Stephen Dixon - 30 Pieces of a Novel

Gould removes from the closet filled suitcases, boxes of clothing, old lamps, an easel with two legs missing, a crib mattress, and other things before he reaches the paintings. They’re rolled up like a carpet and he tries to lift the roll, but it’s too heavy so he pulls it out to the living room—“This a good place?”—and she says, “The light will be better for viewing over here. When Bolling was alive we had terrific light everywhere — he couldn’t live with a lot of dark spots, not even in the closets. But each time a lamp goes I don’t get it fixed or replaced and the ceiling fixtures, other than the kitchen one where I stand on a counter, I can’t reach.” He starts pulling the roll along the floor, and she says, “You can’t lift it? Dragging it like that won’t do the outer one any good and it might be the best of them all.” He hoists it to his shoulder and gets it to where she tells him to and gets on his knees to set it down: between the love seat and the rocker and chair. Cocktail table that was there is against the wall, a little scatter rug on top of it. This is going to be hard, he thinks, untying the roll, and they never talked price. He can’t afford much; was figuring on a hundred bucks. Thought she’d be glad to take it — as an incentive he’d wanted to give it in cash, and she can’t be doing well — and rid of a painting. But she’s put out for wine, cheese, and grapes and spiffed up the apartment for him. The setting’s a selling one and he doesn’t want to hurt her feelings or have her think he’s wasted her time by saying the one he chose is just too expensive for his tastes, and there might not be another he likes or would want to pay even a hundred for. Hell with the hundred. He’s here, he’s led her on, she’s put herself out for him, and he’s going to have to buy one. He flattens the paintings out best he can — there must be thirty or forty — and starts going through them. Top one he’s already dismissed: a small ugly nude, with a good arm and a withered arm and breasts that seem in the wrong place, though it’s a realistic studio portrait, and a belly-button hole wide enough to fit a nickel in, and some of the paint’s cracked and peeling. Looks as if it’s from Bolling ‘s art-school days, if he went to one; he doesn’t know, or forgets, how Bolling got his early training. Pulls it back to the next: a candlestick and Chianti bottle standing on a wrinkled red cloth, velvet or something shiny. This one probably means something, with a candle in the bottle but not the candlestick, and just barely lit, or maybe that’s an attempt at flickering. Then a still life of oranges and apples and an unidentifiable fruit, a lemon or kiwi or even a big walnut. It could be considered a good painting, light seems all right, oranges and apples look real, but he hates paintings of this sort — all still lifes except drawings — even by Cézanne. Or he doesn’t hate Cézannes but doesn’t admire them and by now just walks right past them in museums. Bolling would have said, “Your loss,” and they may have even talked about it, but unfortunately they never went to a museum together, except when he pushed him to the Met once, but it was quick because Bolling was incontinent by then and, he thinks, silent through the entire visit. Next are three self-portraits. He doesn’t remember putting them back this way fifteen years ago, by category. Maybe there’ll be a few straight Dejas. They aren’t good paintings or likenesses and he wouldn’t take one for sentimental reasons, even if she gave him it for nothing. Bolling was a nice guy, smart, generous, amiable, maybe a bit grouchy sometimes, and they had good conversations about politics and art and such, at the most saw each other twice a year for drinks and peanuts at this apartment but bumped into each other a lot in the neighborhood. He only became close to him — seeing him daily for weeks — when Bolling ‘s sickness got much worse and Grace had become exhausted from taking care of him and couldn’t push him in the wheelchair anymore or get him off the floor when he fell or slid off a chair or take him to the doctor or hospital alone and was never able to give him his painkiller shots, so he volunteered to do these things, since he was just around the corner and had given insulin to his father years before, but they were never friends. “I like these, some better than others; the self-portraits are especially — I don’t know what — strong,” and she says, “Aren’t they? People used to think me frivolous when I compared them in honesty — the whole exposed man — to some of the late Rembrandt ones and all of Van Gogh’s. But I couldn’t hang one here, for obvious reasons. I’d rather have the LBJs, much as I loathed the man — so shrewd and coarse and what he did to prolong the war. You knew him, didn’t you?” and he says, “I didn’t actually know him. But when he — this is what you must mean — put his arm around my shoulder — the news service I worked for then covered regional stuff for a few Texas radio stations, otherwise he wouldn’t have said boo to me — it was like a bear’s, which I think was how Bolling said he depicted him in his caricatures there. Or maybe that’s where I got my bear analogy from … I forget, it was so far back, reporting. But that’s how big Johnson was and maybe