Belinda Chapter 6

About eleven that morning she woke up screaming. I came down as fast as I

could. For a moment she didn't know where she was, who I was. Then she closed

her eyes and put her arms around me.

I sat there beside the bed until she was asleep again. She looked tiny,

curled up under the quilts. I smoked a cigarette, thought a lot about her and

me, about falling for her, and then I went back to painting.

About two o'clock she came up into the attic. She looked relaxed and

absolutely cheerful.

I was still in the middle of some detail work on the punk nude figure of her

on the carousel horse and she stood watching me quietly. The main part of the

painting was done and I thought it was spectacular. She didn't say anything.

I put my arm around her and kissed her.

"Look, there's a gallery opening this afternoon for a friend of mine," I

said. "A good sculptor name of Andy Blatky. It's his first one-man show,

Union Street, fancy, sort of a big break. You want to go with me?"

"Sure, I'd love to," she said. She tasted like vanilla wafers.

I started to wipe the brushes.

She moved away and spent a long time checking out the roach and rat pictures.

Barefoot in her flannel gown, she looked like an angel. Seems the little

girls of long ago in my church parish had dressed like that for a procession

at Christmas midnight mass. Only thing she needed was paper wings.

No comment on the roach and rat paintings either, just her warm sweet

presence and the knowledge, the splendid knowledge that she was here to stay.

I told her I'd put her things in the guest room. That could be her private

place. Yes, she said, she found all that. Beautiful brass bed in there. Like

a big crib with the side rails. Everything in the house was beautiful, like

the sets for an old-fashioned play.

I smiled, but her comment made me feel uncomfortable. Settings for a play,

Alex talking about Mother's room in New Orleans-I wanted to put all that out

of my mind.

After a quick shower she came down looking splendid. She had on a beautiful

old tweed suit, a little worn in spots but exquisitely tailored. She looked

very jaunty in the little tapered jacket. Snow white turtleneck sweater

underneath. Pair of vintage alligator pumps probably made before she was

born.

I had never seen her like this before, without a costume. And she was the

shining expensive girl I'd only glimpsed that first afternoon, her hair

brushed free, her makeup only a little blush on her cheeks and the perfectly

applied candy lipstick.

She gobbled a bowl of cereal, smoking all the time, belted down a Scotch with

precious little water, in spite of my protests, and then we took off in the

late afternoon sunshine for Union Street.

I was pretty high from the lack of sleep. I felt wonderful, maybe even as

wonderful as she looked.

"I want you to know something," I said, as we were coasting along Divisadero

Street. "No matter what I said about never showing those paintings, it's

pretty damned exciting for me doing them." Silence.

I glanced over to see her smiling at me in a rather knowing way, her hair

blowing softly around her face in the breeze, her eyes glistening. She took a

drag off her cigarette and the smoke disappeared.

"Look, you're the artist," she said finally. "I can't tell you what to do

with your pictures. I shouldn't have tried."

But it had a defeated sound to it. She had moved in with me, she wasn't going

to fight with me anymore, she felt she couldn't. "Say what you really feel,"

I said.

"OK. What's the big excuse for never showing all those others? The stuff with

the bugs and the rats?"

Here we go again, I thought. Everybody asks. They have to. And so would she,

of course.

"I know all your work," she said. "I've seen it in Berlin and Paris and I had

the big coffee-table book before I-"

"Ran away from home."

"-Right. And I used to have every book you ever did, even the early stuff,

The Night before Christmas and The Nutcracker. I never saw anything like

those grotesque things back there, the ones with the houses falling apart.

And you've dated them all. They go all the way back to the sixties. So why

are they locked up like that?"

"Not fit to show," I said.

"Ruin the old career because the little girls would scream 'Eeek, a mouse!' "

"You know much about painting?" I asked her.

"Probably more than you think," she said with a little teenage bravado. Just

a tiny crack in the adult poise. Subtle lift to her baby-soft chin as she

exhaled the smoke. "Oh, yeah?"

"Grew up in the Prado for starters," she said. "Used to go there every day

with my nurse, practically memorized Hieronymus Bosch. Spent a couple of

summers in Florence with a Nanny who didn't want to do anything but go to the

Uffizi."

"And you liked it?"

"Loved it. Loved the Vatican, too. When I was ten, I used to hang out at the

Jeu de Paume in Paris. I'd rather go there or the Pompidou than go to the

movies. I was sick of the movies. Damned sick of the movies. When I was in

London, it was the Tate and the British Museum. I've put in my time on

capital A art."

"Pretty impressive," I said.

We were making all the green lights, and the sad, faded Victorians were

giving our now to the restored mansions of the Marina. Ahead was the sight

that never fails to stun me, the distant mountains of Marin under a perfect

sky, cradling the brilliantly blue water of San Francisco Bay.

