Above All Else (part 3)
April 1, 2007
Jarrett Lerner is the winner of the 2007 Observer Short Story Competition. This is the third and final installment of his story. If you missed the previous chapters, visit http://www.tuftsobserver.org/fiction.
The idea to write the letter came to Marilyn while looking over the article her daughter brought her some weeks before. Ava had arrived at her house without warning. Washing her hands at the sink, Mayilyn watched as her daughter stumbled up the curb, her arms wrestling around a fat stack of newspapers. Once inside, she plopped the papers onto the kitchen table and began rifling through the top one. She tugged out the Arts section, folded it back, and, slapping it on the table, stood back to let her mother have a look. The Manet of Massachusetts, she read. And after giving her daughter a quizzical look, she continued, learning how her daughter’s boyfriend was leaping in giant’s steps, chasing after and surpassing the triumphs of his elders. At the base of the page, beneath a small heading that read, This Day in Art History, she saw that it was the birthday of the sculptor Alberto Giacometti as well as the painter Dima Janiszewski. A brief update was offered, telling how the portraitist, long a phantom, had been living in California and intended to make a last contribution to the art world before he was gone for good, finally accepting the teaching position the San Francisco Art Institute had annually offered him for the past decade. Isn’t it great? Ava asked, pointing to the photograph of Alan. Unbelievable, Marilyn said, and asked if she might keep a copy. She hung it on her office wall so both the article on Alan and her father could be seen. It was almost a month later that Ava returned in hysterics with the news of Alan’s ideas of possibly leaving. And so it was for her daughter’s sake that she picked up a pen and wrote: One day nearly fifty years ago you met and painted and made love to a young girl named Ava Effran. I am the product of that afternoon encounter—your daughter. She told her story, attempting to explain away her silence. She openly wondered if there were others like her, and others like Ava Effran. And how many? Victims, she called them, of a driven artist. The casualties of dreams. And then, abruptly, she stopped, digging a dash into the page and declaring that this letter is not about me, but my daughter, your granddaughter. She explained the situation. How a gifted young painter—not unlike your former self—was on the verge of making a terrible mistake. You wish to make a last contribution to the world? Do something good before you go? She suggested that he intervene. It’s too late for you to be a father. To me at least. But you’ve still got a chance to be a grandfather. Fifty years ago you broke one Ava’s heart, why not stop it from happening to another?
* * * * *
Alan often dreamed of meeting Dima Janiszewski. He imagined the painter pale, still youthful except about the eyes, where wrinkles crackled out towards the hairline, his wise white hair all gone but for the rim around the back of his head and the sprouts from the inner ear. They would be together in a smallish, cozy studio, Alan perched atop a stool in front of a bare canvas, the master beside him, a brush resting in his hand. While the scent of fresh paint prickled their sinuses, the sole sound the elder painter’s hot breath pouring from his nostrils, bristling the frills of his mustache, Dima Janiszewski would show Alan exactly how he had combined the anatomical understanding of Leonardo with the quivering pathos of Matisse. He would show him how the hand, dipping and screwing and slashing and diving, could reveal the human depths in an earlobe, could tell a story in a cheek.
Alan’s dream, however, came true without his knowing it. For the old man was slouched atop a toilet bowl in a bathroom that smelled of hospital hallways, gazing dumbly at the dirtied floor tiles and holding not a brush in his hand, but his rebellious genitals. He was pissing. It looked and sounded uncomfortable, the stream exiting in energetic but broken intervals, a bassy splash and then, in the brief interlude, the hint of a wince in the old man’s eyes. His face was dark and loose. It resembled a paper lunch bag, balled up and unsuccessfully smoothed out again.
“You can tell I’m nervous,” the old man told the tiles, and then looked over towards his visitor. “I always sit down to piss when I’m nervous. It’s just smarter, really,” he continued, once again to the floor. And then, to his bewildered visitor, he asked “You need this thing?” and pointed down.
“No, no. Just washing my hands,” Alan said, and went to do so. When he went to get a paper towel he noticed the old man looking at him again. But he dropped his eyes immediately. To avoid any awkwardness, Alan asked, “What is it you’re so nervous about?”
“Long story,” he said, and looked over to Alan. The old man considered the younger. His eyes lingered momentarily on the feet. The rims of his sneakers were caked in dried paint. The tops, too, were mottled, smears and spots of color crisscrossing and clashing with one another. Even the bottoms of his pants had paint on them, just a few dribbles, looking fresh, as if made earlier that morning. The old man ventured a guess, “You’re a painter.”
Alan said, “Yeah,” alarmed but not too alarmed, believing he exuded a painterly air.
“I tried my hand at painting, when I was real young.”
“Oh yeah?” Alan said, almost patronizingly.
“Loved it. Really did,” he reminisced towards the tiles. Then he peered up at Alan, grinning. “Great for getting the ladies, isn’t it?” He laughed. His feeble skin—like beaten burlap—looked to rip about the stressed mouth.
Alan smirked in reply. He asked, “You stopped?”
The old man opened his mouth but didn’t speak. He just showed the untidy row of his bottom teeth. “Not exactly,” he finally said. He confessed that he was never good with words, with explaining himself. So he explained another.
He said, “There’s this story about Manet—” (He stopped, looking up to ask Alan, “You know Manet?” “Of course.”) “—Well there’s this story. It’s buried somewhere in his correspondence. His wife is dying, and he’s at her bedside, her deathbedside, and she’s saying her last words and all. They know she’s on her way out. Minutes, we’re talking. And they all know. The doctors do, Edouard does, even Suzanne does—that’s the wife. And as she sputters out those final words, he can’t even listen. He doesn’t hear her. He’s staring down at her and all he can think of, all he can think of as her lips slow and stop, as she dies and then is dead—all he can think about is how he’d paint this certain shade of pink in her face.”
“…”
“I used to tell everyone that story, when I was real young. A defense, sort of.”
Awed, Alan reflected on the story. He felt it said it all, encapsulated and celebrated what it was to be a painter.
“I used to tell it,” the old man said, “proud of it. Something or other like that.” He looked up at Alan and pressed his lips together. He returned his gaze to the tiles to continue. “But it’s pride like you’re proud of a wart. And one morning a while back—a while back but still not soon enough—I reread it, this story, and it was all different. Something new. These same words weren’t the same. Then the question, it came: is it responsibility, is it loyalty, if you can’t help but do it? Excuses, you know…proud of a wart. You see, it’s a curse as much as a blessing.” He held his hands up oddly, placing one over the other, then switching them. “It’s not above. It’s beside…maybe below even. The ups and downs everyone’s got…the stuff of life…the grist…” The old man pressed on, but Alan had stopped listening some time ago. All he could think about was how all Manet could think about was how he’d paint that certain shade of pink in his wife’s face.
Alan left the bathroom while the old man stammered to the tiles below him. He left, fully and finally convinced that he must pursue his dreams, that he must go after his hero and learn his lessons.
* * * * *
“You can get up now.”
Ava rose from the couch and slipped her arms back into her blouse. As she buttoned it, from the bottom to the top, she walked to the canvas, watching as the wisps of charcoal began to announce themselves as her shapes, to become containers for her colors.
It’s beautiful, she thought. Or maybe she said it. She wasn’t sure. Either way, in between flicks of his brush, the painter, never once removing his gaze from his creation, answered,
“You’re beautiful.”
So she responded, telling her lover, “I wish I could keep it.” Or maybe this time it was only a thought. For he made no response. He did pause for a moment, an intent look on his face, as if he might. But the artist did not speak. With another flick of his brush he colored in her cheek.
Jarrett Lerner is a sophomore majoring in English.