mother-in-law, who had always seemed so sensible, would choose burial instead of cremation confounded him. Vivian had explained—repeatedly—that Jewish people did not believe in cremation. Still, the dirt thrown on top, the bugs, all of it, seemed horribly slow and torturous.
Perhaps
, he thought,
it is because I am a gardener. Because I know the unceasing activity below the ground, how the roots from nearby trees strangle everything in sight
.

“Mama would have liked how nice everything looks,” he whispered to Vivian, trying to chase away his misery.

“I wish it didn't remind me of a putting green,” Vivian wrapped her gloved hand around his bare one for a moment, then took it away.

Birds cawed, landed atop nearby monuments, flapping their wings and spanning the crowd with paranoid button eyes. The rabbi seemed to be rushing, as though he were late for an appointment across town. He recited Evelyn's good deeds like a grocery list: dance lessons at the synagogue; raised money for Hadassah; volunteered at the Jewish Home; took care of her ailing husband, may he rest in peace. Everyone breathed formless puffs of steam, rubbed their hands together and pattered their feet in place on the frozen ground.

After the service, Vivian lit a cigarette. The rabbi helped her into
the Nissan. Alfonse adroitly occupied the driver's seat. He felt like a man. The daughters he had sired were in the backseat. Even if they weren't fair and bewitching as every man hopes his daughters will be, still, there they were, pressed against opposite windows. And though Evelyn was dead, though he and Vivian were not happy and hadn't been for as long as he could remember, though Isabella was crazy, and though he hadn't yet managed to engage in conversation of any import with his estranged daughter, still he felt almost giddy, as if it were a Thursday night in June fifteen years ago, the air cool, the sky light, and they were on their way to Evelyn's for brisket.

He waved with masculine efficacy to the funeral director, proceeded through the cemetery, and led the procession out onto the street.

“Brr . . .” Vivian rubbed her upper arms. “Is there a window open?”

“Yes,” Isabella muttered, “But if I close it, we'll all die of smoke inhalation.” Her mood was fouled by the amount of attention paid her sister at the funeral. Particularly by Joycie Newman, usually Isabella's biggest fan, who had virtually ignored her, the whole time fawning over Francesca. One flick of the wrist, a disingenuous wave before the service began, was all Joycie had spared for Isabella; she'd been too busy flirting with her sister. And, of course, Isabella had hoped to see Aaron, just so she could muster all her willpower and snub him. He was engaged to be married, she'd heard, and she wanted to smile and congratulate him, as if no news had ever mattered less.

“How come Aaron wasn't there?” she inquired calmly.

“Who's Aaron?” asked Francesca.

Vivian sprinted to a new subject: “Did everyone see the obituary?” She removed a small square of paper from her wallet and unfolded it carefully. Isabella ardently reached out her hand, but Vivian handed it to Francesca. “Francesca, honey, read it out loud, would you?” she said.

“Isabella, you read it,” said Francesca.

“Yes, thank you.” Isabella took the piece of paper, pleased that her sister had happened upon the correct solution. She cleared her throat: “Evelyn Rose Horowitz, 76, beloved wife of Yitzchak Horowitz (deceased). Mother of Vivian Horowitz DeSilva, New Haven. We will miss her spicy conversations and peppered opinions.
Send contributions to United Alzheimer's Foundation or the Jewish Home for the Aged.”

“What's wrong with it?” Vivian wrinkled up her face.

“Nothing!” Alfonse patted the carpeted hump between them.

“Francesca?” she flapped down the sun visor and studied her younger daughter in the compact mirror.

Isabella folded the obituary and handed it over the top of the seat to her mother. “I know what's wrong with it,” she said cryptically.

“There is nothing wrong with it,” said Alfonse.

“What's with peppered and spicy in the same paragraph?” Isabella asked.

“I like that,” he stated passionately. “It made me think of Grandma's cooking.”

“Exactly!” Vivian pointed her finger emphatically at his cheek, then pushed in the cigarette lighter and searched for a Merit Ultra Light 100, her new brand.

“Since when did Grandma cook anything peppered and spicy? Fatty and overdone would be more like it. We'll miss her fatty conversations and overdone opinions.” Isabella grinned at her sister, pleased with her own wit.

But Francesca paid no attention. She was preoccupied with when to leave and how to minimize the moment's significance. How to get the paintings back into the car without causing a stir, without igniting sudden interest (though there was little chance of that; why, she allowed herself to wonder, had she brought all the fucking paintings in the first place?); and how to turn the paintings over to the curator while engaging in as little chit chat as possible. Plus, there was
Bunyan
to finish and
Reality Has Intruded Here
.

“Tomorrow, I have to go home,” she said.

“Tomorrow?” Isabella cried. “But why?”

Vivian turned back and smiled, her head cocked to the side. “We understand, honey,” she said. “Your sister has a very busy life.”

Now Francesca wanted only to arrive at the house, unfold into the cold air, steal a few moments of solitude. Just five minutes without a tactless, unanswerable question (Where did you learn to paint like that? Do you know how much your grandmother loved you? Judy
Garland used to dress like a man, too, and she was considered very modern, very stylish). Five minutes without someone braying about her surprise existence. They all stared at her as if she were a statue come to life. And then there were the thoughts of Lisa. Deep in her body, something throbbed each time she thought of Lisa, a little piece of death she carried with her, the suggestion that her own demise might not be so far off in the future. Though Francesca did not believe in life after death, the possibility that she and Lisa might meet again—as vaporous souls, trees, minerals, whatever—brought her comfort.