Lydia's Party: A Novel (16 page)

Norris

Norris knew she shouldn’t have come. Now she was stuck here. She’d planned to spend the night at the Park Hyatt, then Sunday in the city. She needed to check out the exhibition space at the Cultural Center and had planned to do that first thing in the morning, then see a drawing show at the Art Institute after that. If all went as planned, she’d be home before dark. Now there was no telling when she’d get out of here.

What a mess, she thought. Even a day away hurt, when she was preparing for a show. If she were home, she’d be in bed now. And back in the studio hours before anyone here was even awake. She hated departing from her perfect routine.

•   •   •

Norris knew people thought that was boring, but she’d noticed they were generally the same people who hadn’t found something worth doing. Norris loved her routine. Every day she got up at five. She couldn’t wait to get to the studio, though she made herself run three miles first, to get it out of the way.

After that, she showered, made coffee. Then she walked the few feet to her studio and went to work. Nothing felt better than that. Later she’d eat something, a piece of fruit, some yogurt. She’d had a kitchenette and a bathroom built into the studio so she wouldn’t have to leave.

She drew for a while, first, to warm up—thirty minutes, maybe an hour—then she went into the painting, whatever she had going. Usually she put paint down, made moves, but sometimes, when a painting was further along and starting to get tricky, she’d just sit with it all morning. Looking, thinking. Sometimes when she wasn’t sure what to do she’d sit with it until mid-afternoon. It was like a conversation that had wound down, she thought then, like waiting for the other person to speak, tell her what it wanted. Though usually she knew what to do and kept at it until she had to get up, to stretch, eat.

She left the studio then, took a real break. Shuffled to the kitchen with that light-headed feeling of leaving the real world, the work, behind. Then there was the mail, the solitary lunch, more yogurt, with nuts, or a piece of cold fish, or a boiled egg. She glanced at the newspaper, went outside for a few minutes, usually, walked to the pond. Then it was back to the studio, though afternoons were less focused. If she couldn’t think of what to do she allowed herself to read then, though it felt a little like surrender. An uncertainty fell over her in the afternoon; she questioned everything she’d done. It was different from the exaltation she felt in the morning, but she liked even that, the sense of reassessment, of coming back to earth, thinking,
It’s not as good as I thought it was but I know how to fix it
. Or
I don’t know yet but I know I can figure it out
. Painting was a puzzle she knew she could solve, something she was always working in her head. By late afternoon when she was sure she couldn’t work anymore, or was afraid the work she would do would cause more harm than good, she took another walk. After that she ate, usually a salad, then spent an hour or two on the computer. Sometimes she drank a glass of red wine then, just one.

Jay came over sometimes after he got off work and let himself in. Norris had given him a key so he wouldn’t bother her, ringing the bell. He knew not to disturb Norris when she was in the studio. Sometimes he made dinner and had it waiting for her—she’d taught him how to broil fish. Norris allowed it as long as he didn’t come near the studio. She didn’t ever want him there, except when she needed him to help her move things. He was a distraction, which was his purpose, but only when she wanted to be distracted. And he came to the house only when she told him he could, about twice a week.

She made him wait, not to tease him, but because twice a week was what she wanted, and when he stayed overnight she made him sleep in the guesthouse. He understood to let himself out the side door in the morning, so she wouldn’t see him. A few times he’d fallen asleep in her bed, or pretended to.
Oh no you don’t
, she’d say, waking him up.
You know the rules
. And he’d leave, like the obedient child that he was. Norris didn’t want to see him in the morning. It spoiled her routine.

•   •   •

The new paintings were big, bigger than ever. She was just finishing the twelfth, and probably the last, in a series of birch forests. She’d flown to Norway to do the research, hired a guide to take her around so she could take photos. She’d stayed all of four days—that’s how eager she’d been to get back and get started. Each painting was nine feet square, nothing but tree trunks and light, and, in a few, snow. No sky, no ground. The work was laborious and time-consuming but it didn’t take as long as it used to, now that she knew what she was doing.

•   •   •

Some critic had accused her of
cranking them out
but he was an ass. Even Natalie, who’d made a fortune off her reliable productivity, had suggested taking a break. But why? She’d never felt so herself.

