The Saving Graces (5 page)

"Oh, Rudy, you are so much stronger than he lets you believe! Would you have dropped out of school if it weren't for Curtis? No, and you'd have a real job by now, you'd have a profession." "Oh, now you don't like my job, either. Well, great, this is just wonderful." Oh, that really hurt. I was selling designer jewelry in a Georgetown boutique, and okay, it wasn't my life's work, but it was all right and I was pretty good at it. But it certainly wasn't Curtis's fault. We moved to D.C. after he graduated from law school, and-well, I just never went back to finish my art history master's. I said, "How in the world is Curtis responsible for what my job is? What do you think he did, force me to quit school?" "Yeah, that's exactly what I think. Only he did it so you didn't even know he was doing it." "Oh, that's funny. You are so full of-it, it's-" "Rudy, he's manipulative and controlling-those words were invented for Curtis Lloyd, and I don't know why you can't see it! He makes you think you're crazy, and meanwhile he's this creepy southern sociopath, like Bruce Dern when he used to play those psychotic bayou maniacs-" I threw a CD at her. It hit her on the side of the throat and made a little cut-tiny, but it bled. She went paper white. We gaped at each other, completely horrified, and both wanting the other to apologize first. If we hadn't been drinking since five o'clock in the afternoon, I know we'd have found a way out, some face-saving retreat. Oh, but we were drunk. And we were both just so tired of lying about Curtis.
Eric was staring at me as if I had two heads. "You did that? You really threw a CD?" "You can't picture it, can you?" I didn't blame him; I'm notoriously nonviolent.
"What happened? How did it end?" "I told her if she felt that way about Curtis, maybe she ought not to come to my wedding."
Eric has enormous brown eyes, like a figure in a Velázquez painting. When he opens them wide behind his steel-rimmed glasses, I know I've said something amazing.
"And she said, 'All right, if that's what you want,' and I said, 'I think it's what you want.' She said, 'Well, what do you want?' and we went around like that for a while. That's another thing Emma's good at-hiding behind questions, throwing up diversions. People who don't know her think she's really frank and open, but she's not. She's one of the most reserved people I know." "Did she go to the wedding?" "Oh, sure. But we didn't resolve anything." "Did she spend the night?" "Yes, because we just let it go. We chickened out. I started taking plates and glasses out to the kitchen, and when I came back she was standing over her suitcase, pulling on her jeans. I was shaking inside, walking stiff, like a puppet. I said, 'So you're going home?' She said, 'Yeah.' She didn't look at me, but I could tell by her voice she was crying. And that did it, that just killed me. Because she never cries. So we both started crying, and I told her I wanted her to come to my wedding, and she said she wanted to come, and that was sort of the end of it. But we didn't make up, not really, and neither of us ever apologized. We just went to bed. Or passed out, in my case. I took some pills and went to sleep, just-got out of there.
"The wedding-God, the -wedding was horrible. I woke up with a headache that lasted for three days. I could see the little scratch on her neck above the collar of her maid-of-honor suit, and every time I saw it I'd sink down into this black hole of depression. Lee and Isabel were the bridesmaids, and it only took them about thirty seconds to realize something was wrong between us. Emma and I stayed mad at each other for three months." "But you reconciled." "Yes. Finally. I wish I'd known you then," I said, and Eric smiled.
"How did it come about? The reconciliation." "Oh, well . . . I can't tell you that. It's Emma's story, not mine. Another calamity involving a man, but that's all I can say. But it was her man that time, not mine." Eric couldn't stop shaking his head. "How did you feel when she told you Curtis was manipulative and -what was it? Manipulative and-" "She called him a sociopath, Eric, that's what she called him, and how do you think I felt? It was like a stab in my heart. These are the two people in the world I love most, and I can't stand it that they hate each other. But he doesn't hate her, and that makes it even worse. He never says anything bad about her, he never has." "Do you think so? Rudy, do you really think Curtis likes Emma?" - - I said, "The only good thing about my wedding was, we finally got to meet Lee's boyfriend. Although he wasn't her boyfriend yet, it was their first date. 'Henry the plumber' we'd been calling him. We were dying to meet him, because you know Lee, the original Jewish American princess, and she was absolutely in lust with this man who was installing heating ducts and copper wiring in her basement. But we all ended up falling in love with him, and so did she, and nine months later she married him." And that was the end of our fifty minutes. Emma.
