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Chapter 11

Carolyn walked down the path beside Val Hunter’s house, her thoughts a confused jumble. How would she handle this with Paul? Not only was it impossible to maintain the secrecy of her friendship with Val, but how would she explain the painting? She regretted her impulsive act only in the moment before she remembered the gray peace of the painting and her feeling as she stood before it in the heat of Val Hunter’s house. No, she wanted that painting to hang in her house. She was lucky to have a chance to buy it—and she would buy it, no matter what Val said—and she was lucky to be able to afford it. But how to handle this with Paul?

“Why Carolyn, hello! What a surprise to see you over here!”

“Hello,” she said tightly to Dorothy Robinson, annoyed at being startled, that her thought process had been interrupted.

“You’ve been visiting Mrs. Hunter, how lovely. She and her boy are so nice. Don’t you think so?” She took a step closer to Carolyn, the point of her sharp nose quivering like the antenna of an insect. “Do you know them well?”

“No, not well.” Carolyn edged away from her, backing down the path. “I’ve got to run. Paul will be home soon—”

“You must come over, Carolyn, you and Paul. You will, won’t you?”

“Of course, Dorothy, but with each of us working different hours, well, you know…” Impatient and exasperated, she finally made her escape.

“I’ve bought a painting from Val Hunter.” She had decided that the best approach was direct—like the clean simplicity of a Val Hunter dive—but during the conviviality of dinner time. He was gnawing on a chicken wing, watching Peter Jennings report on the Reverend Jesse Jackson’s visit to Cuba. He looked away from the TV screen and toward her, blankly. “You did what?”

“I bought a painting. From Mrs. Hunter. Next door.”

“The Amazon? You don’t even know her.”

“We’ve talked a few times,” she said as casually as she could.

Dabbing at his lips with a napkin, he studied her. “Oh? You’ve never mentioned it.”

She shrugged to convey that she had not considered it important.

“It seems odd that you didn’t mention it. Talking to an Amazon who paints strikes me as unusual enough to be worth mentioning. Now I see the reason for the art books. I don’t see why you wouldn’t tell me.”

She was irked as much by his characterization of Val as by his inquisition. “Do you tell me everything that goes on during your day? You hardly mention anything at all. You’re never interested in my job—”

“Why did you buy this painting? An act of charity?”

Anger flared. “She’s very good. She’s a wonderful artist. Her work is displayed in a gallery.”

“Oh?” He looked taken aback. “Which one?”

How could she have been so stupid? She hadn’t thought to ask. “Venice, I don’t know where.”

“Venice,” he repeated. “Where all the loony tunes roller-skate.”

She said crossly, “Does she have to hang in the Metropolitan? I like her work. Isn’t that good enough?”

“How much was it?”

Swiftly she gauged her husband. Val had said: Whatever the traffic will bear. “Four hundred,” she said.



“Four hundred? Carolyn! You might have consulted me!” He stared at her.

“Oh, Paul.” She did not feign her disgust. “I spend almost that much on each of those dresses you insist I wear to your office parties.”

“That’s different. This is something for the house. What if I don’t like it?”

“I don’t think you’ll mind it. It’s a study of rain—really quite unobtrusive. It’ll fit in very nicely in the living room.”

He said sarcastically, “So you’ve even decided where it should hang.”

“Honey,” she said in her most conciliatory voice, “let’s not fight. If you don’t like it we can hang it in the garage.” Not very damn likely, she thought.

“Four hundred. For an amateur she’s pretty proud of her work.”

Anger flared again. “She is not an amateur. I told you her work is displayed in a gallery. She sells her work. I sell my work. You sell your work. Are we amateurs?”

“I don’t know anything about this so-called gallery and neither do you. Maybe she’s just giving you a line. And if she sells her work only to you, she’s an amateur.”

“You’re so quick to sneer and judge things—”

“I’m not prejudging anything,” he said in a tone edged with ice. “Not till I see this painting you went ahead and bought without even a thought for my opinion. It must be these new hours of yours—you’ve been testy and strange ever since you’ve been on them.”

His voice softened. “Why don’t you invite Mrs. Hunter over, maybe for dinner? If you’re that impressed with her, I’d like to meet her.”

Nonplussed by this unexpected tack she blurted, “I don’t think you’d care for her.”

“Now you’re the one who’s prejudging.”

“She doesn’t seem your kind of person, that’s all,” she said lamely, feeling suddenly that she had lost control. “There’s her son too, he’s only ten—”

“Invite him too. Wednesday’s the Fourth of July—invite them over, we’ll barbecue. The kid’ll love the pool. Okay?”

“I’ll ask her,” she said reluctantly.

The next day during her lunch hour she drew four hundred dollars from their bank account, and back at her office consulted the Valley yellow pages. After work she drove out along Laurel Canyon to an art supply store. Afterward she stopped again at the library and checked out several more books. She had the remainder of this afternoon and all weekend to read.

On Monday she changed into shorts and a blouse and walked out to the pool to greet Val. “So how was backpacking?”

