Robin Black - Life Drawing

Owen walked in just then. I repeated what Alison had said.

“Well, that makes things pretty clear,” he said. “Mystery solved. Now you just have to decide what to do.”

“I have to call Nora back. Before anything.” She left the room.

Owen and I looked at each other. “What the fuck?” I said. “Who the fuck does that?”

“There’s a lot going on there,” Owen said. “I don’t think we know the half.”

I poured him a cup of coffee. “What a mess. And for the record I never believed she was lying.”

“Oh, come on, Gus. Half an hour ago, we both thought she might be. I still don’t know. We only have her word on what Nora said.”

Alison came back before I had to respond. “Nora wants to stay with him for a while. He’s home. I tried to talk her out of it, but she feels like she can help him and there’s only so much I can do about that. The calls will stop, though. He won’t do it with her in the house.”

“Did you tell her what’s been going on?”

She nodded. “I tried to stop her. But I can’t. She’s an adult. Or anyway, that’s her view. And it’s … oh, it’s all mixed up for her with that bloody religious crap. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be so contemptuous, I try not to be. But this is when all that starts really angering me. And the boy, the big Christian influence, was such a nothing. The whole thing is just unimaginable.”

“I’m sorry.” I threw Owen a meaningful look: See? She couldn’t possibly sound more sincere .

“Well, maybe God can explain why Paul decided to start harassing me now,” she said.

“Went off his meds?” I put a cup of coffee in front of her. “I’m really sorry.”

“Oh, I’m sorry too. My guess is that my moving away made him feel like he had to up the ante to pull me back in.” She laughed. “Now you know what a decade or two of self-help books does to your brain. Bloody hell. I’m so sorry to you both for dragging all of this … all of this mess into your lives. I know the whole point of you being here is that the worries of the big bad world are far away and now I’ve introduced all this family melodrama.”

It was Owen’s turn to look meaningfully at me.

“Don’t even think about it,” I said. “This isn’t going to go on for long.”

“Okay,” Owen said. “I’m out to the barn. He’s spent one night in jail. I don’t know the man, but my guess is he won’t want another.”

Alison looked up at him. “You’re right. I hadn’t thought of that. Let’s not waste more time on him. I vote we all get back to work.”

“Meeting adjourned,” Owen said.

“Meeting adjourned,” I said.

“Meeting adjourned,” Alison said.

Alison and Owen left together, so I didn’t have a chance to speak to Owen alone right away. I could have followed him to the barn but could too easily imagine Alison seeing me and concluding that we were hurrying to talk about her behind her back — which was exactly what we would be doing. So I waited until noon, when he turned up in my studio.

“Okay, my doubter, what do you think now?” I asked.

“I think fences make good neighbors.”

“No. Really.”

He sighed. “Really? I think she has an abusive former husband and a freight train’s worth of baggage. And I don’t hate her, whatever you believe. I even feel bad for her. But I often wish she’d never moved in next door. And I don’t think that makes me unfair or unreasonably suspicious.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t think that it does.”

He walked over to the picture of Jackie playing chess. He spent maybe a minute looking at it, then moved to look at the drawing of the boys in the kitchen eating eggs. “So this is the big project,” he said. “It’s interesting stuff, Gus.”

It was the first time he’d seemed to think so. The first time he’d looked long enough to express an opinion. “Thanks,” I said.

He nodded toward the sketch of Oliver Farley sitting on our front steps. “I particularly like this one. Or anyway, I like that there’s one outside the house. Makes them all breathe a bit.”

“I think there’ll be more. I have in mind a few boys swimming in the pond.”

“The detail, as always, is stunning, Gus. Not the people yet, obviously. But I assume …”

“No, not yet.”

“That’s new for you. Figures. Such distinct ones, anyway.”

“I think they’ll come last,” I said. “I’m creating context.” It was a line I had used to myself more than once.

He touched my back, just for a moment, a bye for now caress. He said he thought he was going to wash up for lunch if I was ready for a break. I told him that I was.

We ate deviled eggs he’d made, and a salad I threw together. I asked him if he wanted a beer and he said he thought he’d better not.

We sat for a few minutes, eating, before I asked, “When were you going to tell me?”

He made a questioning face.

“You’re writing again. Aren’t you? When were you planning to tell me?”

He smiled — a grin, really, those craggy lines that bracketed his lips, deepening, curving. “When have I ever had to tell you anything like that? Don’t you think I know you can tell? When have we ever had to tell each other those things? Anyway, you know how it is, you’re afraid of jinxing it …”

“What happened?”

“Jesus, if I knew that … I don’t even want to ask. I don’t really want to talk about it all. Not out loud. Let’s just see if it can hold on for a bit. You know how it is. The universe decides to take pity …”

I nodded. I understood. After a bit he asked me if I had been in touch with the owner of the gallery in Philadelphia where I’d last been included in a group show. “She’s going to be awfully interested,” he said. “Knowing Clarice, she’ll probably need smelling salts when she sees how good this stuff is.”

“Really? You really think so?” I was surprised he seemed so sure.

“Oh, come on, Gussie. You know how good it is. You don’t need me to critique your work for you.”

But I had, for weeks and weeks and weeks.

“I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what you’re working on?”

“Not yet. In a while. If it sticks.”

I nodded and I said, “I understand,” and we went on to talk of other things.

After lunch, I felt something absent for so long that the sensation came as a surprise and an unexpected gift. I had known I would feel relief that Owen was back engaged in his work. But I hadn’t remembered the electricity that would be running between us, a rope of the stuff from my bright, sunny studio to his dusky, cool barn.

Maybe it was feeling that connection to Owen again that gave me the courage to take on the task I had been putting off for weeks: painting the boys themselves.

From the first, it wasn’t work I enjoyed. I could never lose myself in it — because there I was at every turn being uncooperative, unskilled, inept. There I was with that strange disconnect I rarely otherwise felt between my intentions and my execution, with that heaviness in my hand, that stiffness to my lines. And there were the resulting figures, too — not people, not really, but more like paintings of soldier figurines.

“Ugh,” I would say out loud, several times a day, as I stepped back to look.

Owen insisted they were better than I thought. Now that he was back at work and the subject no longer taboo, I could worry it through with him. “I don’t see it, Gussie,” he would say. “I think they look fine.” And for a few minutes I’d be reassured; but not for long.