What do you do when you look at a piece of modern art and it looks like nothing at all, your mind goes blank, and you can't even think of a joke or something smart-mouthed to say about it if you happen to be viewing it with a pal, and all you can think is, Either I'm crazy or you are,- Mr. Big Shot Artist, and since you've got this exhibit in a real building and all these people are standing around contemplating your stuff and saying intelligent things about it, it must be me? Well, what do you do? - What I do is get out as fast as I can without saying much of anything, and I also try to drink as much of the cheap white wine as I can if it's an opening, so at least the night isn't a total loss, and plus I find I have a lot more to say about the artist's oeuvre if I am, how shall I say, slightly oiled.
But these solutions don't apply if you're in his studio with the artiste himself, and it's just you, him, and his work. And say his work mystifies you; it might be priceless, it might be dreck, you don't have a clue. And say you're supposed to be doing a serious, paid, legitimate piece on the artist for the major newspaper that employs you, and, oh yeah, you also have this painful, yearning, lusiful attraction to the artist's body, not to mention a helpless and wholly out of character passion for his heart, both of which are married? Then what?
You're fucked.
"So, Mick. Tell me the story of how you went from patent law to fine art. Constitution Avenue to Seventh Street." It's never too early to start thinking in headlines, I always say. "Bourgeois to Bauhaus. Buttoned-down to Polo." "Well-" "And while you're at it, what exactly is postmodernism?" When I'm nervous, I become insufferable. I can see it happening, but I can't stop it, can't shut up, and the more important the occasion is to me, the more obnoxious I get. Today, boy, I was really outdoing myself.
We were standing in the middle of Mick Draco's chilly, cluttered studio, which was smaller than I'd expected, considering he shares it with two other peopie. Richard, the photographer from the paper, had just left after taking about two hundred pictures, from every angle you can imagine and some you'd never dream of, of Mick smearing yellow paint on a canvas with a trowel. I got a good, long look at him then, because I didn't have to talk, I could just stare. I lied, I have three weaknesses. I don't like to admit to the third one. It's physical beauty. I know, I'm shallow, and I hate it. Sometimes I go out with unattractive men on purpose so no one can accuse me of superficiality. But in truth, all other things being equal, I'd rather they were good-looking.
Watching him, I decided Mick's beauty came from the way he moved as much as from his great-looking body, and his facial expressions-humor and self-consciousness, patience, rapt concentration, finally impatience - as much as the handsome face itself. He was wearing black slacks, a tweed jacket, a blue work shirt, and a red tie, and I had on jeans and a T-shirt, and I was thinking it was funny, maybe kind of sweet, that he'd dressed up and I'd dressed down. As if we'd been thinking about each other when we put our clothes on this morning.
To his credit, he didn't even try to answer any of my facetious questions. He said, "Would you like to sit down?" He took an oily rag from his work table and swished it around a coating of plaster dust on the only chair in the room.
I gave the dirty chair a look and said, "Uh, no thanks," sort of deadpan.
He has a beautiful smile, truly self-deprecating. He lowers his eyelashes, which are longer than mine, and curves his lips up at the sharp corners, and you imagine he's thinking, That's a good joke on me. He sort of mumbled, "Yeah, I guess this isn't the best place to talk. Want to go across the street?" Yes! Yes! Let's go there again, Murray's, that dump with the rotten food and congealed air, where everybody looks like a corpse and the coffee tastes like antifreeze! Let's sit across from each other in a cracked booth by the smudged window in the livid light, like we did last week, and talk and talk and talk! "Yeah, okay," I mumbled back. "If you want to."
* * *
On the way, huddled in our coats against the November drizzle, he answered the main question, or I guess he thought he did. I was struck again by the idea that he was shy, or at least deeply reserved, because of the way he turned -away from me, peering down shiny, wet G Street while he explained what had to be one of the most significant events of his life. I could barely hear him. And he'd picked the least focused, most distracted moment to deal with the subject-us in the middle of traffic - as if he wanted to slip his answer in without anyone noticing. "I got into art when it felt like I could get into it," he said-or I thought he said; he was muttering again. "You were joking about postmodernism-" "No, I wasn't." "-but you know it redeemed representation in some ways, made the figure respectable again, I guess you could say. Brought back the concept of meaning in painting. Which wasn't allowed so much during modernism." He took my arm in the intersection, and we scuttled across. I said, brilliantly, "Come again?" He cleared his throat. "Abstraction never appealed to me, I couldn't feel it or understand it. I looked at it and knew I couldn't do it, and I was proud or stupid enough to think that meant I couldn't be an artist. Yeah, stupid. Stupid enough. Years." He muttered something I couldn't hear. I started to say, "What?" but he was holding the door open, so I passed him and went inside.
