“What else?”
He hesitated, then said, “Her mom- it was as if being a daughter was her main job in life. She once told me she felt she’d always have to take care of her mom. I tried to convince her that wasn’t right but she really got steamed. Told me I didn’t know what it was like. I didn’t argue with her. All that would’ve done was get her madder, and I really don’t like it when she gets mad.”
He walked away before I could respond. I watched him lift the chain to the parking lot, get in the Toyota, and drive off.
Two hands on the wheel.
Courteous, reverent, industrious, almost excruciatingly earnest.
In some ways, Melissa’s male counterpart- her spiritual sibling. I could understand the rapport.
Did that get in the way of her thinking of him the way he wanted?
A good kid.
Too good to be true?
My talk with him had twanged my therapist’s antennae, though I wasn’t sure why.
Or maybe I was just filling my head with supposition in order to avoid reality. The topic we’d barely touched upon.
Blue skies, black water.
Something white, floating…
I started the Seville, pulled forward, coasted across the San Labrador city line.
Melissa was awake, but not talking. She lay on her back, head propped on three pillows, hair braided atop her head, eyelids swollen. Noel sat by her side, in the rocker Madeleine had filled an hour ago. Holding her hand, looking alternately content and edgy.
Back in her uniform, Madeleine moved through the room like a harbor barge, docking at pieces of furniture, dusting, straightening, opening and closing drawers. On the nightstand was a bowl of oatmeal that had congealed to mortar. The drapes were drawn, warding off the harshness of midday summer light.
I leaned under the canopy and said hello. Melissa acknowledged me with a feeble smile. I squeezed the hand Noel hadn’t claimed. Asked her if there was anything I could do for her.
Head shake. She looked nine years old again.
I stuck around anyway. Madeleine swiped a bit more with her dustrag, then said, “I go downstairs,
Melissa shook her head.
Madeleine picked up the bowl of oatmeal and walked halfway to the door. “Something to eat for you, monsieur doctor?”
The invitation and the “doctor” meant I must have done something right.
I realized I was hungry. But even if I hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have turned her down.
“Thank you,” I said. “Something light would be fine.”
“A steak?” she said. “Or some nice lamb chops- I have the double-cuts.”
“A small chop would be great.”
She nodded, stuffed her dustrag in a pocket, and left.
Alone with Noel and Melissa, I felt like an unwanted chaperon. They seemed so comfortable with each other that three was definitely a crowd.
Soon her eyes had closed again. I stepped out into the hallway, found myself drifting past closed doors. Drifting toward the back of the house- the rear spiral staircase that Gina Ramp had descended that first day, looking for Melissa. Stairs that ascended as well, tunneling upward through the gloom of the hallway.
I began climbing. At the top was a hundred square feet of bare space marked by cedar double doors.
Old-fashioned iron key in the lock. I turned it, stepped into darkness, groped for a light switch, and flicked. Found myself in an enormous, loftlike room. Over a hundred feet long, at least half that amount in width, with dusty pine-plank floors, cedar walls, unfinished beam ceiling, bare bulbs joined to unshielded electrical conduits that ran the length of the beams. Dormer windows on both ends, shaded with oilcloth.
The right portion of the room was filled: furniture, lamps, steamer trunks and leather suitcases that brought to mind the age of rail travel. Groups of objects assembled with loose but noticeable organization: Here a collection of statuary, there a foundry’s worth of bronze sculptures. Inkstands, clocks, stuffed birds, ivory carvings, inlaid boxes. A jumble of staghorns, some of them on mounting boards, others bound together with leather thongs. Rolled rugs, animal skins, elephant-foot ashtrays, glass shades that could have been Tiffany. A standing polar bear, glass-eyed, yellowed, snarling, one paw waving, the other clutching a taxidermic salmon.
The left side was nearly empty. Two levels of vertically slotted storage racks ran along the wall. An easel and artist’s flat file sat in the center. Canvases and framed pictures filled the slots. A blank canvas was clamped to the easel- not quite blank; I made out faint pencil lines. The wooden frame had warped; the canvas billowed and puckered.
A pine paint box sat atop the flat file. The latch was rusted but I pried it open using my fingernails. Inside were a dozen or so sable brushes, their shanks paint-stained, their bristles stiffened to uselessness, a rusty palette knife, and paint tubes dried solid. Lining the bottom of the case were several pieces of paper. I slid them out. Pages cut out of magazines:
Color photograph- good quality, satin finish.
Two people- a man and a woman- standing in front of paneled doors. The Chaucer doors. Peach-colored stucco around the wood.
The woman was Gina Dickinson’s size and shape. Model-slim figure, except for a hard, high swell of belly. She had on a white silk dress and white shoes that stood out nicely against the dark wood. On her head was a wide- brimmed white straw sun hat. Wisps of blond hair fuzzed her slender neck. The face below the hat was encased in a mummy-wrap of bandages, the eyeholes flat and black as raisins in a snowman.
One of her hands clutched a bouquet of white roses. The other rested on the shoulder of the man.
Tiny man. Coming midway to Gina’s shoulder, making him four seven or eight, tops. Sixtyish. Frail. Head too big for his body. Arms disproportionately long. Stumpy legs. Goatish features under frizzy gray hair.
A man whose ugliness was so beyond aesthetic repair that it seemed almost noble.
He wore a dark three-piece suit that was probably well cut, but tailoring couldn’t compensate for Nature’s faulty draftsmanship.
I remembered something Anger, the banker, had said:
No portraits in the house…
The aesthete…
He was posed formally, one hand in his waistcoat, the other around his bride. But his eyes had wandered off to one side. Uneasy. Knowing that the camera would be cruel even on special days, but that special days cried out for preservation nonetheless.
He’d kept the picture at the bottom of a box.
Like the magazine photos, inspiration?
I took a closer look at the canvas on the easel. The pencil lines assembled themselves as coherent form: two ovals. Faces. Faces on an equal level. Cheek to cheek. Below, what would have been the sketchy beginnings of torsos. Normal size. The one on the right flat-tummied.
Art as revisionism. Arthur Dickinson’s attempt at mastery.
March 5, 1971.
