Charles De Lint - Memory and Dream

She resisted the urge to put a finger to her nose to see if it started to grow at the lie.

Albina touched her arm. “Izzy?”

Izzy focused on her friend and gave her a vague smile. “I’m sorry. I got sidetracked.”

“About those paintings you have finished—these experiments. I’d be interested in having a look at them.”

Izzy shook her head. “Sometimes you have to do things just for yourself,” she said, trying to explain.

“It’s like, if everything you do goes up for sale, you’ve nothing left for yourself. There’s no way to judge where you’re going, how you’re doing. I need the freedom of knowing that there are paintings I can do that aren’t for sale, that don’t have any consideration in how or why they came about, or in what they have to say. Paintings that just are, that I can look up from my easel and see them hanging on the wall and ... oh, I don’t know. Grow familiar with them, I guess.”

“I think I understand,” Albina said.

Perhaps she did, Izzy thought. Perhaps what she was telling Albina did make sense to someone who didn’t know about the numena and how they came to be, but she still felt that the only person at the table who could read between the lines of her explanation was Kathy. When she glanced over at her roommate, Kathy smiled and gave her a wink.

III

Two weeks after that night at The Rusty Lion, Izzy came back to the apartment from working at the studio to find a fat manila envelope waiting for her on her bed. Her pulse quickened when she recognized the handwriting as Rushkin’s.

Why now? she wondered. Why was he contacting her now after all these months of silence?

She picked the envelope up and looked for a return address. There was none. The postmark was too smudged to read, but the stamps were domestic, which narrowed down its place of origin to someplace between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. It could have been mailed from Newford, for all she knew.

After hesitating for a long moment, she finally opened it. Inside was a thick sheaf of paper covered in Rushkin’s handwriting and profusely illustrated with ink sketches. It was, Izzy realized, once she started to read it, a review of her show at The Green Man. Rushkin had gone to it. Gone and loved her work.

But

She read on, nodding her head at his critiques, glowing at his praise. Much as everyone had loved her work in the show, Izzy’d had misgivings about certain of the pieces—nothing she could put her finger on, nothing that anyone else might even notice; she just knew that something wasn’t quite right and had no idea how to fix it. For each one of those paintings Rushkin provided a detailed critique, showing her where she’d gone wrong and how to fix it, should the problem arise again.

His insight astounded her. She enjoyed working on her own—painting in Rushkin’s studio now gave her the freedom she’d had at the Grumbling Green-house Studio behind Professor Dapple’s house, with the added benefit of being provided with everything she could possibly require to do her art. But she realized that she missed her erstwhile mentor. Not the way he was when he got angry, not when she had to tippy-toe around his ego and temper. But all those many other times that far outnumbered the bad.

When they worked together and he would step over to her easel and point out this or that mistake. Or she could go to him with a problem she was having and he would either solve it for her, or give her the tools and information she needed to work the problem through on her own.

It wasn’t the same with him gone, she thought, holding the letter against her chest. It was so unfair, both Rushkin and John disappearing out of her life at the same time.

She wondered when he’d gone to the show. Where he was now. When he was coming back.

The letter answered none of those questions. Its tone was affectionate, but it addressed only the works that had been hung in the show, nothing else. There was no news, no inquiries after her, how she was doing, how she felt. She couldn’t even answer him, because there wasn’t a return address anywhere inside the envelope either.

She sighed. In this way Rushkin was exactly like John. They could both be so frustrating.

IV

February 1976

At four o’clock in the morning, Izzy found herself out on the street, shivering from the cold. It was well below zero with a bitter wind cutting through the tunnels of the downtown streets, making it feel far colder than the weatherman had claimed it would be. She’d gone out for a night of clubbing and hadn’t dressed for really cold weather, thinking she’d be inside and traveling in cabs all night. Now she wished she’d forgone fashion for practicality. Her feet felt frozen in their thin leather boots. Her hands weren’t too bad, tucked into her armpits, but the cold was turning her stockinged legs blue under her short skirt and she was sure she was getting frostbite on her ears and face.

She could have stayed in the warm bed she’d vacated a half hour ago, but no, she had to get up and go home the way she always did, forgetting that she didn’t have any money left after a night of buying and consuming far too many drinks. Not enough for a bus or the subway. Certainly not enough for a cab. Not even a dime to call someone like Alan to give her a lift—not that she would, mind you. Three hours ago, before she went home with whoever it was she’d gone home with, she might have been tempted. But she’d been so tipsy and she didn’t want to be alone in her bed—that always came after, when she woke up in someone else’s bedroom and simply had to go home.

Maybe she should sleep with Alan some night, she thought. At least then she’d only have to walk across the street to go home. But she liked Alan too much. She couldn’t sleep with Alan and not have a relationship with him and what she didn’t want was a relationship. Alan was her friend. If they started sleeping together, sooner or later he’d walk out of her life and she’d lose another best friend the way she’d lost John.

Oh, don’t get all maudlin, she told herself, and with practiced ease she pretended to put John Sweetgrass out of her mind.

She was so cold by the time she finally got home that she could barely stop her hand from shaking to insert the key in the lock. But she finally managed. When she opened the door and stepped inside, it was to find Kathy sitting up, reading.

“I th-thought I’d d-die out there,” Izzy told her through chattering teeth. “There’s tea made.”

Izzy shook her head. “No, I’d just be up peeing all night. Is there anything left in that bottle of whiskey that Christy gave us?”

“Let me go see.”

While Kathy went into the kitchen, Izzy pulled off her cold coat and boots and settled down on the pillows near where Kathy had been reading. There was an afghan there, and she wrapped herself in it.

“There was enough for one shot for each of us,” Kathy announced, returning with the small glasses, half full of amber liquid.

Izzy accepted hers gratefully. The first sip went down like liquid fire, and within moments its warmth was spreading through her.

“That’s better,” she murmured, snuggling deeper into the afghan. “You were out late,” Kathy said.

Izzy shrugged. “I was out clubbing and met this guy ....” She let her voice trail off and took another sip of the whiskey.

“You’re meeting a lot of guys these days,” Kathy said. “It seems like every week there’s one or two new ones.”

“I didn’t know you were keeping count.”

Kathy sighed. “It’s not like that, Izzy. I’m just a little worried, that’s all. This isn’t like you.”

Izzy gave her a bright smile. “I’m experimenting with drunkenness and promiscuity,” she announced with a solemnity that was belied by the twinkle in her eyes. “You know, trying to live a life of mild debauchery the way all the great artists have.”