She turned toward the foyer, sliding sideways through the crowd, changing course to avoid Sonia Kasgard, who would get your forearm like a bear trap and whose eyes would bore into yours until you submitted to her crumbling eyeliner and bloodshot, crazed whisperings—in a room where you couldn’t hear your own voice—drawing you closer, closer, until those waxen red lips were intimately involved with your ear. She was New York batshit crazy. Checked all the boxes. Health-food nut. Cats. Dressed like a bag lady. Millions in the bank. Never shut up about real estate. It was never anything but what was up for sale at the Dakota and how she really felt that just a little more space, just one more bedroom, a tad more square footage … She had a three-bedroom in the Apelles and six on twenty acres in Westport, next to the Lindberghs, no less. Space was an infection, and you didn’t want to catch it from her.
Arriving unassailed in the foyer, a marble-floored gallery space big enough to execute a three-point turn in, yes, a Volkswagen Beetle, an advertisement to anyone entering the apartment that the residents were urbane, rich, thoughtful collectors of modern art, my mother encountered a man still wearing his parka, water pooling around his boots. He was facing the large canvas opposite the door and muttering to himself, a bridge troll between her and her daughter. As she approached, he addressed her with his attention still focused on the painting.
They put it right here to slap you when you walk in.
She narrowed her eyes. It’s exactly what she’d thought when she’d first come in. Yet another painting they’d bought instead of hers.
I suppose so, she said. How often did the city subject her to the free associations of men who had her captive attention for ten seconds in an elevator, ten minutes in a cab? Five times a day? Fifteen? You plied them with affirmations until you were set free. The cabbie, the suit and tie, the doorman at the building next door, a man she passed multiple times a day, Hey, momma.
Ha! the man exclaimed. There it is, he said, stabbing his finger at the canvas. There it is, goddamnit. Look. Right there. A goddamn question mark. He nodded ruefully, having made short work of the incomprehensible painting so cruelly thrust upon him without an instruction manual, without an apology for being something that existed beyond the scope of his imagination.
My mother had the feeling he was the sort who did battle with abstraction in all its forms. What redeeming quality could possibly exist in someone who sought out punctuation from a Joan Mitchell, who took a piece of art as a call to arms, its mere existence a direct challenge to his supremacy? He was one of Bo’s friends, obviously.
Perhaps it was the rum, perhaps it was the only sane response, but she said, That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.
The man, his eyes still trained on the painting, said, Well, stick around, because I’m just getting started. He unzipped his coat and dug around inside until he’d located a pack of Camels. He shook them and presented to her the extended finger of a filter, which she waved off. Without remark, he brought the packet to his mouth and caught the cigarette with his lips, replaced the packet, lit the cigarette, and dropped the match to the floor, where it sizzled in his boot puddle. All the while, studying the painting as though it were a plaque affixed to a building in a foreign city, written in a language he didn’t speak. He leaned closer, exhaled smoke, squinted, flexed his teeth.
See this patch here? He waved the cigarette. Indecision. Couldn’t figure out whether to let the blue dominate or soften it with white, and what she ends up with is this purple morass, but instead of painting over it there’s this little wedge of red over here, and it looks like an accident but it’s a lifeboat. It keeps that purple from bringing down the whole painting. She left that mark of confusion in on purpose. It’s pretty bold to leave the question mark right there for everyone to see.
What? my mother thought. Um, she said.
No, you’re absolutely right. A stupid criticism. The indecision is what makes the painting. The rest of the painting’s smoke, and there’s the fire, right there.
Could be, my mother said.
Ah well. Nice knowing you, Joan Mitchell, the man said to the painting. For the first time since they’d been talking he looked away from the canvas. I tell you another thing, he said. I had a painting like this, I’d put it in a room with a chair in front of it, and I’d close the door and watch it move in the light.
Would you? my mother said, taking a sip and crossing her arms.
You better believe it. Having it out here where you pass it on the way to the can? Philistines.
You and my husband would get along just fine.
No philistine, he?
Oh no, he’s definitely a philistine. Just one with a chip on his shoulder.
She painted this last year, the man said. She asks me if I want it. I can’t decide—it’s that purple, you know. I didn’t understand it then, but it’s the purple that put me off. I bought another one instead.
You have that one locked up in a room with a chair?
I use it as a dartboard. I tape Bo’s photo to it and … It’s nothing compared to this one. He looked back at the painting. You probably think I only want it because I can’t have it. But this
