CHAPTER 23
Now it’s best to stand aside. Be my own statue. Let my Mythos act in my place. They are the issue of my quiddity, and, though voiceless, their eyes bear history like the worlds spinning in the timeless cosmos. Worlds which their shapes resemble a history of their own making, messages from that past born to the here-and-now, and for the future, where new heroes shall try to take their place. Tonight, the guests shall wander, appreciate and criticize; sum up; and take their message to the people — as oracle, or Paul Revere.
Not so fast.
The artist cannot play the role of the shy debutante. And this is a debutante’s ball, in a manner: the grown-ups, the leaders of The Society of Artistic Fashion, have come to see the pretty girls and handsome boys, have come to judge who’s dressed nicely, whose teeth are bucked, who can stand upright and walk gracefully, speak without a lisp, and stay free of vulgarisms. We can’t allow our pretty maidens to marry stupid boys, or see our going-somewhere men fall under the spell of common, gold-digging sluts.
Oh, if it were as easy as all of that! Now, step into the spotlight, Minus, and give the crowd a little hip shake. Dance, monkey, dance!
I introduce the Mythos as art’s example to the restoration of the life-image gods, who fertilized our imagination thousands of years ago. I am the center of an atom, whose electrons swirl on their elliptic paths, hands held firmly to fluted glasses filled with a spiritual nectar whose golden bubbles tickle the nose. This atom tracks the sculptures, guided by a voice I can narrowly place.
“THESE GODS NOW RESTORE OUR PRESENCE TO THE EONS THAT HAVE PASSED. Their resurgence shows our loss, having come to know them in name alone, or in legends forgotten.”
Music plays in the background: piano and violin, single notes, sonorous, processional. I pronounce the show’s title to our thirteen guests: The Mythos at Twilight. Their faces reveal interest by ignoring me and consigning attention to the sculptures, as duly commanded by their raised presence, seated on pedestals to befit their awesome, lofty station among us modern mortals. My hand holds a corner of one pedestal, an act both of prelude and possession. The guests have dressed variably in white and black, or bold prints. Hair is coiffed for a formal evening.
The Mythos Zeus stares at us from his rightful, venerable position. In a collective pose, the audience regards the statue while I gaze, adulterated with love. Does my expression show such hints? I have lived in their company for months; my desire matches theirs, my confusion matches theirs, my flirtation matches theirs. I must guard their exposure to the world. Inertia is my appearance, but roiling tubercular energy churns beneath my hot, moist skin. My voice, attendant to the mood, rises to my sculptured god.
“We know Zeus as the all powerful, and the ‘father of the gods and men.’ Yet he played the imp and trickster, who mocked lovers’ oaths. Here, as you see, Zeus is placid, immortal, and tired. The erasure of death and promise of eternity does not mean, however, time has been cheated out of its usual ravages. Look into his eyes.
“My plan has been to disassemble the flimsy ideas we have learned of the ancients. My Zeus, though retired and in his rocking chair, has, with the nearby basket of lightning bolts, his clear look onto history, his own and the world’s, created and lived, triumphs recorded, and passions avowed.”
This voice I use has found a burnished elegance in the soft, cloudy echoes of the Beehive, ringing that settles into the canvas honeycombs almost before it’s been noticed. I make eye contact fleeting, use it as a leash on the guests’ attention to the pace of my remarks. Those in the front row think I’m addressing the people behind them; those in the back want to move forward. I stay out of the white spotlights trained three ways onto Zeus. My voice could be any of the immortals.
“Tonight is a peek outside Calypso’s grotto, down along the gnarled cliff to the red sand beach, into the shallow waters where skeletal shipwrecks lie awash in barnacles, teasing our desire to flee. Where memory is brutal, and not ephemeral.”
We move on.
I lead us down the aisle, thrusting a pointed finger at the figures — Narcissus, Aphrodite, Poseidon, Apollo — interposing my voice between the spaces, and stop at Calypso, lying alone in her claw-footed bathtub, her knees thrust above the waterline, fright hidden behind a visage of calm. “Calypso’s skin hangs from her bones, her muscles depleted, arthritic joints gnarled by age. For this Mythos, time has finally trapped her against the same rocks sirens used to shipwreck sailors. I give you the Nymph, at ninety. Gone is the coy smile of the artful woman. She has been cast aside like hundreds of her kind. The Mythos are no longer devious tricksters, pernicious interlopers, or clashing Titans, and cannot squabble ever again over courtly favors. Their power is inert to all but their daily chores. Mortal in every way but name.”
The guests circle Calypso. The tub is raised on its front feet to expose the goddess’s folly of youthful temptation in an old woman’s body, a tempestuous gesture of freedom while imprisoned by her immortality. I watch the critics’ faces: some see fear on her face, forlorn in those soft-lidded eyes, while others seek the true nature of her turbulent bath, whose water slaps against and over the sides, as her hands and feet flutter beneath the surface. Is she swimming in place, or escaping?
I lead them into the heart of the exhibition, and their necks twist and crane to see more.
“Apollo was known as a healer, and what doctor didn’t appreciate a round of golf on a Wednesday afternoon?” The electrons stir and murmur. Apollo contemplates each of us as he leans on his driver and pities his latest shot to, sent into the fairway rough. “The Greeks believed life’s most important events were physical acts. Their honor-based warrior mentality saw to it that, live or die, men marched into battle and women grieved when they didn’t return. Is it no wonder, then, that their gods were electrically and sexually charged beings? Mortal men and women had reason to follow by example. These deities were heroic models for the everyday man and woman. They have walked thousands of years on this stolid image, yet….”
I turn, walk a circle around the pedestal, one hand lightly touching the beveled edges, and then stop at the adjoining corner.
