September Song Page 16

  The reception he got at the first place he tried shook him so thoroughly he shied from repeating it at the next one.

  The lady owner of the gallery was replacing the few slides she had glanced at, preparing—he could hear it coming—to utter the standard, “Sorry. Not for us,” when he propositioned her.

  “Where do you think you are?” she demanded indignantly. “This is a reputable establishment, I’ll have you know! We are not for hire. Good-day to you, sir.”

  At Pettingill et Cie he began his pitch, “My wife is an artist.”

  Whose isn’t? said Mr. Pettingill’s weary expression.

  “May I show you some color slides of her work?”

  Like the lady at the first gallery, Mr. Pettingill seemed to wonder where he thought he was, only with a difference. One for not beating about the bush, Mr. Pettingill said, “That won’t be necessary.”

  Though this was what he was after, he disbelieved for a moment that he had found it, or that it could be so blatant, so unashamed. In the silence that ensued they took each other’s measure. Mr. Pettingill named his price. It was breathtaking. This was no lottery. This was more like buying the prize in hopes of winning the ticket.

  The following Saturday, as always, before setting off on their rounds, he read aloud the list of the day’s galleries. The Pettingill was the last. He planned to produce Mr. Pettingill at the end of another dreary Saturday like a rainbow.

  “Have we tried any of those places before?” she asked.

  “No. All virgin territory.”

  She did not rise to his chirpiness. Even as he read them aloud she could see those names scratched through like all the others in the book.

  In early afternoon, with three down and one more to go he could see coming on that tightness around her lips and that furrow between her brows that signaled discouragement, and he decided to go directly to Mr. Pettingill.

  “Well, Jane, dear,” he said afterwards, “it’s not the Melrose, but it’s a start.”

  “Now don’t go putting down my gallery,” she said. “Oh, wasn’t Mr. Pettingill wonderful! So enthusiastic!”

  Yes, Pettingill had played his practiced part in the charade smoothly, and had looked to him for appreciation. He had felt like one of the countless customers of a well-worn whore.

  “So perceptive! He understood my aims entirely. I could see that you were a bit annoyed at his pointing out my influences, but I didn’t mind a bit. I have always gratefully acknowledged my debt to the masters. Oh, Allen, this has been a long time in coming. Without you to keep me going I could never have held out for so long. I am so grateful to you for your loyalty and faith. I do hope you feel now that it has all been worth it. Oh, what a difference a day makes! I’m a new woman. I’m so happy I could cry, and I believe I’m going to.”

  The end would justify the means. The ads he had placed in the Times and the Village Voice would draw viewers to the show. The papers would send their critics. Nowadays, to hedge against the future, not knowing what they liked anyway and with no standards to guide them, collectors and curators were afraid not to buy pictures. Other, honest galleries would woo her. In time the museums would take notice and there would be a retrospective. Those canvases, some anyway, could come out of storage in Yonkers. In the meantime, he could return to the IRS with proof that hers was a serious, professional, profit-seeking enterprise, not a “hobby.”

  Had he really believed all that? Now that it had not happened he could not believe he had, but before it had not happened he had believed it would.

  They chose the pictures to be hung and together drew up a list of prices for them. Her expectations seemed unrealistic even to him.

  “They’re worth every bit you’re asking, and more,” he began by saying. Then after a pause, “However, we must not forget that your reputation has yet to be established. What you want is for the pictures to find homes. Let people see them on their friends’ walls. Spread the word. Perhaps if the prices were a bit more attractive …”

  “Hold yourself cheap and so will the world,” she said.

  She wanted to be present at the gallery throughout the duration of the show, surrounded by her productions, watch people look at them and overhear their admiring remarks. Mr. Pettingill was glad to let her mind the store. He gave her the key and went off on vacation.

  The pictures were priced on request. As the days passed the prices were revised downward. “Hopscotch” had originally been $5000; now she would entertain an offer of $3500. Appreciative people could have “Rope-Jumping” for $2500.