how thin I might have been then.” “Oh, my goodness, you just reminded me. Why’d I have them out if I wasn’t going to offer you? Glass of wine? You’ll have to uncork the bottle; I always bungle it,” and he says, “No, thanks, too early. And no cheese either; I’m stuffed. A grape I’ll take,” and she holds out the bowl and he pinches off a cluster and goes through fifteen to twenty more paintings while sucking and chewing grapes one at a time. “So, you haven’t seen the paintings you liked? There was a Deja landscape among the ones you looked at — one of the mountains, but from a different perspective, and no sea,” and he says, “There was? I didn’t catch it or recognize it. Was it very abstract?” and she says, “No, relatively realistic; about three back,” and he says, “I must be going too fast. Or else you sold the ones I remember or gave them away.” “I told you: no one’s looked at the oils since you. I would have shown them to art dealers, or anybody for the asking, but no one asked or responded positively to my hints or inquiries.” “That was in ‘seventy-nine, when I did that,” he says, and she says, “Bolling died on May sixteenth, so you saw them about a week before. You went through them exactly as you’re doing now,” and he says, “I thought they were all spread out on the furniture and floor, and after it you and I got them together and stacked them the way they are now,” and she says, “No, sir, they were in a big pile from the start. We got them out and unrolled them and you selected the one you liked and Bolling inscribed it to you. He even borrowed your pen for it, and when he saw it was a real fountain pen — a Sheaffer — he said this might ruin the nib and you said you didn’t care,” and he says, “I remember that. In the bottom right corner, and it didn’t ruin the point. I don’t have that pen anymore — I misplace, or they slip out of my pockets, about one a year; it kills me, they’re so damn expensive — but I remember it worked after. The inscription’s covered by the frame now, the canvas edges tucked under and probably stapled to those — what are they? — the stretching boards.” “The stretcher.” “Right. I didn’t want it to be and I specifically asked my wife — she brought it to this hotsy-totsy framer — to keep the inscription visible, it was very important to me, but that’s how it came back from the shop and, you know, I wanted to return it for them to do it right this time or just correct it, but never did, or it was too much bother and we wanted it on the wall more. I know the inscription said something personal,” and she says, “It said, To my dear friend Gould, who came to our rescue in this time of crisis and deep need, always our love and thanks, Bolling Sneeson.” She starts crying. Seeing her, or something else — what she said Bolling wrote — he does too. She goes on longer than he and he thinks, Should he hold her, pat her shoulder? but doesn’t want to. He says, wiping his eyes, “Listen, I’m sorry, but someone’s picking me up at three-thirty. Here. He’s going to ring downstairs. He was supposed to at my mother’s but I told the woman taking care of her—” “How is she?” and he says, “Fine, considering. No, she’s okay, no real health problems, ailments: just her memory — like us all, right? — though a little worse. But you see, this was before I knew or realized — seeing you, seeing her — because like a dope I forgot our appointment, and what I should have done was call this guy from my mother’s but I was in too much of a rush to get here,” and she says, “Then it’s impossible for you to choose a painting today. I know all about your taste and judgment, but something like this takes time. It’s like choosing a dog. You want to observe it first — it could be too vicious or frisky for you, and I’m not talking about puppies — or a cat or even a parakeet. To see if you want to live with it, and live with it you must. You don’t want to put all that money into framing a painting and then stick it in a closet because you now don’t like it,” and he says, “I made my decision that way the last time and I can do it now. Sometimes quick decisions — well, you know, and I love the painting he gave me as much today as I did then.” “You were wonderful to him, and to me too — I’ve told you. But to him you were a lifesaver those last months and he wanted to give you two paintings but you said — your characteristic modesty then, and I’m sure now too—‘One’s more than generous,’” and he says, “Two? I don’t recall that. Though it was true: one was more than enough. Not that I wouldn’t have appreciated two and known what to do with them, but as I told you on the phone — or did I say it here? — I didn’t want to be a hog. I also wanted you to sell the rest; that’s what I remember from then. That you didn’t? So, other people don’t know what they’re doing, only zeroing in on the latest young hotshot who’s made by … I don’t know, art entrepreneurs who have a stake in him and important friends. Anyway, I know in this pile is the one I would have taken if I had taken two. Of course, this time around I’m going to pay. And we never talked price, I’m afraid.” “Oh, that’s another matter. How much an artist deserves to be paid for his work. Does it involve how much time went into the labor, how much thought went into the conception, all the expenses that