“Yet, even in age, they command our respect — look at Apollo’s resolve; look again at Zeus and Narcissus and Artemis — and they charge that we treasure the drama they’ve endured, and that which they created, too. Those natural leaders throughout our history felt this; they took energy from it. They also died by the cartload because, let’s be serious, since the age of gunpowder there has been little glory in war. Which is a means to say this: the images of the ancient Greek gods and goddesses are stronger than anything contemporary. And they are more resilient against fashion, or the notion of abstraction, in art. Renaissance artists undertook the job to raise their vocalic image from the poem and the song. Their spirits became visual. Now, as a swan song, deities in the golden light of sunset, they can turn a wise expression and the artful gesture.”
I step away. The atom moves along, releasing a few electrons to sail out on long, elliptical corrections. One by one, the gods hold forth in their moment of lordly paragon. I indulge on this fantasy to keep my legs easy over my feet. The eyes of my Mythos know me. I hope they won’t sing tonight as they had done on so many other evenings, alone with me, where I saw but half a figure emerged from the plaster. Whose voice was it, then, mine or theirs?
At the thirteenth Mythos — Prometheus, who leans against a tree, his exhausted muscles and ragged sinew all patchwork beneath gossamer skin; but the fire-giver holds his wily, wrinkled face up to the light of his heavenly successors — I walk forward to extol the Titan. “Shading his wrinkles like a cloud, you can still see the cicatrice across his belly, where the eagle ate through the skin to get at his liver. What’s wrong with growing old? Nothing. We can relish in the signs of life-sought-and-opponents-bested, women pursued and captured, young men enticed and relieved of their seed.”
I notice the women chuckle more freely than the men. I move to the edge of the a
tom, where I turn to address the group within their ranks. “The ancients lived and thrived at a time when ‘belief’ had strength behind it, like no single god could possibly presume. Men and women had gods and goddesses with whom they could identify, and in whose faces they recognized themselves. On the battlefield, or in the boudoir.”
Belinda, who has been at my side from the beginning, draws away to let me finish.
“The gods’ true gift to us? Why, themselves. Old, young, and middle aged; youths without enough hairs to pepper their chins; girls in the blush of womanhood taking all the risks a goddess assumes, by her right. However, this gift was also their pox on us. So glorious and powerful they stood, leading us into battle or even out of the womb. Yet their capacity for failure lay in their stories of great triumphs and tragic mistakes. Through these, they taught us that godly qualities — excellence they knew we humans tried to emulate, only the best of us with humility — remain hidden until we show our vulnerability, the creases in our human nature and those that crisscross fate as the experiences mount. If we didn’t heed their words, we soon learned, the gods provoked us to folly, as they often provoked themselves to commit.”
More laughter flatters me. A chuckle settles a score. A cough strangles on its own truth. To the side, fingernails tap against a crystal flute in the sudden refrain. The servers at the back of the room quickly throttle their chatting.
“The Mythos Project has a subtitle,” I say, reaching towards a conclusion. “ ‘Serendipity in time, balance of age’ ” I turn my head and look up, into the rising throat of Prometheus. “Exalted, feared, mocked, and finally transgressed upon by the future they thought would always be there for them, theirs to rule, the Mythos’s stories moved from mouth to song, to paper to stone, and to canvas — eventually also to comic books and radio and the movies.” More laughter; sucking of teeth. “Depravities of nature brought them down — first by their own, godly sort, and then humans pitched in. To bury them. Find new gods, one god. Less fickle, perhaps. Almost. As you look at these sculptures tonight, you shall see yourselves. We’ve used the gods for this sort of folly. We always shall.” I nod to my guests, vibrating on their energy to get at it all. “Thank you for coming tonight. Please continue to enjoy yourselves.”
The clapping is polite or it is robust, nothing in between. A few hands rise like paper leaf caught in a thermal draft. I trouble myself with the decision to play the effete artist dude, to pass on their curiosity, or to be the normal guy who happens to make good art. My curiosity gives me the goose, and I nod in the direction of the hand held highest. I hope this isn’t to ask where he can find the bathroom.
“I need to ask,” a man says, in a voice used to making questions. “What’s the aesthetics of form you’re working in?” His head rides above the others, with its furry brown eyebrows and beaked nose. Belinda introduced us earlier. Jack Sander-something.
I answer him instinctively. “What Julia Child said of cooking, I’ll let that to explain my form: ‘It’s so beautifully arranged on the plate, you know someone’s fingers have been all over it.’ ”
The laughter this gets, though not my intention, settles like a snake on a desert rock.
Jack, however, hasn’t come here tonight to let me do shtick, as I think he’s heard in my bon mot. He says, “Yes, yes. ‘Beauty.’ But, as you know, sculptural realism has been played out for years. Decades. At least in the major galleries.”
“Has it been played out?” I reply. Okay, I think, no jokes, no soft soap, no hard sell. “I find life sculpture everywhere. Museums are filled with it, often from every era, all movements. And people fill museums! Magazines are devoted to the art, Jack, so either sculptural realism has caught on again, or it never left us. Now the answer to your first question is that I’m working in naturalism and balance. I think life figures have usefulness that strips the metaphor away from the non-representational, and let’s us see what we know, the familiar. That says much for the craft. We are asked, once again, to recognize ourselves. Dare I say we don’t see that on gallery walls these days.”
A woman in front gestures, and says, “Are you saying critics and gallery owners, not to mention collectors, don’t know better?” Her mannish, gummy face, tempered only by rouge and pink lipstick, demands from me confirmation, either for her opinion or mine.
“Know better than whom? From what?” I look through the group with a frown, but when I come to Belinda, her smile grows waxy. “Sorry, I have little idea what critics and gallery owners think, other than what I see in the galleries or read in the trades. Just because something’s on display or is given a blue ribbon, doesn’t guarantee its purchase.”
At the rear of the pack, Viscount Bruce raises his eyebrows and spreads his surprise (at my answer or her question?) to others on my right. This look catches the primed inner-tension of a fat gent in white blazer and red bow tie. Their communication transmits through everyone, which make them shift where they stand, like soldiers at muster, or locusts. I can’t care; I feel already further along. I tell them more: “Look, the best work comes to light whatever its medium. I’m confident that realism can never die as an artistic subject … not if artists look at the complete breadth of life subjects. See this, if you please: the lives of the gods progressed after we mortals set them aside, pushed them away for the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God we know today. But not everyone trashed those myth stories, and thanks to them — the artist, writers, and sages — the best, most fertile minds — art has never relegated Mythos to obscurity. Tonight, I give you my interpretation of the Mythos in their twilight. Even in this, our so-called post-post-modernism, I must take my art to its logical progression.”