  During the two weeks the show hung some two dozen visitors came to the gallery. They looked as though they were lost and had wandered in by mistake. They left hurriedly. A few others poked their heads inside and withdrew them as though they had smelled a bad smell. Sitting there she felt, she said, like the lady attendant of a Paris pissoir. She had begun like a bouquet; like a bouquet she wilted more daily.

  Mr. Pettingill returned from his vacation on the closing day of the show to supervise the taking down of the pictures. They were stood with their faces to the wall like punished schoolchildren. In their places those of the next show were hung without delay. Mr. Pettingill’s bed was never allowed to cool.

  Now it was the morning of the day after.

  It was no time to be thinking about fishing, but fishing was what he was thinking about.

  He saw himself stepping into a landscape by an artist of the Hudson River School: Thomas Cole, Frederic Church, George Innes—misty, silent, still. Time had been turned back to the sixth day of its creation and he was the first person on the scene. While in the city streets outside the studio where they sat waiting sirens wailed like wolves, in his fancied world trouble was as yet unknown.

  He waded knee-deep in his favorite stretch of the Catskills’ Willowemoc. The headwaters of that stream rose in heaven, and there it was stocked with trout.

  To choose from among his flyrods—the Garrison? the Halstead? one of the Paynes?—was always hard, each had its memories, but you could fish with only one at a time, and, precious though it was, its worth measured in karats, today he had chosen the seven-and-a-half-foot “Pinky” Gillum. It was just as well that for the past several years he had fished only in fantasy. Split bamboo rods were delicate, breakable, and though he was no longer an active member of the fishing fraternity, word had reached him, if from no other source than the Wall Street Journal, of the spectacular appreciation in the value of such “classic” rods as his, crafted by makers whose like would not be seen again. Even so, he was unprepared for the sum they fetched when he auctioned them to help pay Mr. Pettingill. Having no use for them anyway, his weekends being otherwise occupied, he had kept his in guarded and bonded storage. When Jane achieved recognition, a lasting gallery connection, and his Saturdays were his again, he would go back to fishing. Occasionally he sneaked a visit to the warehouse and while nobody was looking jointed a rod and flexed it. He felt then like a conductor with a chorus of trout at the bidding of his baton. For in all modesty, he had made of himself a maestro. If, as the brothers of the angle liked to think, time spent fishing earned you time off in purgatory, then for his early years he ought to have been whisked right through.

  It was just sunrise with steam hovering above the water. So silent was the world that he could hear the big fish rising greedily, unguardedly to a hatch of insects—Hendricksons they were, size 16—forty feet upstream of him. He presented his fly just above and to the left of the fish for it to float down to him on the current. He tensed for the strike …

  “Here they are,” said Jane.

  They looked out the studio window. Down on the street two men inside the moving van were handing the pictures to two outside.

  He was about to say, “Well, dear, you’re in good company,” but he was silenced by the look on her face of fixed dejection.

  Virgin and Child

  ON THE NIGHTS WHEN SHE ATTENDED evening classes Cecily stayed over with her uncle and aunt in Ma
nhattan rather than return home to Brooklyn. Danger lurked in the dark streets; the subway was a sewer. A lone young woman had to dart from cover to cover like a head of game. Cecily’s defense was to make herself drab. No makeup, no jewelry, shapeless sweaters, loose long skirts, flat heels. She looked like Garbo off the lot.

  But just as Garbo could not turn herself into a scarecrow so Cecily’s camouflage did not mislead every predator. One had approached her minutes earlier as she was trying to hail a taxi. She looked through him, nodded as he spoke and, smiling charitably, handed him a dollar. He was so nonplussed he took it. She left him looking put down as her taxi pulled away.