“Hot as hell. But great.” Val had emerged from the pool and was toweling her hair. “How was your weekend?”

“Boring,” Carolyn admitted after a moment of reflection. “Will you help me with some packages in the car? Then can I come over and get my painting?”

As she looked into the trunk of Carolyn’s car Val said accusingly, “What’s all this?”

“A gift. If you can give me a gift I can give you a gift.”

“No. You can’t do this.”

“Of course I can. I can do anything I want.” Carolyn chuckled, enjoying herself. “I’ll take these packages if you carry the easel.”

Carolyn lowered her packages to the work table in Val’s house, staring at the painting propped against the box, framed in a paper-thin band of silver. “It’s perfect. I love it more now than when I first saw it.”

“I think the framing is right, it extends the painting to the edge. And the varnishing went well—only took one coat.”

“Is that unusual?”

“No, just lucky. Often there’s a flat spot or some matte areas and you have to give it another coat.” Val was opening a package. “Holy Christmas morning,” she said softly, “will you look at all this. Sable brushes.” She picked one up, stroked the bristles with sensual delicacy.

“The woman at Carter Sexton said that painters always need brushes, and sable is best. I told her you made your own colors; she said to get basic colors and lots of white, dry pigments and linseed oil. So everything here is her suggestion—the watercolors and watercolor paper, it’s their best. And the roll of linen canvas.”

“Even a carrying case.” Val’s voice was a purr of pleasure. She had unlatched the wooden case filled with tubes of watercolor. “I’ve always needed a decent case to carry supplies when I paint somewhere besides here.”

Carolyn watched, smiling, as Val touched the tubes of paint with caressing fingertips. Impulsively she hugged Val, and was surprised by the softness of her body; she had expected muscular solidity. “Can you come over for a few minutes and help me hang my painting?” She knew exactly where it would go—across from where she usually sat on the sofa, so that she could glance up and see it.

“It’s interesting,” Paul said.

Carolyn clearly understood that he disliked the painting. “I think so too,” she said relentlessly. “I think it’s wonderful, I’ve never seen a painting I like so much.”

“That’s going a little overboard, don’t you think? I don’t know that it looks best in the living room—”

“I definitely do. I love it, Paul,” she stated, defying him to deny her the pleasure she felt in this painting. “I love it.”

He nodded. “I’m starved.”

As she served their dinner she tried to recall another time she had successfully asserted herself on any issue of importance during their marriage. She could not remember any. She could not remember trying before.

At dinner, as they watched Peter Jennings report on the Reagan administration’s unhappiness with the Reverend Jackson’s activities in Cuba, he said, “Tell me, are all Mrs. Hunter’s paintings like that one?”

She replied carefully, “What do you mean, ‘like that one’?”

“Modern.” He grinned, trimmed a piece of lamb neatly from the bone. “Does she paint navels in the middle of foreheads?”

She said coldly, “Is that your sole understanding of modern art?”

“Come on, Princess. I was just trying to be funny.”

She knew better; she knew he had not really accepted the painting in the living room and this was an indirect attack on it.

“Forgive my levity,” he said sarcastically. “I should have realized you’re an art critic now that you’ve read a few books.”

She remembered the pride she felt during the past weekend when she looked at examples of cubistic art in her books and suddenly understood why the concept had been so daring and exciting—that it had led the entire revolution into modern art because artists for the first time had looked at an object as it would appear from different angles, in different places, at different times. She said, “I’m only glad I don’t have your sneering ignorance.”

He contemplated her.

She had always disliked this aspect of him, this feeling of being under the microscope of his gaze in cold, evaluating analysis, as if he had laid his emotions aside like a scientist. “I’ve never closed my mind to anything,” he finally said, his voice uninflected. “Did you invite her for the Fourth?”

She had decided that she would wait, and if he did not mention it again…“I’ll ask her tomorrow.”

She lay on her raft next to Val in peaceful, quiet companionship. She had applied suntan lotion so that she could remain in the sun longer.

“I’ve been reading about different forms of art,” she said. “I know expressionist art comes out of emotion and it’s individual and personal art—but from what I’ve seen, your work isn’t abstract. Yet you say it’s expressionist.”

“I love artists like Rothko who work with pure color and elemental shapes. And sometimes I use distortion to show greater intensity of feeling. But often my work is figurative, even representational, like the desert scenes you saw the other day. But it still comes out of my emotion…For example, I might choose to paint the bark of a tree red.”

“Why?” As Val chuckled she said, “I’m sorry to be so dumb.”

“You’re not being dumb. It’s a good question, the kind Neal asks. Makes me check my premises. I remember reading somewhere that the only ones who can really force us to reevaluate our lives and perceptions are children and artists. Carrie, let’s say the tree I’m painting is dying against a sunset sky. It’s sunset for the old tree too, the end for it, just like the end of a day for us, with a glorious red that actually means death.”

“I see,” Carolyn murmured, thinking that she truly did see.

Val chuckled again. “If you ever wanted to see people skewered for dumb questions you should have been in my art class in New York. You could ask Kolvinsky anything, but if he thought your question was stupid he just wouldn’t answer.”

