Life Drawing (19 page)

But I had, for weeks and weeks and weeks.

“I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what you’re working on?”

“Not yet. In a while. If it sticks.”

I nodded and I said, “I understand,” and we went on to talk of other things.

A
fter lunch, I felt something absent for so long that the sensation came as a surprise and an unexpected gift. I had known I would feel relief that Owen was back engaged in his work. But I hadn’t remembered the electricity that would be running between us, a rope of the stuff from my bright, sunny studio to his dusky, cool barn.

Maybe it was feeling that connection to Owen again that gave me the courage to take on the task I had been putting off for weeks: painting the boys themselves.

From the first, it wasn’t work I enjoyed. I could never lose myself in it—because there
I
was at every turn being uncooperative, unskilled, inept. There
I
was with that strange disconnect I rarely otherwise felt between my intentions and my execution, with that heaviness in my hand, that stiffness to my lines. And there were the resulting figures, too—not people, not really, but more like paintings of soldier figurines.

“Ugh,” I would say out loud, several times a day, as I stepped back to look.

Owen insisted they were better than I thought. Now that he was back at work and the subject no longer taboo, I could worry it through with him. “I don’t see it, Gussie,” he would say. “I think they look fine.” And for a few minutes I’d be reassured; but not for long.

I was fretting over this, two weeks or so into this big push, when I answered my cell without looking at the number and heard the unmistakable cry of “Augie!”

“Laine.” I instinctively turned my back to the window, to the
barn. She asked right away how I was doing and I gave her a brief answer, knowing the call had to be short, hoping Owen wouldn’t happen to wander in; but also feeling a guilty elation at the sound of her voice. It had been ages, maybe years. She told me just a little about a new studio class she’d started and made a few humorous remarks about her teacher. And then she said, “So, here’s the big surprise. I’m actually about ten minutes from your house … I was driving home for the weekend, Mom is having a giant fiftieth birthday party thing and I just thought I would take a detour. I hope it’s okay. Do you know it’s like a century since I saw you?”

“I can’t believe it,” I said. “You’re here?”

“I am! Surprise!”

She had no reason to know this was a problem, and I couldn’t think of a way to tell her no. I couldn’t think at all. For a second I imagined saying I would have to meet her at a restaurant, but nothing coherent came to my panicked mind.

“It’s okay though, right? I mean, I won’t stay long if you’re working or whatever. But truly I just want a tiny look at you. I promise not to stay. I can’t anyway. Mom’s thing is like in five hours. I just need a glimpse of you.”

I had no plausible excuse. “Circle the area for fifteen or twenty minutes if you don’t mind. I need to get dressed, things like that. We’re hermits here, you know.”

She laughed. “Sorry about the bad impulse control, Augie.” It was the same phrase Nora had used about her trip to see Owen in the barn. Generational code for bad judgment? “I’ll give you a half hour,” she said. “I could use a cup of coffee anyway.”

A
s I walked the flagstone path to the barn, I thought of bolting, cutting her off at the driveway somehow, but I could feel the danger of that. It was one thing not to bring up our occasional contact,
quite another to deceive Owen so elaborately about her coming to our home.

I didn’t knock, a return to the old ways now that he was writing again. “Hey,” I said, and he looked over.

“Hey, back. What’s up?”

I shrugged. “Nothing terrible. Just … I just got a call from Laine. You know. Laine.” It was shocking how rapidly his features fell, his eyes seemed to harden. “I’m really sorry. I … She’s in the neighborhood.”

“The neighborhood? Gus, we don’t have a neighborhood.”

“The area. I had no idea. She was driving close by, and she wants to see me. She’s … she’s impulsive, you know. She doesn’t mean …”

“Whatever, Gus.” He turned back to his computer. “Just let me know when she’s gone.”

“It won’t be a long visit. I’m really sorry.”

“Just let me know when she’s gone,” he said again.

