Warpaint (2 page)

“Hmm. What on earth moved you back to this?” she said.

In the late fifties, C.C. had painted a series called
Planets
: five long, narrow, subdued oils of three heavy globes, in varying tones, sensuously pungent, so eerily and erotically charged, it caused a minor scandal. And that, it seemed, was that, because – and for no reason she'd ever given Quiola – she turned to a modified, cubist realism, something that irked the boys of New York. She remained faithful to that idiom until 1971 when abruptly she'd turned to female portraits, most in morbid colors, as if the women were corpses.

The difficulty that Quiola gazed at was both new and old – the narrow canvas and the globe-shapes were back, but now in clusters, elongated so they seemed unburst rain aching to fall of thick, palette knife-strokes in gelatinous green pond scum beside cartoon yellow or contusion purple and black.

“What do you think?” asked C.C., coming up the stairs.

Quiola let the cloth drop. “Very personal.”

“Exactly. It's killing me.”

“Lay off, then.”

“Can't.”

“No. Of course you can't.”

“Ready to eat?”

“Sure,” she said, turning to follow C.C. back down the stairs. “How's Liz?”

“Fine. Wants us to stay with her at the Plaza. Says the suite is enormous.”

“That's just silly. We can stay in Chelsea.”

“No. Wants us close. Come on, I've got salmon to broil.”

“You let her push you around, you know.”

C.C. laughed. “Can't help it.”

“She's a bully. Anyway, C.C. – this thing, tomorrow night? Makes me nervous. MoMA and all.”

“I know. Try not to worry.”

“And when is the surgery?”

C.C. glanced up. “In a week. Let's not talk about it –”

After supper, Quiola retreated to the guest room; when C.C. knocked, she found her ex in an old, bleach-battered XXL t-shirt, kneeling by the front windows that ran smack along the floor.

“Mind if I intrude?”

“Nope.”

“What are you looking at?”

Quiola got up off the floor, and handed C.C. a black and white snapshot: a woman, about forty, wearing a checked woolen overcoat standing in am empty lot on a cold, snowy day; beside her, a young, very pregnant girl; their hair pulled back from their broad faces in a single braided tail.

“Oh,” said C.C. “these two again.” She examined the picture briefly, since she'd seen it many times before, while Quiola sat cross-legged on the bed. C.C. pulled the sash of her robe tight, placed the photo on a dressing table, and sat down in a chair, knees and hands pressed together, like a kid might sit. “An angry woman, your mother.”

Quiola shrugged. “They do look grim, don't they? Mom used to say she had a lot to be angry about.”

“And you?”

“Me? You know me. Am I angry?”

“Very funny. You burn. You hum like a wasp's nest. Now would be a good time for a cigarette,” she added. “If I still smoked.”

“You
smoked
? I didn't know that.”

“In the fifties, everyone smoked – sometimes it was nice, you know, not to talk. Just light up and share. Simple.”

“I see. What else
don't
you want to talk to me about, besides the you know what?”

C.C. laughed. “Always cutting right to the chase, aren't you?” She shook her head and rumpled her curly hair. “Nothing, really. I'm restless. I can't sleep. I hate needles. I hate going under. I loved my father, but I hate doctors.”

“I know. Have you told your brother?”

“Ted?” said C.C. bitterly. “Jesus. You remember what happened the last time I talked to him, don't you? I haven't bothered to call. I won't. He can read the obituary.” She stood up, folded her arms and began to pace, then stopped in the center in the dark room. “Do you think you can stay with me for awhile? Just until I get through this? I'm going to fight it, I will, I promise. I know it's a lot to ask, after Luke and all, but I –”

“Hush yourself,” said Quiola, “and come here.”

 

♦

Neither the Plaza nor the Waldorf are now what they once were and, like stately matrons unable to give up their posts, they've gone shabby and gaudy. Quiola would've asked for a W or a Swisshotel, but Liz remembered them as they had been back in their heyday; she saw the Plaza as if Gatsby and Daisy, Tom, Nick and Jordan were all still in the wedding-cake suite on a hot summer night, caught in the coils of hope and betrayal. She'd insisted on staying there, for its lost glory and for its proximity to Central Park.

