Broken for You (39 page)

"Restitution?"

"Restitution, that's it. Money, paintings, stocks, bonds, insurance policies. It's in the newspapers all the time. I don't blame them. It's the principle of the thing, I know that, and they've got the right. It's just not something I ever felt like doing."

Irma returned her gaze to the Scrabble board and started laying out a word. "What I lost was my husband and my child. You don't look for teacups in a cemetery."

M.J. studied Irma's face. She didn't usually look her age, but tonight she did, even wearing "Sassy Cinnamon," and he felt a pang of tenderness and fear.

He looked down at the word Irma had laid out on the board. "A-Z-Y-G-O-U-S," he said. "What's that?"

"Azygous," Irma replied matter-of-factly, as if it were the most common word in the world. "It means 'not one of a pair'; 'having no mate.' 'Odd.'"

M.J. smiled and shook his head.

"What, you don't believe me? Look it up. It's the last word under A. 'Azygous.'"

"No, Mrs. K., I believe you."

"That's sixty points—plus fifty more for using all my letters. Not a bad start." Irma pulled out a pencil and notepad. "Are you keeping score?"

M.J. picked up his I and his N and lined them up under Irma's S. He spelled a three-letter, three-point word meaning the breaking of religious law or moral principle.

"Why bother, Mrs. K.?" he said. "We both know you're going to win."

Troy turned off the truck motor. They sat for a while, silent, sad, not facing one another.

It was midnight. The sky was dark, the moonlight tangled in a congested swirl of mists. The porch lights were on. Everyone in the house was surely asleep.

He spoke first. "That was nice what you said, about my being your technical director."

"I meant it." Wanda turned to him. "I really do count on you for . . . so many things." His profile was a dark, unreadable silhouette. "I'm sorry, Troy. I wish I could—"

"God I love your body." Sound waves came to a standstill in the space around them, defying physics. It was an enclosed space, Wanda realized, containing commingling molecules of their breath, too, and minuscule flakes of genetic code. "Good night."

She sat still, alone, unable to move. Her heartbeat grew oddly amplified. Her blood tides pounded with a pressure so fierce that all sounds had the ebb and flow of a storm at sea. For the second time that night, she felt as though she were suffocating. She began breathing in short, quick gasps that, had she been physically self-aware, she would have recognized as sobs.

God I love your body.

Wanda was trying to remember a time in her life—any time—when anyone had said words to her that meant as much as the words Troy had just spoken.

T
wenty-seven

Reviews

Ever since her initial diagnosis, Margaret had undergone a CT scan every three months; this was in the inter-it of what neurologists call "following the tumor," a phrase which had ways struck Margaret as amusing. Where were they following the tumor
to
? Did they expect it to lead them somewhere? She sat in Dr. Leising's face, reviewing the most recently reconstructed images of her intracranial space. Gus was with her, as was Susan. It was a routine visit.

"As you can see," Robert said, "compared with the January CT, the
tu
mor demonstrates no appreciable change. There it is," he continued, and there, and there. . . ." He pointed to several images with the tip of a
ba
llpoint pen. "In this slice especially, you can see that the margins of the tumor are still well-defined and there has been no growth." He used his
pen
to trace the edges of the star. Margaret fancied that she felt an accompanying tickle, deep in the recesses of her brain. "Frankly, Margaret, I'm dumbfounded. All I can say is, you are one very lucky woman
." I
know,
Margaret thought, but dared not say it. She smiled and squeezed Gus's hand.

Subsequent meetings went much the same way: They'd gaze at thin-section CT images of her astrocytoma (Margaret preferred to call it "The ar") while her doctor, docentlike, pen in hand, would enumerate The ar's stable characteristics. Margaret always made an effort to feign
polite surprise when the words "no change" were uttered; she did not want to give the impression that she was gloating. She often sensed a tinge of disappointment in Robert's voice. Perhaps he felt embarrassed by the fact that his dire predictions for her future had not come to pass. Or maybe he hoped The Star would be more of a challenge to follow, less constant. "Just keep doing whatever you're doing," he'd repeat, glumly, shaking each of their hands in turn.

"Don't worry," Margaret would chirp. "We will!"

Reviews of the group show first appeared in local and regional publications:

"A mosaicist named Tink Schultz—along with two other local artists—is exhibiting a collection of small-scale sculptures and wall mosaics. In style, they are reminiscent of the
pique assiette
tradition made famous by Raymond Isidore, the 'crazy plate stealer' who spent thirty years applying ceramic and colored glass mosaics to every interior and exterior surface of his home in Chartres. Historically, this type of mosaic construction is nothing new; even Seattle has its counterpart, in Milton Walker's West Seattle rock garden. And the
objets trouve
nature of Schultz's work is commonly employed by contemporary artists. But Schultz is no crazy plate stealer. Nor do her materials come from thrift stores or Dumpsters. Schultz's tesserae are generated by breaking antique porcelain from the massive collection of a woman named Margaret Hughes, and they are the by-products of Jewish persecution." Another:

"In a large wall mosaic entitled,
Etoiles, 1942,
a line of smiling, round-faced schoolchildren proudly wear the yellow star on their winter coats as they stand before a school playground. The other half of this grim diptych,
Etoiles, 1943,
shows the same children, still wearing their stars, but in this image they are emaciated, haunted-looking, and imprisoned behind the real barbed wire with which Schultz has wrapped this group portrait. Having seen these pieces, it is virtually impossible to imagine a more apt medium for the subject matter." And another:

"Schultz's sculptural mosaics are stunning reinterpretations of objects related to Judaism: In
Winter Miracle,
she gives us a fully lit menorah
with swordlike shards of gilded porcelain standing in for the flames. In
What Is Woven,
a dozen loaves of braided challah are laid side by side, cradled in cloths, like nursery newborns. And nowhere is the union of artistry and materials more profoundly expressed than in
Seder Plate
— in which thousands of pieces join to form a large Passover platter. Its five sections, for the components of the Seder meal (lamb bone, egg, bitter herbs, honeyed apples, and parsley), are delineated with distinctive figurative designs and Hebrew characters. Although the symbolism here is obvious, it is staggering to behold."

