Warpaint (4 page)

The spark in Liz's eyes banked.

“Your flight tomorrow is at eleven?” asked C.C. “You'll let us take you to the airport, Liz. That's not a question.”

“Of course, of course. But you know how much I hate goodbyes.”

“None of those,” said Quiola. “Not tomorrow. We'll be good.”

“No, not tomorrow,” said C.C.

 

♦

Quiola, too, had never known anyone like Lizzie either, but for a rather different reason then either Nancy or C.C. because, by the time she met Lá Moore, Liz had become an icon, powerful, comfortable with fame and quite willing to exploit it – she refused to be interviewed, rarely left her Minnesota home, and did her legal best to keep the facts of her life as much to herself as she could.

In the spring of 1983, however, Liz decided to make a rare visit to New York City, after an absence of a decade. This made several galleries, MoMA, and her agent ecstatic. The
New York Times
took note; a few old friends arranged a party. But she'd come then in '83, as she would come in '02, to visit C.C., then just back from Paris, and flush with a new love.

“This girlfriend of yours, is she stunning?” Liz asked, as they headed downstairs for an early supper at the Plaza. “Well, Charlotte Clio?”

“You are not my mother! And I've already told you, Quiola isn't beautiful. She's lovely in a way I have no words for.”

“Will I want to paint her?”

“I do,” said C.C. with vehemence.

Liz smoothed her graying hair. “That's all that matters, isn't it? Where did she get such an unusual name? How did you pronounce it? Quiola?”

“That's right. Her mother is Chippewa. Didn't I tell you? Anyway, her mother had an Apache-Cherokee friend at boarding school named Quiola so we assume it's Indian but I think it might be Spanish. Anyway, she is lovely but her
name
is beautiful.”

“Chippewa? You mean Ojibwe? Where is she from?”

“That's the funny part. She was born on the North Shore like you, but from a town or a place called Grand Portage. I think it's a reservation. Her mother left right after Quiola was born, so really, she's a New Yorker by right.”

“What's her last name again?”

“Kerr.”

“Hmm. I don't know that name.”

“Why would you? Oh, I see – small towns. Kerr is the father's name, Joshua Kerr. They never married, and he split early on.”

“I see – and her mother's maiden name?

“I believe it was some kind of animal. Wait. Otter. That's it. Rose Otter.”

“Ah.”

“Ah?” C.C. narrowed her gaze. “Ah what?”

“Nothing, just ah.”

“You will behave?”

Liz turned the wattage up on a stare of mock surprise. “Behave?”

“Please, Liz. Don't batter the poor girl.”

“My, my these elevators are slow! Anyway, I do what I like.”

“Always have.”

“You should know. Putting up with me since you were in diapers. How is my sweet Nancy doing, by the way?”

“Mom's well. A little forgetful.”

“So am I.”

“Yes, but you wear the years more lightly than Mom. She's wobbly, and had a fall that spooked her. I'm sorry she won't come in for the party –”

Liz put her hand up in a gesture of dismissal, as the elevator opened. “No matter, C.C. None of us bops around like we used to. I'm only sorry I don't have the time to visit Connecticut, and see her myself. Now, where's your new friend?”

But C.C. was already scanning the snowy plains of the dining tables, reflected in the ice of the wall mirrors, to find Quiola sitting straight-shouldered, her gaze frozen, as if she were awaiting execution at some rococo, Italianate palace. She had good reason to be nervous. It was bad enough that C.C. doted on the woman, but Liz Moore was a phenomenon, documented, researched, revealed, in some quarters, reviled. As a college student, Quiola had studied Moore's style; she'd read the one, unauthorized biography and had bought postcards of several works, like
Rib
, for her dorm room. She was so nervous about meeting Liz that day that her hands grew damp and trembled. She tried to keep them clasped, under the table. This made eating difficult.

“So, you are C.C.'s muse,” said Liz, deftly seating herself. “I'm glad to meet you.”

“Likewise,” Quiola managed, staring.

Liz stared back. “So –”

C.C. plunked herself down between them.

“How are you feeling?” she asked Quiola. “Better? She doesn't take jet-lag well.”

“I see,” said Liz, opening a red clutch for her glasses, big, black and oval. She picked up the menu. Other diners seated themselves, but then, all at once, the room began to buzz with murmurs.

