Cascade (45 page)

Dez really had no one else to advise her. She sensed that Maxie was right. But what was the point of creating something if she couldn’t partake in the discussion about it? And now critics were looking back at the Shakespeare series and remarking that all along, weren’t they prophetic, using the universal truths found in Shakespeare to make statements about the current, earthly turmoil?

She came the closest she ever had to opening Portia’s casket, thinking that if she had an idea of what her father put in there, an idea of what he had thought was “infinitely” worth saving, she might extract some wisdom from his choice, might find an answer for herself. Art lasted past the artist; she had lived by that creed her father had believed in. It almost
didn’t matter who she was. Like every generation, hers was likely ignoring people who would go down in history while many of those getting so much acclaim, like herself, would have their names turn to dust along with their bones.

Regardless of whether there was some form of afterlife, Dez knew that when it came right down to it, she wanted to be recognized as the artist of the work she had done in
this
life. And she wanted Jacob to know that she was who she was: D. H. Spaulding. Surely, if anyone had guessed about Spaulding’s identity, he had?

She had not seen him in four years.

She romanticized him; she was aware of that. Romanticized him even when she dated other men—none of whom really interested her. One good reason for doing the interview was so that he could know, wherever he was, that she was the artist responsible for
The Black Veil
. She wanted him to see it for what it really was—a painting for him, a painting about Cascade.

And, her reasoning continued, if the painting was being seen by the general public as anti-Nazi, then there were better, purer, less personal reasons for wanting to show it, to be part of an interventionist push. The stories coming out of Europe had, with the years, grown impossible to read—most recently, the state-backed, two-night, glass-shattering storm of violence throughout Germany that had outraged the world. Germany was a black stain spreading over the continent, gobbling up more and more of the European capitals, and the threat didn’t stop at Europe’s borders. In winter, American Nazis had held a rally at Madison Square Garden. The rally leader turned out to be a petty criminal with big dreams, and the rally was followed by a larger “Stop Germany” march down Fifth Avenue, true, but the easy spread of the ideology was chilling, all the same.

“What glisters might be gold,” she told Maxie. “I’m going to do it.”

In November 1939, the
Life
story came out. It was a typical day-in-the-life
Life
story, and what little political commentary there was got lost in the sudsy text. Once the editors realized that D. H. Spaulding was no
man, the story’s political bent had gone out the window. The photographs showed Dez painting in her flat, showed her riding the trolley to the office.
She is not your average bohemian artist,
the copy said,
living in Greenwich Village
.
Miss Spaulding lives on the west side and shops for her hats at Macy’s, like any career girl.

Of course the whole idea was a mistake. When she saw how corny and condescending the piece was, she burned with regret. There wasn’t the same respect and seriousness of tone that a piece about a man would have commanded. Or maybe it had nothing to do with her being a woman, but about her being so foolish as to allow herself to be photographed buying a hat. She should have been photographed in Camden’s smoking a Lucky Strike. It was the fact of her normalcy, her hats, her job. Suddenly, D. H. Spaulding was a bore.

Although she’d finally confided in Abby and Amy, other colleagues at the League were funny—miffed, mainly—about their exclusion from the big secret. Dez pointed out that the evidence had been there all along, right in front of them. It wasn’t her fault that people assumed D.H. was a man. Of course, plenty of people, like Mr. Washburn and most of her colleagues at the
Standard
, thought the
Life
story was a great coup.

Art lives after the artist. She tried to hang on to that sentiment, but it was cold comfort, and sometimes not even true. Sometimes art turned to dust: burned, lost, destroyed, forgotten. What was it all for, if not for someone with whom to share it? She understood the sense of isolation Jacob must have felt back in Cascade; she felt it now herself. What hurt most was that she heard from Sidney Orenthal, who knew someone who knew him, that Jacob had left New York City well over a year before, sometime in late 1937 or early 1938, to take a teaching post in New Haven.

Their paths were not going to cross; he had never wanted them to cross. Theirs was not some great Russian love affair. It was a small thing, tightly wound, and it had strangled on itself.

She didn’t paint anything for a while. It seemed she had nothing left to paint, and she didn’t know who she was: Dez Spaulding, Dez Hart, D.H.

She realized, too, that she did not care for people noticing her, pointing her out on trolleys, asking if she was the girl artist they had seen in
Life
. Was there really a whole town under water, they would ask? Did books really float out of library windows?

