September Song (20 page)

The Melrose Gallery stood high on his hit list and he hit it often. With branches in Dallas, London, Paris, Tokyo, a trendsetter, a weathervane in the winds of artistic fad, it represented all that he despised. Having rung the bell, they stood at the door to be recognized by their old friends Messrs. Taylor and James, the directors. He gave them his gallery smile and his little bow.

He rang again. Still the buzzer did not sound. He rang again. He could see the two men clearly and could see that they saw him, that in fact they were discussing him. He could almost read their lips, he could certainly read their expressions.

The accumulated spleen of years rose in him like a clogged drain regurgitating. He beat with his fist on the door.

“Yes!” he shouted. “That's right! It's ‘those two' again! Open up!”

He set down the box of slides and, shaking with outrage, pounded with both fists. The door remained locked.

“You dirty bastards!” he shouted. “You charlatans! You pimps! You supercilious shits! Who do you think you are? Who appointed you to decide what is art, you crappers?”

It was not the sight of one of them dialing the phone for help that silenced him, nor was it any embarrassment over the public spectacle he had made of himself. He was shaking now not with indignation but from fright at his outburst. Not defiance but defeat was what he had exhibited. He had revealed to himself and to Jane the futility of their long quest.

Plodding the thirty blocks home after giving up on getting a taxi, fearful of breaking the silence by saying anything, he said only, “Well, Jane, you're in good company.”

Having heard that too many times before, she said nothing.

The next day, Sunday, while Jane went to her studio, he prepared for his annual income tax audit. It was the prospect of this that had contributed to his outburst of the day before. As with chips on a gambling table, he stacked the receipts for the studio rent, canceled checks for models, for the photographer who came monthly to take the color slides. In francs the bills from Lefebure, the Parisian color merchants with whom she had a charge account—last remaining source of broad red sable brushes—ran off the page. Converted by calculator into dollars, the figure was still fingerlength. Not only was she undaunted by the world's rejection, she defied it. She was challenged to produce even more. Her courage in the face of adversity, her unsparing dedication to her art was a wonder and an inspiration to him. Six days a week, with Saturdays off to make their rounds of the galleries, she was in her studio and at her easel from nine in the morning until six in the evening. (They dined out.) She had held her babies in one arm while she painted. Her prodigious output was proof in itself of her genius. Not even Picasso was more fecund. How could he be disheartened when she was so steadfast? He must be the Théo to her Vincent. Like Philip IV with Velázquez, he was honored to pick up her paintbrush when she dropped it. Yet though pity for himself made him feel disloyal to her and to their common cause, he could not help uttering a plaintive, “Vissi d'arte.” He followed it with Tosca's, “e d'amor.” And even so, he dared not claim her full expenses for fear of being disallowed them all. That threat had hung over him for years like the blade of a guillotine.

Time was when he had had to undergo not one but two annual audits, the first in rehearsal for the second, like being crammed by a tutor for an exam. This was with his accountant. Charley's patience with him had worn almost as thin as that of the Internal Revenue Service.

“All that imported Belgian linen canvas!” Charley lamented. “Those expensive Block colors! Does she have to paint so
big?”

This stung him because he had once timidly ventured the same question himself, when the storage bill for the nine hundred canvases in the warehouse in Yonkers reached four figures. Perhaps, he suggested to her, gallery owners were put off by their size. Most apartment-dwellers did not have that much wall space. This was met with the scorn it merited. She was not painting pictures the size of doily cloths like those to be bought at supermarkets. Did Monet think of petit-bourgeois
locataires
when doing his water lilies? Did—though in no other respect would she ever compare herself with them—did Pollack have in mind mobile homes, or Stella? Her eyes were set on the dimensions of the Marlborough Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art. Even they—the snots!—would see the light in time—or if not in time, in time to come. Then she would have her vindication! Meanwhile in defiance she painted more and more monumentally.

