"I think I could learn to cook," Patrick said.
"Sure you could; it just takes practice--and you have to love it.
That's the secret ingredient. You have to love it. ALDEN!"
Patrick finished his burger, thanked Parker and Hildy, and walked down
the road. As the sounds of the party faded behind him, he began to
relax. He hadn't realized how tense he'd been. What's the matter with
you? he asked himself. Parties are for fun, right? But he had to admit
that it hadn't been fun, not really. Interesting, but not fun. What is
fun? Is it when you don't care what happens?
He turned down Rock City Road toward town. If you didn't care at all,
you wouldn't be interested in what happened; it wouldn't matter. How
could that be fun? But, if you cared a lot, you would be too tense to
have fun. I guess, he thought, you have to care a little, enough to be
interested, but not too much. He tended to be on or off; he cared
intensely or he didn't care at all. In this case, he thought, he cared
too much. He wanted a woman. He was just as good as Joe Burke or Gino
Canzoni. They had women. Beauties. They were citizens or writers or
artists or whatever they were. Who was he?
Patrick couldn't answer that question. He just knew that he was as good
as they were. That meant that somehow, someday, he would show up at a
party with someone like Amber and make jokes and have fun. This was a
cheerful thought. But, in the meantime, he had to learn more science.
And art--what the hell was art all about? By the time he reached town,
Patrick was singing songs from a Burl Ives record that his mother used
to play when Patrick was a little boy. "_How can there be a cherry that
has no stone? How can there be a baby with no cryin'? _"
4
Willow lifted groceries from the bicycle basket, took them inside, and
set them on the counter with a satisfying thump. Onions, garlic, a
green pepper, a red pepper, basil, a can of coconut milk, a can of
chicken stock, a small can of curry paste, chicken, lettuce, and two
bottles of Gewurztraminer. The wine was extravagant. No doubt about
that. But, for once it was her money. Ann had given her a job mornings
at the Deli. Willow took her first pay directly to the Grand Union
supermarket. She had been to the library and copied a recipe for curry
and the name of the recommended wine. She put the wine in the
refrigerator. Amber owed Art a meal, and Willow had volunteered to
cook.
It was two in the afternoon, warm, too early to start. She was tempted
to lie down and read, but instead she took a straw hat from a peg by
the door and walked outside. Bees were buzzing in the roses. The tops
of the trees were dark against a bright blue sky. Her feet led her into
the pine woods on the far side of the studio where a deep layer of pine
needles softened her steps. She walked for five minutes and stopped. In
the distance, a chainsaw snarled twice and was silent. The air was
still and resinous. Small sounds filtered through the branches above
her. A young chickadee flew toward her, pausing briefly on low
branches. Willow remained motionless. The tiny black and white bird
hopped and flew directly to her shoulder. She felt its thin claws shift
as its head turned first one way, then the other. It rested a moment as
Willow filled with a mixture of elation and deep humility. A quick
whirring of wings and the chickadee was ten yards farther on its way.
Willow remained still, her eyes misty, her mouth slightly open. She let
the special feeling spread through to her fingertips and the soles of
her feet. No words for this, she thought. As if in answer, the
chickadee called. That's it, Willow said to herself--two notes
descending, a major third. She repeated the two notes in her mind. The
call and the feeling and the quiet beating of her heart wove together
like a shawl to be saved for the future. Hers. Her.
"God," she said. She was thirsty. She continued slowly through the
woods, working her way downhill. At some point she would meet the lower
road, and she could walk back to the beginning of AhnRee's driveway.
She came to the top of a ledge which she followed until she found a
place to scramble down. At the base of the ledge, she straightened and
listened. Banjo notes were picking their way through the trees. An easy
deliberate rhythm drew her along and down the hill, farther from
AhnRee's drive. The notes grew louder. Willow could see a clearing and
part of a roof line through the trees. Someone was playing in the back
yard.
She paused. The player was practicing _Cripple Creek_, getting into it
further and further. My day for music, she thought. When it stopped,
she clapped with pleasure and emerged from the trees onto a rough lawn.
The banjo player was sitting under a birch tree on a wooden kitchen
chair. "Right on! Excuse me," she said, "I was walking and I stopped to
listen. Where am I?"
"Cripple Creek," he said and smiled. "My back yard. My mother's,
actually." He was tall and thin with shoulder length reddish hair and a
wispy mustache that was supposed to make him look older. His hands were
large. Long fingers wrapped around the neck of the banjo he was holding
upright on his lap.
