What We Hold In Our Hands (5 page)

“Who is this?” a woman's voice asks.

It isn't Yoko. Ann doesn't know what to say. “I'm just a visitor to the exhibit.”

“Someone there called this number.”

“Well, it wasn't me.” She hangs up.

“Was it her?” the custodian asks.

“No.” Ann drops her hands.

“Sometimes she gets her friends to call, and create situations.”

DAY EIGHT. “MOUND OF SORROW. MOUND OF JOY.”

Ann returns to the same room the following day. Across from the telephone hang the framed scraps of paper she looked at after Yoko's call. Yoko gave nine of them to a gallery, but there are only six in this show. One is marked with crayon. Was that a child's mischief or intentional—Yoko saying that art is not sacred, but open to other people's additions? Ann found crayon marks on the wall in Duncan's closet when she cleaned his room after he left for university. Angry red and yellow slashes, faded records of some childish tantrum. They must have gestured silently there for at least ten or twelve years, hidden behind games and boxes. Yoko's framed pages are torn, words missing. They are more instructional “paintings,” but Ann is tired of reading Yoko's instructions.

She wanders to the other side of the big room where three piles of small grey stones lie on the floor in front of a television showing Yoko and John in bed for peace. The large pile is unnamed, but the other two are marked, “mound of sorrow,” and “mound of joy.” A woman in a red sweater crouches beside one of the piles, building a stack of stones, each smaller than the last, like the tower of coloured plastic rings Vanessa and Duncan used to play with. Ann had always loved to gather the rings back, in order of size, onto their yellow pole, the colours arranged like a rainbow, while her children slept and she bustled from room to room, tidying traces of the day's activities, attempting to compose the disarray in her own mind and heart.

The joy and sorrow piles seem of equal size, although the stones are arranged differently in each, forming random patterns. Some stones have strayed over the lines that circumscribe joy and sorrow, into the neutral territory between. The woman's tower wobbles a little, but she rests a finger on top, kneeling there as if saying a prayer over her measure of joy.

The voices from the
TV
sound hollow and ghostly. Ann picks up a stone, rubs it between her fingers, lets it fall with a click onto the mound of sorrow. She has spent half her life erasing the evidence of her children's tantrums and messes, mistakes and disappointments, willing their lives to be perfect and happy, but her power to make them so, always limited, is now lost. Her daughter will marry the small-as-a-point financial advisor. They will lavish their days on jobs in office buildings fifty stories high, and their evenings on each other in an uptown apartment, from which their wastefully lit offices will be visible all night. Her son will become the dentist his father wants him to be, not the singer he could be. He will hum melodies to himself while drilling his patients' teeth. And he will be sad and angry a thousand times over without ever again resolving his feelings into red and yellow strokes made for her to discover.

In the third and final room, across from the wall of doodles, Ann finds the “point” in its 1980s incarnation, not a glass sphere as Yoko conceived it in the sixties, but cast in bronze like the baby shoes Ann keeps locked in a drawer, evidence that her children were once so small they needed her to hold their hands whenever they walked out into the world.

DAY NINE. “FLY”

Ann watches the video in a dark, narrow room, sitting on one of two black leather benches. Is that Yoko's young body the fly leaps and buzzes along, her curves forming a desert landscape for the insect to explore? The soundtrack—Yoko wailing and crooning, playing with sound like a child unaware she is being listened to—reflects either the fly's triumphs and disappointments or the woman's agony at being nothing but the fly's motionless terrain. Ann laughs in delight and horror, delighted at the correlation of Yoko's frantic noises and the fly's apparently aimless quest, horrified as she imagines how it would feel to let a fly probe her lips, tickle her nose, and creep along her naked skin.

She becomes aware that people have entered the room behind her, making the air feel warm and thick. The fly wanders through Yoko's pubic hair. A man sits down on the bench beside Ann. The camera pans back from Yoko, showing her whole body speckled with flies. Ann jumps up and pushes her way out of the room.

The fly had twenty-five minutes on Yoko's body. Ann has had nine days inside her mind. She has completed her mission, but what has she accomplished? Coming here every day was like picking up her children from school—a daily ritual, nothing more or less than that, something to lean on for a time, to build her life around.