Many unknown faces stare at me. For the purpose of calm, I find likenesses in them to Hollywood legends, snatched (for me) from my boyhood television obsession. There’s Cary Grant, combing back his hair with a stiff hand. Ingrid Bergman looks amused. Joan Fontaine’s surly puss (another happy customer) divides my mood. Sidney Poitier looks angelic, tall, and slightly miffed. And can that be Bogart? Each has a clever face, the same used on screen to play their popular characters. Marquee names of the silver screen’s Golden Age, who are already buried or have one foot in the grave, the photogenic clubby set that lost cache when the 1960s let Joe and Jane Average walk onto Hollywood’s sets. Then a tall woman, her short black hair makes me recall Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday, with bone horn-rimmed glasses, raises her flute to toast The Mythos Project. Next to her, Hugh Hefner leers at her slim neck. She’s an obvious arts patron by her wired look, dressed in a smooth wool skirt and short, fitted jacket, black with white oblong polka dots and a reversed-pattern silk tie. I bow my head, and mime a tip of my hat. The guests take time to survey each other, waiting for the next question. I feel like I’m playing footsie with the boss’s daughter, at his dinner table, and suddenly unsure whose foot is returning the favor.
“I like their look,” says another woman in the center of the three ragged rows. “For expressiveness alone you’ve shown restraint, and remarkable talent at developing their personae we know from the legends. I think you’ve got their godly beauty — age and wrinkles beside the point.” She’s spoken in a soft though self-reliant voice. Her blond hair (Lana Turner?) is straight and long, curled down the back of her neck and around one bare shoulder to caress her breast, held up by the spaghetti straps of a little black dress. She has advocates among the guests, but more people give signs of conflict, or displeasure, than they do agreement. And I count seven — eight — demonstrably look at the floor, or just away, and shake their heads. “The question I have is really for me, however,” Lana Turner says, her voice suddenly laced with unease. “Will my clients merely like them, or will they see what you and I see, Mr. Orth, and purchase them for their collections?”
I glance at Belinda, who has been patient with my oratory (unplanned, though now that I’ve come through that, I feel okay). She says, “Their size is marketable for municipal and corporate collectors. Dimensions fitt
ing for the board room, or an estate’s formal parlor or the foyer. Or for the garden, when casts are made.” I sense she’s heading off tough criticism, or more loaded questions. I wonder how far from the aesthetic everyone is willing to drift. The show has only just begun, right? But I’m only the artist, as the man and woman have justly said.
“They’ll need good reviews,” says the fat gent (Sidney Greenstreet?). From his rapid blinks and wheezy breaths, my manager and I sense he’ll not be the one to write the rave. No one raises a further hand or makes a comment. I’m content with the silence. I’ve already told them to mingle, so there’s nothing more for me to do. Shoo them? I wish.
Belinda steps forward, stops beside Prometheus, and at arm’s length from me, to thank our guests in her prairie twang, taking up what is the business half of our duet. People break apart and move off on their own, some with signs of the short-form impression, leaning to a summary verdict. Two take themselves quickly to one side — Bogart and Turner — and start a loud discussion that makes my stomach churn.
I need a diversion. Released from my audience, music opens my senses first, then sight and smell. Belinda chose Arvo Part’s piano and cello to help lead the party. The composer’s sonorous notes are made with the slightest pressure on keys and strings, sleepy fingers of overfed cherubs. Waves of stomach-happy smells drift across the room, canapés and skewered meats, held warm at the caterer’s station (china dishes and silver forks, linen napkins and stainless steel hor d’ouervre toothpicks) placed next to the elevator. The sofas have been pushed to the side, the television stashed. The dome lamps spew light at half intensity, making the room glow with the gray tones of winter morning. The white beams come from the spotlights trained on my Mythos, three beams for each sculpture, whose features and postures freeze the dramas of classical art and modern culture.
Belinda takes my hand and draws me away from people. I’m nearly speechless from shock. “Did I do okay?” I ask. “You did your kind of okay,” she answers, and “That was a brilliant description for someone who hates explaining his art.” “Look where that’s left us.” “Don’t fret. We’ve got friends here. Some.”
We look across the floor. Thirteen people mingle with thirteen sculptures. The combination is intentional. Their scattering from the window end of the aisle has been like gold dust blown from a palm. I watch for a show of favorites, when a person returns to one sculpture for a third time. Only four people take such further interest. I’m not surprised, given how I read their angled body language as we moved along. Returns to the food table and bar are expected, but disturb (they’re only here to eat and drink!) more than delight me (take its measure … weigh the second view with the first … walk into the story that she’s telling … move through time), how they make careful inspection of the wine vintage, and casually view a sculpture across its spatial plane, the arms and legs, blunt torsos, a sword or garden spade, a ribbon, and the face that holds them steadily as if to say, You’re lucky if we can swap roles.
I know four of the guests (I made the case to include Peter N; Belinda saw its wisdom immediately). The other nine are Belinda’s inspiration: no august names among them, but they carry enough contacts, clout, and collector’s cheques to make the buzz audible through the next month, for which the gala opening will be one place all the others want to be. That is, if they decide to create any buzz at all.
Not every invitation was accepted, but Belinda had secured the spread she was after. Two latecomers were people whose names meant something (I’d recognized them from bylines, not their specialty) but whom Belinda hadn’t met before. And when one of these two had to cancel last minute — a right old stalwart of American sculpture from D.C. — he’d put a call through in a “dauntless voice” (Belinda’s words) suggesting an equally valuable replacement; we pleasantly accepted, thanking him for that kindness. All are clothed smartly. I’ve worn a black suit and white shirt (no tie); Belinda stands brilliantly in a strapless navy dress and pumps, a string of pearls around her throat that draw the eye to a bit of cleavage. (I think she’s taller than me tonight.) Belinda insisted the honeybees (smirk) not be allowed in the first group. The number thirteen was pre-set.