"I'm Willow. I live up there in AhnRee's studio," She pointed up the
mountain.
"Ah, yes--AhnRee. I'm Martin. Lower Byrdcliffe Road is just down at the
end of the driveway." Willow couldn't decide whether he was shy or
busy. He seemed to be telling her to hoof it. The Devil made me do it,
that's what she told Amber later.
"I can play Cripple Creek.
"Oh yeah?" He held the banjo toward her.
"Not on that. Do you have a violin, umm, fiddle?"
"Strangely enough . . . " He stood up, leaned the banjo against the
chair, and said, "Be right back." Now what have I done? Willow asked
herself. She hadn't touched a violin in two years. He brought her an
old violin, nothing special, but the strings and the bow were in good
shape. She played a few notes.
"Been a while," she said. She played the first bars of _Cripple Creek_.
Such an easy melody. It sounded horrible. She stopped. "Just a second."
She took two deep breaths and let the feel come back to her. She played
one long slow note, listening. Better. She played the note again. She
played two notes. Her body began to wake up. It was surprising how you
played the violin with your whole body. I mean, God, she'd been playing
since she was three. She began again, more slowly. She had now
forgotten Martin. She played it through. Then again, a little faster.
Yes, she thought, and took it at a tempo close to the one she'd heard
through the trees. Halfway through, she heard a few tentative notes
from the banjo. She smiled, eased back, and let Martin lead. They
played until they had managed a decent version and stopped. There was
another burst of applause. A woman with short blonde hair and a heart
shaped face was clapping by the corner of the house.
"Hi, Mom. This is my mother, Heidi, ah, Willow."
"How do you do," his mother said. "Very nice."
"Willow appeared out of the woods," Martin said.
"Ah," his mother said, "a wood nymph. This is the time of year.
Although, I must say, musical wood nymphs are rare."
"Well," Willow said, handing the violin and bow to Martin, "I'm off to
gather mushrooms, back to my dwelling of twigs and pine cones." She
smiled at Martin's mother, the pretty bitch, and walked into the woods
without looking back, damned if she was going to go down their
driveway. A few moments later, she heard _Cripple Creek_, as if in
apology. Or was he just going back to work?
There was something familiar about Martin, an intangible set to his
attitude, a stubbornness. She thought back over her friends but
couldn't come up with the match. Memory is strange, she thought. It's
all in there, but you lose the keys, the entry ways. It's like a city
that keeps growing and growing. I mean, you have to go back and back to
the old neighborhoods? Lennie Rosenbloom, Mr. Rosenbloom to her,
encouraging but firm as she struggled through that Mozart sonata, his
hurt smile directing her to feel the music--he was shorter than Martin
and his hair was sandy colored. God, the light on his neck and chest.
She was 13, so close to blushing all the time that she had to act like
a zombie to keep herself under control. Played like one, too. God. No,
it wasn't Mr. Rosenbloom. The road appeared beyond a clump of bushes.
She pushed through and turned toward AhnRee's.
She had walked farther than she thought. By the time she reached the
driveway, she was worrying about dinner. She planned as she hurried up
the hill toward the studio: first, the onions and the peppers, get them
going in the large cast iron frying pan; second, the chicken, cut in
chunks; then the chicken stock and the coconut milk, the curry and the
basil. Whoops, forgot the rice. Start that right after the onions and
the peppers; give it time to steam a little and not be so wet. She
placed the straw hat on its peg, drank a large glass of water, and
played _Highway 61 Revisited_.
"_Like a rolling stone_ . . . " she sang along as she cut up onions.
"_To be on your own_ . . . " Whack, whack. "_How does it feel? _ . . .
" Whack, whack. Amber and Art arrived in the middle of _Desolation
Row_.
"Listen to that," she said as Bob Dylan's harmonica blew out the pain
and isolation.
"Damn," Art said, "that smells good."
"Listen!" Willow said, turning up the volume.
_Don't send me no more letters, no--not unless you mail them from
Desolation Row._ Dylan's intensity, the smell of curry, Amber's perfect
body next to Art's shoulders, and her own unnamed passion coalesced
into another moment she would never forget. "Too much," she said when
the piece ended. "Want some wine?" She busied herself with dinner.
Earlier, with the chickadee on her shoulder, she was a child of the
universe. Now, she felt reborn as an adult. It was so lonely and sad,
so--terminal.
She looked at Amber and Art. They did not appear to be in crisis. Art
was lighting up a joint. Willow took a few hits out of politeness. She
didn't mind getting high once in awhile, but the smoke in her lungs
felt foreign and unhealthy. Amber, who smoked cigarettes occasionally,
dragged away with gusto, the little pothead. Art was following her
around with his eyes as though he were chained.
