An Emergence of Green (9 page)

“I love artists like Rothko who work with pure color and elemental shapes. And sometimes I use distortion to show greater intensity of feeling. But often my work is figurative, even representational, like the desert scenes you saw the other day. But it still comes out of my emotion…For example, I might choose to paint the bark of a tree red.”

“Why?” As Val chuckled she said, “I’m sorry to be so dumb.”

“You’re not being dumb. It’s a good question, the kind Neal asks. Makes me check my premises. I remember reading somewhere that the only ones who can really force us to reevaluate our lives and perceptions are children and artists. Carrie, let’s say the tree I’m painting is dying against a sunset sky. It’s sunset for the old tree too, the end for it, just like the end of a day for us, with a glorious red that actually means death.”

“I see,” Carolyn murmured, thinking that she truly did see.

Val chuckled again. “If you ever wanted to see people skewered for dumb questions you should have been in my art class in New York. You could ask Kolvinsky anything, but if he thought your question was stupid he just wouldn’t answer.”

Carolyn laughed. “Did he ever refuse to answer you?”

“Frequently, the old bastard.” She laughed along with Carolyn. “Kolvinsky taught me, though. Opened my eyes like never before to color and light. I see the unique colors of the California landscape thanks to him…She trailed off. “Died three years ago. I’ll never forget him.” In soft reminiscence she continued, “Tiny man, spiky gray hair like nails in his head. Always wore a clean white shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, plaid ties with stains—God knows what they were. Terrible old baggy pants, looked like he’d stolen them from a bum. Always wore the same brown shoes, paint stains all over the toes. Always at me to sleep with him, never gave up. I guess he was fascinated with the idea of bedding a woman a foot taller than he was. The old bastard,” she repeated, chuckling in affectionate memory. “The only thing he was really wrong about was where you could work. He insisted a painter had to be in New York or Paris.”

“Did your parents send you to art school?” She realized she knew virtually nothing about Val’s background.

“Just the year in New York. Otherwise I’ve pretty much scratched for myself. Dad was a wildcatter—about as perilous as professional gambling. It was feast or famine in my family. Mostly feast when I was growing up and mostly feast for my brother Charlie—he’s six years older and has a degree, a mining engineer. Takes after Dad, been all over the world, in Brazil since April. Anyway, when I was old enough it was famine time again. Dad did manage to pay for the year in New York.”

“What about your mother?”

Val sighed. “She’s still in Connecticut. Lives with two spinster relatives. Dad retired five years ago on his Social Security and military pension. Came out here to be with Neal and me. She wouldn’t come.” She sighed again. “I don’t know if it was all those years of being on the edge with Dad, but she’s a born-again Christian now and thinks Dad and I are heathens and I’m a tool of the devil because I’m bringing up Neal without God…you get the picture. I’ve always embarrassed her. My height was something she couldn’t fix—you know, like giving someone a nose job. And she hated the whole idea of me becoming an artist.” Val’s smile was wry. “All things considered, I’m glad Mother’s in Connecticut. Mother thinks modern art is mostly fraudulent and quite possibly pornographic.”

Carolyn was looking at her sympathetically. “That’s such a shame. Your own mother so narrow-minded when she should be so proud. I think art is exciting. It is to me…I’m learning how to look at it.”

“Art is exciting, Carrie, not because it’s my profession. It tells us who we are and where we are, makes sense of life as life actually is. I think that’s why there’s so much resistance to it.”

Concealing a smile, Carolyn said, “Some people’s whole idea of modern art is navels painted in the middle of foreheads.”

Val laughed. “It’s interesting how strongly some people reject a portrayal of the human body rearranged. It’s a gut level reaction—as if their whole sense of identity is threatened.”

“Who’s your favorite painter, Val?”