went into making the painting and keeping up a studio to work in and so forth. Bolling only used the alcove here, which had our son’s loft bed and dresser and no window and explains why his work became sort of somber, and because the room was so crowded and small he rarely did any paintings in it but tiny oils. But also how many prizes the artist’s garnered and critical praise he’s received and shows he’s had and who’s his current gallery and agent and how he does abroad and where and what museums and private institutions his works are in and the amount paid for them, though don’t make me laugh. If all these, or only some, are the criteria to price one of his works, I should be paying you to cart it off my hands. But there’s even more to it. Forget friendship and past good deeds and how much the potential buyer wants and loves the work — that’s just between you and me and which I know to Bolling meant a lot too. But how long the work’s been sitting around unsold and how many canvases the painter’s done overall, and is the one the buyer wants considered among his best in period and style and is the medium the work’s in supposed to be the best the artist has ever done?”—Then she goes on about Giacometti: His portraits or artist studio paintings? And if the portraits, then which should be considered more valuable, the ones of his mother or brother or wife or favorite non-family model—“Some adorable little girl the artist had an old man’s crush on late in life?” And should his sculptures be worth more than his paintings, if there’s a way of fixing a price on them competitively, because they cost more to make and have had a greater influence on other artists and have interesting anecdotes about some of them, like the matchbox figures, though those couldn’t have been too costly to make even if they were whittled down from much larger blocks? But then most of his sculptures are bronze, particularly the famous stick figures and that mangy dog, which means a number of the same ones came from one mold. So why shouldn’t the clay model be more valuable than its cast bronze? True, it’s clay rather than the more durable and expensive bronze, but it’s the original and singular … All this while he’s going through the rest of Bolling’s oils. Then he sees one, third from the last — he quickly flips through the final two and doesn’t like them — that’s a lot like the one Bolling gave him. He doesn’t remember it from before, but he sort of likes it. Not as much as the one he has but he doesn’t remember liking that one immediately either, just being drawn to it. Not even that; it was the best of a lot he didn’t much like any of and it was only after Sally got it framed that he started liking it and increasingly over the years till he liked it so much he wanted another of Bolling’s oils of a similar scene or something close. It’s worth a hundred. It’s larger than the one he has, though that’s not why, with more sky, less sea, same mountains but not as pointy. In fact they look more like a woman’s breasts than the ones in the other painting, but a mature woman’s rather than a mature girl’s, and there’s nothing in it that can be mistaken for a waterfall. It also has a large blue egg-shaped object on its side in a lighter blue sky to the right of the mountains. It doesn’t seem to belong there, looks unfinished as an idea and cheap, and what’s it supposed to mean: a sun with the color of a darkened sky? Maybe it’ll blend in better later on, but for now he can live with it because of the rest of the painting. No, this one’s the best of the bunch here, in his opinion, and since he feels he has to buy one, this one’s it. He looks up. She’s saying, “For instance, this work over here.” He looks at the wall she’s looking at. “That’s Bolling’s? I wouldn’t have thought so. Nothing in this group or on the walls even remotely—” and she says, “It’s by a cousin, on my mother’s side. He didn’t buy one in return, which kind of disappointed me,” and he says, “You bought it? Or Bolling did, years ago? I don’t remember it from then,” and she says, “That’s what I’ve been saying. I got it last year, the most extravagant present to myself ever. But that’s another matter, my cousin not buying one of Bolling’s works for even a quarter of what I paid for his — we won’t talk about true worth. There’s very little tit-for-tatism among painters. They mostly exchange works of comparable value, and what better time than when they’re both not selling anything? But when their art starts selling, then you have to buy and if you’re lucky they let you have it for half of what their gallery would charge. Since my cousin only started painting five years ago, there was no chance for Bolling to exchange anything with him. He only paints now and has begun to become one of your young hotshots. Being a professional and successful go hand in hand. Otherwise what goes hand in hand is elementary school art teacher and weekend artist, bartender, and intermittent painter. No, bartenders usually aren’t painters, nor are dentists. Plastic surgeons often are, in their spare time. But you get my point. And I paid sixteen hundred for it. I didn’t have the money and am paying in small monthly installments. I wanted to help support him because by doing so I was supporting all art in general, I felt, and