Stephen Dixon - 30 Pieces of a Novel

He tells her he’ll be in the city in a month to see his mother and if it’s all right he’d like to come by to choose a painting. She says to call her a week before so they can make a definite appointment. “I don’t want to pretend I’m a busy person or that dealers are batting my door down to get his works, but occasionally I do see a friend for lunch.” Three months later she calls him. “I got your number from the woman taking care of your mother. She said you were in New York last month. If you were, it’s possible you called and I missed you,” and he says, “I’ve actually been there twice since I spoke to you, but only for a day — in and out, by train. I’m sorry, I forgot. But we’re all coming in for two weeks in June. I’ll call before we drive in, or just get me at this number in New York,” and gives it and the day they’ll be there. She says, “Incidentally, you never said what you were interested in of Bolling’s: the drawings, pastels, satirical pen and inks — they’re of Lyndon Johnson and his cronies; I don’t think he was ever better, satirically, than with those — or his Majorca watercolors: the sunrise series, the sleeping cat sequence, another one of just beach stones — there were these enormous boulders along the shore, some like the Easter Island ones, though not carved — and of course the oils.” “The oil paintings. Something like what he gave me, since the last time we spoke you said you hadn’t sold any for a long time,” and she says, “What I said then was ‘never.’ Not one. Not in his lifetime or mine. Not even a single drawing. Whatever he did that’s not here has either been given away or donated to a school’s art sale, but I think even those came back.” “So,” he says, “one of those, the oils. I hate to sound dumb about it — because, you know, I really admire most of them — but one to sort of complement, for another wall in the same room, the one I already have of the sun and sky and such of that island and town … I can never remember the damn name. I know it starts with a D —the island, of course, is Majorca — but the town. I know I also said the same thing one of the last times we spoke — that it starts with a D and I can never remember its name. But my mind can’t be that bad off if I’m able to remember almost verbatim, and maybe even verbatim, what I said about not remembering the town’s name and that business about the initial that last time, some — well, I don’t know how many months ago, but several,” and she says, “Deja, De-ja, D-E-J-A, though the Spanish spelling of it is different and not just with a little diacritic,” and he says, “Don’t tell me it; one’s enough, and I wouldn’t want to confuse things even more. I should write it down, but I know I’ll lose the paper I write it down on. That has less to do with memory loss than absentmindedness. In my address book, under your name and number, I’ll put it, and then I’ll just hope I remember it’s there when I want to recall the name, if I don’t from now on recall it automatically. As for the address book, somehow it just turns up whenever I look for it. Anyway, I’ll call you the day after we get in.”

She calls him in New York. “Damn, how’d I forget?” he says. “I won’t even say I was going to call you. I mean, I intended to but we’ve been so busy: my mother, whom I see every day, and taking the kids around — movies, museums, shopping sprees, you name it. When they’re out of school and too old for day camp — they think — it’s ‘What’re we gonna do today, Daddy?’” and his older daughter, who’s beside him, says, “I don’t talk that way, Daddy. And you don’t let us shop.” “If you’re no longer interested in buying one of Bolling’s paintings,” Grace says, “that’s all right too, Gould. People are allowed to—” and he says, “No, I want one, very much so,” and to his daughter, with his hand over the mouthpiece: “Only kidding, sweetie. Just making talk…. When shall we meet? Tomorrow at one, maybe? I think I can be free then,” and she says, “No good. I’m a dog walker now — a professional one; I have no animals of my own — and I’ve four dogs to walk between one and three.” After that, she’s busy too. “Thursday?” and she says, “I’ve dog-walking jobs from eight to twelve, and the last one, for an hour, is five at a time, so would two o’clock be okay? I need some rest, and also a shower, after a long spate of walks — picking up all that doodie, and they can slobber over you when they get playful. And it’s hard sweaty work, getting pulled forward, holding them back, really straining at the reins when some outside dog barks or jumps at them. But I’ve got to make money somehow; I’m really short.” “Two, then,” and gets her building number — the street he knows, since he had once lived around the block from them and it was how he’d met them more than twenty years ago: in the stationery store at their corner on Columbus where Bolling bought most of his art supplies and he bought things like typewriter ribbon and reams of paper, and he said, when they were on line to pay, “You must be an artist,” and Bolling said, “And you? It’s obvious what you do too, unless you have an unusually extensive correspondence going and you mail all your letters in those manila envelopes,” or something like that.

He’s at his mother’s when the phone rings. It’s Grace: “Your wife told me you were there — I’m not following you, I want you to understand. You don’t remember we had an appointment at two?” “Oh, my God”—and looks at the wall clock—“it’s twenty to three and someone’s picking me up here at three-thirty. How can I be such a dunce. I’ll be right over, should take me no more than ten minutes if I run,” and she says, “You won’t have time to look at the paintings.” “I’ll have time, don’t worry; I know what I want and it won’t take long,” and she says, “Really, we can make it another day,” and he says, “No. I don’t know what the hell our schedule is the next few days before we leave, and I want a painting and won’t let my being a forgetful blockhead stop me. Are you free now?” “Yes. I set aside two hours for you to look at his artwork,” and he says, “Good, then we have enough time; just tell me your building number again.” He finishes making his mother coffee, puts it in front of her with some cookies he brought over, apologizes that he has to leave early but he’ll see her tomorrow when he’ll take her out for lunch, gives Grace’s name and address to the woman who looks after his mother, and says, “Tell him to ring the vestibule bell for me there — it’s only six blocks away — and I’ll come right down, or in a few minutes, and he can stay in the car,” and she says, “I can’t remember all that, can you write it?” and he says, “Just tell him to ring the bell and ask for me,” and runs and walks fast to Grace’s building, rings her bell downstairs, and she says, “Gould?” and he says, “Yes, at last, I’m sorry,” and she buzzes him in.

