Lion's Share (25 page)

The crates were gone and Jana stared around a room that seemed to have doubled in size. Only then did she realize how much she'd been thinking of Gary today. What Ed would think of either the new work or the old hadn't entered her thoughts. Ever since losing her virginity, she'd felt almost estranged from this man who'd played such a huge role in her life. “My trip to Minneapolis will do us both good,” she told herself. “Besides, if Ed wanted, he could go with me.” She recalled her comment, last summer when they'd flirted dangerously, about how she'd sneak him into her room at Yaddo. She had to laugh at herself—she was acting as if she were the only player in this drama, as if Ed were some stuffed animal she could cram into her suitcase.

It would be no trouble to sneak Leroy into her hotel room, would it? She walked over and opened the closet door—she hadn't realized how much junk she'd been piling in here; Leroy had been pushed to the back. Mice had gotten in again, and the insulation they'd dug out of the walls was all over his mane and tail. She didn't want to touch him, let alone sleep with him.

She wondered if the cleaners would accept stuffed animals, then had second thoughts about the way they handled things: last week a blouse had been returned to her missing a shoulder pad, and over the past few months she could remember two or three melted buttons. She also couldn't: bring herself to walk in and say I'd like my lion cleaned, or I'd like my
daughter's
lion cleaned. But maybe the self service places … She stuffed him headfirst into a shopping bag and took him to the laundromat on Third Avenue.

Her plans were for Leroy to go in the dry cleaning machine, but there was a big sign saying NO STUFFED ANIMALS, and attendants seemed to be peeking out from every crevice. Hesitantly, she looked around—the two dozen free washers all had a post or wringer in the center, Leroy would be pulled limb from limb. Finally, she spotted a double-load front-loading washer against the back wall.

She sat Leroy in the center, set it on cold water, gentle cycle, dumped in one of those double-load boxes of Tide, no bleach. She put in six quarters, pressed the button. The machine began to fill with water. Leroy sank comfortably down in it, his head bobbing just above the rising tide. Then the detergent came in; he was in a bubble bath. Now he spun slowly, head over heels. Stopped. Was he too heavy for the machine? She was about to see if she could pry the door open when he started spinning again, the other way this time, building up speed.

It was like watching a child at an amusement park. She'd spotted a popcorn machine at the front of the store, and she treated herself, like at the movies. When she got back to the machine Leroy was spinning so fast she couldn't see him. He was a yellow blur, like those sheep blurred just before she fell asleep some nights. Jana placed a piece of popcorn between her front teeth and clamped shut on it.

A half hour later all the motors and lights went off. She pulled Leroy out and set him in a laundry cart. His fur was glowing. She reached over and pulled a few pieces of stuffing out of his mane, examined his body, found two little holes, pinpricks, one on each side of his neck. She hesitated for a minute. She shouldn't take him home wet. He'd survived the washer; she supposed a little hot air wouldn't harm him.

Once he was in the dryer, she could watch him changing positions, hear his large black plastic eyes knocking against the window. His mouth kept falling open as if trying to catch hold of the pink fabric softener cloth she'd thrown in with him. When the machine stopped he ended up cradled between two side spokes, legs crossed—a pipe in his mouth would complete the picture of old-fashioned comfort.

She took him out and set him back in the shopping bag. Wait a second—on the way over he'd filled the entire bag; now he shifted loosely to one side. Could dirt have taken up that much room? She pulled his head up and watched his neck flop over the side. She pulled out one arm; it too flopped limply. He
couldn't
have lost that much stuffing. Or could he? She went back and checked the washer, reached her hand in to see if there were piles of stuffing she hadn't seen, but came up empty.

She took Leroy home, propped him up on the bed, then called Marilyn. If anyone would know about crafts and fabrics, it would be Marilyn.

“He was probably stuffed with foam,” Marilyn said. “Foam dries out, especially in the heat of a dryer. That's why foam pillows have to continually be replaced. There was an advantage to those old feather pillows our grandmothers used.”

Jana asked what she could do now, and Marilyn suggested she get some shredded foam from a crafts store and restuff him. “Or if you can wait a few weeks, till I'm done with this wallpaper book I'm working on, I'll help you,” Marilyn offered.