I like the work immensely.” He doesn’t. Looks like some turn-of-the-century work. That’s not accurate. There were plenty of great artists then, though mostly French. But like an Audrey — Aubrey? — Beardsley drawing or poster of a beautiful young woman with wavy locks and sensuous lips and tiny waist and perfect bosom and long body in a long diaphanous gown looking as if it’s being blown by a wind machine. Pre-Raphaelite, that’s it — Dante Rossetti and others — but maybe he has the time wrong. The woman in the painting’s somewhat modern, see-through blouse and dreadlocks on a Caucasian and smoking a pipe, but she’s even barefoot and behind her is a thicket of curlicued trees. He says, “Sixteen hundred. That’s nowhere near to what I was thinking of paying — I mean, on the downside. I didn’t even think of it, how much. I should have because I should have assumed his works would be worth something by now,” and she says, “Didn’t I tell you? I don’t want to make things worse for myself here, but I had slides made of some of these to get them exhibited and sold, but no luck. So, selling one now at a more affordable price — remember, I said I would have taken a quarter of what I gave my cousin if he had shown any interest in one of Bolling’s — would be all right and might renew my energy to try and sell more.” “Shit, I feel like such a vulgarian, rushing through these and bargaining even before I tell you the one I like. Maybe, to give myself more time with all this, I should look at them again in September when we’re on our way back from Maine. But where you don’t go out of your way again with wine and cheese, and I promise I’ll keep the appointment and get here on time,” and she says, “You selected one? Then let’s see if we can settle on it now,” and he holds open the pile of paintings and says, “This one okay?” and she says, “You like that? I do too. So take it,” and he says, “It’s much larger than the last one I got, so a hundred dollars wouldn’t be right for it, would it? — just say so,” and she says, “Not from anyone else. Just as I wouldn’t have sold, if you hadn’t been given it, that last one for a hundred dollars to anyone but you … though a hundred then is worth about two hundred today, no? and maybe more. They say in the last twenty years the dollar has lost half its value every decade. But it’s going to a good home and a good person, and Bolling would love that you have it for a hundred. This very minute he’s probably even scorning me for selling it rather than giving it to you, but he’d also have to know I can use the money.” “So, deal then, great; I’m so happy, and thanks,” and takes it out and says, “Can I roll up the others for you?” and she says, “Better let me, there’s a special way,” and rolls them up and ties them and the buzzer from downstairs rings. She goes to the intercom while he carries the paintings into the closet. They seem lighter, which is ridiculous. “Yes?” and his friend says, “I’m here for Gould Bookbinder. My car’s double-parked, so can you tell him I’m waiting?” She turns to him, and he motions he heard. “Want me to …?” pointing to the other stuff, and she says, “No, I may want to throw some of it out. And it’s raining now so you’ll need to protect your painting,” and goes into the kitchen. He rolls up the painting and she comes out with newspapers and two shopping bags and says, “Oh, let me see it one more time, I feel I never will again,” and he holds it up and she says, “He did mountains and trees like almost no one. A real nature boy for a city kid,” and he says, “Trees?” and she says, “Here and here and behind these two a whole grove of them. They’re not brown or green and no little olives or white flowers on them, but that means nothing.” “Listen, I know the guy’s in a rush but can I put some ceiling lightbulbs in for you? I’m a half foot taller and have a long reach,” and she says, “I’ve nothing but sixty-watters for table lamps, so don’t bother.” He writes out a check, says, “Remember, cash it,” and she says, “Why wouldn’t I?” and he says, “If you’re anything like me you’ll keep it in your wallet till it’s ragged and unre- … in- … just not negotiable.” She rolls up his painting, wraps it in newspaper, sticks the bags at either end, and says, “There’s still some space in the middle where it can get soaked, so keep your arm around it there.” Intercom rings and she says into it, “He’s coming down now; give him a minute.” They say goodbye, kiss, she says, “If you and your wife have the time when you drive back—” and he says, “I don’t see how. Got to see my mom, Sally’s got to see hers, we’ll only have two days, but if we can we will.” Walking downstairs he thinks, Look at me: T-shirt and shorts and old sneakers, while she was smartly dressed. She’s probably thinking now, “The slob, Philistine. If I hadn’t caught him at his mother’s he never would have come here before he left for Maine. So insincere. And thinks he can choose in two minutes and offer me a hundred for it and that I’ll take the money because I need it and what he did for Bolling years ago. Oh, it’s sold, what’s the point of complaining? and his wife is nice and might like it and putting it in a frame will preserve it.” Or she isn’t thinking much of anything; just putting the wine and cheese away and clearing up the closet mess.