“What is it?” asked Liz, looking around. “What's going on? Good Lord, it isn't me, is it? We'll have to leave, I can't bear –”

“Calm down, its not you, it's a wedding,” said C.C. “There's the bride and groom.” A dark-haired, youthful, well-dressed couple were just dashing up the steps and in through the brass-plated revolving doors, he in a black tux, she in white eyelet, a single, brightly-dressed bridesmaid in turquoise, followed by a single, elegant bridegroom, then, family. The party swept across the lush lobby carpet to squeeze into an elevator, and was gone to what guests could soon hear through the floors, a reception. As the faint chords of an orchestra wafted down from above, Liz turned back to the table and said, “Such a spectacle! I should be ashamed to spend so much on a wedding.”

“Marriage is an institution for those who want to be institutionalized,” said C.C.

Liz stuck her tongue out and wrinkled her nose. “Despite my own best advice, I married. But we didn't parade ourselves through the Plaza.”

“No,” said C.C. “Stone broke, the both of you. Paul had to borrow the car.”

Liz shrugged, and then said to Quiola, “C.C. tells me you work in ceramics. Don't you find that limiting? I would.”

“Well, I –”

“So
domestic.”
She took off her glasses and laid them on the table. “You'll never be taken seriously if you stay with clay, let me warn you. All this nonsense about finding a woman's voice, or whatever these new-fangled feminists go on about, takes the backbone out of any good artist's work.”

“But –”

“Come on, Liz,” said C.C. “You owe feminism –”

“I owe nothing. Not to this bunch, anyhow. The
feministes
of Paris, or the Village, I admired them – they were my friends. But these girls, all they've done is take away my privacy, and interfere with my work. Don't tell me you've become one?”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” said C.C., huffing.

“Hogwash.”

“Really? Your work would be right where mine is now, without feminism. In storage.”

“Bull,” said Liz. “If the work is good it will find an audience. Eventually.”

“Thanks.”

Liz glared at her. “Your work is good, Charlie. Time will out.”

“I'd prefer not to die before time wills itself out.”

“That happens. Can't be helped. But Quiola, you must change your medium. Paint, my girl, not pots.”

“I don't make pots –”

“Doesn't matter,” said Liz. “Are you a feminist, too?”

“I – don't know. Like Rebecca West once said, ‘I've never been able to find out precisely what feminism is. I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.'”

Liz sniffed. “Cicely,” she said “also announced that the main difference between men and women is that men are lunatics and women, idiots.”

“Cicely?” said Quiola, confused. “Who is Cicely?”

“Rebecca West. Liz knew her,” said C.C., glum. “In Paris.”

“Panther,” said Liz. “At least, that what Herbert – oh, excuse me, Jaguar, once called her, your Rebecca West. She was Cicely Fairchild, to her family. Rebecca West is an Ibsen character.”

“Liz Moore, honestly, name dropping. Shame on you,” said C.C.

“I drop nothing,” said Liz, primly. “Your muse, here, is the one who dropped Rebecca on my head, for daring to defy what I think is so much mumbo-jumbo. Look at you two! Just because you happen to be in love doesn't mean you also have to toe a political line. A strong woman with talent is a strong person, period. The rest are all lunatics or idiots. I leave politics to the politicians.”

“Everything is political,” said C.C.

“Slogans. I can't stand them.”

“Just what
do
you like?” asked Quiola roughly, and then blushed.

Liz eyed her.

“Well!” said C.C.

“Ah-ha!” Liz smiled. “Glad to see your muse has some spunk, my dear. I was beginning to wonder if you'd fallen for a dud.”

“Liz!” said C.C.

“I like strong people, with talent,” said Liz Moore, answering Quiola's question, ignoring C.C.'s protest. “And good food.”

 

♦

The root cellar of the “shed” was the coolest place C.C. and Quiola could find, bar air conditioning, all that hot April 2002 week,
as they awaited C.C.'s operation. Earth-sweet, the cellar would
store C.C.'s work while she was laid up. She looked over an empty frame and asked, “Do I really want this? What do you think? Is it worth keeping?”

Quiola turned around. “Sure? Why not?”

