Above All Else (part 1)
March 2, 2007
Jarrett Lerner, A’09, is the winner of the 2007 Observer Short Story competition. His story, “Above All Else,” will be serialized in the Observer. Follow the story in next week’s issue.
Alan was on his knees below the canvas, a book, Dima Janiszewski: the Middle Years, beside him. It lay open to a large reproduction of a painting titled “lady holds her elbow.” Alan had modeled his newest piece on the work—the same side-profile pose for his subject, the same source and angle of light. Both women’s chins were trimmed with shadow, their ears fully lit. It was the transition that was troubling him. Making things work between two opposite sides. He set down his stick of charcoal and picked up his brush. He rubbed its dry tip across his palm, practicing the motion he would attempt on the canvas.
Ava had let herself in much earlier. She made herself a cup of coffee and read for a while on the couch, waiting. But they were going to be late. So she tapped at his door, shyly. He didn’t respond. So she guided the door open, only enough to let her lips show.
She spoke just above a whisper. “Sorry Alan, but we’re going to be late.”
He crumbled, his shoulders caving in. He tossed his brush to his side.
“It’s a cheek,” he moaned, upwards, to the canvas. Then, softer: “A cheek.”
“We should go in ten,” she said. And after guiding the door shut, careful to rotate the knob right so it wouldn’t scrape, she added, “I’ll be in the car.”
* * * * *
If Dima Janiszewski remained a bachelor all his life, it was not because of a lack of love for women. It’s possible he loved women more than any other man; his livelihood depended on them. For Dima Janiszewski could only paint women. At age seven, the precocious child made several sketches of his mother as she gathered the wash off the drying line. She mounted her favorite of the bunch on their living room wall. Upon seeing it, a family friend marveled that his impoverished immigrant friends owned a sketch by the recently deceased Degas. The mother corrected the guest, and then had to fetch the rest of the drawings to convince him. From then on, Dima Janiszewski was known as a prodigy. At twenty he began receiving critical attention. His works were shown in several galleries. Numerous people approached him with offers to become his agent of sorts, his “in” to the ever more politicized art world. A little money was all they asked. Money that, when he was making millions as the spearhead of the newest movement, would be pocket change. But Dima Janiszewski was no movement maker. Only a painter. Plus, he had no mind for business. Only for his paints, his brushes, the women he made his by use of these tools. He favored relative obscurity and a skimpier income over the celebrity that seemed promised to him. This is not to say he wasn’t famous, wasn’t regarded by many as the preeminent portraitist of his time. He was. But he became a painter’s painter, preferring to philander his way inside as many households as possible rather than become a household name. His allegiance was not to the critics, but his canvases. And, as he had found, each of these increasingly spectacular canvases required a brand-new muse.
* * * * *
In the car, Alan continued to whine about his inabilities at the easel.
“I always run into trouble when I paint you.”
“Alan, shushup. You’re the, the Monet of Massachusetts.”
“Manet,” he corrected her. “With an ‘a’.” The misquoted article of the Boston Globe went on to rave about the “twenty-five-year-old wunderkind,” sounding only one uncomplimentary note, some local critic who conceded Alan’s talent but couldn’t help quipping that he has leapt in the footsteps of giants, but I wonder whether he can one day make his own prints.
“You’re going to have to pose for me again.”
“Ma-nay,” Ava said, trying to teach her tongue. “Man-nay.” She bobbed her head with each syllable. “I can never get that right.” She sighed and drummed her thumb on the rim of the steering wheel.
Alan didn’t really want to talk. To Ava or anyone. Seeing others so soon after a bad session brought him down. He just wanted to brood. He’d rather be all alone, still toiling away. Not only did he understand things better while painting them, but he cherished them more. He saw painting as a struggle between an object and himself. Pounding away, painting and repainting, until it relented, revealed itself to him in full. That is when he felt most alive. Sizzling at the summit, he called it. Basically, he’d rather be off finding that right collaboration of colors that filled Ava’s eyes than gaze into the real things. Sometimes.
But he wouldn’t be back in his studio for hours; he needed to get his mind away from it. So he asked, “Your dad going to be at this thing today?
“No. He stopped coming a few years ago.”
Alan nodded. “You think he ever gets angry, how your mom didn’t take his name?”
“I don’t know,” she shrugged. “She’s real family oriented. I think he’s fine with it.”
“Well she obviously wasn’t considering her kids. Ava Taylor-Mailer.”
Ava offered a smile. No more. But also no less.
“So who’s all going to be there then?”
“Everyone,” she said. “Every Taylor who’s got a pulse. Mom, all the aunts, grandma—” Ava glanced at Alan, who was wincing, worried. “What?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m just worried it might be…a little awkward. Like if they all hate me.”
“They won’t,” she assured him. “How could they?”
“How could they?” he repeated. “Your mom seems to be able to.”
“Alan. That’s not true. She wouldn’t have invited you at all if it was. It’s just…she doesn’t understand…I don’t know. Let’s not get into it.”
“No. What? What doesn’t she understand? Why I’d leave?”
“I guess…I mean—I’m not saying you shouldn’t or anything—but, I mean…she’s sort of right, there are tons of art schools out here too.”
“Christ,” he moaned, rubbing his forehead. “Ava, none of the schools out here are offering to pay for me to go to them. And it’s not even about the place. It’s about the people.”
