Robin Black - Life Drawing

“I’m taking her away. We’re going to London. I told her … it doesn’t matter. But I told her we should go see my parents, and we’re going. She and I have to sort this out. But I know I’ve been a terrible friend. Not a friend at all.”

“For what it’s worth,” I said, feeling my own dignity make its demands, “Owen has been straight with me. I’ve known that she spoke to him. All of that. He hasn’t kept anything from me. And they aren’t … there’s no …”

“So you two are okay? I really hope so. I hope we haven’t …”

“I don’t know. What does ‘okay’ mean? Really? This is a bad time for us. You know that. You knew that all along.” I could sense my anger rising again. “When do you go?”

“Tomorrow. Back just after New Year’s. Though I’m … I’m hoping she’ll go stay with friends then.”

“Right.” There it was again: I wanted to say that I too hoped that Nora would never return; but I had promised Owen not to try and keep them apart. “I hope it helps” was all I allowed myself to say.

Alison left right after that. In the kitchen, as she put her coat back on, she said, “It won’t go on. She knows that it can’t go on.”

I nodded. I couldn’t bring myself to wish her a good trip, just mumbled a goodbye.

The next afternoon was a cold one, the sky banded with clouds. I watched from inside as Owen carried their suitcases out and lifted them into the back of Alison’s car. It was a strangely somber scene, the complexities within our quartet by now so well understood that nothing we did in any combination could be undertaken lightly anymore.

I didn’t say anything to Owen about Alison’s apology. I couldn’t see how her admission changed anything between us, or between him and Nora, either. If Alison succeeded in calling her daughter off, he would have to deal with that. My hands were clean.

During Alison’s and Nora’s absence an unmistakable aura of suspense hung over our lives. Something had been interrupted, not ended. We both worked, or anyway I tried to, though without much success. Owen seemed more productive than that, looking content when he left the barn; and I resisted the temptation to point out that he seemed to be doing very well without his muse by his side; but then realized he was probably getting frequent encouraging emails from her. We ate our meals together. We shared our bed, uneventfully.

Christmas came and went without a ripple. It could have been any of the other days that week. And then, on Boxing Day, I got an email from Laine.

Augie, this is your conscience speaking. Are you doing the things we talked about? Are you sticking with those soldiers of yours? I have been thinking it over and I know this sounds weird coming from me and maybe I should be quiet, but I think it’s really important that you not give up on them. I mean, I DEFINITELY have no experience with this, but I’ll bet it sucks to be super good at something and then try something new. It must feel impossibly hard. Even when I try something new, it’s not like I’m giving up something I do amazingly well, like you paint landscapes and rooms. And I’m guessing it feels like starting over or something, which must be awful. But it would bum me out completely if you just gave up

.

I’m really sorry if that’s obnoxious of me. I put off writing this for days. But then I thought, it’s not like you’ll cut me off for bugging you and maybe you need someone to push? So, like I said, this is your conscience speaking. Or something like that

.

Here, I’m home for the holidays. Spending a while with Mom and then tomorrow out to Dad’s new household in Wayne for a week. Gulp. It turns out I have seriously mixed feelings about him getting married. I didn’t think I would, I thought I was okay, but then it happened and I realized I’m just like every other kid of divorce in the world. Somewhere in there I thought they’d get back together one day. Unbelievable. I could see how much it upset Mom, and I was pretty contemptuous, but it hasn’t been easy for me with the holidays and all. I haven’t felt this low in a very long time

.

So wish me luck, out in the suburbs, flipping out

.

I soooooooo loved seeing you. Send me pictures of your pictures

.

Love

,

Laine

Dear Laine

,

You must have been spying on me. I have indeed lost my nerve, and been doing my old familiar work, but I promise to reread your note until I get my courage back. And then I’ll keep reading it. You’re right. Change is hard — for us all. But there’s no point fighting it. Not to go all Zen on you, but all of life is change, so we might as well decide it’s a good thing

.

Let’s make a deal. You try to have a decent time at your dad’s and I’ll go back to painting my soldiers

.

I’m really glad you wrote. Just let me know if there’s ever any way that I can help

.

I loved seeing you too. You are incredible

.

Love

,

Augie

Ileft for Philadelphia around eleven-thirty the next day, taking the South Street exit off the Expressway, turning east. Once I’d crossed over Broad, somewhere around Tenth Street, the sidewalk grew more crowded, mostly young people, mostly in groups. It was the start of lunch hour and the traffic was slow and impatient, lots of honking, lots of drivers making sudden lunges to get around stopped cars. There was a sense of too much activity jammed in too small a space, a feeling, a phenomenon I hadn’t experienced in a very long time, this seething of people, this hive.

At Fourth Street, I turned right, driving south.

Steinman’s looked very much the same, except that instead of a fabric shop to one side and an empty shop to the other, there was now a used bookstore where the empty store had been and an empty store where the fabric shop had been. Urban renewal and urban decay, bumping up against each other. During the weeks that I had squirreled myself in my corner of the store, I had heard endless discussions about the fate of the street, the neighborhood, the block, the building and also about the history of it all. That had seemed to be the subject every customer brought in, along with talk of colors and styles, angles of brims, opaqueness of veils. Len’s attitude had been that the area was on a fast downhill, while Ida had taken the view that through every generation, somehow, this street managed to survive and it would always do so.

And in general, nearly four years after my stint there, despite the replacement of one empty storefront with another, it looked a little more occupied, a little busier than it had been back then. Steinman’s itself, its window an array of the most elaborate, colorful, even absurd hats, still carried that air of enchantment, like an outsized Fabergé egg mysteriously placed on a gray urban block.

I peered through the glass before going in, as if afraid I might have the wrong place or maybe the wrong proprietors; but there was Len, looking thinner, his face nearly gaunt, and that was enough to propel me inside. It took him a second after the tinkle of the door’s bell, but then he knew me. “Ach! It’s Leonardo!” he said. “Look who’s here. Ida!” he called. “Come out and see who’s visiting.”

“Hi, Len,” I said. “It’s good to be back. Good to see the old place. And you too.” While I spoke, Ida emerged from behind the black drape separating the public and private sections of the shop; and it was obvious right away that something was wrong. I had studied her too intently, too minutely for too many weeks not to detect the immobility in her right arm, the stilled expression on her face.