“I don't know. It's too fancy for one of mine. Maybe Liz –”

“Keep it,” urged Quiola. “What about this?” She pulled a stack of unstretched canvases from under a workbench, mussing the swept floor with cobwebs and a flurry of dust-bunnies. “They look old.”

“God, the stuff I've wasted. Just put it in the trash.”

“All right. And this?” She held up a small painting of a small cramped room with one open window. “Yours?”

“Mine,” said C.C. taking the picture. “Liz's city studio, so tiny the paint fumes knocked you over. I doubt she ever closed that window. You know she passed out, once. Place was lousy with bugs, too, and here I was, right out of school, clean as a whistle. I bet she read my face like an open book: you
live
here? How can anyone actually
live
here?” She laughed, but the laugh caught up on a cough, lung-deep, with legs. Quiola tried to keep her face blank as new paper, while C.C. cleared her throat. The younger woman pulled up her blue jeans a bit, then knelt in order to pull a box of dusty jam jars from a space behind the bench. Doing so sent a spider packing, and she murmured, “Be well, Grandmother Spider.”

“What's that?” asked C.C.

“A spider.” She stood and brushed off her knees. “Why did Liz stay in that studio for so long if it was foul?”

“It was also dirt cheap. The painted lady's lair – that's what she called it. ‘Come into the painted lady's lair!'”

Quiola leaned back against the workbench, resting her elbows on it. “Did she ever mind being called a witch? She's never seemed to mind.”

“Oh, no. She just laughs. Says Al Kroenen was a fool.” C.C. drew herself up, as if to mimic Liz's height, and assumed a very Liz-like pose. “‘That man drank too many of Tom Davis's loaded martinis, and thought I'd been making eyes at his wife. I wasn't. She wore too much warpaint for my taste.'”

“Warpaint?”

“Yeah, warpaint. What, haven't you ever heard make-up called ‘warpaint'?”

“Not really, no.”

“Funny. We used to call it that. ‘Can't leave the house without my warpaint!' Mom would say to Dad. You know how I hate the stuff. Refused to learn how to use lipstick. Mom was so patient. Like Liz said, generous. But for all her effort, I still failed girl's school.”

“You just wanted to be a different kind of girl.”

“Did I ever. Let's have some coffee, eh? I'm getting tired.”

“Let me brew it?”

They climbed out of the cellar, into the hot, bright afternoon.

“Why, because you think mine's too weak? Coffee snob!”

Quiola let go the heavy cellar door, which shut in an ungentle whack, making a small dust storm. “What time's our appointment tomorrow?”

“Nine. Have you ever noticed doctor's offices are all same? Not like my Dad's old office, solid and wooden. Today it's MacDoc, cheerful and subdued, those same brown or beige or aqua chairs, that same carpet anywhere USA. They must all use the same carpenter, contractor, painters – maybe that's what I should've done, become a house painter, like my great-uncle. Much more useful than making pictures nobody wants.”

“Nobody is an exaggeration.”

“Next to nobody, then.”

They were still arguing the next morning, as they sat in the cheerful MacDoc waiting room.

“Mrs. Davis?” called a nurse.

“My mother isn't here,” hissed C.C.

“She's coming,” Quiola said.

“I'm not Mrs. Davis!”

“At our age, we are all Mrs. Somebody. People being polite.”

“My ass.”

Quiola let it go. If C.C. wanted to be cross, she had every right. No one should have to have the kind of conversation she was about to have with her surgeon, Dr. Theresa Wong, who said Taxol, radiation, and then we'll see. To prep, nil by mouth after midnight.

And then they were back out in the hallway headed for the car.

“I'll go bald,” said C.C. after a few minutes. “From the Taxol.”

“Very lesbian chic.”

For a full moment, C.C. said nothing. Then, “How about a tattoo? Think I'd look too butch – or too old? Bald old bitch with a skull tattoo?”

“Perfect! Let's do it. Right now. After, they won't let you near a tattoo needle.”

“Are you serious?”

“Are you?”

“Dead.”

So that afternoon in New Haven, they found a barber, reluctant, at first, to shave off a fine head of hair, but when they told him why, he relented. Then, a tattoo parlor, a husband and wife business; he did the hard-core, she did the students, and they both let their seven-year-old watch as they worked.