Jana mentioned having to leave for Minneapolis, and working on the exhibition full time when she returned. “If I don't get it done right away, it might have to wait forever. But thanks anyway.”

She ran over to a crafts store, bought two bags of foam, gold thread to stitch up his holes with, and a brown paisley ribbon to tie around his neck. She perched on the edge of the bed and held him on her lap. She took her nail scissors and enlarged the holes at his neck, stuffed two handfuls of foam in each side. No, that was too much. She took some out, sewed up the holes, then kneaded his neck to try to even out his stuffing. Next she slit a hole in the seam at the top of one arm, stuffed it with foam, sewed it up, and kneaded. She repeated the process with the other arm, then both legs. She'd used up both bags of foam, and could have used even more, but it was after six and the store would probably be closed, so she made do.

She leaned Leroy's back against the headboard, crossed his legs. Wherever she placed him, it looked as if he belonged there. He seemed delighted to be home and in his own bed again, and they'd both been through the wringer already today—she didn't have the heart to bundle him back up and whisk him off to Minneapolis.

JANA RAISED a sleepy head from the pillow. “Oh good, you're awake,” Ed said. “Are you certain you don't want me to call in late and drive you to the airport?”

“I'm positive. The last thing I need is to get stuck in traffic and miss the plane—cabbies know how to handle rush hour.”

“Have it your way.” Ed bent to kiss her. “Break a leg.”

“Thanks.” Jana moved over to his side of the bed, hoping to fall back to sleep enveloped in his leftover warmth, but she was too restless. She got up a little after eight, unpacked her suitcase to be sure she had everything she needed, then packed it again. She was taking Ed's garment bag on this trip, not her mother's suitcase—easier to keep things pressed without folding them. She put on the same gray tapestry jacket she'd worn that first day with Ed, hoping it would bring her luck. The show might be poorly reviewed, but at least Ed loved her—as she headed for the airport, that almost seemed enough.

The plane took off forty-five minutes late, but picked up time en route. Keeping her seatbelt fastened, Jana thought about Ed most of the trip. She was still thinking of Ed as she walked into the terminal and a small, heavyset woman in her early twenties accosted her. “Are you Miss Replansky?” she asked. “You look just like your photograph in our files. I'm Sharon, from Walker's internship program. Steve Whitman's busy with last-minute arrangements—he asked me to pick you up.”

Stopping at the Sheraton long enough to drop off her bags, Jana noticed the daisies on the dresser. “Start with ‘he loves me,'” the note said. “I have a feeling there's always an even number of petals. All luck, all love.” So Ed remembered.

Her stories of pulling apart daisies at Yaddo might have inspired the note, but Ed had been looking for an excuse to buy her flowers as long as they'd known each other. He'd intended to give her a Christmas plant, but she'd stopped his hand on their way to the florist's. “Don't, please. It won't live,” she'd insisted. No plants ever grew for her. She stared at the huge, cultivated petals of these daisies, so straight and sparkling they looked waxed—they would be awfully hard to kill in five days, and after she left no one had to know what became of them.

“Ed's a thousand miles away,” she silently reminded herself. “If I'm going to make a good impression here, I'd better concentrate on being the artist again. I should be making small talk with Sharon, not thinking of Ed.”

“They started hanging the show yesterday,” Sharon explained as they headed for the museum. “Dave Phillips flew in from Chicago last night.” Richard Calpis, the other artist, would be arriving from San Francisco that evening.

“Good,” Jana thought. “I wasn't the first artist to arrive.” When she curated shows, one of the worst scenarios was an out-of-town artist who had nothing better to do than supervise the hanging. Flying in early was a mark of the amateur. She recalled her first one-woman show: Buffalo, 1972. The show opened on a Thursday. Instead of shipping the paintings, Jana rented a car and drove them up on Monday, then stayed in a hotel until after the opening. Five nights in the hotel, plus the car rental, cost nearly $500. In those days her rent was $185 a month, and some months she had difficulty scraping that much together. The money would be well spent if she could be certain her work was displayed correctly, she thought. But what did she do when she got to the gallery? Stood back and watched the paintings go up, feeling out of place and afraid to open her mouth. Those days were only laughable in retrospect.