More guests begin to circulate after quick hits on the hors d’oeuvre table, and, more auspiciously, hover as singles and duos around several Mythos. Despite the criticism I deflected, no one is looking around for the coat rack and the exit. They hold their wine glasses at the stem or the foot, never with hands around the bowl. They talk to each other while looking at a sculpture, not from the sides of their mouths, like gangsters, but turning their heads. Another sign of strength? Why not.
“I can’t measure them rightly,” I tell Belinda.
“Your sketches and maquettes surveyed well,” she replies, speaking like a gangster. We baste ourselves in those words as if it’s our epigram. She smiles and makes a little bow to the passing Audrey Hepburn. Cary Grant breaks away from Lana Turner. Poitier lurks for a refill.
Conversation through the aisle becomes free as the minutes pass. Some speakers get loud. Hands rise and point, follow a line from leg to shoulder, circle the head; a thumb juts out to gage the torso or bust; notes get written. There is disagreement also, bursting like dogs run amok at a kennel run. Laughter, too, glides on sugared phrases. Good, bad; bad, good. The worst thing an artist can get is the equivalent of an Irish wake. That’s not what’s taking place here. We begin a walk down the aisle, Belinda and me. To avoid groups, we let our expressions speak for us, and we don’t stop.
Dad looks retrograde chic in woolen slacks and a dark, paisley shirt, neatly wrapped in a leather jacket, henna brown, one of those Seventies’ belted designs that hug the hips. Only a tall, lean man can carry this style into a third decade. He told me these jackets are what the “artsy types” wore back then. I believe him. All he needs is a pipe and a devilish grin to be Hugh Hefner working the Playboy mansion terrace. Dad’s taken advantage of his invite and status, making the rounds to give sage comments (“Her cheeks suggest wind … The force is mathematically precise … Those little boats in the washtub don’t have a chance in hell for escape”), he speaks frankly, keeps friendly acquaintance with all the women — ages are not a factor — holds his wine glass adroitly, takes expert sips. I think he’s missed his calling, somehow, or more likely has infused me with what I am today.
Then someone begins to clap behind us. My skeleton vibrates. Is this appropriate? I can’t say; I’ve never been its recipient. Belinda helps me turn around from the buffet area, where we have ended our journey. A few people join in the applause — Lana Turner, Don Ameche, Cary Grant — while others stand rigid (or look askance, toward a cohort — Sid Greenstreet — pity and boredom dark lines across their foreheads). Now it’s certain that reception is split; I have one critic, one dealer, and one gallerist. We’re at a disadvantage, and the opposing rank gathers like centurions at the city gates. Nevertheless, they have social graces, and join the applause in gesture, but without much volume.
I look for the applause’s inception. Peter N stands in the center of the aisle, beside Poseidon dressed in overalls, bandy-legged, with broken corn stalks around bare feet, his face a bouquet of fissures and lines, a trident held between two muscular hands, which have put it to practical use: its three tines aim earthward, the points used to till the soil that awaits, from a cloth bag slung over his shoulder, the seeds he’ll sow for his country garden.
The guests step around the Mythos and come forward. Belinda urges me by the elbow to do something — I make a short bow. It’s like a fantasy and nightmare in the same dream.
Suddenly, people speak in a rush, words cross, everyone is in on the argument. Conclusions and deliberations come in flurries. And these people aren’t shy: “I don’t see anything unique here. Your modern objects break the historical continuity that we look for.” “It’s camp … that can’t be what you’ve wanted … it’s reaching for Warhol’s pastel iconic ‘-isms’ — he wouldn’t have tried this!”
“You’re both wrong — They’re gutsy portraits — There’s edge to them when we just need that again in art.” “Oh, they’re right, but they say it the wrong way. Orth has vision and craft, and no market voice. I say they’re mostly a miss.” “We can do the market!” “Can you?!” “Friends, please!” “Friends?” “How many more Mythos can we expect to see at the gala?” “Too contrived — style and craft, okay, I get it, but this all speaks of art colony.” “Nothing wrong with that!”
Laughter and derision ride strong from the harshest critiques; breathy cheers for the kudos. This is important talk that I must take seriously. But I’m not here to argue. Others want a map of my direction. The people speaking up for my Mythos can’t overcome my disappointment. Belinda looks shattered, which only makes me feel worse. More defense comes from Maharani Smrtee, who pledges her purchase of Zeus and Narcissus. “Get me the moving men tonight!” Dad guffaws; he harbors a street fighter’s glare. Peter N argues for me: “Take the pieces as a whole to see the structure; they’re not meant for critical cant, and they stand up for realism.” “But that’s low-end market, Pete!”
Then Belinda takes control of her mind and emotions again, and speaks confidently: “Best get on board Harvey, Claire, Rico — before you’re left with mop-up critiques that’ll be months behind the glossies. We’re opening with twenty-one Mythos on November seventeenth.” Sid Greenstreet yells, “Good luck!” Cary Grant shouts back, “Minus doesn’t need luck, but he’ll take praise, mister.” Lana Turner chortles, “You got that right!” Joan Fontaine howls, “They’re cartoons! Superheros!”
I want to slink away. This is hyper-realism. I feel like a carnival barker confronted by angry customers; they’ve paid to see the World’s Fattest Woman jiggle her jellied arms and legs, and in walks Miss Twiggy. But I have Athena at seventy! Chubby, sexy, holding her hands under two sagging breasts. With a flourish, six of the nine arts people sift noisily through the others, headed for the elevator. They find a waiter to take their glasses. This is it, I think, the show and my future. Over. Then Viscount Bruce calls for champagne, and waiters appear from the sides to distribute fresh-filled wine flutes to all who’ve stayed. Behind us, while Zeus waxes happily on his rocker, seeing off the visitors with his casual resignation, the elevator door drops with a drum’s throbbing hollowness.