She hurries past the maze and the silent telephone, back to the first room where the white walls still pretend to be blue. She stops to look at the broken mornings in their case. If only she'd paid attention to the details of those mornings, she could remember whether the sky had been yellow, silver, or pink, how the light slanted through the window, where it fell on her daughter's cheek or her son's rough hair. If one of these bits of glass could hold all that, she would smash the case for it. She has a few colour photos which capture a mood from back then, some jerky home videos, but that's not what she's missing. If she'd allowed herself to make art all those years—portraits, landscapes, real photographs—she might have noticed more, slowed time with her attention, ceased to wish away the years yearning for her old freedom in the black-and-white apartment. Then maybe now she wouldn't feel so incomplete.

She turns to stare at the box with its shiny glass keys. They blur and warp behind her tears. Yoko told her to take one, but the Plexiglas looks impenetrable. She would have to lift the whole thing from the wall, and carry it out in full view of the guards and visitors. She swipes a tissue across her eyelids, crumples it. Lets it fall. Will someone wonder if it's part of the exhibit, construct meaning from its placement on the floor, conjure up a whole, solid, and convincing portrait of her, the absent agent of its disposal?

Before leaving, she notices a new apple perched on the column. The light forms a splash of white along the green curve of the fruit. Its stem rises to a point. Ann has read that the museum bought a case of organic Granny Smiths from which they replace the bitten and shrivelled ones. She imagines the museum's shadowy basement full of crates overflowing with bright round fruit. Without worrying what anyone might say, she reaches for the apple, and slips it into her purse.

A Large Dark

THREE AND A HALF MONTHS AFTER HIS WIFE LEFT HIM,
André
had signed up for an evening watercolour class held in a Sunday school classroom at a suburban church. He'd been looking for a way to get out of the house one night a week, to talk to someone other than his son, the nanny, the people at work, to meet a woman who'd praise his paintings and let him take her out to dinner.

One mild Thursday evening in November, a fluorescent ceiling fixture was flickering in the art room. Barry, the white-haired art teacher, lumbered onto a stepstool to try to deactivate it, while André, thirty years younger and at least thirty pounds lighter, pulled a muscle craning his neck and offering unhelpful advice. When Barry finally gave up to let him try, André balanced on the stool, searching for the place where the narrow bulb was attached, but bulb and fixture seemed to be all one, conjoined and wired to the ceiling. Tapping the bulb, he leaned over too far, almost falling onto Barry.

“Don't hurt yourself,” Barry said, stone-faced.

André took one last look before jumping down. Massaging his neck, he asked, “Why do they make them like that?”

“To torment us.” Barry grinned.

From the portraits on one wall, past ministers, their faces grey and bespectacled, peered out over rows of collapsible tables and plastic chairs, while the windows of the opposite wall reflected the lit figures of the students within.

André returned to his seat, feeling foolish and clumsy. He was sitting directly across from the flickering light, which promised to give him a headache. He removed his glasses, rubbing the grooves between nose and eyes, then placed the heavy, black-framed lenses onto the table in front of him. He considered moving to a free spot across the room, but Katya, who hadn't arrived yet, always sat beside him, and he liked watching her chestnut hair fall across her face as she leaned in closer to her painting. Katya's missing his attempt at fixing the light had been a lucky break.

Even without his glasses, André could see the reflection of the teacher's paper in the mirror overhanging the table at the front of the room. Barry always tilted the mirror so his students, tired after working all day, could opt to watch him paint from their seats. Consulting his reference, a photo of a seascape, Barry began his demonstration by floating cobalt blue into an orange wash. André relaxed his eyes, tried to breathe deeply. Tonight he hoped to let go of his perfectionism, and allow the paint to flow onto the paper, resisting his tendency to overwork the watercolours until they made thick pasty mud in the shapes of trees. That had been last week's production.

“Do a sketch first to get the composition,” Barry was telling the class. “Play with placement. Leave things out. Put them in. Multiply, subtract. It's like math.”

“I used to be good at math,” André joked. But no one laughed or even turned to look at him.

When Katya appeared in a red jacket, bringing with her the mingled scents of her spicy perfume and the warm night, André thought how he needed a woman to make his life add up again.

“How much have I missed?” she whispered, unpacking her paints.

“Not much.” He fiddled with his glasses. He could never think of the right words.