“Honestly,” Quiola muttered at the dizzying neon mid-town display, as the stretch limo careened up 6
^th
from Grand Central.

“What?” asked C.C., from a half-mile away on the other side of the stretch.

“Nothing.”

“God it's so hot, you'd think it was August.”

Studiously deaf, the driver delivered the two women to the Plaza where they found a young man from MoMA stationed at the lobby desk, awaiting the impossible, incredible Liz Moore. He'd been sent over, in person, to greet their guest and to offer her a small token, a platinum and diamond Tiffany brooch. But what Liz hadn't told the emissary was that he would wait there, at the lobby desk, until C.C. and Quiola arrived. So he'd been standing there, patient and nervous, for about a half-hour.

A long, spare drink of Minnesota water was Liz Moore as she stepped out of the elevator and made her slow way across the lobby; even with her shoulders stooped by arthritis and her strange olive eyes worn beyond worn, Lizzie was still formidable, thin-legged and rangy like an ancient Amelia Earhart, although she preferred to think of herself as Lindbergh, “the hero of my youth,” as she called him. Ignoring MoMA's young man, who stood as stiff as if petrified by Medusa's glare, she gave C.C. a kiss on both cheeks, and said,

“You're looking well, my dear.” Her voice carried the lilt of a Scandinavian mid-west and she wore some sort of pine or evergreen scent, as if she'd been determined to bring the North Country back east with her. “The short hair becomes you.”

“And you,” said C.C., “look marvelous.”

“I'm antediluvian,” said Liz, with slight quaver into a laugh.

“Here,” said Quiola, “let me take these,” as she retrieved two small bags near their feet, one her own, one C.C.'s.

“Ah, Quiola,” said Liz. Her disquieting gaze softened. “Always a pleasure. I thought you were in Paris.”

“I was.”

“How nice of you to come, then.”

“For good, this time.”

“
What
?” said C.C.

Meanwhile, the man from MoMA, frostbitten by fear, smiled and smiled.

“I don't intend to go back,” said Quiola quietly.

“We'll talk about that later,” C.C. muttered. “Can we leave the bags here, or should we take them upstairs?”

The young man cleared his throat. Despite his excellent manners, Quiola could see his eyes shining with a reverence close to hysteria at History, the great, the magnificent, the impossible Liz Moore. History, however, continued to ignore the young man, saying to C.C., “Upstairs. We're not expected until five. There's time for a little nip.” Liz tucked an arm in C.C.'s. “Come.”

At this point Quiola stepped in to relieve the poor emissary from MoMA: she answered his questions, accepted his gift, and hastened him away by the possibility that his mere presence might have over-taxed History and perhaps ruined the show. When Quiola finally made it up to the rooms, Liz was chatting idly with C.C. about old friends, scattered or dead, most of whom Quiola had not known or did not know, except by reputation. She poured herself a drink, and put the Tiffany box on the coffee table. C.C. asked Liz what she thought of electronic art.

“Electronic art? There is no such thing. People may be doing it, but it isn't art. I refuse to ‘e'. No email. I won't have a cell phone.”

“But a cell can be useful,” said C.C. “I keep one in the Heap, for emergencies.” She shook the ice in her G and T. “Did you know that Mark Twain was one of the first people to put a telephone in his house?”

“You
would
know that,” said Liz.

“Why not? His home is in Hartford. Can't say how many times I've been there, after visiting Mother. Anyway, Twain had the phone installed in its own little alcove. But he regretted it. Couldn't stand the ring.”

“A man after my own heart,” said Liz. She sipped sherry, then asked in a lower voice, “And how is your mother?”

“Failing, I'm afraid. I miss her. Alzheimer's is just so pitiless. I visit, but she doesn't know me and she's so…small.”

“Terrible,” murmured Liz. “I'm sorry.” Silence took them, until Liz turned briskly to Quiola and asked, “What do you think of it? Electronic art?”

“Not much. But I'm no expert.”

“Nonsense,” said Liz, with a shrug and quick chop of her knobby hand. “Of course you are. All an artist needs is an eye and –”

Quiola got up and walked to the window. “It's raining,” she observed.

