History of Art Page 4

  I is a full professor of music and new media at a major research university. He is hot shit. For a while, he perceives no ironic distance between who he is and who others take him to be: hot shit, inside and out. He remembers the particular kind of asshole he was in school and realizes that in some ways his confidence and focus benefitted him, and in others did him harm: He performed poorly in subjects he didn’t care for, and no one reached out to guide him because he was such a jerk. He spots students like him—actually, they flock to him. As gently as possible, he tries to convince them to be less like him, but the evidence is more persuasive than his words; he invites them to his home to make music and they see all his instruments, the electronic equipment, the artwork. He disappears in the middle of the semester to travel to international conferences to which he has been invited as distinguished guest. He watches them watch him, those assholes, and he doesn’t know what to do. “I’ve been lucky,” he tells them. “You’re a fucking genius,” they say. Because of him, they believe in themselves utterly, believe they will one day prevail.

  I remembers H, the real fucking genius, who could take music centuries old and make it new. When H conducted, they were capable of surprising themselves and each other. He thinks often of his fellow students. No one had more heart than F; every event touched her, and she transformed it and her emotions into wondrous performances. He wonders how she’s getting along, what gifts she bestows on whom. And J, that crazy bastard. Did he harness his epic rage? He thinks about D’s toughness, how they tormented her about her big shirts. No one could sing like her. G and E worked like devils, never showing the signs of wear or resentment that often come from working harder than everyone else. A had been so humble and sane; he was probably running an orchestra somewhere. B was changing the country, motivating people to get off their asses and really make a difference. She could have done anything; she could have been the college professor. But she was helping others in what, to I, was the nobler cause. And C made millions with his ingenious tunes—popular music so fresh and surprising that I had to pull his car to the shoulder to listen once or twice. C pleased himself and yet managed to delight others. I could not say the same of his own work, which mostly no one outside his small circle cared about. This is what he’d wanted.

  Even so, I knows that he has had more success than he deserves. To compensate, he devotes himself to nurturing his students; maybe they will be better than he is, in every sense; maybe they will become people who fully deserve their success. In this way, over the years, I becomes less and less like the asshole he once was.

  THE CONFUSED HUSBAND

  He met the woman he was to marry, but she didn’t have a limp. The old witch who’d read his cards had said his wife would have a limp. He had understood the crone’s message: His bride, lovely and perfect in every other way, would have a malformed leg; his life would be one of hardship, working to support and care for her. He told the crone, It doesn’t matter. I’ll love her anyway. He felt very noble. The witch swore at him in her dialect and spat in the dirt. Obviously, she had not been so lucky.

  So he was surprised when he met his bride-to-be, that she didn’t have a limp. In fact, he found her exquisite in every way: smooth olive skin, black wavy hair that shone, and deep brown eyes. He admired her back, the way her muscles moved under the bodice of her dress as she drew water from the well. That she didn’t have a limp troubled him, but only for a while. When they walked in the square, he noted the approving glances of his neighbors. At their wedding, amid all the dancing and well-wishing, he sensed the pleasure people took from the match. For a shadow of a moment, a chill shivered his spine, but then it was time to carry his new wife home. The husband ran through the streets with his bride in his arms. The wife was wrapped head to toe in a veil made by the women of the town, and the scent from her glowing skin steamed up through the delicate lace. The husband couldn’t wait to get her home. “I love you! I love you!” he cried. “I love you!” ­replied the wife. The husband threw the wife down on their bed and unwrapped her. They embraced, and they weren’t careful about it, because they were young, and their bodies were perfectly sound.