“Look, Al,” said Charley, “you're in a position now where you could afford to retire if you sold out and got out of the city and away from these ruinous expenses. You hate it here anyway.”

“You don't understand the art world, Charley. Here,” he said, quoting Jane, “is where it's at.”

“This may be where it's at but you're still knocking on the door.”

This sort of thing he had to put up with from the IRS. Did he have to pay for it too?

“Move up to Woodstock. How long is it since you went fishing? Woodstock: that's the ideal place for both your interests. It's an artists' colony. There's art all over the place. In banks, cafes. Up there she might even get a show in one of the local galleries.”

He shuddered to think of Jane's reaction to the suggestion of a show in some “local” small-town gallery.

“For not much more than you're paying in yearly rent on the apartment and the studio you could make a down payment on a home up there. A nice old farmhouse. Hell, you could get a place with a barn big enough even to store all Jane's … stuff.”

It was that “stuff,” and the pause preceding it, that cost Charley his longtime job.

Shy of having another accountant see into his private affairs, he now prepared his tax return himself, and went unaccompanied by counsel to his annual audit.

“According to our records,” said the IRS official, “it is now——years that you have been claiming business expense deductions for your wife's painting.” As on television when someone uttered an obscenity, his mind had blipped out the number. “In all that period of time just four pictures have been sold.”

Actually they had not. He had falsified those sales, thereby diminishing his claim, in hopes of making it look as if her efforts to sell were earnest.

“We do not insist that a business show a profit every year,” the man continued. “But the government can no longer subsidize you in what is, we submit, a hobby. An expensive hobby.”

Had Jane heard that she would have choked with indignation. Shades of Cézanne! Holy Vincent!

Onto the screen of his mind flashed a set of figures:

Item: “Portrait of Dr. Gachet”

Income: $82,500,000.00

Expenses:

canvas $20.00

Paint $10.00

Studio rent (1 hr.) $1.00

Total $31.00

Net profit: $82,499,069.00

“Your deductions are disallowed.”

Although this was what he had anticipated with dread for years, and more with each year, it came nonetheless as a blow. Without those allowances there was no way for him to make ends meet.

Shaking his head incredulously, as though dealing with someone deluded, the IRS man had read off the figures for the studio rent, the supplies, the models, the storage bill on the nine hundred pictures in Yonkers, etc. Each wove a strand in the web he was tangled in like one of those hapless insects injected with anesthesia by its captor and slowly sucked dry of its juices.

A sensation as though he were grappling with an octopus assailed him as he waited for the elevator in her studio building. When he opened her door, fearful that his disloyal thoughts might have left telltale traces on his face, he eased himself out without being seen. She was on a stepladder working on her current canvas. Hobby! He likened her heroism to that of Michelangelo lying on the scaffold and painting over his head for ten years.

Without telling Jane, he took a day off from work and, slides in hand, made his own round of galleries. New ones opened weekly in the SoHo district—and just as often closed. It was both of these factors he was counting on now, for in this lone foray of his he had in mind an opposite approach from their usual one. Turned away repeatedly at the front door, he was going now to try the back one. Jane would die of shame if she knew what he was up to, would disavow him, would divorce him, but he was desperate. The ruling of the IRS to disallow his deductions for her was not his only worry. The other was his mounting concern over her. As though he had a thermometer and a chart at the foot of her bed, he could see that her fever was peaking. It was not that she was painting any less determinedly than before. On the contrary. What was alarming was that she was painting with both hands, like a mariner trying to bail out a sinking boat.

The reception he got at the first place he tried shook him so thoroughly he shied from repeating it at the next one.

The lady owner of the gallery was replacing the few slides she had glanced at, preparing—he could hear it coming—to utter the standard, “Sorry. Not for us,” when he propositioned her.

“Where do you think you are?” she demanded indignantly. “This is a reputable establishment, I'll have you know! We are not for hire. Good-day to you, sir.”

At Pettingill et Cie he began his pitch, “My wife is an artist.”

Whose isn't
? said Mr. Pettingill's weary expression.

