CHAPTER 4

I’m good, I’m always good until I’m so tired of being cheerful I could cry. Some days my paintings are awful and I wonder why anyone would take up such a difficult, non-rewarding profession that has no gold stars and no fixed standards by which to measure oneself. This time last year I wanted to put the model’s eye outside her head— like Picasso—but have this year, especially lately, cracked open so wide I can’t find the model’s head anywhere; and am flying through the galaxy with an errant eye, trying to pin it on god knows what.

I was tired of being good, could tell by the way I sliced the red pepper. As expensive as peppers were, they were good for three meals each if I was careful and here I was wantonly cutting one in half, lusting after its crunch and the way it stood out bright red on the green leaf lettuce. As soon as I made a rule I broke it, how does one live with anything as dull as rules, they made me want to eat the whole thing.

At last, a commission. The nice interior designer emailed with a client who wanted a 48” x 48” landscape, based on photos of their ranch in Montana. The husband and wife visited my studio; two wispy, white-haired aged individuals who seemed dreamy and unfocused. As they left, the wife said she felt bad that I had to paint in such cold weather. I told her I was used to it and liked cold weather, trying unsuccessfully to hide my shock and surprise at such gentle compassion. I needed the money and couldn’t wait til spring, and now was no time to go soft, not her nor me. The husband wanted the painting’s horizon line shifted upward, so the rolling mountains of his youth would show more prominently. The interior designer had instructed that the terrain be painted lower than in the photo, below the lower third of the painting, to make the sky its defining feature. I had just gotten started, had just blocked in the areas. It was the couple’s painting, they had paid for it, and they would be the ones to look at it. I obliged them and raised the horizon line. They watched for a while, then, too cold to stand there any longer, left. The husband was happy. The hills he used to play in had come to life in the painting. The completed piece was wonderful, dreamy and soft like they were, full of air and light pouring across trees and mountains. The interior designer was furious. The painting was supposed to be mostly sky. She didn’t care about the mountains; where was the sky? And what did sentimentality have to do with it? I learned about the hierarchy of interior design that day—the client, low on the pecking order.

The voice put my hair on end, that disembodied voice at the other end of the line. She had seen a painting at MiaCiao and wanted to buy it. Our first phone call was a disaster and the subsequent calls no better. I couldn’t hear her, and didn’t care, her voice turned into mumbled white noise, the tone swirling around my brain until I went numb. Then clarity, then every few moments I would go blank again, like an alligator whose belly had been rubbed. What was she saying? It wasn’t a bad connection; it was something else. I had the same problem when we finally met, a woman who wasn’t actually there, those black dots for eyes sucking in all around them, her clothes disappearing into the blackness, too. She was petite and beautiful, with long, dark hair, but there was no heat, no presence, no sound—a spectre and a terrible, malevolent creature. I couldn’t get far enough away from her. It was petrifying and I hope she never calls again, but I sold her one of my best paintings and delivered it to the coldest, most sterile, wealthiest house imaginable. She post-dated a check then called a few days later and said wait another week to cash it. A wealthy woman whose check I couldn’t cash? I couldn’t take my painting back because whatever was wrong with her had probably infected it. I didn't want to be near her in case she infected me, too. The wait was dreadful, filled with nightmares and a persistent uneasiness. My best painting was now in the hands of, what? She wasn't from any known configuration of life. I couldn’t paint, couldn’t sleep, and when I did sleep had terrible nightmares. Each day was a fearful blur, a repeat of the day before, filled with a strange anxiousness. When the date finally arrived I went directly to her financial institution, where the only person behind the counter frowned at his computer screen and typed way too much for way too long. What money was being transferred, and from where, Transylvania? It was a long time before my mind was free of her. Death hung in the shadows, hurled away when I turned to look.

I was to deliver Racing Horses at 2 p.m. The temperature had climbed into the nineties, brutal by Seattle standards. I was suffocating, the interior of the RX7 roasting, my hair stuck to my sweaty neck. I began to worry about the painting strapped to the roof rack. It was wrapped in padding but the sun was fiendish and heat would eventually crack the wood. Parking was impossible, made worse because I couldn’t find the address. I drove around and around, the heat scorched the steering wheel, melted the leather seats, melted my brain. The likely building looked like a condo complex, it was that big. It slowly occurred to me that the whole building was the single address. I called the number he had given me, and the art patron opened the biggest door. I double-parked, then stepped inside with the large painting, exclaiming how nice to have air conditioning, as most of Seattle didn’t. I shut the door behind me to conserve the coolness. He said he didn’t have air conditioning and opened the door again. Then why is it so cold in here, I snapped at him, still frayed from driving around in the heat. I resisted the urge to slam the door shut.