She has cheese and crackers out, grapes, two wine glasses on a tray, and in the center of it an unopened bottle of Burgundy. There are stacks of sketchbooks of different sizes on the same table. When she opened the door he kissed her cheek, apologized again. She says, “You know, for a while there I thought you were only saying you were interested because you wanted me to think someone still wanted Bolling’s work.” “No, I am, very. You have sketchbooks out. For me, or you just keep them here?” and she says, “You said you liked the mountains and seacoast of Deja. Some of his best watercolors of those scenes are in these. And some have words he wrote on the bottom of them — reflections, some of it real poetry, I feel, but his own, the only time he ever wrote it — and sometimes all around the edges like a frame, so are sort of mixed media. I thought because he used words in a literary way on them that you’d be especially interested. They could be expensive, though, compared to his other watercolors, since I think they’re his most innovative work in any medium, or at least unique for him, which should count for something in an artist’s body of work,” and he says, “Probably, but I only came for the oils; is that all right?” “Oh, those. I don’t think I’ve had them out since you chose one. It means burrowing into the long closet, pulling out a whole bunch of things first to locate them, and then untying and unrolling them and they’re no doubt dusty … who cleans the back of a closet like that one? I know I should have looked after them better, wrapped them in a way that would have best preserved them, making sure nothing hard or jagged was against them so the paint wouldn’t flake or the paintings themselves get punctured…” and he thinks, What’d he get himself into? This could take an hour and he doesn’t have the time. She has crackers and cheese out. They’re for him, unless they’re for someone coming later. But then the cheese wouldn’t be here now. If she just wanted it at room temperature she would have left it in the kitchen. Putting it here she’d have to think he’d think it was for him, and then the wine with it. Two glasses. Of course it’s all for him. But what’d he expect, all the oils would be spread out and waiting for him on the floor and furniture and taped to the walls and he’d just look at them quickly and hit on one and say, “That’s it,” and pay up and carefully roll it up and put some twine or a few rubber bands around it and help her get the rest of the paintings rolled up and back into the closet and then kiss her goodbye right after his friend rings and leave? And there must be fifteen of them, twenty, because she hasn’t sold any and that’s about the number there were before, though she might have given some away since then … he hopes so. He says, “I’ll get them. I’m not afraid of work and dirt, and I swear I have good quick taste and judgment and I know there are — know from the last time … my memory’s perfect on that, with maybe the most minuscule of lapses — but what was I saying? Oh, yeah: that there are a few oils of his from that period that I truly loved, but all, of course, of the ones shown me from the closet and the two from the Deja period you still have on the walls — I’m just guessing they’re the same ones,” and she says they are and he says, “But that I liked.” All this is a lie. He forgets what he felt that last time. No, he remembers: a few were awful — half of them, maybe; amateurish, almost; paint slashes here, there, drips, drops, lots of splashed-together flashy colors meaning and representing or just plain doing nothing to him, or maybe a few hints of mountains and sea. What he remembers most is that he didn’t want one too big. What he remembers before that is he didn’t want one at all, from what he’d seen of Bolling’s works on the walls from all his periods, but he knew he couldn’t say so once Bolling said he wanted him to choose one for himself. And now he remembers there weren’t just Deja scenes in the closet but portraits, self-portraits, nudes, a few cityscapes. Bolling and Grace thought he’d like the cityscapes best because he’d lived in the city most of his life and they’d never heard him have a good thing to say about the country or beach, and he said something like, “I’ve had plenty of it, thank you; last thing I want to be reminded of when I’m in my apartment is the city outside.” So they brought all the oils out and unrolled them on the furniture and floor, and there were so many, and there was so little space — some of them were so big and all of them were large — that there were usually two or three lying on top of each other, and he’d peel one off without saying anything but inwardly rejecting it and underneath was usually another big splashy nude or Deja scene or self-portrait or very dark cityscape, so dark he almost couldn’t make anything out in it but a few lit windows. Till he saw a Deja painting he liked, and that it was the next to smallest of all the paintings must have helped his decision. The light colors were bright but not flashy, the dark colors weren’t that dark, and he could recognize mountains and sea and what he thought was a waterfall without absolutely recognizing them as such, so it was both realistic and abstract and he liked that, or impressionistic or expressionistic and abstract — anyway, not absolutely one thing or the other, or he at least thinks that’s what he thought then. And Bolling’s face lit up when Gould looked at the painting longer than the others and he said — after Gould said, “It’s all right if I pick this one, right?”—“It’s one of my favorites. Did things in that I never did anywhere else. So why isn’t it on the wall? I forgot, and now who cares? But I’ll let it go without a grimace because of how kind you’ve been to me and helpful to Grace, and I know it’ll be going to an appreciative and aesthetic home,” and then, “On second thought,” hoped Gould wasn’t just taking it because it was one of the smallest. “No, size meant nothing. You said to choose one and I took that to mean any one except maybe the very largest, which I’d also have a problem with since I wouldn’t want to seem like a hog,” and then Bolling asked for Gould’s pen—“I know you always have one, so hand it over, brother, though spare the paper”—so he could inscribe it to him.