The Woman in Oil Fields (12 page)

“Anyone in the country can paint a beautiful picture,” he announced. “We're after the not-so-beautiful that's also somehow lovely.”

He told Robert to “paint the unpaintable.” When Robert asked for details, Frederick answered, “You show
me
, Mr. Smith. If you want to pass this course, get to work.”

Robert's talent was for portraits – faces, profiles, surfaces. He assumed his father meant for him to get
inside
the people he painted, to expose the edges and hues of their angers and loves.

In the sunny studio, Raymond Purcell's spongy red hair was afire. His body bobbed with excitement whenever Frederick spoke, as if buffeted by the sound of his voice. Raymond didn't receive an assignment; Frederick said he had a remarkable style, and should just keep painting what he wanted. Robert felt jealous, especially as he'd landed the hardest task of all. Did this mean he had the most to learn?

He was shocked to see the actress in class, the woman Frederick had pushed from the room the night of the ball. “It turns out, she's serious about learning,” Frederick told Robert when the first meeting was over. They were driving in a rented Dodge, on their way to the Warwick. “In my experience, actresses are the least serious people in the world. Jill is a pleasant surprise.”

In his room, Frederick fixed himself a Scotch and soda. Robert grabbed a Milky Way bar and a Coke from the portable refrigerator by the bed. When he was nine or ten, his father scolded him for eating too much candy, for being overweight. Robert was thin now, but he held the candy bar out of sight between his knees, still anticipating disapproval.

“It was a shaky start,” Frederick admitted. “It's been years since I've spoken to a group. I was nervous. Needed a little something to steel myself. Did I embarrass you?”

“You did fine.”

Frederick opened the closet door. “See?” he said. “No harem. No hidden mistresses. Just lonely old me.”

Through the window Robert watched the looping grids of Houston's streets.

“How
is
your mother?” Frederick asked. “Since she won't speak to me, you'll have to be my spy.”

“She's okay. She says you left her high and dry, but I think she's learned to live without you all right.”

“And you?”

Robert shrugged. “I guess you knew what you needed.”

“The thing is, when two people live together as long as we did, one's voice becomes background noise to the other, like an all-day radio,” Frederick said. “Soon, they're only half listening to each other. ‘What, what?' – the single most common utterance in marriage. I couldn't stand a lifetime of ‘what,' Robbie. It's as simple as that.”

He poured himself another Scotch. Below and all around, Houston's lights throbbed like clusters of fireflies swimming out of the dark. “On the other hand, comfort's harder to find than you think. I'm an old man now.” He was forty in '71. “These days I'll see an attractive woman on the street and try to catch her attention, but she glides right by. It's shameless, the way the young only want the young, like some abominable herding instinct. What about the rest of us?” He sipped his drink. “You definitely know when you're out of the hunt. It's not a choice you make.”

Robert recalled all the young women eager to dance with his father at the ball, and the actress, Jill Ryne, placing her hand on his arm, but he didn't say anything. Frederick seemed convinced of being, as he put it, a “sexual cast-off.” The more he drank, the more depressed he became. Robert wanted to ask his dad's opinion of his work, but the Old Master was clearly stuck in his sadness.

In the next few days Robert got to know his classmates. They'd go for sandwiches, share what they'd learned. They all agreed that Mr. Becker was a magnificent teacher, magnetic and inspiring (if a little offbeat). They wanted to ask him to join them some night, but were too intimidated to approach him personally. Robert could've asked, but he was enjoying meeting new friends; he knew if Frederick came along he'd dominate every conversation. At the end of each class he watched his father frown and slink away to the parking lot alone, to go drink in his room. Robert had seen the roses Frederick sent Ruth after the ball. She'd tossed them out with the coffee grounds. “All drunks are sentimental,” she said. Still, it was hard to believe that a man as brilliant as his dad could remain unhappy for long.

Raymond Purcell was the only member of the class who didn't socialize with the others. He always looked spent when the sessions were through, limp in his chair, as though he'd been beaten instead of steadily encouraged.