“I will.” I began to walk away, then stopped. “I’m not in touch with him at all. Not since his call years ago. In case you’re wondering. She …”

“I wasn’t wondering, Gus. I just want to get back to work.”

“Okay,” I said, and then, “Thanks.”

I
n the few minutes I had, I went upstairs and into the bathroom, where I studied my face. What would she report to Bill?
Augie looks good. Older, but maybe like she’s been working out. She’s awfully tanned
.

I brushed my hair, then braided it. I thought about Alison and how she would have put on makeup, been sure she was wearing her lipstick. But I couldn’t, even if I’d wanted to. The last thing Owen needed was any evidence that I was trying to doll myself up for Laine—and for any descriptions she might bring home.

P
lumper than I’d ever seen her, and prettier too, Laine leapt from her VW bug and gave me the sort of hug I hadn’t had from anyone in years. I thought she might lift me off my feet and spin us both around. “My God, Augie! I can’t believe I’m really seeing you!”

“Laine, you look amazing!” I took a step back. Her hair, dyed purplish black, was cut into a pageboy with bangs, all very 1920s, complete with the dark red lipstick she wore. The piercings on her nose, cheek, eyebrow, lower lip, once heavy steel, now glistened with tiny gems, as though she’d been sprinkled with fairy dust. Her eyes were rimmed in heavy black makeup and she wore a short, shapeless black dress, black tights, military boots—the perennial art student uniform—and a green army coat over that.

“Come inside,” I said. “What can I give you to drink? Or eat?” I made the offer instinctively, not thinking how it might extend her stay.

“Nothing. I really can’t. Mom is expecting me. She’ll kill me if I’m late. God, I love it here,” she said as we stepped into the kitchen. “No wonder you ran away. I can’t believe I’ve never come before. This is like some kind of paradise, isn’t it?”

“Sometimes,” I said. “Depending on how the work is going. Paradise. Hell. You know how it is. But yes, I feel lucky. We both do.”

“Is Owen around? I haven’t seen him in years and years.”

“He’s … he’s out doing some errands. That’s what you get for surprising people.”

“My bad.” She smiled, then pointed through the door to the living room. “Can I …? I’ve been so curious about this place.”

“Of course. Come on, I’ll give you the grand tour.”

W
e started upstairs.

I watched her do exactly what I had done my first time there: she walked through each room to its window and looked outside. “Oh, wow. You have a pond. Can you swim in it?”

“Someone could swim in it. I’m not much for swimming.”

“I would swim in it every day.”

“Not in October, you wouldn’t.”

“No, but summertime. Summertime it would be amazing.”

When we stepped into the bedroom, I tried to squelch thoughts of how Owen would hate having Bill’s child there. “Anyway,” I said, hurrying us through, “the studio is the most interesting room. Let’s head back down.”

“It’s really all perfect, Augie. And it’s weirdly like I imagined it would be. A real farmhouse.”

“Minus the farm. Can you imagine me tending cows?”

“Oh, you’d find a way. And I’d come help.”

The biggest change I saw was how happy she seemed. Not just no longer miserable, or even pretty much okay, but positively glowing.

“You really seem great,” I said, in the living room. “It makes me very happy, Laine.”

She’d stopped in front of the painting over the mantel. “I never saw this, did I?”

“No. I painted that … you were in school by then … I think,” I added, as though I didn’t know exactly when I had painted it and that she had been in her second year at NYU, still sending me bulletins more or less weekly about her daily life.

“The light,” she said. “It’s so you. Dad used to call it ‘Augie light,’ remember?”

“It’s not one of my favorites. It’s …” I barreled past the emotions crackling in me. “Owen loves it. That’s why it’s there.”

“I think it’s kind of great.”

“Well, thank you. Anyway, the studio is through here …”

I
gave her free rein, encouraged her to move the pictures around, leaf through my sketches. What did I want from Laine’s perusal of my work? I wanted her to love everything, of course. I wanted her to reaffirm what Owen had been saying, quell the doubts that I still felt.