It was an isolating time, but like all bad times, it got better.

In April, James Lawrence King, returning from a monthlong trip to South America, sent a telegram expressing his astonishment, and to say he looked forward to seeing more of her work. When she wrote to thank him, she mentioned that her father had said he would like to reopen the playhouse with
The Tempest
.
It is not only remarkable that you were the one who bought the painting, it is oddly fitting, don’t you think?

After all the stir of “girl artist,” Clem Greenberg championed her in an article in
Art News
. He balanced the buildup and criticism by focusing attention on her paintings.
Where the focus should be
, he wrote. The tide began to turn in that way no single person can ever really control. People started looking for her work around the same time that Dez realized she had to get back to it, and take her work in a new direction, regardless of how people might receive it.

She began experimenting with eliminating color and with emphasizing line and form, producing what became her
New York Subway Series
: seven stark, simplified black-and-white scenes inspired by riding the IRT. Maxie showed the series in June and five of them sold within two weeks.

What a whim success could be, what a fluke, Dez thought. But she was grateful for that fluke. In the fall of 1940, she bought a modest but high-ceilinged apartment on Central Park West, with a sunny living room that she turned into a studio, where she plunged back into color and completed
Color Studies
: five five-foot-high abstract explorations of color that appeared to shimmer and pulse, thanks to a subtly undulating base of
thick plaster that she covered with sheets of hand-hammered silver leaf. Maxie showed the series in December, and James Lawrence King bought #
4, Blue
. His note to Dez, her reply, turned into regular correspondence. In March of 1941, he wrote to say that he planned to turn his attention to the playhouse within the coming months. In September, he wrote that renovation was already under way. He was wiring the building for electricity and steam heat. He had also decided to punch out an addition—“still in keeping with the Elizabethan look of the place, not to worry”—that would add space for new, separate, ladies’ and gents’ rooms, as well as a drinks bar. Italian craftsmen would refinish the woodwork and build what was needed. A team of seamstresses in Connecticut would make new seat cushions. In the spirit of what was, an assistant had located a textile factory that could duplicate the gold-flecked red velvet Dez’s mother had chosen for the original cushions.

Dez phoned the number engraved at the top of his stationery. A receptionist put her through to his secretary, and then finally to him, and his voice, when he came on the line, sounded genuinely pleased to hear from her.

She said she was phoning to thank him for all he’d done, for the cushions, especially. She told him how incredibly touched she had been, to hear that.

“Well, we can’t forget who founded the theater, can we?” His voice was charming in a way she now, vaguely, remembered from that day she’d met him so briefly.

“I was thinking,” he said, “or should I say, hoping, that you would paint the poster for the opening production. Unless you’d like me to use your
Tempest
?”

“I’d like to do a new poster,” she said, realizing that it was true. “I’d like to put my father in it.” She could immortalize him as Prospero. She added that now seemed the right time to mention that she had little desire to be directly involved in the production. “I’ve been hoping we can choose a staff—a director, all that—and let them do what they do best,” she said. “I am most definitely not my father.”

“I’ll get someone on it, start advertising,” he said. “I have to be in New York in January, and probably February, too. It’s looking to be a busy year, ’42. Why don’t we plan to interview people then? I’m assuming you’ll at least want to be part of that.”

She did, of course, and during that call, they decided on a date for the grand reopening. Thursday, August 6, 1942, a little less than a year away. For the first time in a long time, Dez found herself looking forward.

Instead, the war came. A week after Pearl Harbor, King sent a terse telegram.
THEATER PLANS DELAYED INDEFINITELY
. Another week after that, a handwritten letter arrived, one of apology and invitation.
Can I make it up with a New Year’s dinner at 65 Irving when I’m in the city next week?

August 1947

D
ez rode the Connecticut Central north, early on a mild August morning. James and most of his contingent would take the Philadelphia train; Abby and the New York group were motoring up.

She wanted to be by herself on this trip. She wanted the lull and comfort of the train’s clacking wheels, the sway of the carriage back and forth. She wanted to rest her forehead against cool glass and watch Connecticut flash by. The countryside was changing—there were more roads and filling stations, fewer fields. Where cows used to gape at the trains flashing by, developments of small houses were popping up.