Though lately even Norris had the nagging feeling she should change it up a little. Do something else, throw in a monkey wrench to keep from getting stale. She was looking at the women here tonight and wondering. Here could be her next show.

It was an odd thought. She hadn’t painted the figure in twenty years, and the complication of starting now, having to negotiate with actual living subjects, was tiresome even to consider. It was just that they were so, so what? So
vivid
tonight, Norris thought.

She was looking at Celia’s hair. It was a fuzzy halo. She was wondering what color it was, how to make that color, and thinking she’d start with Naples yellow and add a lot of white. And something else—some red, but which one, so it wouldn’t turn orange?

Sometimes change was like that, Norris thought. It just happened, with no transition, for no discernible reason. Being stuck here, which was the last thing in the world she’d wanted, was having a strange effect on her. She’d always sworn she wouldn’t paint people, but she was starting to think she was going to paint these women.

•   •   •

She could almost see the show already. The painting of Lydia would be the anchor. She’d aged a lot since Norris had last seen her. She looked gorgeously decrepit tonight. She’d be the centerpiece, facing the door, and to her right maybe Elaine, the odd piece that made it all tremble and keep trembling, the disturbing element that activated beauty.

People assumed ugliness was the opposite of beauty, but they were wrong, Norris knew. Prettiness was. Who was it who’d said that thing about beauty? Norris thought it was John Graham, the artist who’d made that obscene drawing of the woman with the gash in her neck, at the Weatherspoon.
Beauty is the beautiful expanded to the verge of ugliness.
Something like that. That’s what they were, Norris thought, looking around. That’s what these paintings would do.

She was getting one of those vision rushes now, the kind she usually got only in the woods, that state she used to fall into as a child that made her feel so strange—happy and mute and totally disconnected from other human beings. It’s what made her want to paint in the first place, that sheer pleasure in looking. When she got that way, in high school, her parents thought she was high—she could hardly make out what they were saying—and she was, but not on drugs. She’d look at them—through them, they said—like they were talking objects.

In those days, she’d wanted to look more than make; sometimes she still did. Making, looking—either way, she thought, it was all about pleasure. All this blather about art as a higher good missed the point. Or was intentionally false. Art was pure selfishness. The rest was just talk.

•   •   •

Norris scanned the room. The candlelight on the bottles—my God, she thought. The stiff pink icing on those ridiculous cupcakes, the constellation of dark crumbs littered across the honey-colored table, Elaine’s small, fat fingers resting on a silver knife, the moon of her cuticle, greasy from something she just ate, glinting in the firelight, the fire glinting off the silver knife with that low pearly glow that looked like a seventeenth-century Dutch sky. The moon on the snow, out the window.

My God, how beautiful it all was, Norris thought. Almost too beautiful, too Vermeerish, though the women themselves were clownish, too, more like a scene out of Jan Steen. Norris wouldn’t make the paintings this beautiful—too corny. She’d pull it back a little. But she saw it, and she supposed this was her version of love. Appreciation was the best she could do, she thought, though if they knew how well she appreciated them, this minute, they might forgive what they thought of as her coldness.

She wondered how many of them would be willing to sit for her, nude. She could make photos instead of drawings, if she had to, to make it easier for them, so they wouldn’t have to sit around embarrassed and bare-assed in her drafty studio all day. Although it might be companionable, sort of, Norris thought, if they’d promise to shut up.

What odd thoughts she was having. An hour ago she didn’t even like these women. Now she was imagining her friends—suddenly they were her friends—coming through her studio one by one and taking off their clothes. Unless she had them come in pairs. They’d like that better, she was sure, they’d feel less embarrassed, though she’d have to be very strict about her no-talking policy. Maybe she could pay them, Norris thought. Maybe that would make them take it more seriously, but no, they’d be insulted. She’d have to bribe them some other, more irresistible way. Dinners, wine—they loved to eat and drink. She could pay Jay to cater it. The cold studio would be a problem, though. She’d have to crank up the heat.