She served and poured; they ate and drank. The evening got blurry.
Willow told them about the chickadee and about playing _Cripple Creek_.
"Yeah," Art said. "He lives in a house behind his mother's. She's got
money, or the family does. Don't know much about Martin; he went to
private school, was only around summers. His father was a pilot. He
died about ten years ago."
"He plays banjo pretty well," Willow said.
"Yeah, I guess. How come you stopped playing the violin?"
Willow scratched one knee. "I love the old greats," she said. "I mean
they are great souls, but . . . "
"They weren't your soul," Art said.
"No. I mean, they are, but they aren't." She put her hands behind her
head into her hair and paused, spreading her arms out slowly, letting
long dark strands run through her fingers and fan across her shoulders.
She shook her head. "I didn't want to be stuck in that scene forever.
Doors were closing."
"Willow's father is a music prof," Amber said.
"My mother plays, too," Willow said. "A nice Jewish musical family with
perfect children who know how to get along."
"What's wrong with getting along?" Amber smiled meaningfully in Art's
direction.
"Maybe you could sing; you look a little like Joan Baez." Art was a
decent guy, really. And he had those shoulders. Willow's ears were
buzzing.
"I wish," she said.
"You got any Coltrane?" The guy was full of surprises.
"We do." She rose slowly and flipped through the albums that Amber had
borrowed from AhnRee. "Night music," she said, putting it on the
stereo. Amber was smiling broadly and wiggling her toes.
"Ice cream," she said. Willow remembered that she had to work in the
morning.
"Bedtime for me," she said. Amber promised to do the dishes.
"Great dinner," Art said.
She closed the porch door behind her and stepped out of her clothes,
feeling the cool night air on her skin. She stretched, reaching high
with her fingers, and then slid her hands appraisingly down her sides
and hips. This feeling of aloneness, this new sense of herself, wasn't
so bad. Whatever it was, it was real. She pulled a blue broadcloth
nightshirt over her head and lay in bed, drifting away from the muffled
tenor sax, out toward the trees and the summer night. The quiet lured
her, not so much for itself, although it was wonderful, but for what
might arise within it.
In the morning, Art's truck was gone; Amber was nowhere to be seen; and
the dishes were dry, upside down in neat piles. Willow ate a bowl of
cold cereal with milk and then rode into town. The first thing she did
at Ann's was to make a pot of coffee. Drinking too much wine gave her a
headache, but dope left her head filled with a dull cloudiness that
drove her nuts. It didn't hurt, but she couldn't think. It was as if
she'd watched a dumb television show all night. "Dumb, dumb, dumb," she
sang. "I'm dumb, dumb, dumb-deedoo-dumb, dumb, dumb. Where's my bass
man?" she asked the coffee pot. "There we go," she said as coffee began
running into the Silex pot. "Dumb, dumb, deedoo."
"So it's a canary I hired?"
"Tweet. What are you doing up?"
"Couldn't sleep--smelled the coffee. We had a late delivery; see if you
can get the stuff out before it gets busy."
"Tweet, tweet." Ann acted grumpy, was grumpy, especially early in the
day, but there was no edge to it. The feeling was directed more at
herself. Willow did what she was told without resentment, agreeing with
Ann's pronouncements whenever possible. Ann wasn't around that much.
The whole idea was that Willow would open the Deli and let her sleep.
Ann took a cup of coffee upstairs, grumbling about the Pentagon and
Johnson's war. Willow began pricing cans of delicacies. Stocking was
easy; it was the little price stickers that slowed her down.
She was in the back room, looking down into a carton, when a voice
called out, "Anybody home?" She saw a familiar head of red hair.
Patrick, she realized as she came to the front of the store.
"Hi, I was in the back." Now that was intelligent, she thought. Patrick
was considering the meat and cheese on display in the counter cooler.
"Is it Patrick?" Brilliant. He straightened and turned.
"Himself," he said. "Good morning, Willow. What are you doing here?"
"Working, natch." She saw him start to grin; probably he thought she
was a little rich girl.
"Oh," he said. "Could you make me a roast beef sandwich? To go?"
"White, wheat, pumpernickel, light rye, dark rye? . . . "
"Dark rye."
"You want some horseradish in there? Mayo? What?" Patrick rubbed his
chin.
"Hell of a decision," he said. He turned his face up to the universe
for guidance. "Horseradish?"