  Cecily’s uncle and aunt lived in a neighborhood as desirable as could be found in the city these days. The doorman of the building, whom she called “Saint Peter,” let her in. She pressed the elevator’s Penthouse button and in sixty seconds made an ascent as full of contrast as Dante’s climb from Inferno to Paradise.

  The penthouse transported you in time as well as place. It was Early Hollywood, suitable as the set for a Fred Astaire film. The decor was Art Deco, that elegant artificial style designed to deny the grim reality of its period. High in the sky, insulated from the city’s din and squalor, you imagined top-hat and tails, dancing cheek to cheek, the pop of a champagne cork and the kiss of glasses. Her uncle, pleased with himself and with his rise in the world, once looked out the big picture window and said, “We’re on Cloud Nine.”

  This evening, with Cecily to baby-sit for them, her uncle and aunt were going out to dinner and the opera. The production was Wagner, so they would not get home until morning. Cecily would have the apartment to herself. She liked nothing better.

  Not that she did not enjoy the company of her uncle and aunt. They were her favorite people. And to them she was more like a daughter than a niece; indeed, she was often mistaken for that owing to her resemblance to her uncle. They had taken her with them to London, Paris and Rome. So many and so fine were their gifts to her she had to refuse some so as not to arouse her father’s jealousy of his more successful younger brother. The penthouse was her second home. Her aunt urged her to invite her boyfriends there. The suggestion was that in that rarified atmosphere any young man would be impressed by her connections.

  “I haven’t got any boyfriends,” said Cecily.

  The coming of Constance, now two, rather than displacing the niece, drew the three still closer. Cecily felt toward her little cousin like a big sister. And she never felt more at home than when she was alone in possession of the place and entrusted with the care of the child.

  Her uncle and aunt were dressed to go. Cecily complimented them on their clothes. The three kissed and the parents left.

  Cecily sat little Connie in the highchair and warmed her food, talking all the while. The child listened as round-eyed as a parakeet perched upon a finger. Cecily fed her, and when she had eaten, bathed her. Then she rocked her, crooning lullabies. She sang “Rock-a-bye, baby,” “Froggy went a-courting,” “Daddy’s gone a-hunting to get a bunny rabbitskin to wrap his baby bunting in.” She laid the sleeping child in the crib, covered her, kissed her flushed cheek, switched on the nightlight and left her.

  After her supper Cecily showered. While drying her hair she sat in darkness by the picture window. It was like looking down upon the stars from the heights of heaven. The warmth and whirr of the hair dryer, the darkness, the distant indistinct glow combined to make her drowsy. Taking her book she went to bed.

  Somebody was in the apartment. Through the door, left open for her to hear any cry from the child, came the sounds of somebody moving about. A siren went off in her mind. She must get to the child! She switched off her lamp and got out of bed.

  Before she could take a step the overhead light came on. Dazzled by it and in terror she did not at once recognize the man in the doorway. Then, “Uncle Jim!” she cried. “It’s you! Oh, thank heaven!” And she rushed into his arms. There she nestled while her quaking slowly subsided.

  “I wasn’t feeling well,” he said. “Norma went on to the opera alone.”

  She noticed then that he was in pajamas. It was him undressing that she had heard before. He had wanted not to disturb her.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed. “You must go to bed and let me take care of you.”

  “That,” he said, “is what I’ve got in mind. Going to bed and you taking care of me.” Pressing her close, he kissed her lips.

  She broke free and backed across the room. She was too dazed to be indignant. She could not believe this was happening. The familiarity of the setting made it all the more unreal. How could he have so misjudged her? How could he have so misinterpreted her feeling for him? She had been affectionate but never by word or deed had she invited anything like this.

  He advanced, holding out his arms to her. So he had done for years, and in them she had found comfort, love, protection.

  “Uncle Jim? Uncle Jim?” she pleaded, trying to call up the man she knew, recall him to himself.

  He had miscalculated, looked foolish. He was incensed. His face clouded. She feared he meant to force her into submission. Not much force would be needed. She was too sick at heart to put up any strong defense.

