The Angry Woman Suite (29 page)

My very next thought was that Matthew, even if he’d had the time or wherewithal to plan, could never have prepared so fitting a first impression of his Magdalene suite, because it was absolutely incredible, mesmerizing. But then I realized he
had
planned, right down to the last detail. How else to explain the juxtaposition of those nine canvases lined up left to right, like words in a sentence, each station a stepping stone to its ultimately sordid ending? Or the way the sunlight brightened and hardened all that angry, raw emotion staring back at us?

We stood in silence. And then I stepped out from behind Sahar’s wheelchair to get a better look. The first painting was the darkest, depicting Magdalene in a field of wheat, wielding a scythe, black clouds above her. She was full-bodied, back partly turned, the set of her mouth furiously tight-lipped—and this image of a normally concealed destructiveness run momentarily amok was so vivid that I shivered, feeling the sharp blade of that scythe slice into the tender skin between my shoulders.

To say these were not cheerful pictures is an understatement—although Magdalene didn’t look quite so threatening in the other paintings, thank heaven. One had her standing in a gusting dirt storm, sullen, childlike. In another she appeared as an adolescent, inside a circle of splintered tree trunks, tears coursing down her cheeks. The last showed her as the beautiful young woman she actually was, hair billowing about her head, joining up with strands of stringy clouds directly overhead: it looked as if she were one with the sky. But in this one Magdalene also looked stung, as if someone she’d trusted implicitly had stolen everything from her, right down to squeezing that last drop of moisture from those overhead clouds.

Naturally, all the other paintings’ backdrops suggested outside extremities as well—hinting perhaps that Magdalene’s renegade temperament had
less
to do with a moral turpitude than with a natural reaction to things out of her control? Was that what Matthew had seen in his subject? That Magdalene was quite simply a tragic figure suspended between avoidance and obsession?

Considering this, I became less repelled by the glare and angst in Matthew’s paintings. Rather, gazing at them was like looking into mirrors, onto the natural ambivalence deep within
myself.

I turned, in the process nearly tripping over Sahar’s wheelchair. Her face was devoid of color.

Matthew said, “There’s one more, just finished.” His expression was as grim as Sahar’s. “In the back.”

Baffled by this new, strained undercurrent between Sahar and Matthew, I was nonetheless curious about this other portrait, and I quickly followed Matthew, taking note of everything in the spacious, cluttered studio—the way the light played up into the room’s highest corners, and one wall especially, which displayed sketches of Matthew’s earlier works: studies of barns, a pot of geraniums, sheets drying in the sun. Other walls were lined with bins of oils representative of Matthew’s more recent endeavors: abstracts that were percussions of color, form, and subliminal message. And then, at the back of the room, nearly obscured by a cot and a smoking chair, on an easel, was the last portrait of Magdalene. I gasped when I saw it, and behind me heard Lear mutter, “Mad, mad, mad.”

“That’s it,” Matthew pronounced.
“Exactly
what I’m calling these pictures: The Angry Woman Suite.”

“But, really, Magdalene doesn’t look so angry now!” I protested. And it was true. In this last portrait of Magdalene there was more resoluteness than fury, more composure than frenzy, more light than dark. It was still a breathtaking, tightly compacted beauty Magdalene had, with a bit of highly-charged ends, but there was now a calmness to the set of her mouth; a yielding in the blue-gray steel of her eyes, a subtle wavering to shoulders draped with a material matching those pale eyes. I moved in closer, absorbing the painting’s detail, noticing that the backdrop was very cleverly done, nearly unobtrusive, of a river in the far distance. The river curved around Magdalene’s head like a halo. But farther back, and I had to look closer to even make it out, was the figure of a boy. Or maybe it was a man. It was hard to say, the way he’d been blended into the backdrop as if he were a trick of the light.

This last painting
more
than conveyed the secret of Magdalene’s allure, that mix of vulnerability and otherworldliness. And that’s when I was struck by the truth of what had been going on. Matthew had stripped Magdalene naked for the whole world to see what I’d seen first: a victor. A one-of-a-kind who rises up to meet upheavals,
expecting
them, realizing that life without injustice is eminently useless.