At first Wanda pooh-poohed the significance of reviews; but then she tracked them down with assiduity, shut herself in her room, and scrutinized every syllable. She soon learned, though, that giving weight to other people's opinions was creative nihilism; it was like being banished from the Land of No Words and exiled to the Land of All Bullshit. The arts section of
The Seattle Times
was routinely used for fire-starting.

She was contacted by a gallery owner who wanted to give her a solo show, so she spent the next months obsessively applying herself to the design and execution of three new works:
Shoes of the Dead, The Choo-Choo Circus,
and
Holy Book.

On opening night, Margaret once again stayed home. Wanda didn't mind; she put in only the briefest appearance herself before heading back to the studio. She wore jeans, drank apple cider, and stayed well away from Troy.

After this, Wanda's work—and Margaret's collection—received even more publicity. Travel magazines and domestic and international flight publications printed feature articles:

"The Seattle summer art scene has much to offer. In her solo show, mosaicist Tink Schultz continues to excite controversy with her choice of materials (see page 38, 'The Hughes Collection Scandal: Desecration or Deification?') even as she presents us with stunning works related to the Jewish faith. In this exhibition, the large scale of her newest sculptures makes it evident that Schultz is grappling with even grander themes.

"As an example, a piece entitled
Shoes of the Dead
references the horrific display of victims' shoes in the Washington, D.C. Holocaust Museum. But in this case, a mosaicked pyramid of jumbled, unmatched footwear of all sizes and styles—ingeniously and gorgeously crafted from vividly colored tesserae—is not a grim monument to despair and death, but a
joyous affirmation of life. Another of Schultz's more transcendent works is simply called
Holy Book
.
From a distance, it resembles a large, ivory column. Drawing closer, one sees that the column is an unadorned cylinder upon which lies a massive scroll. It might be the Torah. It might be the Bible. It might be the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishad, or any of countless other religious texts. We cannot know: The book's pages are blank, pieced together from millions of minute fragments of unadorned translucent white and gilded china. This piece by Schultz— who describes herself as a 'spiritual atheist'—reminds us that the words of faith are not only divisive, but insignificant; it is the book's flaws which give it a distinct authority and holiness."

There was a feature article in
Vanity Fair:

"The story behind Schultz's tesserae is almost unbelievable: Her work is fashioned from antique European porcelain which was stolen from Jews in the 1930s and 1940s. The thief? One Oscar Hauptmann (1880— 1946), a noted antiques broker and shipping magnate. Permission to break these rare and in some cases priceless antiques—which remain unclaimed by their original owners or surviving kin—comes from Hauptmann's daughter, Mrs. Margaret Hughes, with whom Schultz resides. Mrs. Hughes has made many attempts over the years to track down the owners of these pieces, but her efforts have been wholly unsuccessful.

"Is it possible to separate our knowledge of these facts from the art itself? No, it is not. Even if Schultz's work were shabbily crafted (which it is not), it would still be elevated to a different status. One cannot view this oeuvre without entering into a discussion of the significance of materials coupled with artistry. There have already been strong outcries from many groups and individuals about the nature of Schultz's work and the legitimacy of claims made by Mrs. Hughes; some have expressed vehement support, others equally vehement condemnation. What is Schultz's responsibility to these priceless objects she destroys? What is Mrs. Hughes's responsibility? What is their joint responsibility to the Jewish community at large? And to the community of art historians, curators, and collectors who consider Schultz's process and Hughes's patronage nothing less than desecration? And finally, how much are these controversies and concerns fueled by the fact that the artist herself is not Jewish ? These questions will certainly be taken up and debated
endlessly in both secular and religious settings, but they are not within the scope of this review.

"It is fair to say, however, that at the center of this controversy is the concept of worth: what we as humans value—and why. In Schultz's work, context is everything."

The telephone began ringing almost nonstop. There were calls from journalists, museum curators, civic and religious leaders, agents, and others. Not all of the calls were complimentary; not all of the callers were fans.

From those who did appreciate her work, Wanda began getting offers for commissions. These ranged from commercial projects— solicitations from interior decorators begging her to design kitchen backsplashes, shower stalls, and fireplace facades—to larger, community-related projects and public art for places like libraries, schools, theatres, hospitals, government buildings, and community centers. She found it hard to turn these projects down and ended up saying yes to many of them. They were worthy. They needed doing. The people who approached her were earnest and good-hearted. She would just have to manage her time and energy better.

"Did you have any idea the sea of tre
acle you'd be stepping into, be
coming famous?" Susan asked one night at dinner.

"Sea of grout would be more like it," Bruce joked. "You look tired, girl." "I'm fine," Wanda insisted, but without much conviction. She felt haggard, drained. She'd spent most of the day taking calls, having meetings, trekking back and forth between the house and the studio. Her bones hurt. Her mind
was a rattletrap. Her hands were lonely.