  “It’s me, Uncle Jim. Cecily,” she said. Hearing herself, she wondered, Can this be me? She felt she was losing her mind. She was sure he had lost his.

  He wavered for an instant and in that pause a way to protect herself occurred to her. She dashed past him, through the door and down the hall.

  When he caught up with her she was holding the sleeping child to her breast. He stopped as though stunned by a blow. A mirror had been held up to him and he was appalled at what it showed.

  She gave him a minute to recover himself, get his bearings. Then she handed him his child. He took it with a look of gratefulness such as a mother gives the nurse the first time hers is placed in her arms.

  Dead Weight

  I AM WHAT IS KNOWN in the antiques trade as a picker. A picker is always on the road looking for finds. Some people pride themselves on being specialists. A specialist is somebody with a one-track mind. Your antiques picker has got to know something about everything: furniture—all periods—porcelain, Oriental rugs, paintings—and he has got to have a sharp eye. He must be able to spot a gem in a junkshop or a “sleeper” in a good one. He must be able to tell the fake from the genuine article.

  Without a shop of his own, the picker’s customers are dealers. That was how I came to know Kelly. He had been born and brought up in the business and he had inherited an old, established shop, one of the best in the Northeast. Carriage trade. By appointment only. Monthly ads in Antiques magazine. I went with something to Kelly only when that something was something. No tchatchkes. Whatever I brought him he bought. He knew I knew what I had—I appreciated that—and he never haggled with me. I appreciated that too. Like everybody else, I like to bargain but not to be bargained with.

  Being a picker, and being single, I live in my home on wheels, my camper. I am more or less based in upstate New York, where I was born, but I head south in winter on what I call my Dixie raid, buying as I go, sunning myself down there for a while, then returning north to peddle the merchandise I have found. It’s a free and footloose life, and once in a while you make a killing. Like I did when I recognized from my memory of an illustration in a book a self-portrait of Sir Joshua Reynolds in what the fool who owned it, showing off his learning, called a copy of Rembrandt’s “Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer.” Let the seller beware: that’s my motto. I look upon myself as a curator, preserving the beautiful things from the past by separating them from those who don’t appreciate them and getting them to those who do. Through my hands have passed items now prominently on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was to Kelly that I took old Sir Josh.

  Like me, Kelly was a bachelor. Thus he would have nobody to come home to after the surgery he would soon be having. He told me about it as I was setting off south this year. I invited him to shut up
shop and come out and join me when he was up and about. He would have a change of scene and I would welcome his company. It gets lonely by yourself on the road day after day, and I soon tire of country-western music on the radio down there. I would profit from his expertise.

  As arranged, he left a message for me with a dealer friend in Durant. I was to meet him at Dallas-Fort Worth.

  I could hardly wait to see Kelly. I had something to show him, and he was going to get a professional kick out of the story that went with it.

  I like to wander down back roads, and at old houses, no matter how run down, I stop. In fact, the more run down the better. Being often the first picker in the territory, you make some of your best finds there. I’ve got a nose like a bird dog, if I do say so myself. On this trip, in darkest Arkansas, I had asked a farmer for permission to camp overnight on his land.

  “Make yourself right at home,” the man said. “You’re too late for supper but come to the house in the morning and eat breakfast with us. We set down to the table at half past six.”

  What were those hillbillies drinking their coffee out of but Chelsea cups and saucers! Chelsea! Hen’s teeth are a dime a dozen compared.

  “This is pretty chinaware, ma’am,” I commented.

  “You like them?” she said. Meaning she didn’t. “Why, Lord, them old things been in the family for donkey’s years.”

  To her “old” meant out of fashion, tacky, and longtime ownership of a thing meant you could afford nothing newer.

  I said there were people up north who collected old things and that my business was dealing in them.

  I emptied my cup and turned it bottom up.