Coos Bay, Oregon, right on the ocean. According to Google Maps it would be a long day, eight hours and forty-nine minutes in each direction if you drove U.S. Route 101 down the coast, called the Pacific Coast Scenic Byway in Oregon. The call for artists didn’t include a size limit. I stared at the prospectus in disbelief then submitted several 48” x 84” paintings—too big for the dainty, conservative types at MiaCiao but I couldn’t seem to stop painting large. Someone had to see my glorious giants. The jurors chose three paintings to include in their show, “Pacific NW: New Directions”. An online search of the arts organization yielded a beautiful building, described as an art-deco-style former post office building. The Works Progress Administration had been brilliant here, too. Vanity overcame my better judgement. Besides, I hadn’t been on a road trip in ages. I signed the emailed contract and sent it back.

The women behind the front desk were friendly and appreciative as they filled out forms and gave me receipts. Other submissions lined up along the wall, looked professional and impressive. I could relax, my art duty discharged. I would put this big-deal show on my resume. I went straight to the beach, the warm sand soothed my swollen feet.

I hate motels. I hate hotels. I hate the way they smell. I’m allergic to carpet mites, the only person in the world from the smell of it. The ocean was sensational, the sunset spectacular, the fish and chips beyond my taste buds’ wildest fantasies. I slept at a rest stop twenty minutes down the coast, safe from carpet mites, in my car. The RX7 car seats were Olympic-gold-medal bendable, almost to a flat position, and with all those down-filled padding blankets who wouldn’t be comfortable? It had been a great day. I breathed in the salt air, hugged myself with joy and passed out. I’d deal with my swollen ankles in the morning.

We were both delighted, she, at the painting, and me, at the painting’s new home. I left, out into the now-pouring rain and back to my car. It only took a few miles for the glow to wear off. Her house was gorgeous but conventional, conspicuous consumption with no originality. She was maybe forty years old and a carbon copy of all the other rich women I’ve met; well-mannered, friendly and praising, with the life sucked out of her. She was no longer the master of her own fate, if she ever had been. Her well-kept body said I play tennis! but behind that façade of upkeep and good manners her eyes shielded defeat and sadness. She had married wealth and was now relegated non-existent, consoling herself with fabric swatches and matching carpet, and jogging with her friend who had a wonderful painting of hydrangeas. I wanted to throw her on the ground and tickle her, maybe she'd come back to life.

How hard could it be to create a life of one’s own making? I painted paintings, and that was what mattered. Who knew that art patrons would come in such a wide array of personalities? Who would ever guess that my entire life would be a tango with a stranger? Who could possibly have known that they’d all want a story? I wasn’t selling myself, and this wasn’t a dog and pony show. I was a determined recluse. But my paintings needed homes. The pieces moved across the chessboard until it was checkmate. Guess who lost?

The room was high, like a cathedral, and airy like I might sprout wings, bright from sunlight cannonballing down, exploding on the floor. I'd need sunglasses to go with the wings. Every room was different, this one braggadocio in scale and light. Sometimes you luck out in a crapshoot world.

Just the facts, ma'am. No metaphors here.

My paintings needed good homes. I had no purchase in it, the art patron paid and shut the door.

Middle class suburban housing tracts with their rows of lookalike houses were bad enough. I hated rich people's homes even more. Wealth had money and means to be original but conspicuous consumption apparently didn't extend to imagination - gardener-tended greenery confined and leashed, stinking of bark mulch and pesticide, upscale gold faucets and hanging chandeliers - a ring around the rosie of ashes falling down.

That's where I came in, the serious charismatic artist, understated, composed, ready to offer advice on placement or even hang the painting, if asked. My all black clothes said trust me. It was an act, entirely practiced, as alien as a Broadway play.

Being normal in richy-rich land meant being the same as one's equally rich neighbor. My large composition gold leaf-framed paintings got a toe-hold purely by accident, and I, like wildfire, spread across the manses. I was vouched for, by whom exactly, no one could say. Excellent paintings weren't enough, twenty square feet of wickedly scintillating originality not enough, art patrons wanted a story they could tell their friends. My dog and pony show went into overdrive, anecdotes invented on the spot. If they wanted the south of France painted blue, then blue it would be, Van Gogh's yellow sunflowers a figment of his imagination.

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