  Years passed, and the husband did not grow into the man he had envisioned. Instead of a quietly suffering, tolerant, and impoverished man who was generous with his crippled wife, he became a prosperous and influential leader in the town. The wife came from a good family, and their good fortune rubbed off on him. He didn’t have to think very hard; every choice he made was correct and delivered to him more wealth, security, and respect. When the townspeople had problems or a difficult decision to make, they went to him, and he was thoughtful and decisive. The wife, as she aged, grew even more beautiful. Her back never bent under the weight of her chores, and the husband still found her irresistible. He often sneaked home in the middle of the day to interrupt her housework with his advances. She always returned his interest. Sometimes the husband would pretend to change his mind, so the wife would pretend that she insisted, and she’d chase him through the fields until he let himself be caught. Their many children always survived infancy, and they grew to be strong, clever, and cheerful.

  After a time, the husband grew weary of his role in the town. No matter how much advice he gave, no matter how many problems he solved, always people came to his door with their sorrows—often the same people over and over. Their suffering was like a disease from which they could never recover. He hated the way they humbled themselves, their eyes downcast. Defeat whined in their voices, and the sound burrowed under his skin. Sometimes, when he saw them approach, he slipped out the back door. As he fled, the husband would recall the life he’d previously thought his destiny, and how willingly he would have embraced it, had it been his fate. Why didn’t these people understand their role—to bear up with quiet dignity, to persevere nobly?

  He stalked home after one such episode, having wandered the surrounding hills of the town in an attempt to calm his mind. His wife had left a lantern burning at the gate, and the smell of rabbit stew drifted out to him. He watched her move—setting the table, pouring the wine. He remembered the life he had imagined: trudging home from the fields to care for his invalid wife, supping on a broth of root vegetables, never quite having enough, always a little hungry. He’d fall asleep quickly, sleep hard, and wake up with stiff muscles. He’d cook breakfast for his wife, massage her aching, deformed limb, and go off to the fields for another day of labor, satisfied he’d done right.

  But here were his beautiful, healthy, strong wife and their beautiful, healthy children. What did that make him? Lucky. Where was the nobility in that? All his material goods, his wife and children, he knew, if no one else did, that he’d done nothing to deserve them. How ill-suited he was to his life, how it chafed. He understood suffering and knew how it was done, far better than he understood happiness and good fortune. Hadn’t he been raised by his poor mother for a life of hardship? What now was this? He had grown soft. He’d had no chance to show how tough he could be—not like his beseeching townspeople, who had every opportunity to prove themselves. He felt cheated.

  During supper, when the children giggled happily and sang snippets of their songs, he roared at them. They were surprised, but not afraid. His wife thought he’d had a difficult day or wasn’t feeling well, so she sent the children to bed early. She gave the husband some brandy, and he threw his cup on the hearth. “Can’t you see?” he cried. “You’re killing me!”

  He became critical of the way she did things around the house. He was more inclined to stay home than tend to business, so he had more opportunity to find fault. At first the wife thought he might be sick, and she called the doctor. The husband swore at the doctor, and chased him away with an axe. The wife couldn’t see anything wrong. She ticked off in her head all the problems they didn’t have: no deaths in the family; they didn’t owe money; the children were healthy and smart enough. “I don’t understand you,” she said, with great sympathy. “Please don’t worry. Everything is fine. You�
�re a good husband, a good father.”

  The husband shook his head and wept. Had he married a simpleton? Lately he’d been a terrible husband and father—drunk, irritable, impatient.

  “I don’t know why you’re doing this to yourself,” the wife said. “You have no right to feel sorry for yourself. You have everything. You’ve been given everything.”

  With that, the husband roared out of his chair and ran at his wife. Not one to take a beating, for she knew she didn’t deserve it, she ran away from him. He chased her through the fields, shouting, “You’re killing me! All of you! Killing me!” The wife shouted back, “You’re insane!” It was while she shouted over her shoulder at her husband that she stumbled into a gopher hole and broke her ankle. The bone never set properly, and ever after the wife walked with a limp. She didn’t let it get her down, and she carried on—gay and industrious as ever.

  The husband took his wife’s misfortune hard. He stayed indoors and neglected his business. His children avoided him, and the townspeople no longer trusted his judgment. Eventually his business failed, so the wife packed their belongings, took the husband and their children, and moved in with her parents. The wife’s parents felt lucky to have a house so filled with life. They treated the husband humanely, with love and kindness, as they would any invalid.