“I used to live by the sea,” she said, peering at the reflection of Barry's painting. There was a hint of the Ukraine in her accent.

“My father's family came from Kiev,” he said.

“Shh!” said Miriam, the grey-haired woman who sat in front of André.

Katya's eyes were black with flecks of white where the light struck them. “Do you speak Ukrainian?” she whispered.

“No,” he said too loudly, causing Miriam and her neighbour to glare at him, but he only noticed Katya's gaze, which flickered like the unfixable light before returning to Barry's painting in the mirror.

André put on his glasses to watch Barry write in the details with a long narrow brush, a form of calligraphy, shaping fine, finger-like branches and a flourish of leaves.

“A few more touches,” Barry said. “And it's done.”

“You said I didn't miss anything.” Katya frowned.

“I didn't want to upset you,” he said. But she'd already grabbed her sketchbook and was dashing to the front of the room to join the students crowded around Barry's table.

André followed. He wanted to say something that would make her smile in gratitude, or even admiration. He watched her study Barry's painting and scribble in her book.

Up close, the painting looked sketchy and insubstantial. When André took a few steps back, it started to gain strength. Its power lay not in its strokes and colours, but in the way they played off each other, the contrast of light and dark, the illusion they created of moodiness and movement. The rocks and branches in the foreground seemed to beckon to the glistening sailboat on the horizon where the deep indigo of the ocean faded into mauve.

“I don't know how you do it,” he said to Barry.

“Practice,” Barry said. “That's all it takes.”

André didn't believe him. He suspected there was some trick Barry was keeping to himself, that to make the magic work he'd need to find the right brand and shades of paint, the right weight and grain of paper, the exact alchemical formula.

“Is that a new red?” he asked, leaning over the table to point to a deep crimson next to the yellows on Barry's palette. Some of the other students moved in to examine the colour.

“No,” Barry said. “That's just alizarin.”

“I thought so,” said Miriam, who'd left her seat to take a closer look. She shook her head at André. “You're always suspecting a colour conspiracy.”

He shrugged. “It looked different tonight.”

Barry scraped the edge of a razor blade across the paper to make flecks of white surf. “I'm going to stop there,” he said.

“Beautiful,” Katya said.

The students dispersed. André followed Katya back to her seat. He watched her tape paper to a board and squeeze paint onto her palette.

“Is this sable?” He picked up one of her brushes, stroking it across the knuckles of his other hand, imagining Katya's lush brown hair falling against his skin.

“Just start your painting.” She pushed him away. “Get on with it. You're up to your old delaying tactics. You have to jump in, get your brush wet.”

“So to speak.” He smiled. “You won't let me get away with anything.” The place on his shoulder where she'd touched him felt warm. His shirtsleeve, resting lightly against his skin, seemed to kiss the imprint of her hand. Maybe it would be a good night after all.

He looked at his copy of the photo Barry had given the class. It differed a little from the teacher's. The boat was larger, closer to the shore, and there was an island. He made a small sketch to get the composition right. Then he laid down washes, lost himself in the act of painting. He looked up when Barry walked by, nodding at him. That meant things were going okay, so far. He painted the oblong of a big rock, but started to do the shadow too soon, and the paint ran. That flower of dark spreading across the rock tweaked his old impatience with himself. He felt the bad mood rise in his chest, rush through his blood. Now he wouldn't be able to finish. Now the night was goddamn ruined. Liz was the one responsible for these moods. The goddamn divorce couldn't come soon enough. Katya was painting happily beside him, her rock edged and shadowed in three bold, innocent strokes.

He tried to fix his painting, adding more rocks to conceal the blurry shadow, using a palette knife to scrape away some of the paint and create planes of light where the sun hit the foreground. But when he stepped back, he saw that the rocks were too big and too much alike, and the white sailboat, which was supposed to be sailing bravely out of the harbour, seemed to be drawn hopelessly towards them.

“I've had enough,” he said.

“Leaving early again?” Miriam asked.

André packed up his paints and brushes. “I'll finish it at home,” he said, knowing he wouldn't. “My son's waiting for me.”

Intent on her painting, Katya didn't respond, didn't even look his way.

“I'm done,” he said as he passed Barry at the front of the room.

One side of Barry's mouth turned up, more a grimace than a smile. “You should try to stay for the critique sometime. You might learn something.”

