Memory and Dream

aspects of her mentors’.

And I can see, particularly from your use of perspective, that you have already begun to gain a sense of your own style.”

“I’m trying,” Izzy said.

“Of course you are. And while these things should never be rushed, I can see where you will be having your own shows in the not too distant future.” Lead-ing the way back to her desk, Albina added,

“Now we’ll have to fill out a few forms. We take a forty-percent commission and our checks go out once a month. That’s not a hard and fast rule, however. If something of yours has sold and you’re desperate for some cash, I’m sure we’ll be able to work something out. But please. Don’t be calling me every day to see how your paintings are moving ....”

V

All right!” Alan cried once they were out on the pavement in front of the gallery. “You did it!”

Izzy accepted his hug, but she was finding it a little hard to muster as much enthusiasm herself

“What’s the matter, Izzy? I thought you’d be thrilled.”

“I am, I guess.”

“But ... ?”

Izzy gave him a halfhearted smile. “It’s just that I feel the only reason she took my stuff on was because of Rushkin. It’s like my paintings only have validity because they were done in his studio, under his eye.”

Alan shook his head. “Whoa. Wait a minute now.”

“No. You heard what she said. She thought my stuff was too derivative for her gallery until I told her I was studying under Rushkin.”

“Well, so what?” Alan asked. “Don’t knock it, Izzy. Whatever works, you know? Do you have any idea how hard it is to get your work hung in a good gallery?”

“I know. But still ...”

“And besides. In the long run, people are going to buy the pieces because of what you put into them, because of your talent, not because they’ve got a whiff of Rushkin about them.”

“Do you really think so?”

“I know so. Kathy’s not your only fan.”

“No,” Izzy said. “Just my biggest.”

They both had to smile, thinking of the way Kathy championed the work of her friends, particularly Izzy’s.

“I can’t argue with that,” Alan said.

He unlocked the VW’s passenger door for Izzy, then went around to the driver’s side to get in.

“Wait’ll I tell her,” Izzy said, her excitement returning as she thought of how Kathy would react. She slipped into her seat and banged the door shut. “She is just going to die.”

“Now, that’s better. For a minute there I thought you’d lost all sense of perspective.”

“Oh, but didn’t you hear what Albina had to say back there?” Izzy said cheerfully. “My perspective’s particularly my own.”

“I thought she said peculiarly.”

Izzy punched him in the arm.

“Hey,” Alan told her. “Careful of how you treat the driver.”

Izzy stuck out her tongue at him and then sank happily back into her seat for the drive back to the university. Things were still going to be tight when it came to luxuries, but at least she knew she could now afford to get that apartment with Kathy on Waterhouse Street, and that was what was really important. All she’d have to do was sell one of those paintings at the gallery and she’d have her next month’s rent, plus a little to put aside.

Things were definitely looking up.

VI

But the excitement of Albina’s agreeing to hang her work in The Green Man was brought down a second time when Izzy returned to her dorm and looked at the sketch she’d done of Rushkin last year.

Alan had been right. What she held in her hands was a bad caricature of the artist, not a realistically rendered portrait. How could she have gotten so far off base?

Rushkin was homely, but her sketch made him look positively grotesque: a gargoyle in tramp’s clothing. And while it was true that he was short, he wasn’t a dwarf. He slouched a great deal, but he didn’t have a hunched back. His wardrobe was out-of-date, the clothes well-worn, but he wasn’t the tatter-demalion her drawing made him out to be. She’d drawn a raggedy troll, not a Mari.

She cast her mind back to that first sight of him she’d had, feeding the pigeons on the steps of St.

Paul’s, and saw only the Rushkin she knew. But something niggled at her memory when she looked down at the sketch in her hand. She knew herself. She wasn’t given to the exaggeration that this sketch represented, and familiarity, while it could make one overlook something such as a hunched back or dwarfish stature in one’s dayto- day dealings with a person, couldn’t physically take the fact of it away.

Yet the only other explanation seemed even more implausible: that Rushkin had looked like this when she’d met him and he had since changed.

No, Izzy thought, comparing the drawing to how Rushkin had looked when she’d left his studio today. Not changed. He would have to have been completely and utterly transformed.

She stared at the sketch for a long time, then finally stuffed it away. Rushkin hadn’t changed his appearance. She’d just had a bad day with her faculties of recall the day she’d drawn it. It wasn’t as though Rushkin had actually been in front of her when she’d done the second drawing. She’d just remembered him wrong. Lord knew Rushkin was an odd bird. It would be so easy to fall into caricaturing when trying to draw him from memory after only one brief and rather confusing encounter.

She had to smile then. Wasn’t that just the whole story of her relationship with Rushkin: an endless series of confusing encounters. But before she could take that line of thought any further, Kathy came in and asked about how it had gone at The Green Man that day and Izzy was able to set the whole confusing puzzle aside. Kathy’s infectious excitement about the good news made it impossible for Izzy not to get excited all over again herself, and this time the feeling didn’t go away.

But that night she had a dream that had come to her before. In it, she walked into the section of Rushkin’s studio where she did her work to find that all her paintings had been destroyed. Some of the canvases were slashed, others were burned, all of them were ruined beyond repair, even the unfinished piece that was still on her easel. She knew when she woke that it wasn’t true, that the dreams were just her subconscious mind’s way of dealing with those feelings of self-consciousness that plagued every person who ever tried their hand at a creative endeavor at one point or another in their career. Some people would dream that the world ridiculed their work, their peers laughing and pointing their fingers at what they had done; she dreamt that her work was destroyed—the ultimate act of censorship.

Somehow destruction seemed worse. More personal. More vindictive. And though it was only a recurring dream, and she knew it was no more than a dream, she wished her subconscious mind would find another way to deal with her feelings of inadequacy because when she was in the dream, it felt too real. She would wake up so upset that she’d skip breakfast and rush out to the studio, where she could be reassured that the paintings were, in fact, unharmed.

Rushkin never asked her why she arrived so early some mornings and immediately took stock of her paintings, and she never told him about the dreams. The one thing Rushkin didn’t lack was self-confidence, and she knew he simply wouldn’t understand. She didn’t think anyone would. Oh, they might be able to relate to her occasional bouts with a lack of self-confidence, but they wouldn’t understand why the dreams felt so real and why they upset her as much as they did, even when she knew they weren’t real.

She wouldn’t be able to explain it because she herself didn’t know why the dreams’ despair lingered so strongly when she woke, lying like a black cloud over her day until she could hold the paintings in her hands and be reassured that they were truly safe.

VI I