The Love of My (Other) Life (9 page)

He smiled and shook the rev’s hand. “Dr. Brian Tennyson, nice to meet you.”

Reverend Pincek clapped him on the shoulder with approval. “Henry Ward Beecher said, ‘Children are the hands by which we take hold of heaven.’ You’re a fine young man, Dr. Tennyson, I’m sure you’ll have fine sons and daughters yet.”

The blue-eyed choir singer drew Brian back into the debate, and the rev turned to me. In as quiet a voice as he could manage, which was not quiet at all, the rev asked, “Did you hear that, Tessa? He’s nice, and he’s a doctor.”

“Not that kind of doctor,” I started.

Joan, the secretary, charged up with a sheaf of papers, saving me from an explanation that could only cast serious aspersions on my own character.

What the hell was I doing sleeping with a crazy man?

What the hell was I doing with my life?

The one question I didn’t ask myself, which I probably should have, was what the hell was I doing with the Bucknell skull?

“Come on, Brian, let’s go.” I took hold of his arm firmly and pulled him away. “You brought it, right?

I have to meet Guy.”

Brian opened his mouth to say something, but the rev cut us off at the door.

“Tessa, I have to ask you to take some time off.

We found a plumbing leak. Our funds—”

I shook my head. “I can’t duck out, Rev. People depend on me. Pay when you can.”

“We’re pretty broke right now,” the rev rumbled.

“I hate to take advantage. You know we want to pay you.”

“A donation will come through soon,” I promised.

“I don’t think so,” Brian said, with a rueful smile.

“I do,” I said and tread heavily on his foot.

“We’re certainly praying for one,” said Reverend Pincek.

“While we wait for the answer to our prayers, tell me, Rev, are you charging for the senior dance?”

Brian asked. He draped his arm around me with casual familiarity, as if we’d been married for ten years. “You know, to raise money.”

The rev and I exchanged a look. I said, “Most people who come to eldercare are on fixed incomes.

They live on social security.”

The rev scratched his chin. “It’s a nice idea, Brian, but we don’t want to add to their financial burdens. The new health care laws have strained the tight budgets of the elderly to the breaking point.”

“Some of them are even forgoing medications because of the new financial burdens,” I added. “The government passed a law and didn’t bother to think about how real people would be able foot the bill.”

Some of the money I made at the church had been spent on Mr. James’ costly medicine. “It was the triumph of philosophy over humanity,” I said. “Of course, the health insurance companies are just getting richer than ever.”

“Not another one of your rants,” Brian said firmly, holding up his hand. He thought for a moment.

“Charge non-elderly people. Make it an everyone dance, a family dance. Get the teens in here. Little kids. Charge anyone under sixty-five. You might not get a lot of people, but hey, I’d take my granny to a dance for an hour to make her happy. And if there’s food involved … ”

I have to admit, the rev and I were dumbfounded.

Neither of us had ever considered such a radical idea. I said slowly, “We’d have to spread the word fast.”

“There must be an email list for the congregation,” Brian said.

“We can put it up on our website,” the rev sang.

“We can put up a sign on the door,” I enthused. I could visualize it, and I’d get to try out some of that new titanium white … .

“The Bible study group meets Wednesday nights,” Reverend Pincek said.

“Tonight!” I exclaimed. “They’re a gossipy bunch.”

“This could work,” the rev said. “Everyone’s welcome, kids under ten are free. That might bring in some of the young families, too.”

“Kids under five are free,” Brian said. “And park some big jars around for contributions.”

“I’ll get volunteers right on it,” the rev said, with excitement. He galloped off.

Brian squeezed me in one of his bear hugs.

I pushed him away. As I moved forward, my foot wobbled. Not now! The heel of my shoe was broken.

“Right when I have to meet Guy.”

“It’s a sign,” Brian leered at me playfully, “for us to go home and cuddle. Then go see Frances.”

I took off my shoe and glared at the offending heel. “What part of ‘no’ do you not understand, the ‘N’ or the ‘O’?”

“You know you want to,” Brian said. “You have to give back the skull. Do it now. Frances is a good guy, he’ll understand that you only meant to help the rev.”