“May I show you some color slides of her work?”

Like the lady at the first gallery, Mr. Pettingill seemed to wonder where he thought he was, only with a difference. One for not beating about the bush, Mr. Pettingill said, “That won't be necessary.”

Though this was what he was after, he disbelieved for a moment that he had found it, or that it could be so blatant, so unashamed. In the silence that ensued they took each other's measure. Mr. Pettingill named his price. It was breathtaking. This was no lottery. This was more like buying the prize in hopes of winning the ticket.

The following Saturday, as always, before setting off on their rounds, he read aloud the list of the day's galleries. The Pettingill was the last. He planned to produce Mr. Pettingill at the end of another dreary Saturday like a rainbow.

“Have we tried any of those places before?” she asked.

“No. All virgin territory.”

She did not rise to his chirpiness. Even as he read them aloud she could see those names scratched through like all the others in the book.

In early afternoon, with three down and one more to go he could see coming on that tightness around her lips and that furrow between her brows that signaled discouragement, and he decided to go directly to Mr. Pettingill.

“Well, Jane, dear,” he said afterwards, “it's not the Melrose, but it's a start.”

“Now don't go putting down my gallery,” she said. “Oh, wasn't Mr. Pettingill wonderful! So enthusiastic!”

Yes, Pettingill had played his practiced part in the charade smoothly, and had looked to him for appreciation. He had felt like one of the countless customers of a well-worn whore.

“So
perceptive!
He understood my aims entirely. I could see that you were a bit annoyed at his pointing out my influences, but I didn't mind a bit. I have always gratefully acknowledged my debt to the masters. Oh, Allen, this has been a long time in coming. Without you to keep me going I could never have held out for so long. I am so grateful to you for your loyalty and faith. I do hope you feel now that it has all been worth it. Oh, what a difference a day makes! I'm a new woman. I'm so happy I could cry, and I believe I'm going to.”

The end would justify the means. The ads he had placed in the
Times
and the
Village Voice
would draw viewers to the show. The papers would send their critics. Nowadays, to hedge against the future, not knowing what they liked anyway and with no standards to guide them, collectors and curators were afraid
not
to buy pictures. Other, honest galleries would woo her. In time the museums would take notice and there would be a retrospective. Those canvases, some anyway, could come out of storage in Yonkers. In the meantime, he could return to the IRS with proof that hers was a serious, professional, profit-seeking enterprise, not a “hobby.”

Had he really believed all that? Now that it had not happened he could not believe he had, but before it had not happened he had believed it would.

They chose the pictures to be hung and together drew up a list of prices for them. Her expectations seemed unrealistic even to him.

“They're worth every bit you're asking, and more,” he began by saying. Then after a pause, “However, we must not forget that your reputation has yet to be established. What you want is for the pictures to find homes. Let people see them on their friends' walls. Spread the word. Perhaps if the prices were a bit more attractive …”

“Hold yourself cheap and so will the world,” she said.

She wanted to be present at the gallery throughout the duration of the show, surrounded by her productions, watch people look at them and overhear their admiring remarks. Mr. Pettingill was glad to let her mind the store. He gave her the key and went off on vacation.

The pictures were priced on request. As the days passed the prices were revised downward. “Hopscotch” had originally been $5000; now she would entertain an offer of $3500. Appreciative people could have “Rope-Jumping” for $2500.

During the two weeks the show hung some two dozen visitors came to the gallery. They looked as though they were lost and had wandered in by mistake. They left hurriedly. A few others poked their heads inside and withdrew them as though they had smelled a bad smell. Sitting there she felt, she said, like the lady attendant of a Paris pissoir. She had begun like a bouquet; like a bouquet she wilted more daily.

Mr. Pettingill returned from his vacation on the closing day of the show to supervise the taking down of the pictures. They were stood with their faces to the wall like punished schoolchildren. In their places those of the next show were hung without delay. Mr. Pettingill's bed was never allowed to cool.