Belinda and I get our first drink of the night, having abstained from mind-clouding substances until our roles have finished. I want the cloud now. The viscount and maharani toast me, and the Mythos’s success, and Belinda’s “snapdragon” leadership. We hear a “here-here!” and a “Bravo!” — which make me wonder if that’s all for bonhomie, or pity.
The remaining guests become jovial and celebratory, for our benefit, Belinda and me. But I feel the anxiety of dread. Nevertheless, three different hands reach for my arm. Their owners laugh and proffer dibs on my company. “I don’t get it,” I think, before I’m led away, finally, by just one hand, with a few following like confetti in the wind. The defection of the six is not to spoil the majority, after all. Is this how I should read the crowd? This is really too much. What about the haters? They’ll torpedo the show! Well, if that’s to happen, then at least I have one idea. But the hands stay affixed to my upper arm and one sleeve, and I’m walked to one Mythos and then another. I hear their voices, see spotlights make white cones through the foggy ceiling lamps, smell sweat-sour sauce and brandied fruit. I’m asked to explicate for the audience. (“I saw a man on a bus, a defeated man in purpose and past; he spoke brilliantly of the future.”) The sculpture of Calypso in her bath needs deference. (“It’s assured that none of us loses. Until it happens to us. Then we’re left to diddle away time.”) Platitudes and artsy banter, of course, but I need the practice. I hope that I have cause to use what I’ve learned.
I’m released for a moment by one admirer, only to be taken away by another hand. This hand belongs to the maharani. She leads me back to Narcissus, behind which awaits the viscount. I’m afraid I haven’t given the FaceCards their fair merit in this story. Not enough time or space. They lack roundness, and are stained in secondary purples, greens, and oranges. Everyone can be important to a life. People come and go. Tonight, my FaceCards — a Jack and a Queen (not the Tarot, but good ‘ole Bicycle) — excel in magnanimity and solace.
The leonine-voiced viscount and contralto maharani speak to me. “Fabulous work, Minus.” “Of course, you know that, and don’t worry about –” “Mustn’t mind your critics, eh? — they’ll be late to the party.” “I’m not so sure as you two seem to be.” “It’s past, lad. Have a drink. Get yourself a goddamned scotch, old boy, and relax.” The maharani’s jewels rattle when she shakes my hand. “Have you found it terribly taxing?” I defer to her worries. “We’ll talk on Thursday, Minus. Our poker night marches on, lad! You must be there to hear us tell the others about tonight. They shall accept our recommendation.” “Don’t sell another piece! Not until us four get our share.” Then they wave me off, a shooing gesture, back to the lowly party.
Dad appears from behind the Titan Iapetus’s red-painted legs. Dad’s hair is whipped like a troubadour working for hat-money in the village square. We nod like strangers who are confronted, suddenly, with society’s rules for hospitality.
“Dad.”
“Son.”
“You look good. Real good. Is this something they’re piping through Chicago’s taps these days?” I’m stabbing at anything but the present agony grating across each nerve. My lips tingle under the effort at composure.
“I wonder,” he replies. A sheepish look follows. “O-kaay. Truth be told, I feel good. Now if they really want to sell some snake oil, they can pump a few tankers worth of whiskey in the water supply. Just for flavor, you know.” Dad rummages in the pockets of his leather jacket and, finding nothing, he looks at me. I don’t want to talk politics.
Dad’s intuition on this is strong. He says, “Seems you’ve been given lots of advice on how to cope.”
“Bad and good.”
“People walking out can’t feel right, not to an artist. More counseling to come, too, I suppose.”
“You?” I ask.
“Not from me! Wouldn’t know where to begin. Besides, all that’s too easy, when you’re not the guy standing in the soup.”
“Is that where I am?”
“Where else? I mean, you’ll want to get perspective. Soon. Success or otherwise, it’s all the soup. Just different flavors.”
“You could have been a chef.”
He shakes his head, a wry grin goading a joke to come out. “Mathematics has its own kind of seasoning.”
“No advice then?”
“Son, you’re a rock. Buck up. Nothing’s been determined.”
“That’s as good as I deserve,” I think. But now I need to change subjects, because my head buzzes with disquiet alarm. I ask, “Did I see your eye on a few of the ladies?”
Dad puffs up his chest. “Two eyes, Minus. Three women. Four competitors — no, two are left, seeing a pair have gone.” He nods at a few of the women mingling, and leans toward me. “I got one reply,” he whispers.
“You’re a devil,” I tell him.
His mouth performs a mischievous wiggle, like a naughty rabbit in a carrot patch. His fast recovery gives my mind peace. “You’ve done well, Minus. I’m not surprised. Always, you were the builder, of some thing or another. You played with blocks as a tyke, but not like other kids. Do you remember granddad’s erector set? I thought you’d make a fine engineer. I didn’t want to push you into anything. Your name was enough already. It’s best to let kids find themselves, do what they want.”
I wonder if Dad is thinking of Mary Catherine, at least a little, of whom he has said (as a joke, but that’s how things start) he’d lost her to the Bible’s rhetoric and to “that God.” With mom gone, he really only has us to worry about. Parents forever worry. “Engineer? Huh,” I say. “Not me. Never. I get motion sickness on train rides.”
Dad wra
ps his hands around his elbows. He might be using all his strength to hold in a belly laugh. “It was on one Thanksgiving that I knew you were different,” he tells me. “You wanted to carve the turkey. I don’t think you were seven, then, but you had perspective. And a keen eye for dimension. Dimension and perspective. You talked about both all the time. It was weird, the words you knew at that age. All those colors, and how they mixed to make hundreds more. You hated numbers, but you could see geometry by putting your thumbs together and spying through the notch. Dummy me, I thought you were playing soldier, sighting targets. I never treated you differently, though, than Mary Catherine. She would have noticed.”