As Frederick said, Jill Ryne was the nicest surprise in the group. “I used to be a painter's model,” she told Robert. “One morning I realized the painter was having more fun than I was, playing with his colors while I sat there freezing my ass off in that big, drafty room.” She always wore a black ribbon around her neck to highlight her bone-white skin, the most erotic sight Robert had ever seen. She joked about being old – at twenty-five, and with a birthday just around the bend, she was the senior member of the class. Robert felt giddy whenever she laughed or looked at him and smiled. She was kind to everyone, but seemed especially warm with him. One night after dinner with their pals she dropped him off at Ruth's house. When he opened the car door she kissed his cheek, just a friendly peck, but he was so excited he couldn't find the curb, and slipped on the soft front lawn.

Buffalo Bayou winds around cotton warehouses, rice mills, freeway overpasses, clumps of blooming dogwood. Herons rise from thin brown reeds along its banks, possums skitter over plastic garbage bags, Pepsi, Coors, and tuna fish cans. Flies circle an old, abandoned shoe, buzzing like cracked cellos.

Robert sits and stares into the water. Brown and orange eddies – mud and rust – stir wild rose petals in pools around warped coffee tables, Volkswagen fenders, jackets and knives, tires and old bicycle pumps. People dump this stuff for convenience or fun; the stream is a living collage of color and shape.

Frederick, dredged from memory, drifts near the bottom by a hot water heater, wearing a striped wool shirt and khaki-colored pants. He claws his way toward the surface, past the city's cast-offs, the auto parts and toaster plugs. Twigs and silt tangle in the once-thick beard, the firm, ironic smile is now an O of fear.

A black four-door Chevy pulls swiftly off the freeway, stops, raising dust. Robert slaps mosquitoes from his wrists. Two young men drag a busted vacuum cleaner from the Chevy's trunk and heave it into the bayou, at the spot where Robert imagined his father. The men grunt and spit. When they're gone, Robert stands and watches the ripples. Frederick, cut and bleeding, paddles back into his head. He lifts his arms to the sky.
Robbie
, he mouths.
Lend me a hand. Please, Robbie. Save me
. Bubbles erupt from his throat. O. O.

One day, in the second week of class, Jill leaned past Robert to smooth a charcoal line on her sketch pad, and he caught a shot of her breasts beneath her smock. She saw him look, smiled. He turned away, embarrassed, but felt he'd received a brief, sweet blessing.

“He assigned me set designs, backdrops for plays,” she said. “Sunsets, stars.”

She drew perfectly lovely clouds, Robert thought, but how hard is a cloud? She'd gotten off lightly. Nothing like painting the unpaintable. Frustrated with his own assignment, he spent studio time sketching Jill's neck. Her birthday was two days away. “An early gift,” he said, handing her the drawings. She blushed. “You're a sweet boy,” she told him, and kissed his cheek.

Frederick asked Robert to go help Raymond. Robert caught a tang of Scotch in the air, beneath the drifting smells of chalk dust and oils, radiator heat and fresh breezes from the windows. “I can show you a better sky,” Frederick promised Jill, pulling up a stool. She beamed.

Under his smock, Raymond had on the same stiff suit he'd worn at the ball, and to every class so far. His hands twitched with nervous energy, rattling the legs of his easel. “I want to kill him,” he whispered. “Wring his goddamn neck. I'm letting him down, letting him down …”

Robert was astonished by the work: flat, nearly colorless eggs curled across solid black backgrounds. Raymond had gouged each canvas with a palette knife, to interrupt the surface. Robert saw no balance here.
This
was a remarkable style?

Raymond laughed when Robert described his own project. “That's not an assignment, it's a chisel in the heart, man.” His red hair bounced above his ears.

A tight, cold pain seized Robert's stomach and balls. He rose, mumbling “water” and “excuse me.” Raymond returned to his canvases, whispering, “Twist his silly neck till his Adam's apple pops to the floor.”

______

That evening Robert heated himself a chicken pot pie, scarfed it down, and told his mother he was going to catch a bus to the Warwick. Ruth had meant to serve stew. She stood in a bright orange apron, holding a spoon, watching Robert finish his pie. “If you're looking for his approval, Robbie, you might as well know he'll never give it. That's him, not you. God forbid he should ever admit he cares for anyone.”

Robert set his plate in the sink.

Softly, Ruth touched his shoulder, his back. “I should've thought twice about letting you take this class.”

“He's a good teacher.”