So the whole world could see what belonged to me.

The pictures felt suddenly indecent—and the studio suffocating. But I nonetheless stood rooted to the spot, held fast by indecision.

“They’re exquisite,” I heard Sahar say. Her voice was tight. I turned then, remembering I’d left her at the front of the studio. Magdalene had wheeled her back. My eyes traveled between the faces of these two women that I loved, and I was hard put choosing whose face was the palest.

Or which was the most frightening: the fear in Sahar’s eyes or the fear in Magdalene’s.

I didn’t think further.

“Exquisite, indeed!” I agreed heartily, taking the wheelchair from Magdalene and turning Sahar away from the painting. A part of me registered the falsity of my tone, but a bigger part of me was intent on separating Sahar and Magdalene; of keeping them apart from a pain greater than my own. To put it bluntly, I was aiming to avert a calamity I’d yet to fully comprehend.

And then, amazingly, another part of my brain recognized how ironic it was that a man with the reputation as the least sensitive, who ostensibly couldn’t see past the nose on his face, was looking at the cruel and tragic hand Matthew had wielded and seeing it for what it was. For I sincerely believed, then, that Matthew had seduced Magdalene. How else could he have painted her so well? All that anger in those first paintings, and then later, in the last, what looked to be a sort of philosophical acquiescence, even … contentment on
her
part?

Matthew
had
gotten to know Magdalene. Too well. And
she’d
enjoyed the process.

And I understood more. The first round of paintings had been meant to depict a
collective
anger: It was Matthew and Magdalene’s anger at the injustice that they couldn’t be together. Because Sahar was in their way.

And now Sahar knew it.

I suppose Matthew and Magdalene thought, if they thought at all, that this was an oblique and therefore less painful way of cluing us in. It was certainly honest cheating, I’ll give it that, if there is such a thing. There were no lies and nobody fell down a flight of stairs, like what happened to Sahar before. No, this time there was only
innuendo.
Sick, irrefutable innuendo.

And of course I was crushed. And livid. Matthew Waterston had been my hero. And Magdalene was my heart. But my heart was now broken, and the only thing larger than my hero’s icon status was his hypocrisy. He was flawed, nothing like he seemed—and I couldn’t help wondering, as Magdalene had once wondered, are any of us as we seem?

But almost worse, I realized Magdalene could never be the kind of woman who’d need me the way Sahar needed me.

I turned and bolted from the studio, running square into Jamie. I’d completely forgotten about him. But the look he gave me is stamped on my memory. It’s fleeting, this look, and at the time I perceived it as regret. And concern. For me and his mother, and that dark cloud of unspoken conflict swirling around inside his father’s studio. Of course I understand now, because one only understands life looking backwards—plus I’ve replayed the scene in my head innumerable times since—that Jamie’s expression was one of abject longing.

But that in no way whatsoever was that longing directed at me or either of his parents.

It kills me to have to say it, but I never spoke with Matthew Waterston again.

In fact, much stayed unspoken. And if not for Jamie,
all
would’ve stayed unspoken—and even after Jamie elected to go to a music school in New York, I still didn’t tell Sahar of the things Jamie said to me.

“It’s not what you think,” Jamie had insisted the day before leaving for school. “My father’s
not
in love
or
lust with Magdalene—he’s
not
sleeping with her. Those are ideas you’ve manufactured in your own head, Aidan, spun from paranoia. Look, you
have
to stop punishing my dad. You
have
to start talking to him again. He’s
suffering,
Aidan.”

Of course Jamie knew nothing of the adult world—or so I thought. He was young, unseasoned.

I busied myself hanging swords for a new exhibit, for the museum. Not bothering turning around, I retorted, “You don’t know what I think.”

“
Everyone
knows what you think. Aidan, do you mind? Would you mind looking at me? You know what
I
think? I think you don’t want to have to deal with the
real
truth here.
The truth about my
mother.”

I kept my back to him.

“My father’s been trying to warn you about my mother, Aidan.”

I froze.

“And his warning is in those Angry Woman paintings. In fact, those paintings
are
the warning. Jesus, Aidan, I’ve got to believe that on some level you know this already, but you can’t stay with it because my mother’s got you feeling like you’re her …
deliverer
or something, which, for a reason that would escape any sane-minded person, you love.”