But I had a better idea, and I dug in my bag for a role of duct tape which I brandished victoriously. “I can fix my shoe. I can do anything with duct tape!”

“Oh, brother.” Brian sighed. “I’ll go home and make lunch. Do you have any money for me to buy food, or am I using that tub of laundry quarters I found in your linen closet?”

“You’re coming with me, mister,” I said. “I’m not letting you out of my sight until I have the skull. I think you have it on you.”

The Rothschild Gallery was even more pretentious than the Frances Gates Gallery. Rooms were dimly lit, swathes of fabric hung down, and flatscreen TVs shared wall space with exceptionally atrocious abstract art.

Naturally, there was a rave review from The New York Times prominently placed in every room.

“This is the ugliness of ugliness. This crap makes me want to kill myself,” I muttered.

“Tessa, sweetheart, life is always right. Don’t even joke that way,” Brian said.

We moved from room to room. I was supposed to meet Guy here, but I didn’t see him among the black-clad hipsters. I spied a partly open door in back. “Let’s check this one,” I said.

We entered a large empty room that wasn’t quite as dark as the rest of the gallery. There wasn’t anything in the room except some red lights high in the corners, glowing like red demon eyes. I must have been grimacing to myself because Brian stroked my cheek and shoulder.

“The stuff looks like a four-year-old crayoned it, but why do you care so much? Why let it trigger you?”

“Art can be so much more,” I murmured. I leaned into Brian’s warm, solid chest. It had been so long since a man had held me with love and support.

Truth be told, my ex had never been good at that.

He hadn’t held me much physically, other than our sporadic conjugal connections. He hadn’t held me emotionally at all.

“What, exactly, can art be for you?” Brian asked.

He nuzzled me and drew me closer in to his body, as if he craved me.

This was it, the central, ineluctable question of my life: what can art be for me? I had never framed it this way, but hearing Brian articulate it opened up something.

Could art be my livelihood? It was certainly my passion. But could it sustain me?

And what did it mean to me, apart from the material aspects?

I bi-located into the Louvre, so that I stood in front of the sweeping Daru Staircase. I was a young girl looking up to the gorgeous rippling Winged Victory. “My eighth grade French class went to Paris, to the Louvre. I walked up the stairs to the Winged Victory, and I was smitten! It’s so beautiful and full of life, timeless and eternal. Looking at it, all the mundane stuff of life fell away. All the petty misery. I was healed, I was exalted. I was transformed. That’s what real art does!”

“Fair enough, this stuff isn’t art,” Brian observed.

His words pulled me back to the Rothschild Modern and the schlocky degraded stuff that passed for art at even the most exclusive galleries. Brian waved toward the door. “It’s entertainment. So what?”

“So these commodities corrupt art as a field,” I cried, willing him to understand.

“Why not take a stand against it by making beautiful art? Not by stealing. But by showing your own art. Your paintings are beautiful—people will buy them.”

I gulped and covered my face with my hands. “I may have made some stupid choices in the past. Bad choices.”

“Choices that keep you from painting?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Sweetheart, you can’t hold on to the past that way. Whatever you’ve done, own it, apologize, make amends if you can, and then move on.” He nestled me closer in to the crook of his neck and shoulder and kissed my forehead.

“My reputation … ”

“Fuck your reputation,” Brian said, but tenderly.

“You’re young and alive. As long as you’re breathing, you have a chance. To make things right, to make a fresh start. It’s a gift.”

“You don’t understand,” I whispered.

Brian kissed me more deeply on my mouth.

“Want to explain?”

“No,” I said, but Brian was still kissing me, and the gallery faded away, and I started to respond.

What luscious magic hold over me did this man have to elicit such arousal?

He picked up my hand and kissed my palm.

“Mm, you know I can’t resist that,” I moaned.

Everything in me softened and opened. I lost myself in the breathlessness of the moment with him, and it didn’t matter that we were in a gallery. We could have been anywhere in the world, a crowded bazaar, or Grand Central Station, or alone in this quiet room.

I simply wanted him.

“Tessa, you’re a sweet, caring, beautiful woman and a gifted artist. In my world and here. Stop beating up on yourself. You’re alive, and you’ll figure it all out. It will work out.” He kissed my neck and clavicles.