"Horseradish," she said firmly. "And a little mayo on the other side.
I'll wrap the pickle separately, so it won't get soggy."
"Pickles are supposed to be soggy." He was grinning again.
"The sandwich, Patrick."
"Ah." He was altogether pleased with himself. She made the sandwich,
mumbling like a junior Ann, and at the last moment included an extra
pickle.
"There," she said. As he gave her a five dollar bill, the edge of his
palm brushed her fingers. She put the change on the counter between
them, not wanting to touch him again; she was still feeling his hand,
pleasantly hard against hers, and she wanted to go on enjoying it. "Off
you go," she said.
"Gotta put the paint on the wall. That's what Wilson says." He took the
bag and the change. "Maybe I'll see you and Amber at the Depresso."
Damn him.
"Maybe." She gave him her best Mona Lisa smile and flicked some hair
back over her shoulder. A horn honked.
"Speaking of Wilson . . . " he said. "Thanks."
He's cute, she thought. Her hand was still warm where he had touched
her. Like the ocean, his eyes darkened, the deeper she looked.
The next morning, Patrick was back. "Good sandwich," he said. He meant
it, and she felt a warm stirring. God, not a blush!
"Let's do that again." She hadn't wanted him to think of her as a
useless rich girl; now she didn't want to be Mother Earth. She opened
her mouth to speak and closed it. Confusing. Fortunately, he had turned
to the drinks cooler. She made the sandwich, including the extra
pickle, and took his money from the counter. As she reached toward him
with the change, her arm dipped and her hand rested for a moment on his
palm. "Thanks, Willow. Have to run."
"Bye." He was out the door and into an old blue pickup before she could
think of anything else to say. It wasn't me, she thought. I didn't do
that. It was my arm, like a damned dowsing rod.
Two guys came in for coffee and bagels. A steady flow of customers kept
her occupied; by noon she was over the embarrassment. But she was on
alert. At dinner she said to Amber, "My goddamn arm was out of
control." Amber clapped. "Oh, great," Willow said. "I'm groping
strangers, and you think everything's fine."
"It is fine. You just need to get laid, that's all. And how can you
call Patrick a stranger? You've known him for a month."
"Get laid--that's your solution for everything."
"No, no. It's a help; it takes the pressure off. And it's interesting,
Willow. Men are so different. Now, we're not talking babies, here."
Amber took a bite of bread. "Mmm, this bread . . . " She swallowed.
"Yumm. You're getting it; those first couple of loaves were kind of a
workout. You could get some good men, Willow; they're around. You need
a strategy."
"I'll pass out numbers at the News Shop," Willow said.
Amber laughed. "Give number one to Patrick. Maybe number two to that
cute Claude. Leave Art out; I'm not done with him. He's got a lot of
talent, Willow. You know what he told me last night?"
"Let's see . . . "
"He's buying another old barn--for its frame. He's going to put the
frame against his house barn, end-to-end. He wants to roof it and hang
one room in a quarter of the upper level, leaving the rest open. Can't
you see them: the finished barn and the design together, sort of
turning into each other?"
"Neat idea," Willow said. "O.K., I'll leave Art out."
"Oh, I forgot to tell you," Amber said. "There's a big party, Saturday
night. It's going to be on the mountain at a place called, 'Mead's
Meadow.' Art says they have it every year. It goes on all night; some
people bring sleeping bags. Kegs, music--why don't you ride up with
us?"
"Maybe I will," Willow said. "If I have any numbers left."
5
Patrick held the brush handle between his palms and walked to the
middle of the Van Slyke's lawn, rubbing his hands back and forth,
spinning the brush until it was dry. "See if you can finish the garage
by four," Parker had said. Good deal, it couldn't be later than three.
The paint cans were stacked by the ladder and the folded drop cloths.
He put the brush on top of the cans, took the rag and the putty knife
out of his back pockets, and stepped back. Amazing how much better a
paint job looks from twenty feet away, he thought.
"Looks good," Hendrik said from the kitchen door.
"Yes," Patrick said.
"Where your wheels?"
"Parker's going to pick me up."
"Have a beer while you wait?"
"Excellent," Patrick said. Hendrik went into the kitchen and reappeared
with two bottles of Heineken. He waved Patrick over to a picnic table
and opened the bottles with a pocket knife. He was a strong man with a
brooding expression and a flattened nose. He looked like someone who
might have painted a famous picture of a boxer. "Happy days," Hendrik
said.