Unless she waited until summer. Put them in the water! How beautiful that would be, she thought—each standing calf-deep in the lake with ripples running out from her legs, her feet distorted by water. She’d put them in the little cove, standing on the stones. Norris wondered for a minute what Jay would think when she traipsed them through.
Be careful what you wish for
, she’d tell him.

She saw it now, the whole show, each painting seven feet tall, each woman a little larger than life, the stones under the clear water, the pond life at the edge, the ferns and frogs and turtles and schools of minnows and then the pale flesh of the women, their hair streaming down. Little yellow leaves lying flat on the water. She could start now, she thought, get their permission tonight. Then she remembered—she had her cameras in the car.

Celia walked past, wineglass in one hand, cannoli in the other, her soft hair a cloud around her head. Norris saw her as she’d paint her, long-necked and flat-chested, a tall, graying Botticelli nymph. Norris had no idea what she’d see when they took off their clothes. She’d protect what they most wanted protected, but some of it, the real shape of them, needed to stay. They were more beautiful than they realized, than she’d realized. She was beginning to see every painting. All she had to do was do it.

•   •   •

Norris got up and grabbed her coat. “I’m going to get my camera bag,” she said. No one heard her. Betsy was in the middle of one of her faux-naïve stories, the point of which always seemed to be the discovery of her own carnal nature.

A shriek went up. Now that no one had to drive, they were getting really drunk. Even Elaine was laughing, for the first time all night, with her head in her hands, tears streaming down her face. They were wiping their eyes with napkins, choking on cupcakes.

Good
,
Norris thought. They’d be relaxed, for the photos.

The Party: Midnight

Norris was moving furniture. Fiddling with lights.

“I’m not doing this,” Elaine said, to no one in particular. She was sunk into the couch, arms crossed over her chest.

“What if you just photograph us with our clothes on?” Lydia said, thinking that ten years ago this would have been fine, even last year she would have gone along with it. But not now. “I think that would be interesting enough.”

“Interesting enough is not the idea,” Norris said, adjusting her tripod, not looking up. But she knew it was the best she was going to get, tonight at least. They needed to get used to the idea. She’d get them to come up later when the weather got warm so she could experiment, inside and out, nude and clothed. Take her time.

Maybe there were two shows here, or more, over time, every few years the same women. Maybe she should put them underwater, she thought. She saw each one in the pond submerged up to her breasts or her neck or deeper, up to the eyes maybe, the scalp. Maybe she’d paint them lying on their backs in the water with their clothes rippling out around them. Maybe she’d stand on the dock and photograph them floating on their backs as if they were dead.

•   •   •

Underwater. It was an idea rich with possibility, she thought. Norris heard the word all the time now. Mortgages. Homeowners were
underwater
. Thank God she didn’t have to worry about that. She, not some bank, owned the place. She owned the whole thing—the house, the studio, the guesthouse, the boathouse, the barn, the six acres of surrounding land—and she kept a nine-millimeter Beretta in her bedside drawer to make sure she didn’t have to share it with any surprise visitors.

“Whoa. What’s this big boy?” Jay had said, hefting it, the first time he saw it. He’d been snooping, looking for matches, he’d said.

“Put it down.”

He’d waved it in front of his face like a movie gunslinger. Squinted through the sight. “I thought ladies like you kept big old nasties next to their beds. Not some sweet piece like this.”

“I said put it down,” Norris said. “And don’t say
ladies.
”

“Why not?” He’d turned to look at her, his mouth still open.

“Because it makes you sound like a hick,” she’d said. “Now hand it over.”

He’d closed his mouth. “So what’s it for?”

“Scaring off little hicks like you,” she’d said, grabbing it.

Thinking about it now, she was sorry she’d hurt his feelings—a little sorry, at least—but it was true. He was a hick.

•   •   •

Norris checked her light meter, thinking that posing them in water would allow them some privacy. It might even be a collaboration, she was thinking now. Let them choose their pose, how far underwater they wanted to be. It already was a collaboration—Betsy, Maura, Jayne, and Celia had each picked up a corner of the table, still covered with food and bottles, and carried it back to its rightful position so she could set up. She’d moved the big leather armchair to face the fireplace and had thrown more wood on the fire to make it blaze. She wanted to capture the flush she saw on them now.