Carolyn laughed. “Did he ever refuse to answer you?”

“Frequently, the old bastard.” She laughed along with Carolyn. “Kolvinsky taught me, though. Opened my eyes like never before to color and light. I see the unique colors of the California landscape thanks to him…She trailed off. “Died three years ago. I’ll never forget him.” In soft reminiscence she continued, “Tiny man, spiky gray hair like nails in his head. Always wore a clean white shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, plaid ties with stains—God knows what they were. Terrible old baggy pants, looked like he’d stolen them from a bum. Always wore the same brown shoes, paint stains all over the toes. Always at me to sleep with him, never gave up. I guess he was fascinated with the idea of bedding a woman a foot taller than he was. The old bastard,” she repeated, chuckling in affectionate memory. “The only thing he was really wrong about was where you could work. He insisted a painter had to be in New York or Paris.”

“Did your parents send you to art school?” She realized she knew virtually nothing about Val’s background.

“Just the year in New York. Otherwise I’ve pretty much scratched for myself. Dad was a wildcatter—about as perilous as professional gambling. It was feast or famine in my family. Mostly feast when I was growing up and mostly feast for my brother Charlie—he’s six years older and has a degree, a mining engineer. Takes after Dad, been all over the world, in Brazil since April. Anyway, when I was old enough it was famine time again. Dad did manage to pay for the year in New York.”

“What about your mother?”

Val sighed. “She’s still in Connecticut. Lives with two spinster relatives. Dad retired five years ago on his Social Security and military pension. Came out here to be with Neal and me. She wouldn’t come.” She sighed again. “I don’t know if it was all those years of being on the edge with Dad, but she’s a born-again Christian now and thinks Dad and I are heathens and I’m a tool of the devil because I’m bringing up Neal without God…you get the picture. I’ve always embarrassed her. My height was something she couldn’t fix—you know, like giving someone a nose job. And she hated the whole idea of me becoming an artist.” Val’s smile was wry. “All things considered, I’m glad Mother’s in Connecticut. Mother thinks modern art is mostly fraudulent and quite possibly pornographic.”

Carolyn was looking at her sympathetically. “That’s such a shame. Your own mother so narrow-minded when she should be so proud. I think art is exciting. It is to me…I’m learning how to look at it.”

“Art is exciting, Carrie, not because it’s my profession. It tells us who we are and where we are, makes sense of life as life actually is. I think that’s why there’s so much resistance to it.”

Concealing a smile, Carolyn said, “Some people’s whole idea of modern art is navels painted in the middle of foreheads.”

Val laughed. “It’s interesting how strongly some people reject a portrayal of the human body rearranged. It’s a gut level reaction—as if their whole sense of identity is threatened.”

“Who’s your favorite painter, Val?”

“Oh God, I don’t know.” Val squinted at her in the brilliant sunlight. “I couldn’t choose one. Well, maybe Cezanne, he was the first to bring a whole new experience of seeing…And the great colorists—Matisse might be the greatest, but then van Gogh brought the whole spectrum of color to full strength…And Gauguin, his simplification of form and all that emotion…Turner, of course. Klee, his theories of color like musical harmonies…Marin and Wyeth for watercolors…Kandinsky…DeKooning, his draftsmanship and subject matter are so incredible…O’Keeffe, Frankenthaler—”

“Enough,” Carolyn said, smiling. She closed her eyes and drowsed, sleepy and contented in the sun. When she opened her eyes it was to an expanse of blue and the pool marker a distance from her that read nine feet. “Val,” she uttered without thinking.

“Right behind you.” Val paddled quickly up to her.

“I dozed off.” Carolyn reached to Val’s raft, took her hand.

“Go ahead and doze off again. I’ve got you now.”

Val’s eyes closed. Carolyn lay still and peaceful, drifting on slow currents. Val’s big hand was unexpectedly soft, and Carolyn was aware as she dozed of its warm protectiveness, the cushionlike flesh of the fingertips.

When she opened her eyes, Val was looking at her. “What does your husband think of the painting?”

She knew she had hesitated too long in answering. “I like it more than he does.” She was relieved by Val’s easy smile.

“Art is purely subjective, Carrie. People disagree all the time about all the art forms.”

“Paul hasn’t had much exposure to art,” Carolyn ventured.

Val said lightly, “I hope disagreeing about my painting won’t start a war between you.”

Val lay with her eyes closed again, trailing Carolyn’s hand through the water between them. Her fingers traced the shape of the hand, over the fingers and fingernails, over the wedding ring.

Carolyn said, “Paul wants me to ask you and Neal over the evening of the Fourth. For a barbecue, to swim…”

Val did not open her eyes. Her lips turned up in a mischievous quirk. “Oh? Will you be there too?”

The two laughed together. Val said, her eyes amused, “I know all about husbands, Carrie. Neal will enjoy the pool. I’ll do what I can to pass inspection.”

 



Date: 2015-02-03; view: 577


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