I remember some of this, not all. Dad has missed something important, however, and I must contradict him. “I don’t think she would have noticed. Her priorities were already outside my life. Outside the family’s, too. All the same, it’s what the good parents do, as you said.”
I want to say something about fond memories, of Mary Catherine and mom, but this distraction has done its part to lessen the blow taken from the evening’s program. I want no part, however, of a trip across some river of forgetfulness. One or two clips from childhood might start one of those bullshit family arguments that no outsider should witness. Dad sees this look on me. I could be wearing a sign around my neck. A woman with natty hair, its long, brown tendrils curled out at the ends below her shoulders, passes us on her way to a waiter with razor-burn cheeks, standing straight-backed and holding a tray of half-filled champagne glasses. Dad gives me a Hefner nod, squeezes my elbow, and glides off. I should be intrigued, but I’m only saddened.
Earlier, between my near-proposal to Belinda and my almost-flight-of-sanity as the Mythos unveiled themselves, I took a phone call at the loft. A voice from out of memory’s fog spoke quickly after my “Hello.”
“Minus, it’s your sister. It’s Mary Catherine.”
She seemed to use her name as a re-introduction to the custom of speaking with an estranged sibling. It’s only now, standing under the disinterested stare from Iapetus, whose concentration is on his next chess move (or is it the bottle of beer in his hand?), that I’m able to see the phone call’s ominous portent.
“Hey,” I said, or was able to produce. “This is a surprise. Unexpected. Wow.” I wanted to ask, What can I do for you? but is that how someone speaks to an estranged sibling? I let her lead, it was her phone call.
“Dad told me about your sculptures,” she began.
“That’s a surprise, since he hasn’t seen them,” I replied. “The show is tonight.” I have the feeling I should be glad you aren’t coming.
“You told him the theme.”
“Ah, well, I might have. Motifs. Themes. Genres. People tend to see art in their own private way.” Silence from her end; I heard audio static and a faint ghost of a voice-over crossing our line. “Where’s this going, M-C?” Silence. Sudden convulsive breathing. Silence again. “Is there something –”
“I never liked that you turned my God-given name into a city dialect. A codeword.” Her voice boomed an odious signal, and my hand flinched around the receiver. “Some home-girl’s initials you used to taunt me with. Now you taunt our loving savior with pagan idols.”
“Mom and Dad gave you your name, Mary Catherine, not God. Hey, is there a reason why you’ve called?”
“Your sculptures are an abomination, Minus. That sinful art spreads lies to an already defiled world. Your talent is being exploited by people who don’t love you!”
“Come again?”
She thought I was taunting her (again), for which she unleashed invective, then launched into a homily straight from Sunday’s Holy-Rollers broadcasts. I listened, not for politeness’ sake (or pity’s) but for it’s own curiosity, how she took such interest in something that had essentially nothing to do with her present God-given world. I was only its link to a program, a ploy. When she stopped speaking, yelling, stammering — and while I listened to her catch her breath — she said suddenly, “Can I say hi to daddy?”
My memory of the call (I don’t know how Mary Catherine’s face has changed — I’d seen her two years ago, but that image hadn’t come through clearly, triggering a drift backwards to the more salient childhood) and the slow calm of the moment with Dad just a few minutes ago suddenly fall forward and out of reach. I look around. Faces I know or have made to look familiar by fantasy have now become strobe lights of featureless color. I walk through the guests like an eel swims through limpid water. I gain focus when Belinda catches my attention with a wave, and I make for her on a smooth path that feels like I’m staggering. Next to her stands a certifiably handsome man, who bears Teutonic markings in height, jaw, forehead, and his blue, deep-set eyes.
“You look so calm!” she says to me, and reaches for my hand. I look at her with what I think is a horrified expression, but she only smiles wider. “Let me introduce you to Arthur Mason. Arthur middles for Atlantic Coast collectors, auction houses, and museums. You know how that goes.”
Older than me, Mr Mason nods once and shakes my free hand, the left, which I must turn, palm downwards, to grasp his right hand. This doesn’t matter because what I really find strange is how he doesn’t notice my horrific eyes any more than Belinda has, nor have they mentioned how I’ve staggered through the spot-lit Mythos to this location, aimed at salvation from myself. Perhaps I’m confused by the difference between how I feel and what I must look like.
“You’ve angered a few of your critics,” Arthur Mason says. “I like that!” His eyes glow their soft cornflower blue in the subdued light, which I suddenly notice is dusky outside the spotlights. “Anything negative that’s worded a particular way — and they’re the ones that do this especially well — will get more people interested in you than perhaps if all you got was a handful of decent reviews.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, “Are you trying to convince me that all publicity is good publicity?”
“Listen. This isn’t the Fifties. People like controversy. In the art or the artist. Sometimes you have to shake the snail off the side of the terrarium to make them move. Don’t look so worried. There’s always a chance for failure with critics. But I like your chances for success.”
I say, “That’s where Art has come to. Art as chance?” I’ve asked this rhetorically.
Mason reaches up and adjusts his tie, a striped power tie in blue gradients. “Minus, I like you,” he says. “Your attitude is up front, really the opposite of your sculptures, which are nuanced by design, and your ambition.” He reaches to shake my hand again. I give him the right hand this time, why not, first extruding it from Belinda’s grip. He tells Belinda to phone him in a week, and then excuses himself.
“How does it feel?” she asks, when I’ve turned and we’re both facing the long line of sculptures. “I don’t know yet,” I say. “This will take time to make sense, and I don’t know the reception.” Truthfully, I think, I’m more confused than before. Something needs to enter the picture to set me in the present. Belinda says, “Your dad told me he has a girlfriend in Chicago.” “Really?” “One of the adjunct professors. Not from math, but in that scientific world realm thingy place.” “As I live and breathe.” “He says he misses you. Us.” “Why are you telling me this?” “He asked me to. Don’t look as if you’ve been double-crossed; I think he’s been trying to work out his own angles, finally. He misses you. He says ‘us’ but we both understand the difference, don’t we? I know you miss him. Chicago, too. It’s something I can tell.” “How do you know that? Why do you think that?” “You talk in your sleep.” She’s mocking me. “I can tell, Minus.”
