looked like him, and so must be like him.
Mother had no education. Mother knew nothing, only her prejudices and hatred of men, all men, including her own son. Moments before she died, she pointed a finger at Giles, and that bony worm shook before his eyes for the last time as she spoke in broken words. “You've a c-curse on ya, Giles Gah-ran, God and I know. I've pro-” A cough threatened to shut her up but she fought past it. “Pro-tec-a-ted ya from it, fr-from y-your very na-nature… all these years.” More coughing gave Giles hope she'd shut up before saying another word, but it was no use. She meant to say it all with her dying breath. And some part of him wanted to hear it all again, to absorb it, take a morbid pleasure in her choking on it, her own creation tale of how he came into being one night when she got drunk with the Devil and spread her legs for Satan himself.
“But w-with me g-gone, you'll succumb to your base n-nature to become him again-that monster that spaw- spawned you. Spawn as in the Devil's own seed.”
She found voice now, taking sail on it, adding, “You have his eyes, his face, and his genes. He's in your core, boy, your every cell, your DNA.” She'd then grabbed his hands in her cold, bloodless, knuckle-ugly grasp. “You ought do yourself and the world a favor, son, and come to eternity with me here, now. Take your life. Drop out of this existence now, before it's too… too late. Trade your ugly soul in for anything but what you are!”
Fucking bitch for a mother, he thought now. Louisa Childe had looked something like Mother. Joyce Dixon- Olsen and Sarah Towne to a lesser degree.
Mother had left him with a dust-laden box as well, telling him that everything about his father resided inside that box, and if he did not believe her ever before about the awful nature to which he was heir, that he need only open that ornate antique box.
He had all these years never opened the damn box, several times taking it as far as the incinerator to burn it, but never going through with the destruction. Instead, he had placed the box back in its keeping place beneath his bed, unopened.
Lucinda had said to meet her at her art studio in downtown Milwaukee only blocks from the museum at seven-thirty, and that they would go to the Orion exhibit at the museum together. Lucinda was both young and wealthy, a patron of the arts who enjoyed nothing more than discovering new and unique talent. After all, she had discovered Keith Orion, now the toast of the elite of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, his work on display at the Living Art Gallery inside the Hamilton Museum just down the hall from the masters, da Vinci, van Gogh, Rembrandt, Matisse, Chagall, Picasso, Monet and Manet-all of them. Just off a room filled with exquisite sculptures from Donatello to Rodin to Moore.
Tonight Giles had been invited by Lucinda herself to see Orion's so-called magnificent oil paintings on display at Milwaukee's Hamilton Museum's Fine Arts Center, popularly known as the Living Arts Gallery. Giles thought Orion mediocre at best and did not understand all the to-do over his oils. Lucinda's taste in art swung left, right and center, and her shows had been known to fail miserably, but she had hinted at the idea that Giles's own discovery, his “breakout breakthrough” loomed close at hand.
Giles had dressed for the occasion, all in black, no tie or tails, only his leather coat and sleek shirt and pants along with fake Gucci shoes. He hopped onto a downtown bus to get to Lucinda's gallery near the arts center.
He recalled the day they had first met. He had a letter of recommendation from an art promoter in Minneapolis, Minnesota, that she simply could not be impressed by. Nonetheless, she looked over the portfolio he'd brought in. Still, she remained cool to his work. Even the photos of his two best sculptures-his finest work, requiring years to complete-hadn't impressed Lucinda, and he quickly began to feel she had no taste for what was truly unique and authentically from the heart. But perhaps he could win her over, if only she would come to his studio flat and see the two finished sculptures, and his work in progress. So he pleaded that day with Lucinda to come and have a look at his most recent works.
Back in Millbrook, he had shown one of his sculptures- his best work-to another art exhibitor, Cameron Lincoln. The man had claimed to love it, that it was world-class work, that it could easily fit into any gallery in the nation or the world stage, and that together they could make a fortune selling such works for Giles. But he told Giles that he needed more like it, a grouping, he called it, of at least six or seven “related” sculptures to be a part of a show he wished to promote. Giles showed Cameron his other works, created long before his master work, but Cameron's reaction was as tepid as cold soup to the work that “had no backbone.” Cameron Lincoln absolutely loved the “unique and inspired use of the spinal vertebrae as artistic metaphor” in the sculpture.
“If you can get a grouping together before next April,” Cameron had promised, “I can put your work on display alongside Minneapolis St. Paul's finest artists.”
Giles could hardly believe his luck, but he could not possibly put together that many sculptures in so short a time. It had taken him a year to complete the sculpture that Cameron so admired, not to mention the time involved in getting together all the parts. As a result, Giles proposed a grouping of six or seven oil paintings with similar motifs in which spines figured heavily, one his snake pit of spines, all alive and hissing and writhing. Others were paintings representing sculptures he had dreamed up-plans for similar sculptures as the one Cameron so admired. Giles had already sketched these in charcoal, and he had rushed them to Cameron.
Cameron had stared at each sketch, finding them fascinating. “The attention to detail, even in black and white is remarkable, Giles. Christ, you know every bone and cusp in the backbone, don't you, boy?”
“Some people call the spine the Devil's tail.”
“Really? I'd never heard that.”
“Says it explains why men are evil.”
“Women, too. They got backbones so they hafta be just as devilish, huh?”
Ignoring the question, Giles had replied with a question of his own. “If I do these sketches in oil, can you exhibit the paintings alongside the finished sculpture?”
Cameron had again stared at the sketches or rather into them. They pulled him in, and he felt mesmerized by them. Giles worked so beautifully with the human form, creating fired clay images of women in various poses, birds and animals at their sides. In the spinal sculpture that Cameron so admired and in the sketches, the human vertebra shone through the back as if to tell a story of courage and fortitude, as if the skeletal snake had a life of its own. Uniquely done, the faces were filled with pathos. Life-sized, everything stood in proportion, except that the spines lay outside the otherwise natural, peaceful body, floating overhead like the bony wings of angels. Cameron said, “It is the disarming, stark imbalance that creates a reaction in me that I must believe others, too, will-must- feel. At the center coils the knotty, snakelike cord painted a daring, hellish red. I love it, Giles… love it, love it, love it. So, we've gotta get more done and quickly.”
“It takes time to build a bridge.”
“Giles you've accomplished serenity alongside human misery, no small task for any artist.”
“Sounds like you really like it. Do you? Really like it, I mean?”
“I love it, Giles. We can do the exhibit as oils. I will be terribly surprised if they do not evoke a great response,” added Cameron.
However, before the exhibit ever got under way, the show fell through when Cameron was arrested for art theft and fraud. Sometime afterward when Lincoln was out on bail, Giles, in a fit of artistic rage and frustration killed Cameron.
Giles's bus now arrived in Milwaukee's downtown area, and he stepped from it and onto the pavement. He walked east on Milwaukee Boulevard the two blocks to Lucinda's gallery. She was locking up, readying to go without him. Sometime during the evening, he must ask her again if she could find the time to come to his loft to see his work in progress.
She turned from the door and gasped at his sudden appearance. “Oh, Giles! You frightened me. You made it after all.”
“Sorry I didn't mean to scare you. Running late, I know. Glad I caught you.”
“How've you been, Giles?”
“Fine and you?”
“Have you been working?”
“You know I'm always working, always.”
“All work and no play,” she chided.
“When are you… Are you going to come see it?”
“Oh, absolutely!”
He stopped and she stopped with him, and he stared deep into her eyes. “When absolutely?”'
