Кристина Клайн - A Piece of the World

SOME OF ANDY’S sketches are hurried outlines, a map of the painting to come—a hint of a figure, grasses growing this way and that, geometric slashes of house and barn. Others are precisely shaded and detailed—every strand of hair and fold of fabric, the wood grain on the pantry door. His watercolors are inky greens and browns, the sky merely the white of the paper. Al in his flat-visored cap with his pipe, raking blueberries in the field, sitting on the front doorstep, gathering hay; the fine figure of our dun-colored mare, Tessie, in profile. Andy sketches the scarred wooden table, the white teapot, egg scales, grain bags in the barn, seed corn hanging to dry in a third-floor bedroom. On his canvases these objects look the same, but different. They have a burnished glow.

Andy’s father paints in oil, he tells me. But he prefers egg tempera, he says, the method of European masters like Giotto and Botticelli in the late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance. It dries quickly, leaving a muted effect. I watch as he cracks an egg, separates the yolk from the white, and rolls the plump sac gently between his hands to remove the albumen. He pokes the yolk with the tip of a knife, pours the orange liquid into a cup of distilled water, stirs it around with his finger. Adds a chalky powdered pigment to make a paste.

After dipping a small brush into the tempera, he presses out the wetness and color with his fingers and splays the tip to make dry spiky strokes. He layers it over a pale wash of color or pencil and ink on a Masonite fiberboard coated with gesso, a smooth mix of rabbit-skin glue and chalk. Though he works fast, the brushstrokes are painstaking and meticulous, each one distinct. Cross-hatched grass, a dense, dark row of plantings. When wet, the colors are as red as Indian paintbrush, russet as clay, blue as the bay on a summer afternoon, green as a holly leaf. These bright wet colors fade as they dry, leaving a ghostly glow. “Intensity—painting emotions into objects—is the only thing I care about,” he says.

Over time Andy’s paintings become starker, drained of color, austere. Mostly white and brown and gray and black. “Damn it to hell,” Andy murmurs, cocking his head to look at a newly finished watercolor: Al’s shadowy figure walking down the rows in his visored cap, the white house and gray barn stark on the horizon. “This is better. Betsy was right.”

WHEN HE ISN’T upstairs painting, Andy hovers near me like a bee around honeycomb. He is fascinated with our habits and routines. How are the hens laying, how do you make a perfect loaf of bread without measuring, how do you keep the slugs from the dahlias? What kinds of trees does Al cut for firewood, what type of sail do lobstermen around here use on their boats? How do you collect the water in the cistern? Why are so many things in the house painted the same shade of blue? Why is a dory marooned in the rafters of the shed? Why is that long ladder propped against the house?

“We don’t have a telephone,” Al explains in his laconic way. “And the closest fire company is nine miles from here. If there’s a roof or chimney fire . . .”

“Got it,” Andy says.

These questions are easy to answer. But over time his inquiries become more personal. Why do Al and I live here alone, with all these empty rooms? What was it like when it was full of people, before most of the fields went to flower?

At first I’m guarded. “It just turned out that way,” I tell him. “Life was busier then.”

Andy isn’t satisfied with evasions. Why did it turn out that way? Did you or Al ever want to live somewhere, anywhere, else?

It’s hard to say what’s in my head. It’s been a long time since anyone cared to ask.

He insists. “I want to know.”

So little by little, I open up. I tell him about the trip to Rockland when I refused to see the doctor. The disappearing treasure in Mystery Tunnel. The witches, the sea captains, the ship stranded in ice . . .

What did you miss about going to school?

Why were you so scared of doctors?

He is as gentle as a dog, as curious as a cat.

Who are you, Christina Olson?

In the Shell Room one afternoon Andy finds Papa’s wooden box of keepsakes and opens the lid. He strokes the smooth tines of the whalebone comb. Picks up the tiny tin soldier and raises its arms with his forefinger. “Whose is this?”

“My father’s. This box is the only thing of his I kept after he died.”

“I used to collect toy soldiers,” he muses. “When I was a boy, I created a whole battlefield. I still have a row of them lined up on the windowsill in my studio in Pennsylvania.” He sets the soldier back in the box and runs a finger over the black lump of anthracite. “Why do you think he held on to this?”

“He liked rocks and minerals, he said.”

“This is anthracite, right?”

I nod.

“Coal’s glamorous cousin,” he says. “In the Civil War—did your father tell you this?—anthracite was used by Confederate blockade runners as fuel for their steamships to avoid giving themselves away. It burns clean. No smoke.”

“I’ve never heard that,” I say. But I think: How apt. Papa was never one to give himself away.

“They called them ghost ships. It’s a terrifying image, isn’t it? These ominous ships materializing out of nowhere.” He sets the anthracite back in the box and shuts the lid. “Did he ever go back to Sweden?”

“No. But I’m named after his mother. Anna Christina Olauson.”

“Did you know her?”

I shake my head. “It’s strange, don’t you think—to name your child after a living person you’ve chosen never to see again?”

“Not so strange,” he says. “There’s this great line from The House of the Seven Gables : ‘The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease.’ Your father must have felt he had to forge his own path, even if it meant cutting ties to his family. It’s brave to resist the pull of the familiar. To be selfish about your own needs. I wrestle with that every day.”

SEVERAL MONTHS AFTER Andy and Betsy return to Chadds Ford for the winter, I get a letter from Betsy. In September she gave birth to a sickly child, Nicholas, who needed a lot of special care but seems to be all right. In November Andy was drafted into the army. When he reported for his physical they took one look at his twisted right leg and his flat feet and rejected him on the spot. “He truly feels he’s been given a reprieve and is determined to make the most of it,” she writes.

A reprieve of one sort, I think. But though I may not have a child of my own, I know all too well how the demands of family life can become consuming. I wonder if, as a father, now, Andy will feel even more torn between the pull of the familiar and the creative impulses that drive him.

I’m in the henhouse early on a warm June morning, gathering eggs, when I hear voices coming closer across the field. We’re not expecting visitors. Standing up straight, I lower the warm eggs I’m holding into the pocket of my apron and listen closely.

Ramona Carle—I’d recognize her throaty laugh anywhere.

Ramona, along with her siblings Alvah and Eloise, are summer folk from Massachusetts whose family bought the Seavey homestead down the road several years ago. Alvah is the oldest; Eloise is my age, Ramona a few years younger. They stay in Cushing from Memorial Day to Labor Day. But unlike some other from-aways (with their languid indolence, their impulsive thrill-seeking), the Carles do their best to fit in with the locals. I always look forward to seeing them. They organize egg-in-spoon races at our annual Fourth of July clambake on Hathorn Point, convince everyone to play games like Red Rover and Olly Olly Oxen Free, and bring bags of fireworks to light after dark.