Tuesday, May 4, 2010 - What
was showing some of my paintings to an art... |
| What
was showing some of my paintings to an art gallery
guy compared to that?
Nevertheless, I made my way up the stairs to
Little Pink with leaden heels
The sun was going down, flooding the big room with
gorgeous and improbable tangerine light, but I
felt no urge to try and capture it - not this
eveningThe light called to me, just the sameAs
the photograph of some long-gone love, happened on
by accident while going through an old box of
souvenirs, may call to you
Even upstairs I could hear the grinding voice of
the shellsI sat down and began poking at the
clutter of items on my junk-table - a feather, a
water-smoothed stone, a disposable lighter rinsed
to an anonymous grayNow it wasn't Emily
Dickinson I thought of, but some old folksong:
Don't the sun look good, Mama, shinin through the
treesNo trees out there, of course, but I could
put replica prada handbags one on the horizon if I wanted toI could put
one out there for the red sunset to shine through
236
I wasn't afraid of being told I had no talentI
was afraid of Signor Nannuzzi telling me I had a
leetle talentOf having him hold his thumb and
forefinger maybe a quarter of an inch apart and
advising me to reserve a space at the Venice
Sidewalk Art Festival, that I would certainly find
success there, many tourists would surely be taken
by my charming Dal? imitations
And if he did that, held his thumb and forefinger
a quarter of an inch apart and said leetle, what
did I do then? Could some stranger's verdict take
away my new confidence in myself, steal my
peculiar new joy?
"Maybe," I saidBecause painting pictures wasn't like putting
up shopping malls
The easiest thing would be just to cancel the
appointmentexcept I'd sort of promised Ilse,
and omega seamaster de ville I wasn't in the habit of breaking the promises
I made to my children
My right arm was still itching, itching almost
hard enough to hurt, but I barely noticedThere
were eight or nine canvases lined up against the
wall to my leftI turned toward them, thinking
237
I'd try to decide which ones were best, but I
never so much as looked at them
Tom Riley was standing at the head of the stairs
He was naked except for a pair of light blue
pajama pants, darker at the crotch and down the
inside of one leg, where he had wet themHis
right eye was goneThere was a matted socket full
of red and black gore where it had beenDried
blood streaked back along his right temple like
war paint, disappearing into graying hair above
his earHis other eye stared out at the Gulf of
MexicoCarnival sunset swam over his narrow,
pallid face
I shrieked in surprise and chanel flap bag terror, recoiled, and
fell off my chairI landed on my bad hip and
yelled out again, this time from painI jerked
and my foot struck the chair I'd been sitting in,
knocking it overWhen I looked toward the stairs
again, Tom was gone
vi
Ten minutes later I was downstairs, dialing his
home numberI had descended the stairs from
238
Little Pink in the sitting position, thumping down
one riser at a time on my assNot because I'd
hurt my hip falling off the chair, but because my
legs were trembling so badly I didn't trust myself
on my feetI was afraid I might take a header,
even going down backward so I could clutch the
banister with my left handHell, I was afraid I
might faint
I kept remembering the day at Lake Phalen I'd
turned to see Tom with that unnatural shine in his
eyes, Tom trying not to embarrass me by actual
bawlingBoss, I can't get used to balenciaga bag seeing you this
way
The telephone began to ring in Tom's nice Apple
Valley homeTom, who'd been married and divorced
twice, Tom who had advised me against moving out
of the house in Mendota Heights - It's like giving
up home field advantage in a playoff game, he'd
saidTom who'd gone on to enjoy my home field
quite a little bit himself, if Friends with
Benefits were to be believedand I did believe
it
I believed what I'd seen upstairs, too
239
"Come on," I muttered"Pick the mother****er up
I didn't know what I'd say if he did, and didn't
careAll I wanted right then was to hear his
voice
I did, but on a recording"Hi, you've reached Tom
Riley," he said"My brother George and I are off
with our mother, on our annual cruise - it's
Nassau this yearWhat do you say, Mother?"
"That I'm a Bahama Mama!" said a cigarette-cracked
but undeniably cheerful tiffany co jewelry v |
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