  MAGNOLIA GRANDIFLORA

  I would like to tell my sister Janice about the dream I had last night. I was in the kitchen, getting ready for Christmas dinner or some other holiday meal. I opened the freezer to find the skulls of our parents staring back at me. I panicked. The peas were freezer-burned. I had forgotten to replace the scotch, and where was my father’s favorite ashtray, the resting place for all his cigar-ends? I squinted at my parents’ eye pits. Behind me, Dean muttered something about keeping the door open too long. I blinked, and before me sat a bag of hoary peas, a few disks of pork, and an ice cream cake from the Fourth of July that had half-melted and reformed as confectionary slag in the bottom of the box.

  I would like to tell Janice about this when she comes over tonight with her husband, Paul, but I probably won’t. We’re having New Year’s Day at our place this year. Dean makes ham rolls at the kitchen table while I set up the bar. I wipe each thick shot glass and plunk it down on the sideboard. The glasses came from Dad’s bar, and they are heavy and solid.

  “You should put out the teapot Janice gave you,” Dean says.

  For Christmas, Janice gave us a ceramic teapot. It looks like something a Who from Whoville might excrete. It’s very original. It just doesn’t go with anything. I say as much to Dean.

  “It would be a nice gesture, though, to put it out.”

  I consent to this and put it on the counter. “On a scale of one to ten, hideous.”

  “Be nice,” Dean says.

  “I’m always nice.”

  He turns to show me his raised eyebrow.

  “What?” I’m already imagining packing the teapot and its tray into a box and dropping it off at Goodwill.

  Janice and Paul come exactly on time, bearing topiary. The topiary is surprisingly normal and lovely: an elegant tower of holly balls in a gold-painted pot. “I love it.” I’m so taken with it that, for a moment, I block the door and Paul and Janice can’t get in.

  “I really, really love it.” I take the topiary from Paul and turn it to inspect the glossy dark leaves and red berries. Dean gently tugs on my sleeve. I hop away from the door, letting Paul and Janice enter.

  “Well,” my sister says, managing to sound both smug and incredulous, “I’m glad you like it.”

  She has brought black-eyed peas—a southern tradition, she says. Paul is from Louisiana, and he wants to make us Pimm’s Cups, a New Orleans specialty. “I don’t want to interfere with your traditions. If there’s something else, I . . .”

  “No, no!” Dean and I won’t let him finish. I hate that Paul is so careful with us, that Janice has instructed him to be so, and that he is kind enough—or scared enough of Janice—to do it.

  “Pimm’s Cups all around,” I say.

  Paul worries about his parents while we listen in the living room. His parents ran a grocery in the Marigny, downriver of the French Quarter, until they retired a few years ago. They moved to Mobile and hate it, so they’re moving back to their old neighborhood in the spring. As we chat, I squint at the floor. The glare of the waxed hardwood gives me a headache. Dean is an ardent polisher and waxer, whereas I prefer things scuffed.

  “I mean, they’re old,” Paul says. “What will they do there?”

  “Travel?” I say, because I imagine that’s what retired people do.

  “They only like New Orleans,” Janice says. “It’s ruined them for other places.”

  “So they’ll be happy there,” my sweet Dean says. I kiss his forehead from where I sit on his lap.

  “You’re breaking my legs,” he whispers.

  I hop up. “I think I need another of these New Orleans specials.”

  Paul gets up to make our drinks.

  “I wish they lived closer,” he says. “I worry about the call in the middle of the night—not getting there in time.”

  “Well,” I say, “they have to go sometime.”

  Janice snorts. “Nice.”

  Paul nods. “You’re right.”

  “Anyway,” I say, “it’s not like they’re ever really gone.”

  Dean looks tired, and Janice says something quietly to him that I can’t hear. Paul seems pensive. I change the subject.