Murray's has a counter on the right with cracked red leatherette stools, and on the left a row of cracked red leatherette booths. Last week we sat at the counter, but today we took a booth. The decor.. . think of a bus station coffee shop in Trenton. The walls are lined with blurry, sepia-colored mirrors, and you start when you first catch sight of yourself, because in the sick fluorescent glare you don't look nearly as bad as the person you're talking to does; the grease on the mirrors acts like a gauze filter, and you actually look pretty good. The temperature hovers around eighty degrees, which is why artists in the lofts and studios in this neighborhood come here, Mick says: to get warm. "Coffee?" he asked. I nodded, and he went up to the counter to get it. You wait on yourself at Murray's.
"So," I said when he returned, my pencil poised, notebook open. Ready for business. "You're saying you became a painter because the postmodern atmosphere in the art world finally freed you to feel like one." "No, that sounds ridiculous. Don't write that." I'd thought it sounded pretty good. "Well, what? This is a piece about people who give up straight jobs-that aren't satisfying - them for a dream they think will." I'd explained that before, but I was thinking wç both needed to hear it again. "What I'm looking for is policy wonks who decide to be forest rangers. Dentists who want to write mystery novels. Washington's perfect for this, people love to read about some guy at the Bureau of Standards who threw it all away to become a horse jockey or a mime, a dog trainer, a Deadhead-" "I know, I understand what you're after."
"Okay. Well, let's try it this way. What was wrong with patent law? Why did you leave that profession?" He smiled at me, light eyes twinkling. "I'm impressed." "How come?" "You asked me that with a straight face." I laughed. I felt light and airy inside, buoyant for some reason. Well, he looked so appreciative. As if he was noticing things about me and he liked them. But he wasn't coming on to me, he just liked me. We sat for a minute, not talking, just stirring our coffees and pulling one-ply napkins out of the metal dispenser. - "Well, anyway." My notebook recalled me to my purpose. "Back to postmodernism. Now, you-" "No, Emma, forget that. I'll tell you the truth." But he looked pained.
I said, "Fine," uncertainly. "But it's not a police interrogation or anything. Don't tell me anything that's going to hurt anybody." The hard-hitting investigative journalist at work. Earlier, he'd asked me not to tape our conversation, and usually I push that a little, try to assure the interviewee that it won't hurt a bit, it's for my convenience but also for his protection, blah blab. But when Mick asked, I gave in without a fight.
He rested his forearms on the table and hunched his shoulders, circling the thick, stained coffee cup with his hands. Nice hands, by the way, bony and smart, long-fingered. "It's . . . well, it's not exactly a secret:' He looked up, looked me in the eye.
I stared back without blinking, trying to project professionalism and integrity. But I felt like a doe caught in a flashlight beam. It was so obvious he was sizing me up, trying to decide if he could trust me. I kept quiet-what could I say?-but the phrase that kept coming to my mind was Oh, Mick, if you only knew.
He sat back, twisting sideways so he could slouch against the wall, one foot drawn up on the cracked seat. He loosened his tie. "Draco is a Greek name," he said conversationally. I scribbled down "Greek," although I didn't know what to think yet, wasn't sure what he'd decided. "My father is Philip Draco. Do you know the name?" I shook my head. "Percy, Wells, Draco, & Dunn. Pretty well-known law firm, offices in most of the big cities. My name isn't Draco, though."
I looked up. "It's not?">br> "I mean it's not my real name, my birth name. I was adopted. Never knew my real parents."
"I was an only child, and I grew up knowing what I was supposed to be-a lawyer like my dad. Who is a good man," he added, "really a great man in some ways. He's brilliant at his work, probably one of the top fifty lawyers in the country."
"Did you grow up in Washington?"
"Chicago."
"How old were you when you found out you were adopted?"