In my inability to protest (this is all her way of keeping me calm, approachable) she senses the truth. This new truth. She says, “I think I was punishing you. You didn’t deserve it, but that’s how I felt at the time, alone, traveling this noisy, stinky city. Not even Gretchen would help me, you know, like to give me a whinny or two for comfort. You have the dogs, remember, when you’re
not at the studio.”
“Working at the studio.”
“Working, yes.” She opens these words to cover the dulcet room, its ambient music and lights, and my Mythos. There are deep shadows along the periphery, a wholly conceptual demonstration of her own impressive talents. “Here they are. Finally.”
“Finally.” I say it with a febrile grunt. “Finally? I see it as … fucking glorious. Sometimes, a miracle.”
“That’s decamping. The artist’s view. Okay. So be it.”
“The work, I speak of. Their number.”
“Don’t cheat your imagination.”
There’s room for commiseration between us. I want her to know something she might not feel, in the end (although this is only the beginning, I make myself try to feel) when the work has come to this, one night. “You’re responsible for the show as much as me,” I say. “My statues are here because you’re here. There’s enough pride to share in that.”
“You’re suggesting I should feel more. I do. Tonight, though, that’s inexpressible.”
“Talk about decamping. What is it, really? Have you missed the catharsis in all of this? Let me give you a hint: it feels like death.” I must pause, to let her feel this, before I deliver the coup d’oeil.
She looks away. “I suppose I am a rookie. First-time jitters? The manager carries the load for … I know there’s something, but my thoughts only swing at it. Yeah, that’s it. I swing and swing, and I miss. That’s all it is. But then, you’re the artist. Next time I’ll feel everything.”
I actually believe her. Not wholly, but there’s far more truth behind her sarcasm than I could possibly get her to believe just now. Part of me, though — the incredulous side of Psyche — wonders if the lure of her own ability was how she made herself do it all, made herself happy. Too many comparisons make its justification risible.
We watch the crowd. Nobody else has left since the early desertion, but there is some handshaking going on. It’s time for me to thank everyone. Thank them before they begin to leave. Just then, my Hepburn caricature with the bone glasses steps from a threesome and walks briskly to us. Her outfit, the big black polka dots, is too young for her, but she gets away with it because of her stature, and the way she carries herself.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” she says. She addresses Belinda. “We haven’t had time to talk after that quick hello. Al Dent’s telephone call made my day, I must confess. I said, ‘Albert, sorry about your ankle, and you shouldn’t play tennis on a cold afternoon, but I’ll sub for you any night you choose. Ha-ha-ha!” Her voice is all Manhattan. Up close she shows her age, which distance, that dress, the Hepburn elfin hairdo, and those scallop size glasses, had covered. My guess is sixty, but her skin stretches nicely around the chin and jaw, holding up slack like one tucks in the stomach after exercise. She’s tall and steady on patent leather heels, commanding the assurance of experience. I picture her in ten years, twenty, a doyen holding court in someone’s East Side parlor, or outside Christie’s after a gloriously successful bidding war. “And look what I get to see,” she says. Her head moves side to side, like an old auntie reunited with her wide-eyed niece and nephew. “I’ve been hearing about this Minus Orth and his project for months. You could sell one or two sculptures and still make a name. Are you kidding? Go on.... Hey, sales help, but later! You position yourself by making fabulous art, is what I’ve always said. And Belinda, you have a way with the community, I’m sure. Saul called Paul had nothing on you, my dear.” She takes Belinda’s hand without it being offered, a byway gesture executed during her rhetorical montage. I stare at her nose, powdered like butterfly wings, lips painted coral. With one hand she pulls off her glasses and, caught by light falling from behind, shadows etch her eyes as smoky holes. Her voice becomes the essence of crime. “I called myself Kristine to make things easier, but my name is Karen Kosek,” she says. “I want to write about you and Minus for the journals. On my dime, of course.” For the first time, she steadily looks at me. “There is so much to talk about.”
Belinda loses balance off one heel. On instinct my hand catches her elbow, while Karen still has hold of her hand, which she uses to help steady Belinda. The shock has drawn back Belinda’s mouth and made her eyes bulge. I can only look the same. Belinda pulls her hand away; or Karen has let it go.
“Minus,” Belinda says, her voice wired, “what’s going on?”
Hardly recovered myself, I point at Karen K and try a washout comment. “Ask her. Out of her bag lady getup, I don’t recognize this woman.” This is hopeless. “I know I’ve been taken,” I think.
Karen doesn’t acknowledge me, and pulls from her bag a silver case and a black pen the size of a cigar. She flips her wrist and the case opens to reveal a reporter’s notepad.
“Let’s not cause a scene, you two,” she says. “The press is here, I mean the ones who haven’t abandoned you. They like you. The photo-perfect artist couple, captured in the limelight, make good among New York’s golden pockets. Quite the catch, you’ll be, when you know how to play the game. You don’t want to give them a different story to write: the artist and his muse, caught losing control, caught with hayseed in their hair, left to sweep the floors and pay the caterers their tip.”
Belinda’s hand reaches up to stroke her forehead. “Good play, Karen,” I think. The thought pours from my eyes to her, Karen, where she senses my disbelief but does nothing for me. Her pen is stuck between her fingers, and she taps her notepad.
“So, Minus,” she says. “The woman in the bath. Did you use your girlfriend-slash-lover as inspiration? Perhaps the model thinks, though I don’t agree myself, that you’ve done her a disservice, aging her like dried fruit. She’s masturbating under the water, isn’t she? Knees up, eyes closed. Look at the glee molded to her quivering lips, wrapped in the ecstatic pain of wanton release. Her chiton is deftly bunched up over her breasts. The Brits would call you ‘cheeky.’ Using Calypso is telling. You claimed she never got her man, but she must have got a man, along the way — or at least the help of a digit or two, in the end, no? But alas, you’ve left the statue untitled. An oversight, I’m sure. It’s for the viewer to guess all of this. Is that what you were after? But look at me: such impertinence. Okay, one question at a time. Minus Orth … how is that spelled?”
