Anne Tyler - Celestial Navigation

I was tired, that was all. Just tired and chilled. The next morning I rose as bright as a penny and I handled all the arrangements, every detail. But that one night I must have been at a low point and I lay on my back in the dark, long after Laura was asleep, going over all the objects I had ever lost while some hard bleak pain settled on my chest and weighed me down.

Jeremy Pauling saw life in a series of flashes, startling moments so brief that they could arrest a motion in mid-air. Like photographs, they were handed to him at unexpected times, introduced by a neutral voice: Here is where you are now. Take a look. Between flashes, he sank into darkness. He drifted in a daze, studying what he had seen. Wondering if he had seen it. Forgetting, finally, what it was that he was wondering about, and floating off into numbness again.

Here is his pupil, Lisa McCauley, climbing the stairs to his studio. Jeremy climbs behind her. He has descended to answer her ring, opened the door, greeted her, without once being aware of what he is doing. He has forgotten how he came to be here. All that is on his mind is a circle of blue paper he left upstairs on his drawing table. Is it too bright? Too smooth? No, the problem lies in its shape. A circle; difficult to work with. He will have to cut it into angles.

“It’s spring,” says Lisa McCauley.

Then the flash, which stops him dead. He stands on the stairs with his mouth open and watches Lisa McCauley’s nyloned legs shimmering ahead of him. If he turned the sound of nylon into sight it would make a silver zipper with very fine teeth opening the blackness behind his eyelids. If he touched the gold ankle chain that glints beneath one stocking it would have a gritty feeling; he would keep trying to smooth its echo off his fingertips for a long time afterward. The realness of her is staggering. He could choke on the fine strands of her bones. Her voice seems to displace the air around her, parting it keenly and then slightly flattening itself to separate the halves: “I didn’t mean to be late I thought for once I would be on time I said to myself when I got up this morning I—”

The flash fades. Darkness descends in particles around his head. He stands in silence, staring down at the dust from the banister that has coated his fingers, until Lisa McCauley nudges him into motion again and he sets another foot upon another step.

“Purple is my favorite color,” Lisa McCauley said. “I’ve decided to do this entire picture without it, just as an exercise.” She cocked her head, shaking long blond hair off her shoulders. “Mr. Pauling? Are you with me?”

“Um—”

“I said, I’ve decided to do without purple.”

“Isn’t that purple you’re using now?”

It’s magenta.

“Ah.”

He sat on the stool beside the easel, holding the blue circle. His thumb slid back and forth over its surface. In a minute he planned to cut it into angles, but for now something else was expected of him. What was it?

“Don’t you have any comments?” Lisa said.

She was painting a sad clown. White tears ran in exactly vertical lines down his magenta cheeks. The pain of looking at such an object caused Jeremy’s eyes to keep sliding away, veering toward the buckles on Lisa’s shoes, although he was conscious of her watching him and waiting for an answer. “What do you think?” she asked him.

Jeremy said, “Well, now.”

Her shoes were very shiny but the gilt was flaking off the buckles. Specks of gilt like dandruff were sprinkled across her toes.

When Jeremy was seven he made a drawing of his mother’s parlor. Long slashes for walls and ceiling, curves for furniture, a single scribbled rose denoting the wallpaper pattern. And then, on the baseboard, a tiny electrical socket, its right angles crisp and precise, its screws neatly bisected by microscopic slits. It was his sister Laura’s favorite picture. She kept it for years, and laughed every time she looked at it, but he had never meant it to be a joke. That was the way his vision functioned: only in detail. Piece by piece. He had tried looking at the whole of things but it never worked out. He tried now, widening his eyes to take in the chilly white air below the skylight and the bare yellow plaster and splintery floors. The angles of the walls raced toward each other and collided. Gigantic hollow space loomed over him, echoing. The brightness made his lids ache.

“I hate to have to tell you this,” Lisa said, “but I don’t think I’m going to be coming here again.”

Jeremy said nothing.

“Mr. Pauling?”

“Oh yes,” he said.

“Did you hear what I just told you?”

“You weren’t, you’re not—”

“My aunt’s taking me to Europe, I won’t be coming to lessons any more.”

“Oh yes, I see.”

“We’ll make a tour of all the museums. Well, that’s what I really need, isn’t it? Studying the old masters? Learning their technique and brush strokes and use of color—”

She was swirling a slash of magenta unnecessarily on her palette, avoiding his eyes. Telling him she meant no offense. Jeremy had not taught her anything at all about technique and brush stroke. Line was where his interest lay. He had given up all painting years ago, didn’t even own a set of oils, or if he did they had surely dried up by now in the back of some cabinet. When Lisa’s blobs of color slipped out of her control he could only watch blankly, with his mind on something else. It was possible that he had never offered her a single comment. What difference would it have made, anyway?

Now she was glancing at the time, slipping off her spotless Scandinavian smock and carefully folding it. “We’ll start off in Paris,” she said. “Have you ever been there?”

“Paris. No.”

“That’s the place to go, Aunt Dorrie says.”

She squatted to replace the tubes of paint in the new raw wooden box they had come in. She tucked in her uncleaned brush, and then stood up and surveyed the studio to see what she was forgetting. Jeremy stayed where he was. He had been through this before. Sooner or later all his students left. They went to college, or got married, or moved to New York City, or found another teacher. Sometimes a student only stayed for one lesson. Sometimes they didn’t even bother telling him — just failed to show up, kept him waiting idly on his stool until it occurred to him, halfway through the morning, that things were not going the way they were supposed to be. He pictured himself as a statue in a fountain, sitting eternally motionless while people came and threw their hopeful pennies in and left again.

“I can’t take the painting, it will get all over my clothes,” Lisa said.

“The—”

“The painting . What’ll I do? Shall I leave it here?”

“Oh, fine. That will be all right.”

“Well, I guess I’ll be going, then. I certainly do thank you. I know I’m not a professional yet or anything and I appreciate how you’ve tried to help me.”

“You’re very welcome,” Jeremy said. “And also — and I’ve enjoyed getting to know you personally, too.”

“When I get back,” said Lisa, “if I get back, and if I’m not married yet or anything, then maybe one of those snotty art schools will accept me this time. I mean, I know this trip will improve me, don’t you think? They can’t just keep turning me down forever , can they?”

She held out her hand, a small tight cluster of fingers. Jeremy stared at it. He was noticing how thick the air seemed. It was pressing against his temples, flattening his eyeballs. Moving would be like swimming through egg whites.

“Well, bye,” Lisa said.