Collaboration wasn’t her usual mode but here was an opportunity to try it. She thought of the art dealer’s daughter, that ridiculous name. Tiny Fabulous. It was some joke about art world vanity, she supposed, about people like her, some hipster parody of artists who held themselves apart. Who cared? Who said she was unwilling to experiment?

“OK, Betsy,” Norris said. “Sit up straight, more toward the front of the chair.” At the last minute Norris had shoved the big leather armchair out of the way and replaced it with a straight-backed kitchen chair. Better not to let them get too comfortable.

Betsy was sitting nervously, fluffing her hair around her shoulders and practice-smiling in her tight little way. She’d already been to the bathroom to primp, put lipstick on, some goopy crap around her eyes.
Less is more
, Norris wanted to tell her but Betsy wouldn’t have understood.

“This is not a yearbook photo, Betsy. Relax.”

She didn’t want to direct them too much, though. Self-presentation would be part of it. If Betsy wanted the world to see her in blue eye shadow then so be it. Norris could change it later, tone it down or better yet heighten the color to truly grotesque levels. Besides, these were just studies, reference. The important thing, she thought, looking through the lens, the thing to preserve was this awkwardness, this edge between the fake self Betsy was trying to project and the other Betsy that Norris saw beneath it. Norris let her pose and mug, flashing her big, gummy high school smile, with the cute eye crinkle and shoulder roll. Norris kept shooting, waiting for Betsy to tire, trying to time her clicks to catch the uncertainty that came between the smiles.

“Do you suppose you could take off a few layers, around your neck? I need to see where it attaches.” Betsy frowned but went to the bathroom and emerged wrapped in a scarf, her pale sternum exposed.

“That’s it.” Norris said. “Now try not smiling. Think about something sad. Think about Ted.”

•   •   •

Norris photographed every woman, and Maxine and Pud. Lydia posed with Maxine—the dog wouldn’t sit on the chair alone—and then by herself with the new orange pot. Norris lowered it into her lap, on a towel because it was still warm. “That’s really quite beautiful,” she said, from behind the camera. “It reflects up under your face.”

“It’s not really my color,” Lydia said, thinking that orange reflecting off the underside of her chin didn’t sound good.

“You look fine,” Norris lied. The truth was that Lydia looked ghastly—it occurred to Norris she’d never seen Lydia look ghastly before—but it was going to make a wonderful painting. “Just think of it as kind of an Alfred Leslie look.”

Lydia’s face went blank and then, as memory supplied an image, changed to alarm. Norris said, “Good, do that again.” She clicked several times more and stood up. “I got you at least.”

“Get me out from under this pot,” Lydia said. She felt weak.

Elaine went last. She held a plate of cupcakes for several shots. Norris said, “Why are you holding that? Did you make those?”

Elaine said, “No. I thought I was supposed to hold a plate of food.”

Norris said, “Well hold what you made.”

“I can’t.” Elaine said. “It’s gone, eaten.”

“Didn’t you bring that dairy crap in a can?” Norris said. “Hold that.” So Maura, who’d been watching this exchange, wishing she had the guts to speak to Elaine this way, went to get the can of whipped cream and Elaine held that, smirking and rolling her eyes.

“If you don’t cut it out I’m going to paint you like that, with your eyes rolled back in your head.” Norris spoke from behind the camera.

“Go ahead,” Elaine said. “Make me look like the cadaver I feel myself to be.” Norris clicked some more, getting Elaine’s belligerence. She looked to Norris like an old bull, considering whether it was worth her trouble to charge.

“What about you,” Lydia said to Norris as Elaine staggered up out of the low chair with a hand from Maura. “Want me to do you?”

“I’ve got it,” Norris said, producing a cable from her pocket. She sat straight on the hard chair.

“You need an attribute,” said Jayne, thinking of the medieval saints. Norris had already thought of it. She held up a fish skeleton. She held it in two hands, like a banner, and just before she clicked, with her foot, Malcolm, who’d smelled fish, appeared from nowhere and levitated neatly onto her lap. Norris clicked a few more times—woman, cat, fish. A portrait of two predators, she thought. Perfect.

“Done,” she said.