Peter Heller - The Painter

“Wanna see if the pink ones taste different?”

Nods.

“Okay, let’s go.” I sorted through my own beads for the pink ones and bit them off one at a time.

“Which is better?”

“Pink!” said Celine. Julie nodded. They let go of each other’s hands and began to eat with gusto.

“Now green?”

They nodded. In three minutes nothing was left of any of our necklaces but stained and ragged elastic strings. Their mouths and cheeks were sticky with color, the tunics of their sailor outfits smudged with their own palettes. Their hands fell together again. They continued to watch me with unwavering vigilance, but now it was more anticipation than fear.

“Want a gum cigar? Can they chew gum?”

Julia nodded. “Bien sûr.” She was sitting on a stool at the counter and clearly enjoying herself.

I went to the coat and got out three pink bubble gum cigars. I unwrapped these too and the hands came up and I said, “Let’s chew half.” We did. They were sort of smiling through their chewing.

“Don’t swallow, right?”

They nodded, chewed.

“Okay, maybe we better give the other half to Mom for later.” They chewed, looked to their mom who nodded. “It’s okay,” she said.

“Sautez!”

They broke ranks, ran to their mother, leading with their half cigars, and all three began chattering happily in French.

I polished off my own stogie, chewed. Occurred to me that a real one would be pretty good right now.

“All done,” I said. “That wasn’t too tough, was it?”

“What?” Julia called happily out of her huddle.

“Got what I need. That was perfect. They can go do whatever.”

She straightened. “You what? I don’t understand.”

“I’m going to paint this at Steve’s. Get out of your hair. That was perfect.”

Her eyebrows were two perfect high arches. She was poised between disapproval and delight. All of this dealing with an artist was a bit strange and so unpredictable. But fun.

“I love Celine and Julie. They are perfect,” I said. “Terrific models. Best I ever had.”

I meant it.

“Steve brought up this big easel?” I said. “He’ll send someone to get it later. Give me a couple of days.”

“Well! Paaw. Well, okay. Wow.” She released a long draught of laughter. “I believe I get it,” she said. “Do you want some toast before you go? Another espresso?”

“Sure.”

Before I drove back down the mountain we all ate cinnamon toast, and Julia and I drank espresso and talked about fishing, which, it turned out, she used to love to do with her father in Quebec. The girls played girl Legos on the floor. I didn’t know they made girl Legos but they do. I packed up and all three of them waved me off from the front door.

I drove straight to the hotel. I asked the manager at the desk if there was a room I could paint in, not my room. Still didn’t want to deal with Steve’s place. I said I was planning one rather large canvas, like five by seven. Probably three days. He said, yes, of course. In fact the conservatory room on the roof has just been redone, it would be perfect. I asked for a drop cloth, a small folding table that could be stained. I called Steve and explained that I needed the canvas, the easel from Pim’s. He was used to this from me, he was eager and quick, happy as long as I was working.

“Julia just called me,” he said. “She was a bit giddy. She said you all just had the most remarkable portrait session. She said you didn’t paint at all, you just sat around and ate candy cigars. The girls adore you, apparently.”

“Candy necklaces. The cigars we chewed.”

“Ha! You are not acting like a murderer. You are acting exactly like the old Jim.”

Silence. The old Jim didn’t feel like the old Jim. The old Jim didn’t even know who the old Jim was. Or the new one.

“Sorry to bring up a sore subject,” he said.

“It’s not a sore subject. Can you just bring me the stuff?”

“Be there in an hour. Miguel is on his way up.”

“Thanks.” I hung up.

The thing about old friends is that they never want you to change.

I knew I couldn’t paint the girls without painting something else first. Not sure what. But something was pressing the way it does sometimes. And I knew I couldn’t paint it in the big sunny room on the top floor. I took another small canvas out of the bundle and put it on the easel in the room. I cut off a piece of fiberboard and made a small palette. I wouldn’t need many colors. I began to paint an ocean. It was a cold sea. There were no swimming women this time, no fish. There was a single boat. It was sailing away, not sailing, drifting. In the center of the boat was a pile of sticks, and the sticks were on fire. A plume of smoke rising into an overcast sky. Inside the pyre was a mass. I painted a second boat. It was much smaller, much further away on its journey, but the smoke rose faintly from it, too. It was almost to the horizon and around it circled a flock of birds, and others trailed after it, the way they do after a fishing vessel.

That was it. I signed it. When Miguel came to tell me everything was set up I gave him the picture of the brothers in the valley but I kept the one of the boats, not sure why. I told him to tell Steve to price the brothers however he wanted and to hang it beside the new ones on the west wall. Then I took the elevator to the top floor.

I spent two whole days with the girls, much longer than I’d planned. I painted the garden outside the window first, and I painted in more detail than I had been used to lately. I painted an emerald hummingbird and a finch. I painted mums and hollyhocks, black-eyed Susans. I painted them framed in the windows and then I stepped back, felt the pressure of the windows in my chest and got rid of them, the frames and glass. I painted some sparse grass and a doll in the grass and a seal. The seal seemed alive and somehow happy to be there. That’s what I painted the first afternoon. For some reason I wanted to make a world first, a safe and good world for the little girls.

The second morning I woke feeling clean and energized. First time in a while. I had walked once around the plaza the evening before, bought a silver bracelet for Sofia from the Indians in the gallery, fought the impulse to call her, knew I didn’t want any news, turned my phone off, then I’d eaten a bowl of minestrone in the hotel dining room. Back upstairs I watched two hours of a reality show about sheriff’s deputies in the bayous of South Louisiana called Cajun Justice , and fell asleep. I would have watched more had there been more episodes, I could listen to that muddled French accent all night long. Like the Quebecois, like Julia, the Cajuns were full of beans and mischief and humor and even the bad ones, the ones that were stealing copper and poaching gators, they seemed to be having more fun than the rest of us.

So I ordered room service on Pim, with a double espresso and an extra carafe of coffee, and I took the elevator to the bright room on the roof and I painted the girls. I painted them face on in their sailor suits, holding hands. Their tunics were smeared and streaked with colors. They were a happy mess. On Celine, on the left, on top of her head I put a chicken. A very content chicken roosting in a shaggy nest. On Julie I placed a nest of baby birds and a mommy bird. They were shaped like blackbirds, but they were wildly colored. The girls had forbearance. They were clearly in this together and they were willing to undergo the ruckus on their heads because they thought it was funny and necessary. The nests in their hair did not at all detract from their dignity, they enhanced it.