“But that’s what I’m saying. That’s the whole point.”
“You don’t understand—”
“—No. I do. This part I understand.”
“No. Ava,” he started, and turned to her with his hands raised and poised, as if he gripped a watermelon. He was an awkward talker, too used to relying on his hands to express himself. “Look,” he said, giving the giant fruit a shake, “imagine if the Los Angeles Times called you tomorrow and said, ‘Hey, you’re better than an intern, screw Boston and come write for us, we’ve cleared a nice space for you on the op-ed page.’ You’d say yes.”
“No.”
Alan shook his head.
“No, Alan, I wouldn’t,” Ava continued. “I told you this before. I couldn’t just pick up like that and leave everything and everyone here…”
Alan sighed, exhausted after another round of this argument. He turned to look out the window. Softly, to the receding roadside landscape, he explained, “The greatest painters in the world are out there. Not going would be ridiculous, Ava. It would be suicide or something.”
She peeked at herself in the rearview mirror. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes riding on round tufts of red, and a pressure bulged her bottom lids. In the ensuing silence she itched her arm, turned a dashboard knob, and itched the arm again. “I know, I know,” she said, turning to Alan. “It’s your dream. I understand.” She kept her eyes on him until he turned. Along with the eyes, the curve of her lips asked for conciliation—a temporary truce at least.
He turned, and returned a suggestion of a smile. He reached over and playfully spun her head back to the road. “Hey—eyes on the road,” he said lightly. He kept his hand there, on the dip at the back of her skull, gently rubbing.
“You’re not trying to kill me, are you?” he asked with a laugh. He thought of saying, “End my career prematurely?” but didn’t. Another time he might have.
She tried to laugh back, but only managed an abrupt breath. And as she changed the subject to something less contentious, began to talk about her senile grandma Clarissa, Alan studied her cheek, hoping to find in this new light the detail that earlier eluded him.
* * * * *
Imagine: the handsome, olive-skinned Dima Janiszewski, following you into your home, asking you to disrobe, to stretch out on the daybed and find a comfortable pose. He positions a fresh canvas on the easel, lays out his palette and paint-cups, he organizes his brushes and speaks to you about things other men would never: the fabric of the blouse you’ve just finished unbuttoning, the color scheme of the living room—how the lilac drapes recede beside the violet settee, making it the more inviting. He tells you that your skin about your hips has the texture of chilled eggshells. That a thread of honeydew-green is woven into your eyes. That you rank among the finest creatures he has ever had the delight to see. He begins to sketch your basic shapes, and must drop his nub of charcoal, must momentarily abandon his easel, in order to get a better look. He touches those accomplished fingertips to your flesh. He brushes them along your planes. He sweeps them about your bends. He closes his eyes and lets his hands learn your body’s geometry, wandering its landscape, pursuing its secrets and seeking its treasures. He presses his ear to your chest to listen to your music, his lips to your lips to taste your heart. Imagine you are fifteen-year-old Ava Effran, doing the day’s shopping in Boston’s dusty summer streets, your parents out at work. Imagine the handsome, olive-skinned Dima Janiszewski approaching you, offering to help you home with your sack of citrus, your bread loaves, your bag of onions, telling you of your dazzling beauty, of his need to capture it on canvas.
* * * * *
The envelope was thin, not thick as he expected. But it still bore good news: Yes, the San Francisco Art Institute wanted him to study at their school, so much that they would pay for nearly all his tuition. It read Welcome!!! as if he had already accepted, and went on to boast of the school’s newest additions and improvements. Along with a new photography building, there were two new members of the faculty: the “ground-breaking art historian and Gauguin expert, Lydia Krauss” as well as the “celebrated painter, Dima Janiszewski.” The excitement of it all had a bite, unsettling Alan’s stomach, as if its usual butterflies had caught fire. At once, he felt a reaching, and, somewhere else, a shrinking. After calling his parents he dialed Ava and left a message with the office secretary for her to call him as soon as possible. While he waited he picked up a book. A biography of Manet. He hadn’t read a word of it. It was a gift. He didn’t care much about painter’s lives, most of what was written being rumor and myth anyway. He didn’t even care to know what they looked like—except in the context of a self-portrait. Art should be judged in and of itself, the art speaking for the artist. But he opened the cover of the book and read the epigram, a quote by Manet himself: No one can be a painter unless he cares for painting above all else. He read it again and again, and each time it extinguished the blaze in his stomach a little more. The words so strangely satisfied him he printed them on an index card and pinned it to his studio wall. And the words stayed with him, in his head like an infectious song. Every time he spoke to Ava about his leaving, those eighteen syllables sounded in his head. Even when they spoke about other things. Even when they didn’t speak. Even when he was alone, searching for apartments or ordering supplies, waiting for the coffee to brew, standing in the shower—even then the words chanted in his head. He found it odd. Colors and shapes, not words, usually occupied that space.
* * * * *
If it had not been for a certain audacity—as well as a fear of facing her beloved parents alone—Ava Effran would have never seen Dima Janiszewski again. Perhaps she would have seen herself on the wall of some gallery, a plaque beside the painting bearing his name, a brief description of the work, and the date of their child’s conception. The girl, however, sought out the painter’s studio under the pretense of seeing the canvas’ progress. Dima Janiszewski was surprised to see her, yet he did not flinch.
“Above All Else” will continue in the March 9 issue of the Observer.