  “Where did you get the topiary? It’s charming.”

  “Paul made it,” Janice says.

  “Really?” I touch Paul’s arm. “I had no idea you did such things.”

  “Neither did I,” laughs Paul. “I just woke up one morning with this image in my head. Luckily it was a Saturday. I went right to the nursery for materials.”

  “If it had been a workday, he never would have done it,” Janice says.

  “That’s right,” he says. “I would have been at my desk at 7:00 a.m.”

  Paul is one of those brokers who works very, very hard, not the kind that comes to work at noon in golf clothes.

  “He did great business over the holidays,” Janice says. “The angels were really popular. We were at the festival three hours, and we sold out of everything—bells, angels, mistletoe balls, reindeer.”

  “I wish I had known,” I say. “I would have gone.”

  Janice blushes, and Paul gives her a look that tells me he thought I did know.

  “It slipped my mind,” Janice says, looking at her lap. “The holidays! So crazy.”

  Paul and I ignore her. “If things keep up this year,” he says, “after Christmas I can probably quit my job.”

  “Wow.” I look at him, shaking my head. “I mean really—wow.” Can you imagine? Waking up one morning with an idea like that—something simple like topiary—that changes your entire life? For a moment I imagine the contents of my parents’ shop, now my shop, and its cartoon disappearance: poof! Then nothing. I insist on opening a bottle of champagne to celebrate Paul’s new talent.

  Janice follows me into the kitchen. She leans against the counter. “I see you’ve got the teapot out.”

  “Yes!” My enthusiasm suggests I will profess my love and admiration for it. “It’s very original.”

  “I didn’t think you’d like it,” she says. “But the topiary. You do surprise me sometimes.”

  “I think Paul’s talent is marvelous.”

  “It is nice,” Janice says. She’s more subdued than usual, and when I look up from the cork I’ve been trying to pop, she looks lost, as if there’s a vast sea before her and she doesn’t know where to fix her rudder. The look scares me, so I ask about work. Janice runs a small vocational agency; she helps career castaways and misfits find their true professions. Sometimes they just find jobs; sometimes they find they are totally different people than they’d imagined. Once, a fifty-five-year-old woman, laid off by the battery factory where she had worked for
thirty years, took a test and discovered she would make a fine game warden. In two years she was a park ranger in the Keys, carrying a rifle and protecting herons, gators, and park visitors. In another success story, the marketing director of a software company found satisfaction as a mail carrier. Janice helped him realize that his unhappiness stemmed from too many hours indoors.

  I offer Janice champagne in the old-fashioned saucer-type glass. “Who have you helped lately? Tell me a good one.”

  Janice sips, shakes her hair back, and says, “I don’t help anyone.”

  “Pish-posh,” I say, and she flinches. “You’re fabulous and you know it.”

  She takes up the hem of my organza hostess apron—one that belonged to our mother—and fingers the lovely diaphanous fabric. She traces an embroidered daisy with her thumb, and before I can stop her, she’s poked straight through it. I slap her hand away, clocking her with the enormous diamond dinner ring on my right hand. She looks at me, shocked.

  “Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.” A red splotch blossoms on the back of her hand.

  Janice licks her lips, a bad habit that chaps her skin. Our mother used to yell at her for it, that and gum chewing. “Dry rot,” she says, looking satisfied. “Guess you’ll have to throw it out.”

  “I have no intention of throwing it away. I’ll fix it,” I say. “No harm done.”

  We stay up until three, buoyed by Pimm’s and champagne. In the living room, Dean and I sit opposite Janice and Paul, and I look from Paul’s topiary to Paul, and back again. I’ve never seen a new thing with such importance. The clusters of leaves—glossy and compact—seem ready to burst from their arrangement. The brushstrokes in the gold paint reflect tiny worlds of lamplight; each stroke shows Paul’s hand. Yet it is a very simple thing. I look up to find Janice staring, too.