“Good to all the young women, I'll bet. He's never learned to act his age.”

Her bitterness was like an extra roll of insulation in the ceiling, trapping heat. Robert snatched a sweater from his closet and ran from the house.

Late-season fireflies swirled above Buffalo Bayou; Houston's winter was typically mild. The bus chugged past the stream, under live oaks and willows, streetlights haloed in mist. Robert drew his father's face in the moisture on the glass. A stern, disenchanted stare.

The Warwick looked like a party cake, bright yellow windows in curves of smooth white stone. The moment he stepped off the elevator near Frederick's room, Robert saw Raymond Purcell pacing by a failed ficus in a corner of the hallway. His suit was wrinkled and dirty. He held a large portfolio case. “Smith!” he said, moving quickly as a bee, grabbing Robert's arm. “What are you doing here?” His breath smelled of coffee and pickles.

“I'm … I have an appointment,” Robert said.

“You do?”

“Yes.”

“You do? He gives appointments?”

“What about you?”

A large, erratic vein pulsed in Raymond's forehead. “I see his disappointment, you know … I want to
strangle
him sometimes.” He shook his fist at Frederick's door. “I wish he'd … appointments? Jesus Christ, he gives
appointments?
Why didn't he tell me?” He snapped and unsnapped his case, shook his head, then strode past Robert toward the stairway. “Oh God, he hates me. I know it. America's finest painter, my one chance, and he … oh my God, oh God I want to kill him. Tell him, Smith. Tell him I want to see him.” He disappeared down the stairwell.

When Frederick answered Robert's knock he was carrying the phone. “Yes, Ruth, that's all I want too.” He motioned Robert into the room. Robert veered toward the tiny icebox for chocolate and a Coke. His hands trembled from the force of Raymond's outburst.

“Ruth, Ruthie please, don't hang up,” Frederick said. “I'm
trying
to be friends.” He lowered his voice, glanced at his boy. “I never stopped loving him, you know that. And you, Ruth. Dear Ruth. It hurts that you won't even see me.” A minute later he set the receiver in its cradle. “Well.” He rubbed his face. He'd cut himself shaving again; a drop of blood dyed the tip of his collar. “She's worried about you.”

Robert gobbled the last of a Snickers. He remembered eating greedily as a child so his father wouldn't catch him, swallowing so rapidly the candy had no taste. Always, whenever his father entered a room, Robert's belly felt leaden but empty.

“She asked me when you got here to – oh hell. Do I treat you all right, Robbie? Do you ever doubt how important you are to me?”

“No.” Robert shoved the Snickers wrapper deep into a pocket of his jeans. “It's just that sometimes I wonder what you honestly –”

“Good,” Frederick said, brightening. “Good. I tried to tell her. Your mother's just a worrywart.” He walked, quick and suddenly sure, across the room. He wouldn't look at Robert. “Now, what do you say I fix myself a drink, then we go for a ride, eh? I've only got a few days left here in the old hometown. I'd like to see some sights.” He opened a bottle of Dewar's.

“Dad.” Robert rarely used the word. It felt like day-old gum in his mouth.

“Yes?”

“I guess Raymond Purcell's a pretty good painter, huh?”

Frederick shrugged, busy with the ice.

Robert didn't know what he wanted to say, exactly. He blurted, too loudly, “I worry about him.”

“Why's that?”

“I don't know. Doesn't he seem … a little dangerous to you?”

“How?”

“I'm not sure, but maybe you'd better be careful. I think he wants to hurt you.”

Frederick raised a pointed eyebrow.

“I know it sounds crazy, but he's worked himself up so much trying to please you, and he thinks … he thinks you're not happy with his progress, like you're punishing him and he can't understand why.” In the rush of his words, Robert felt the beginnings of tears. He was so surprised by this, he sat on the bed to keep from losing his balance. He caught his breath. “He just wants to know.”

Frederick looked at him, only for a moment, then smiled. “So he's angry with me?”

Robert shook his head. “Not –” He blinked a few times. “I don't know. He's making threats.”

Frederick sniffed his booze. “You don't suppose this is poisoned, do you? Quick, call the
Post
. If I die before they arrive, it's up to you to see they get my story straight. I want a glowing obit, photo and all.”