“Oh God, I don’t know.” Val squinted at her in the brilliant sunlight. “I couldn’t choose one. Well, maybe Cezanne, he was the first to bring a whole new experience of seeing…And the great colorists—Matisse might be the greatest, but then van Gogh brought the whole spectrum of color to full strength…And Gauguin, his simplification of form and all that emotion…Turner, of course. Klee, his theories of color like musical harmonies…Marin and Wyeth for watercolors…Kandinsky…DeKooning, his draftsmanship and subject matter are so incredible…O’Keeffe, Frankenthaler—”

“Enough,” Carolyn said, smiling. She closed her eyes and drowsed, sleepy and contented in the sun. When she opened her eyes it was to an expanse of blue and the pool marker a distance from her that read nine feet. “Val,” she uttered without thinking.

“Right behind you.” Val paddled quickly up to her.

“I dozed off.” Carolyn reached to Val’s raft, took her hand.

“Go ahead and doze off again. I’ve got you now.”

Val’s eyes closed. Carolyn lay still and peaceful, drifting on slow currents. Val’s big hand was unexpectedly soft, and Carolyn was aware as she dozed of its warm protectiveness, the cushionlike flesh of the fingertips.

When she opened her eyes, Val was looking at her. “What does your husband think of the painting?”

She knew she had hesitated too long in answering. “I like it more than he does.” She was relieved by Val’s easy smile.

“Art is purely subjective, Carrie. People disagree all the time about all the art forms.”

“Paul hasn’t had much exposure to art,” Carolyn ventured.

Val said lightly, “I hope disagreeing about my painting won’t start a war between you.”

Val lay with her eyes closed again, trailing Carolyn’s hand through the water between them. Her fingers traced the shape of the hand, over the fingers and fingernails, over the wedding ring.

Carolyn said, “Paul wants me to ask you and Neal over the evening of the Fourth. For a barbecue, to swim…”

Val did not open her eyes. Her lips turned up in a mischievous quirk. “Oh? Will you be there too?”

The two laughed together. Val said, her eyes amused, “I know all about husbands, Carrie. Neal will enjoy the pool. I’ll do what I can to pass inspection.”

“Has anyone ever told you you’re tall?” Paul joked.

“Never.” Smiling, Val shook hands with him.

Carolyn was astonished by Val, who wore a white dress—sleeveless simplicity, tied at the waist by a twisted cord of bright colors—and sandals fashioned of several thick strands of hemp. In the V-neck of the dress, which was cut down to her cleavage, hung a medallion of shell-thin squares and rectangles, red and yellow and blue—the primary colors of the spectrum, Carolyn now knew. Her only other ornament was a ring, two intertwined gold wires. Her eyelids were lightly brushed with muted rose eyeshadow. An application of lip gloss heightened the natural color and fullness of her lips. Her dark eyes and bronze skin seemed to glow with an attractiveness generated from vitality and health and strength. Gazing at her, again Carolyn was tantalized by the elusive memory from her childhood.

In crisp white shorts and a yellow polo shirt, Neal Hunter seemed to Carolyn small for ten, with a physical delicacy quite unlike his mother. Shifting the bathing suit he carried to the other hand, he shook hands with Carolyn, then Paul.

Paul looked unusually handsome, Carolyn thought. His hair had been freshly cut and styled, the gray at the temples given fluffed-up prominence from blow-drying. He stood straight and trim, the softness of his midsection concealed by a loose, powder blue jacket-shirt over dark blue khaki pants.

“Val, what are you drinking?” Paul stood in the cool of the living room, his back turned deliberately to the new painting. He had decided that no amount of politeness could persuade him to praise it; he would not mention it.

“Tonic. No more than a splash of vodka, please.” Val wondered if her dismay showed. Those ice blue eyes surely mirrored an inner coldness. And that impervious face…He was so wrong for Carolyn. But then, she thought wryly, she had seen many unlikely pairings—such as herself with her own two husbands. This instant assessment might be wrong…although her first impressions were rarely wrong.

His tone was bantering: “A splash of vodka? Two Excedrin would give you more kick.”

She was annoyed; she was always irritated by people who made condescending jokes when others did not care for alcohol. She answered lightly, “One Excedrin is my limit. I’m a real sissy.”

Carolyn said, “Let’s go into the yard. It’s cooled off nicely.”