I groaned, my hips churning against him. Then I leapt up into his arms, wrapping my legs around him. I didn’t know what I was doing, but lately, I never did. It didn’t seem to matter because I was so desperate to change my life.

I still didn’t realize that I would have to change myself first.

Brian pushed me up against the wall next to the door. I vaguely saw his hand close and lock the door. Then someone’s shirt fluttered out into the air.

We finally emerged from the empty room, and I made sure to straighten my skirt. My shirt was buttoned incorrectly, so I hurriedly redid it.

Gallery patrons were clustered around the flatscreens. A woman with kohl-smeared raccoon eyes and a beehive hairdo spied us. She began to clap. The sound drew everyone else’s attention, and they first stared and then clapped as well. A few people called, “Bravo! Bravo!”

“What the hell?” I wondered.

A distinguished looking older man pushed through the crowd. There was no mistaking his tall form and the distinct, craggy features of his distinct, craggy face. He loved himself with the steamy, torrid self-congratulation of a thousand suns, something that had once impressed me.

Now it made me want to vomit.

“Well done, Tess, good to see you. Nice work in there,” he said, in a faux British accent that, I regret to say, had also once impressed me.

Had I been brain damaged back then?

“Cliff Bucknell,” I said slowly.

Cliff took my tone as the adulation he usually received and he preened. “So now you’re into performance art. Give up on those cheesy landscapes?

There’s just no point to them. Beauty is so banal.

Post-modernism is all about the anti-aesthetic. That’s the cutting edge. What’s really evocative isn’t evocative at all.”

Once upon a time, this kind of posturing had enthralled me. Now, and maybe it had something to with how warm and real Crazy Brian was, it seemed silly.

I asked, “What are you doing here?”

Brian, his arm looped around my waist, interjected, “Why do I get the feeling that we were the stars of some show?”

A slithery man dressed all in back stepped forward. “Great performance! An intense expression of scatological yearning.”

“That wasn’t scatological,” Brian started. He did a double take. “What exactly did you see?”

“Everything,” said the slithery man. “I’m opening an installation at the MOMA entitled ‘Altogether Human Beings,’ and I’d love to have you perform your piece there. It’s been recorded here, but I prefer performance art to be live.”

“Recorded?” I reeled backward. “Cliff, you saw … ?”

“Even in lovemaking, you’re, oh, idealistic and enthusiastic, but hackneyed. But then, that isn’t your real talent, is it?” Cliff laughed shortly, his eyes gleaming.

Brian growled, literally, growled. He stepped up to Cliff and pushed him, hard. “Watch how you talk to her, buddy. And what are you talking about, ‘real talent’?”

Cliff puffed out his chest but he receded a few steps. “She knows. Quite a useful gift for the shadow arts, even if she’ll never be a real artist. She made a reputation for herself.”

I fled.

Brian chased me.

As we passed the front door, Guy, smoking a cigarette, stepped in my way. “The contribution of shadows is to make the light shine out all the more, and even that which can be considered ugly in itself appears beautiful within the framework of the general order. It is this order as a whole that is beautiful, but from this standpoint even monstrosity is redeemed—”

“Not now!” I cried, half heartbroken, half outraged.

“Call me, if you value your thumbs,” Guy said.

Fourteenth Street teemed with pedestrians and a profusion of shops. I stormed along it with my shirt and jacket buttoned askew, my taped-on heel wobbling.

As if I hadn’t bungled my past enough, now I was headlining in art porn. Could I sink any lower? This was all Brian’s fault. “You had no right to seduce me,” I spat at him.

“You wrapped your legs around me, what was I gonna say, ‘No thanks’?”

“Yes, if you were a gentleman.” I was really steaming.

Brian laughed. “Right. Who was that pretentious old guy with the fake accent, and what was he talking about, ‘shadow arts’?”

“That’s Cliff Bucknell. He’s the darling of the art world, the next Warhol.”

“He’s the guy who made the skull?” Brian asked.

“He’s the guy whose name is on the skull. I haven’t seen him in three years. How does he know I haven’t been painting?” Was I so transparently, humiliatingly obvious?

“You’re painting now,” Brian pointed out. “You painted that beautiful landscape over the eviction notice. And all those canvases in your living room and hall closet.”