I allowed a quick glance over my shoulder. Looking down, hands in pockets, where I knew his long, sensitive fingers were digging into his palms, Jamie didn’t see my swift survey of thick, dark hair, insolent slouch, or enviable height and broad shoulders. I’d watched him grow from boyhood to manhood, charting each stage, but when had he become so certain of everything based on nothing?

“There was never room enough for me,” he murmured. His voice went stronger: “I got used to that idea a long time ago, Aidan. Not to say they don’t love me. It’s just that they love what they do to each other more than they’ve ever loved me.”

He’d hooked me and he knew it. He moved up alongside me.

“Those Angry Woman paintings have
nothing
to do with Magdalene, and
everything
to do with my parents.”

Not the paintings I’d seen.

“The suite is
symbolic,
Aidan. Which my mother understood. Just as my father meant her to. All that darkness and anger,
you bet she understood it.
Which is why she looked about to throw up.”

I managed to keep most of the scorn from my voice: “What
are
you talking about?”

“Try this one on. My mother’s not in that wheelchair because of polio—”

“I’ve heard as much.”

“Which is something only my father could’ve told you, because Mother can never tell the truth. Did he also tell you Mother threw
herself
down a flight of stairs? After begging
him
to push her? After daring him? After taking his hands and placing them on her shoulders and taking that first step backwards,
facilitating
…
?”

I felt suddenly lightheaded.

“No, I didn’t see my mother fall, if that’s what you’re thinking. I wasn’t there. But I saw and heard plenty before the fall, and plenty after, too. Especially at the trial.”

Matthew had never mentioned a trial.

Jamie’s lip curled. “No, I wasn’t at the trial, either. Still too young. But everyone was talking about it. So of course I knew Mother insisted it was the girlfriend who’d pushed
her
down the stairs, breaking her back. And even though my father testified
he
was
the one who’d inadvertently caused Mother to lose her balance—just like him, trying to save everybody’s skins—the jury convicted my father’s girlfriend. Sent
her
to prison.” Jamie’s words were clipped: “I heard my mother
laughed
when the verdict was read.”

“Jamie, people are sometimes misunderstood—”

“She’s a monster,” Jamie said baldly.

I blanched. “Beg your pardon?”

“My mother’s a monster. She’s always been a monster.”

“Listen, I don’t think—”

“No, you listen. Here’s how sick it all is, Aidan. Despite how it may seem, my parents are
perfect partners for each other. My mother’s beautiful and empty, and my father’s drawn to her beauty—but he hates her emptiness. But get this:
her worst inspires his best.

“His hatred for her does make for interesting paintings, don’t you agree? He’s always had this instinctual obsession for people with substance. Which is why he keeps trying to fill Mother up, to meet that obsession. Impossible, of course, because Mother can’t be filled up. She’s a sieve—it’s her fatal flaw. And that’s what drives my father nuts: that he keeps trying to fill her up anyway. That’s
his
fatal flaw. But once Dad gets nuts, he acts out the only way he knows how. He makes paintings exposing
her
, and expressing his frustration with himself.
Aidan, have you known my father to paint anything as dark as the Angry Women?”

“No—”

“Ah, but he has. But the Angry Women, those are the only ones he’ll take
public.
Look, Aidan, think back to when Dad started coming to Chadds Ford. The first time was right after the trial, because he had to get away from Mother. And he kept coming back summer after summer, though later his coming back became directly tied to you. Oh, come on, don’t look so surprised. Didn’t you ever wonder why my father left me and my mother home in Maine while he trotted off to Chadds Ford every year?

“Sure, my father
had
already started renovating the mill house when he met you, but he could’ve dumped it. He’s dumped lots of projects.” Jamie paused. “My father admires
your
substance, Aidan. Your
sense of responsibility and that stubborn mule-ass tenacity of yours. Maybe because it hasn’t crossed over to obsession yet, like what’s happened for him. You know, I’ve always believed my father finally brought me and Mother here to Chadds Ford to live because, well, because I think he feels
you’re
the last great hope, Aidan.”