To get a clean read on her response, I hadn’t told her a thing about the project. She was close to silent for many minutes, just making little sounds in reaction as she looked.
Huh
and a very quiet
oh
. I sat at my desk and doodled until finally, I said, “Okay, so let’s pretend it’s a critique. What do you think?”

There was a pause before she answered. “It’s interesting. I mean, I don’t exactly get it, but it’s this house, obviously. Right?”

“That’s right.”

“Huh.” She looked around a little more. “I’m … I like them. The details are just insanely good. But I don’t really understand. They’re soldiers from long ago, right? I just … I don’t think of you as someone with that kind of … I guess I feel like I’m missing something here. And I don’t really think of you doing, I don’t know, antiwar art. Is it? I mean, that would be cool, but …”

As she spoke I realized that something had been nagging at me for weeks. How much were the paintings dependent on the story behind them? Did they stand alone or did they need me beside them explaining about the house and the bathroom rehab and the wall?

“Why antiwar?” I asked. “What makes you think it’s anything critical like that?”

“Because they’re dead, Augie. Aren’t they? The boys are all dead.”

O
ver the next half hour, I forgot about Owen and Bill, both evaporating as I explained to Laine that she wasn’t wrong, but that she also was wrong—or maybe I was. I told her the story of the bathroom and the papers. I showed her a couple of the obituaries. “But I don’t want them to look dead in the paintings,” I said. “That isn’t intentional. That’s … well, like I said. Not intentional.”

“Huh.” She looked concerned. “It’s really interesting work, Augie,” she repeated. “And if people take it as antiwar or whatever, that’s not a bad thing, is it? I mean, God, we’ve been at war most of my life. And there are kids I know who barely even know it. All these rich kids who are like, oh right, we’re still at war. And I really like that they’re from some other time. It’s like this brings home how permanent death is. I mean, I look at them and all I see is how sick it is that they were killed so young.”

But it wasn’t what I wanted; and she saw my distress. “I’m not saying it’s simplistic or anything.
Guernica
is an antiwar piece and there’s nothing simple about
Guernica
. Not to mention a million other works.”

“I’ve been … I’ve been working on them,” I said. “Trying. The thing is, I don’t mean them to be like this. Dead. I mean, I want them to be alive. To seem alive. That’s actually kind of the point. To integrate the dead into life. But you can say it, Laine. It’s okay. I know you’re being polite because I’m your teacher. But what would you say if I were one of the poser hipster wannabes?”

“Well.” She bit on her lower lip, then nodded. Inhaled deeply. Exhaled. “Okay. I’d probably say you needed to take a life-drawing class. Except I’d find a snarkier way to put it.”

I laughed. “There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”

She shrugged. “It wasn’t exactly easy. But you know, you’re the one who told me that it was okay to do bad work sometimes. I
can’t even count the number of times you told me if I couldn’t tolerate making mistakes, I would never get better. If you can’t paint the bad stuff, you’ll never paint the good stuff. I never really thought about that applying to you, but it does, right? I mean, it’s always true, isn’t it?”

She was right, of course. Both that I had said it, and that it was true for us all. But I had grown more cautious since my days of preaching the virtues of risk and of failure to Laine. Mistakes had lost their appeal to me.

“I’m not sure this is something I can learn,” I said. “Portraiture. I’m not sure this isn’t more … something basic about me. I may just not have the life-drawing gene. Whatever it takes to make a thing look alive.”

“Augie, you make
everything
look alive. Look at every brick you’ve ever painted. Every chair. I don’t even know what you mean.”

“Every
thing
. Not every
one
.”

“You should just paint them, Augie. Keep going. Just paint them the way you imagine them.”

I thought about that. “That may be part of the problem too. I don’t paint from my imagination. I never have. You know that. I paint what I see. That’s always been the point.”