André shrugged, and adjusted the shoulder strap of his black portfolio. “I have to get home to my son before bedtime.”

Barry turned away. André stood there waiting for something—another word from his teacher, absolution, praise for being a good father, a wave from Katya, a nod from Miriam. But heads were lowered, intent on finishing touches, and Barry stood silent, immovable, arms crossed, ready for the students to bring him their paintings so he could place them one at a time on the easel for critique.

André hurried out the door to the parking lot. Pulling his keys from his pocket, searching for the right one, he dropped them onto the pavement. “Goddamn!” He leaned his portfolio against the black Jeep, and bent down to retrieve the keys. The November night smelled fresh as spring, but, flushed with anger and hot in his leather jacket, he couldn't enjoy it, didn't know when he'd last enjoyed anything. He'd yet to finish a painting, and each week it seemed less and less likely that Katya would go out with him, that he'd even find the words to ask her.

At home, he dropped his portfolio onto the floor next to Braden's running shoes, removed his jacket, and hung it in the closet.

“Daddy!” his son's voice squealed from upstairs. “I'm still awake.”

“I'll be up in a minute,” André called. He unlaced his work shoes, slipped on leather moccasins, and headed for the kitchen, his footsteps echoing through the big, empty house. He imagined Katya sitting at the kitchen table with a bowl of hot borscht, her lips crimson from the beets. Then, noticing the dirty dishes in the sink, his familiar anger flooded back. He'd planned to make hot chocolate for three—himself, Braden, and Bridget, the nanny. Now Bridget wouldn't get a mug. He filled the kettle, and switched on the burner. She always let him down just when he'd started to hope she was on top of her job. She hadn't even wiped the counters. She'd probably say Braden hadn't left her alone for one minute, that she was hired as nanny not housekeeper. But he'd been very clear about her responsibilities when she'd first arrived. One good thing about Liz—she'd been fanatical about the house, couldn't go to bed at night if the kitchen wasn't clean, or out the door in the morning without vacuuming the wall-to-wall.

He filled the mugs with hot water, stirred in the mix. No, he wasn't in the mood for marshmallows tonight. Braden would be disappointed, but he just couldn't reach into that high cupboard, undo the twist tie on the bag, smell that whiff of vanilla. Damn Liz! Even a marshmallow could remind him of her, how she used to bake for him during what she referred to as her Suzy Homemaker phase, when she'd taken a six-month leave from her job at the art gallery while they'd tried to get pregnant.

He'd loved coming home to a wife fragrant with baking, her cotton pullover dusted with flour, her tongue sweet from cookie dough or cake batter. He remembered licking a smudge of chocolate off her chin as he undressed her on the living-room rug. When they'd failed to conceive, she'd claimed that his enthusiasm for getting her pregnant was making her feel ambivalent, afraid of becoming what he seemed so much to want her to be—nothing more or less than a mother and a wife.

“I don't feel like myself,” she'd said. “I need to go back to work so I can remember why having a baby seemed like a good idea.”

“Fine,” he'd said. “But no more ten-hour days or skipping lunch. Your body is going to be nourishing our child.”

When she'd finally gotten pregnant, he'd tried to persuade her to quit work for good, to leave those modern monstrosities of paint and plaster behind to stay home with the baby.

“You can start painting again in your spare time,” he'd said.

“What spare time? At least at the gallery I can talk about painting, and help other artists get their work noticed.”

Liz had taken the standard maternity leave, and André had spent two weeks at home, sleeping in with her, cooking big breakfasts while she nursed Braden, the three of them napping on their queen-size bed through the quiet winter afternoons. If he woke before Braden, he'd bury his face between Liz's heavy breasts, counting the seconds to discover how long he could hold his breath, then tasting each nipple to see which one was sweeter.

“The left one today.” He'd held it between his fingers, watching the milk spurt up in a thin bluish fountain.

“Bradie doesn't notice any difference,” Liz had said, turning away to stroke their son's sleeping face. “You always have to be judging everything.”

Even with Liz's moodiness, those two weeks stood out as the happiest of his life, but, returning to the law firm, he'd been penalized for them, his biggest client handed over to one of the junior partners.

Holding the hot mugs out in front of him, André walked upstairs, watching for toys on the steps.