"Prosit." There are few things better than the first swallow of cold
beer after a day's work. "Yes!" Patrick said.
"Looks good," Hendrik repeated. "Have to keep after these old houses."
"You've got a nice one. Is that your studio over there?"
"Yep."
"Could I ask you a question?"
"Sure."
"What is art, anyway?" Hendrik raised his eyebrows. He took several
long swallows of Heineken. "I've met a lot of artists in this town,"
Patrick went on, "and I realized that I don't understand it."
"Bunch of bullshit, mostly."
Patrick waited. Hendrik looked at him and sighed. He took another
swallow of Heineken and indicated the valley with one hand. "Everybody
wants to be an artist," he said. "Doctors. I saw a clinic the other
day--said 'Medical Arts Group' on the building." He burped. "It's like
this, Patrick: there's art, capital A--fine art, it's called
sometimes--and there's everything else."
"So what is this 'fine art?"'
Hendrik shook his head. He went into the house and came out with two
more beers. "Let's start with everything else," he said. "It's easier."
He pried off the bottle caps. "Everything else is commercial
art--calendar graphics or posters or paintings of lighthouses, fall
foliage, the streets of Paris--that kind of stuff, done in familiar
styles. Nothing wrong with it. But it isn't art; it's craft." He drank.
"It's craft because the painters know what they're doing when they
start. Some of the paintings seem magical, but it's trick magic. They
know how to get the rabbit out of the hat. An artist--capital
A--doesn't know what's in the hat or how to get it out."
"Hmm," Patrick said.
"A guy in Vermont came up with that comparison--Robert Francis. It's
like this, Patrick: an artist needs to make a picture that expresses
how he feels about something or someone or some place. Since every
artist is different, good paintings, true paintings, are original."
"True?"
"Yeah, true to the artist's feelings," Hendrik said.
"True," Patrick said, turning the word over in his mind.
"It's not so easy. What the hell, I'll show you." Hendrik got up and
led Patrick to his studio.
"Look there," he said, pointing at a wall covered with charcoal
drawings of a nude Julie Van Slyke, fifteen years younger. "Those are
studies I made before I did the painting. You can see how I kept
circling around the central idea, this line here." He moved one hand
through the air as though he were stroking her hip. "Once I got it
right, it was mostly a matter of color. Not a bad painting, as it
turned out."
Patrick saw what Hendrik meant through a light haze of embarrassment.
He took a drink from his bottle of Heineken and acted grown up. Mrs.
Van Slyke was leaning forward. She had unexpectedly exotic breasts that
hung and then swelled upwards. "The thing is, it can take a while
before you get it. Sometimes you never get it. I've been working on
this one all year." Hendrik walked over to a heavy wooden easel. A
canvas, half painted, half sketched in pencil, showed a young man
sitting by a fireplace and holding a guitar. His chair was sideways to
the fire. His body and guitar were turned toward the painter. There was
a wine bottle on the floor next to the chair.
"No glass," Patrick said.
"He's drinking alone."
"Why is he turned? Who is he looking at?"
"Maybe if I knew that, I could paint the goddamned thing."
"Oh," Patrick said. "I like it--so far, anyway. Pretty intense."
"Hendrik, are you there with Patrick?" Mrs. Van Slyke's voice came
loudly through an intercom. Hendrik made a face, went over to the door,
and pressed a plastic button.
"Yes, Dear."
"Parker is here for Patrick."
"Be right there," Hendrik said.
They walked side by side to the main house. Patrick felt himself
looking at Mrs. Van Slyke differently; he was seeing her partly through
Hendrik's eyes, as Hendrik had painted her. She was more female.
"Patrick asked what art is," Hendrik explained.
"Are you clear on that now?" Mrs. Van Slyke asked as she took the empty
bottles from their hands. Parker was grinning on the sideline.
"Umm--it's over there," Patrick said, waving at the studio.
"Of course it is," Mrs. Van Slyke said without changing expression.
"What wonderful crews you have, Parker! The place looks marvelous. I
hope you will be able to do the studio next year."
"It will be first on on my list," Parker promised. "Come, Patrick,
let's get the ladder on the rack."
"Thanks for the Heineken," Patrick said to Hendrik.
"Good job," Hendrik said.
"Goodbye, Patrick. I hope that we see you again." Mrs. Van Slyke smiled
and waited for his reaction.
"Bye," he said. They hustled off. On their way down the mountain, he
felt the mood lighten. "Whew," he said.
"Nice going, Patrick. A raise is in order--$2.25, retroactive to the
beginning of this week."
"No shit!"