The show occupied the Walker's entire third floor; her paintings were to the left of the entrance. Electricians were busy working out the proper lighting when Jana walked in. After saying hello to a preoccupied Steve Whitman, she took a closer look around. On the wall directly opposite the elevator hung one painting by each of the three artists, along with the artists' bios and a description of the exhibition. Steve had asked which painting she felt best exemplified her motivation for the series, but she didn't realize he'd be hanging that painting on the entrance wall, or she might have thought twice about choosing
Mulberry Street.
The shadow of that murdered woman set New York in a bad light, an impression she related to Steve.

“It's difficult to cast New York City in a much worse light than it's in already,” Steve said.

Jana decided to let the matter drop, but Steve's comment disturbed her. One of the excuses she'd given herself as she prepared for this show was that it would be interesting to see the different metropolitan perspectives; she'd been actually looking forward to seeing the city itself drowning out the work. Dave Phillips' work, for example, immediately reminded viewers of Chicago's polar winters—the human figures in his landscapes fighting their way out of snow drifts emerged as surreal, transformed creatures. The one time Jana had been to Chicago she'd been caught in a blizzard, and she could easily identify with what these figures were going through.

Dave seemed to have conquered the struggle between self and other which had recently been driving her crazy. Staring at his paintings, she saw past, present, and future mapped out before her: past—the outward vision channeled through internal struggles; present—inner discord transcended through close, steady observation; future—outward vision transformed by the same concentrated attention to conflict, not the painter's conflict but the subject's. Jana had mastered the outward focus years ago, at present her vision was directed inward, but eventually the two perspectives would have to merge. She might someday be able to give that woman staring out the
Mulberry Street
window a premonition of death, then paint her features the way such a premonition would distort them.

She walked around the gallery again, viewing her own work as a stage Dave might have passed through also. She was approaching her last two paintings before she caught a glimpse of herself in one of the chrome-encased spotlights: stoop-shouldered, hunched forward, gazing straight ahead at the center of every canvas. She looked more like a bag lady than an artist.

“I'm going to explore the neighborhood,” she told Steve. “I'll be back in a bit.” She needed air, fresh wind blowing in her face, a distance from any semblance of art. She found a little restaurant a few blocks away, sat at a table by the window, and ordered a glass of wine. She sipped it slowly, ran her fingers through her hair, relaxed a bit. One of the frustrating aspects of being in a group show, especially a show out of town, was not knowing the work of the other artists. Feeling a kinship with Dave's Chicago landscapes eased the tension. Or so she tried to convince herself. But it was more than that. She was tenser than she'd been in months, as tense as she'd been after she'd dropped off the slides at DCA. That night Ed had held her in his arms, and the tension drained out of her.

Ed, Ed, Ed, all of the sudden everything was Ed! This was ridiculous. She'd been caught in a vicious cycle lately: working at the gallery, squeezing in a little time to paint, meeting Ed for dinner. She'd lost the ability to relax alone, or with other friends. But the wine was helping. She ordered another glass, munched a handful of peanuts.

The rest of the day passed quickly. Various staff came in and out while the crew was finishing the lights—Jana went through the motions of memorizing each name, each face, but it was only when Dave entered that the introduction penetrated her professional guise. “Your paintings have a compelling immediacy,” she told him.

“Thanks. I wish I could return the compliment, but I'm afraid I haven't looked closely at the show yet. My sister lives in St. Paul, and I've spent too little time with her and her family the past few years. She's been running me ragged all day.” At that point Dave excused himself and walked around viewing the paintings.

Richard arrived from San Francisco at 5:30. Sharon dropped Jana off at the hotel on her way to the airport, then reminded her that a member of the museum's board of directors was throwing a dinner party at 7:00. “I'm enjoying your work,” Dave mentioned in passing during the evening, but the comment was superficial. From the looks of things, there wouldn't be much chance for intense discussion. Jana consoled herself that all discussions at a time like this would be pointless—she had Dave's address and could always get in touch after things settled down. She was still digesting his work and its significance for her own work—that wasn't something she could exactly put into words yet.