“Go ahead,” Paul said. “Neal and I will be right out with the drinks. Won’t we, pardner?”

“Yes sir,” Neal said.

Neal doesn’t like him either
, Val thought. Walking into the yard with Carolyn she heard firecrackers begin in the distance, faint concussions, then sharp volleys of sound. From several houses away a dog began frantic barking, immediately echoed by other barks and howls.

“Val, you look very nice,” Carolyn said softly.

Val’s glance encompassed Carolyn’s print skirt and peasant blouse. “You too.” She said impishly, “You thought I’d show up in my cutoffs.”

Carolyn laughed. “It would’ve been okay with me.”

“I have two dresses for emergency occasions. Both identical. This white one’s for casual, the black one’s for dressy.”

Carolyn laughed again. “What a wonderfully simple approach to life.”

“Val,” Paul said from behind them, “your vodka and tonic. No more than an eyedropper of vodka—Neal can testify.”

He was stabbed by their easy intimacy; Carolyn’s laughter, her comfortable gesture of sliding her arm through Val’s. He handed Carolyn her drink and set the pitcher of martinis down on the picnic table, then poked the coals of the barbecue as he considered Val Hunter with brief, measuring glances. Almost all women he met looked at him at least once in sexual awareness, but she had not; there was no acknowledgement of his masculinity, not even now when she was boldly appraising him as he walked to a lawn chair, her brown eyes perceptive and impartial, her big strong-looking hands—man-sized hands—dangling casually from the arms of the director’s chair that was his, the one he always sat in when he and Carolyn were in the yard. How could so grotesque a woman—a giantess, a freak—be so confident, so poised? It’s a cover-up, an act, he told himself without conviction.

There were indefinable but pronounced alarm signals in him. He was unprepared for her. He disliked her intensely.

“Carrie’s so proud of your success,” Val Hunter told him.

Carrie. She calls her Carrie
. “She’s very high on you, too. You never know about artists these days—either they’re painting soup cans or wrapping ribbon around an island.”

Would he like my opinion on modern business practices? Be polite
, Val warned herself.
For her sake. Work at it. He looks bright enough, even for an iceberg. He might be willing to learn something.
“Much art today focuses not on the subject but on a statement about the subject. Painting a soup can might be a comment about assembly lines. Or our throwaway society. As for Christo’s work—”

“I’m sure there’s justification.” He would not sit here and be lectured in front of his wife and this woman’s kid. “I’m sure the artist feels justified. But I don’t think you can really blame people for feeling that a lot of art is just junk. Nobody likes it but a bunch of fag critics. A lot of people can’t understand all the fuss over Picasso. Who can relate to a painting that shows an arm over here, a head over there?”

She crossed her legs and smoothed her dress, her eyes drifting away from him. It seemed a dismissal, a disdainful closing out of him. He stared at her legs. They were large but shapely and so heavily tanned that he looked closely to see if she had shaved. She had; there was a tiny drop of blood on one shin.
Probably doesn’t unless she has to
, he thought with a surge of venom.

She was smiling at him. “All art seeks its own audience.” Her smile disappeared. She shrugged. “Some people’s sole understanding of opera is that it’s nothing but screeching. Books are written for a certain audience. So is music. Paintings are created for a specific audience, too. As for Picasso, what is there to say? He’s a giant.”

“
Guernica
is considered the greatest masterpiece of the century,” Carolyn interjected, quoting from her books, her voice vibrant with enthusiasm.

Val nodded. “It’s the most powerful depiction of war and suffering yet created. He opened new ground for every serious artist of our century.”

Paul felt betrayed by Carolyn’s siding with this woman. “Look, I’m college-educated. All I ask when I look at a painting is to know what I’m looking at.”

Val nodded again. “Fine work is being done for people who want literal art. But how much literal reality do we need, other than movies and TV and newspapers and photography? Serious art today is what artists know about reality, as well as what they see. That’s the basis on which they should be judged.”

Carolyn was nodding. Paul said doggedly, probing for an opening, a concession to his viewpoint, “I still want to understand what I’m looking at.”