“Good,” said C.C. “Maybe it'll cool down.”

But it didn't cool down. The pavement gave off steam, the temperature barely dropped, the air hung thick with moisture. Once she'd finished with her clothes and face, Liz went and sat beside the hotel window, watching vapor.

August,
she thought with disgust.
This is city-August. Not April. Not like April at all.

How many sullen summers had she spent in this City, stifling, endless in the days before air conditioning? Nights of torture, no relief, little sleep; she'd kept the kitchen window of her fifth floor walk-up open but after a solid month of it, she'd become a life form no higher or drier than a sponge. She'd flogged herself to sketch because that's why she'd ridden the rails from Minnesota to the glorious, god-awful City, but it was hard to believe it was worth the effort as grit blew in off the street, thick as week-old dust, and the pencil slicked in her hand and sharpening it raised a sweat. She'd open the window, then start the fans and everything not tied or weighted down flew about, including more grit. She wore a sleeve-protector to keep the grit off but it was awful. Desire wilted. All she could think of was a biting, icy Lake Superior bath. When the end of the heat came, it came in inches, until all at once it was freezing, and she had no money for heat.

The Moore retrospective was set to begin just after the galleries closed for the day, and by invitation only. MoMA was whitely lit and stark – to sanctify the dead, Lizzie always said. Ushered in discreetly, the three women met with the curator in his office, and then headed for the show. Lizzie squeezed C.C.'s hand, a reflex, as the curator, anxious as a park squirrel at lunch-time, hovered beside the elevator, waiting for his famous guest to walk the short length from his office to where he stood.

Liz Moore took her time. She couldn't rush, her legs were not as reliable as they'd been the first time she'd visited MoMA. No one had paid her the least mind that day, just another Jane Q. Public, drab, unkempt, hungry. MoMA became her nemesis, and her church. It had the effect, sometimes, of that cold bath she couldn't afford –
do you want, Elizabeth Sarah Moore
, she used to ask herself,
do you really want your work embalmed here? Hung on a wall where only people who can scrape up a fee can get in to see it?
That's why she'd done book illustrations – there was always the public library, open to anyone. Still, MoMA had caught her. Over the years friends donated her work, even the Davises, rot them.

Such a silly, wasteful effort
, she thought,
getting the old lady all dolled up to endure kindnesses seldom bestowed on the elderly
. She should know. She'd been elderly for almost half her life.

“Just look at me,” she muttered, catching a reflection off the elevator chrome. She leaned over to C.C. “Should I get my hair colored?”

“Should you what?” said C.C., startled.

“Well? Look at it. My hair. You think it could've turned a definite white like yours is doing, or a stunning gray. But, no, it's thinned and faded to no color at all.”

Quiola burst out laughing, while the curator stared at the closing elevator doors.

“Well?” Liz demanded. “Color is everything. Especially blue,” and she smiled, which appeared to encourage the curator. But her smile was not for him, it was for blue: midnight, cerulean, navy, cobalt, all the fragments of water and sky from the Mediterranean clarity of California midday to the ebony of indigo night.

“Never thought of you as a blue-haired lady,” said Quiola, deadpan. “But if you want, I'm sure we can find a hairdresser in the City to give you a rinse.”

Fortunately for the curator, the elevator doors re-opened here. Liz let C.C. have her arm, Quiola her elbow, and they made their slow way to a podium of sorts, where History was going to be enthroned for the event. As they moved through the applauding crowd Liz was glad she hadn't worn her glasses. All the faces, as featureless as a Matisse, seemed wonderfully distant.

“Who are these people?” she muttered.

“Just make nice,” whispered C.C.

“No, really,” said Liz, a bit louder and more annoyed. “My friends are all dead.”

“Not
yet
, they aren't,” snapped C.C.

Liz let herself be lowered onto what amounted to a divan, like a tough Venus on the half-shell. People nattered on at her, and she answered with what she hoped passed for polite nonsense, and was grateful when Quiola handed her a glass of iced sherry – her particular kind of sherry – along with a plate of goodies. She concentrated on what mattered: food. Tomorrow: a ride around the Park.

“I hope the goddamn weather clears,” she said, to no one in particular.