"All I'm trying to say is, I'm no Valley girl who can't tell a Mondrian from

a place mat."

I broke up. "That puts you ahead of me," I said, "by a long way. I don't know

what the hell to think about abstract art. I never did."

"You're a primitive, you know it?" she said. "A primitive who knows how to

draw. But back to the roach and rat paintings-"

"You sound like Newsweek magazine," I said. "And you're hurting my feelings.

Little girls shouldn't do that to old men."

"Did Newsweek really say that?"

"Newsweek and Time and Artforum and Artweek and Art in America and Vogue and

Vanity Fair. And God knows who else, and now even the love of my life."

She gave me a little polite laugh.

"And let me tell you something else," I said. "I don't understand Andy

Blatky's sculptures any-more than I do Mondrian. So don't get me into any

over-hearable discussions in the gallery. I'll make a fool of myself.

Abstract art is just plain over my head."

She laughed in a sweet genuine way, but she was definitely surprised by what

I was saying. Then she said:

"Soon as I've had a look around the gallery, I'll answer any questions you

might have."

"Thanks, I knew I was a good judge of character. I can spot a girl who's made

the grand tour when I see one. And I bet you thought it was your charm."

Union Street was bustling with the usual sunny day expensive shopping crowd.

Florists, gift shops, ice cream parlors swam with well-heeled tourists and

locals. This was the place to buy a silk-screened hand towel, every brand of

semisoft cheese known to the Western world, a painted egg. Even the corner

grocery had turned its fruits and vegetables into artifacts, heaping them

into pyramids in baskets. The fern bars and the outside cafés were packed.

The gallery doors were open. People blocked the busy sidewalk-usual mixture

of the bohemian and the well to do complete with the inevitable plastic

glasses of white wine. I slowed, looking for a parking space.

"OK," she said, tapping my arm. "I've done the grand tour and I know the

territory. Now back to the rat and roach paintings. Why are they locked up?"

"All right. The stuff looks good, but it lacks something," I said. "It's an

easy kind of ugliness. The pictures don't mean like my books mean." She

didn't say anything right away.

"It's seductive, but it isn't finished, and if you look at it more clearly,

you'll see that I'm right."

"It's not just seductive, Jeremy, it's more interesting," she said.

I had spotted a parking spot right on Union. Now the trick was to get into

it. She was silent while I pulled up, then back, then angled, slamming the

bumper in front of me only twice.

I turned off the ignition. I was aware that I felt very uncomfortable. "That

is not true," I said.

"Jeremy," she said, "everybody knows what you've done, transcending the

children's books, making art and all that."

"Newsweek magazine again," I said.

"But the little girls in your books aren't even in original clothes. They're

in drag in a way, all got up like Victorian kids, the whole framework is

Victorian-it's Lang and Rackham and Greenaway and you know it."

"Watch your mouth, Belinda," I said. I was kidding. But underneath I didn't

like her challenging me. "The girls aren't in drag," I said. "They're in

dream clothes. It's all dream images. When you understand that, you'll

understand why the books work the way they do."

"Well, all I know is, the rat and roach paintings are original. They're crazy

and completely new."

Again I didn't respond. We were sitting with the sun coming down warmly on

the black leather cockpit of the little car, the sky above blue and open. I

wanted to argue, but then again I didn't.

"You know," I said, "sometimes I think it's a hell of a mess. I mean the

whole thing. Books, publishing, the critics. I think it's a series of traps.

And what makes me mad about my friends always praising those rat and roach

pictures to the stars is this: I know they don't work. And nobody wishes more

than I do that they did. If I thought they'd blow the lid off for me, I would

have shown them a long time ago." It felt like taking a deep breath to admit

all that. "What do you mean, 'blow the lid off'?" she asked.

I thought for a second. I watched her light another one of the clove

cigarettes, and I gestured for her to give me one. She gave me a light from

her own.

"I don't know exactly," I said, looking into her eyes and trying not to be

distracted by how pretty she was. "Sometimes I feel reckless about it all. I

feel like just-throwing it all up."

"But how?"

"I told you. I don't know. But I wish something violent would happen,

something unplanned and crazy. I wish I could just walk away from it all-you

know, like one of those painters who fakes his suicide or something so he can

slide off and go all the way back to square one as somebody else. If I were a

writer, I'd invent a pen name. I'd get out."

She studied me, not saying anything. But I don't think she understood. How

could she? I didn't understand myself.

"Sometimes," I went on, sort of taking advantage of her silence, "sometimes I

think my greatest achievement has been to make success out of a failure, to

make an evasion into art."

She hesitated for a moment, then she nodded.

"And what makes me mad," I said, "is when people point out the failure

involved as if I don't know it. And when they don't recognize the power of

the art I've made."

She took that in. Then she said:

"So you're telling me to get off your case."