From out of nowhere, a man steps into our threesome. He has gray eyes and broad shoulders, which present a gubernatorial bearing as they square our sudden foursome. He’s one of the collectors Belinda introduced me to when I was on auto pilot. A man who’s sure of himself, with a pedigree he was only too agreeable to share (Yale Law, Harvard Business, Wall Street Brokerage, Bonham’s Fine Arts Auctions – London). He jumps through my sudden hesitation at his appearance to ask Belinda a question, his lips moving like radio frequency lines. I don’t hear what he says, in a voice that hides behind the music, but Belinda’s head turns slightly to catch every word, the last of which worry her eyes. My gaze fidgets between this man and Karen K, who has ignored him completely. Her hand hangs steadily over her notebook, with that Freudian pen clutched like a fat turd in her hand, still waiting for my response, is all I can guess. She’s so close now that I can see my reflection in her eyes, a microscopic figure with clownish, or Mongoloid, flatness. The collector makes glances to and fro, and sets his shoulders to leave, which prompts Belinda to gesture that she’ll follow in a moment. He walks off, leaving us three in a Mexican standoff.
“Your appearance tonight doesn’t feel like a coincidence,” Belinda says to Karen K.
“It is.” “It isn’t.”
Karen’s voice collides with mine, but it’s hers that holds longest in the air. She’s like a spiteful sibling who gets away with saying something just out of earshot of mom and dad, but rankles under the whole family’s skin. Worse, her face has become ratcheted tight. Belinda breaks our mental scrum.
“Minus, I have to meet with Tony. That man. Later y-you’ll talk me through this, I imagine. It’s not that I’d like some a
nswers, but I could use a good story. Seems like I’ve heard enough of them.” Her voice has been strong, level, unfettered, until a plaintive, speculative, “Right?” jumps out from her throat like a frog hidden in the clover. I nod as reassuringly as I can without coming off like an ass. It’s a fierce movement that makes my scalp tingle when my hair wags with each jerk of my head. As flummoxed as I am, there’s also the side to this moment that leans into the surreal, in which I watch this comedy of manners from behind us, where Thetis stands on her pedestal in mannered observation, her plaster flowers flattened between a heavy book’s pages as her water-diluted eyes tremor with memory.
The idea that my Mythos know where I am makes me aware of myself again, finally, and I laugh. The sound, genuine, if only higher than its normal pitch, isn’t what Belinda expects. She wants the utterance of my faith in us. Instead, I give her Borsht Belt schmaltz. “I might need an army of analysts to help me understand,” I say.
“You’ve found the right city for that,” Karen says. “Beware. The best shrinks only listen. You’ll talk yourself into bankruptcy only to learn your life is not your fault after all, and you can’t do anything about that. Ha!”
We react to this comment with cadaverous silence.
Belinda flees to the waiting collector, standing softly unfocused in my eyes through the distance. Her need to tend to our business is an atavistic need that keeps her feeling normal at the least cost to us with everything that has happened. I’m left to manage Karen, who asks another question. Her hand writes with scratching quickness on the notepad, although I’ve not said a word. Or perhaps I have, at that. Half of me wants to play this straight: you don’t know this person, Minus; she’s here to interview you; she’s a dispassionate observer, the hack journalist who’s slid from behind the ropes to get her story. My other half is struck by the voice of Karen K, pulling me in, and I’m bent by her power, lured to my death by my own foolish disregard for self-preservation. That, and, what I really want.
“Don’t worry, Minus.”
“I’ve heard that a lot tonight. I’m beginning to disbelieve it. More now than before.”
“Some critics you’ll get, and some you’ll lose. They’re fish in an afternoon pond — hungry, sleepy, fat, lazy. Others … they’ll always hate you or love you, no matter what shit you put out. Your job is far simpler than you want to make it. Far easier than you could imagine. Enjoy it all.”
“You can’t do this,” I say.
“No. But I can. It’s been done.” Her voice is entirely matter of fact. “You knew this the first day you followed me out of the park.”
The elevator door makes a metallic sound, like an asthmatic’s attack, on its way up from the ground floor. I watch the bees fly back into the hive, take aim, vibrate at the sight of the Mythos, and swarm through the room. When I look away, Karen is staring at me with the faintest hint of amusement, a look I’d seen many times. And have misinterpreted, I wonder now. Memories pull me toward contours and angles and color-strands, a slender nose, flattened ears, bangs and curls, floppy hats and summer dresses.
“Were you at the Y debate? And … and at the –”
“Minus,” Karen K interrupts. “I’m everywhere. I always have been. Now –” she points with the shiny nose of her pen “– you need to be here and there, too … up-side and inside. Have a look at your wannabe-artist friends.”
Binny and Alfred walk toward us, through the guests who are spread thin, whom I realize never really made up a crowd. Al is drunk, wavering on his feet. “Where is everyone, Minus?” He’s slurred his words. “Have your sculptures flopped? I’m not surprised. Too traditional.”
In vino veritas, I think. I feel the deep heat of embarrassment. Not for what they’ve come into and seen of the show, but for whom I’m standing with. When I look at Karen, I’m surprised to find she’s not in her bag lady costume.
Binny says, “You should have work-shopped your Greek revivals with the hive. We have experience, and could have helped you. Teach you to find your –”
Karen growls, a NYC noise that shuts Binny’s mouth, and makes Alfred raise his hand in defense. “I’m conducting an interview, here, you assholes.” Her words, their butchering delivery, repels Queen & Consort, and I step back in alarm for what she’s capable of doing — throw a punch or stab one of them with her pen. Karen glares, and says, “I know both of you. I’ve seen your clumsy work. Turn around and get lost, you talentless pieces of shit!”
The caricatures of Binny and Alfred’s smarmy conceit wash off like theatrical makeup. For the first time tonight, I can smile.