"Maybe. Maybe what I'm saying is that if we're going to really know each

other for a long time, get used to me. Get used to the evasion. It's me."

Again she smiled, nodded. She said, "OK."

I got out of the car, and she was out before I could come around to open the

door for her. I kissed her. She slipped her arm in mine, and we moved into

the crowd in front of the gallery. I was getting addicted to these damned

cigarettes.

Through the open doors I could see the spartan white rooms and Andy Blatky's

mammoth enameled sculptures exquisitely lighted on their severe white

rectangular pedestals. How hard this must be for Andy, I thought, watching

the crowd flow and shift, backs often turned to the works themselves, glances

almost covert as if it wasn't proper to admire the exhibit. I had the urge to

turn around and split. But I wasn't going to do that.

We went through the first room and into an open courtyard, and here was a

giant work, its baked pearlescent surface seemingly alive in the sun, its

bulbous arms almost tenderly embracing each other. Modern art, I thought

bitterly. I love it because Andy did it, and it is beautiful, it really is,

this huge, muscular, powerful-looking thing, but what the hell does it mean.

"I wish I did understand it all," I muttered, still holding tight to Belinda.

"I wish I was connected. I wish I wasn't just a primitive to these people,

just a primitive who knew how to draw. Roaches, rats, dolls, kids-"

"Jeremy, I didn't mean that," she said suddenly, tenderly.

"No, honey, I know you didn't. I was thinking about the other two thousand

people who've said it. I was thinking about the way I always feel at moments

like this, kind of on the outside."

I wanted to touch Andy's sculpture, to run my hands all over it, but I didn't

know if that was allowed. And then I spotted Andy himself in the room behind

the courtyard, sort of slumped against the wall. Anybody would have known he

was the artist. He was the only one wearing sneakers and a fatigue jacket. He

was stroking his small black rabbinical-style beard, eyes vague behind tiny

wire-rimmed coin-sized glasses. He looked really upset.

I headed for him, vaguely aware that Belinda had veered off in another

direction, and by the time I was shaking his hand, she was lost in the crowd.

"Andy, it's great," I told him. "Terrific mounting, everything. The turnout

looks awfully good, too."

He knew I didn't really understand his stuff, never had. But he was glad to

see me, and he started mumbling right off about the damned gallery and how

they were bawling out people for putting out cigarettes in their damned

plastic cups. They were washing out and reusing the damned cups. How could

they carry on about a thing like that, the plastic cups? He had half a mind

to give them twenty dollars to cover it and tell them to shut up, but he

didn't have twenty dollars.

I said I did and would gladly do it for him, but then he was afraid to make

them mad.

"I know I should let it ride over me," he was saying, shaking his head, "but

goddamn it, it's my first one-man show."

"Well, the stuff couldn't look better," I said again, "and I'd buy that big

mother in the garden if it wouldn't mean hiding it where nobody would ever

see it in my backyard."

"Are you putting me on, Jeremy?"

I'd never bought anything of his because we both knew it didn't go with the

Victorian gingerbread and the damask and the dolls and all the other trash in

my house. (Stage set for a play!) But I felt so sick of that suddenly. I'd

always wanted one of his pieces. And why the hell not put my money where my

head was for once?

"Yeah," I said, "I want that one. I like that one. I could put it down in the

grass out there behind the deck. I'd like to see the sun come up on it. It's

beautiful, that much I do know."

He studied me trying to figure if this was just talk. He said if I bought it

and would lend it back to him with my name on it-courtesy of Jeremy Walker

for future exhibits, he didn't care if I put it in the bathroom. It would be

a terrific thing.

"Then it's sold. Shall I tell them, or do you want to tell them?"

"You tell them, Jeremy," he said. He was smiling and stroking his beard even

faster now, "but maybe you ought to think it over for a couple of days, you

know, like maybe you're not in your right mind right now."

"I've been doing some new work, Andy," I said. "Some really wild new things."

"Oh, yeah? Well I caught Looking for Bettina, and you did it again there,

Jeremy, you gave me a couple of real moments there-"

"Forget that stuff, Andy. I'm not talking about that at all. Someday soon I

want you to come over and see-" I stopped. Someday soon? I just drifted for a

second. Yeah, that piece would look great out there in the garden.

I caught a glimpse of Belinda far away from me, the pink sunglasses hiding

her eyes now, and in her hand was an illegal glass of white wine. My Belinda.

I spotted other friends, Sheila, a couple of writers I knew, my lawyer, Dan

Franklin, in fast conversation in the corner with a pretty woman two inches

taller than him.

People were looking at Belinda. Babymouth, white wine, pink glasses.

"Yeah?" Andy was waiting for me to finish. "What kind of new stuff, Jeremy?"

"Later, Andy, later. Where's the honcho? I want to buy that piece now."