Page 40 - WTP Vol. X #2

Dark Passage (continued from preceding page)
grabbed a sweatshirt and trudged across the marsh that led to the bay. The sun was bright. She kicked off her boots and put her foot in. When she and Christian swam, side by side in the calm water, she felt free. Her Midwestern man had learned to swim late in life, but he had a commanding, if crooked, crawl. She would glide beside him, delighting in the silky fullness of
the water. On this afternoon, the motion felt good. It snapped her awake. She would cancel her solo show in the city before Alfred did. She would forge her own way; she didn’t need Alfred’s approval to be whole.
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At two a.m., Vic brought a candle to the barn. In her baggy pants and Christian’s undershirt, she stopped before a recent painting. In its brown flurries and twists, she felt fractured lives, ruined by antisemi- tism. Her parents and Alfred’s had both fled from Europe in fear. What an awful bond these parents had shared. “We’re brilliant fragile Jews,” Alfred said.
These men, without loving fathers, exhausted her. Christian’s had disappeared early on. He drank too. Vic picked up a fat brush filled with burnt sienna paint and attacked a new canvas. Her raw marks became fierce. With each jab and stroke, she hated that Christian depleted her energy. So many attempts to help him. Analysis, costly health concoctions for his well-being, her healing through love. “A marriage,” their analyst had said, “joins intimate minds and lust.” They had that. None of it had helped his disease.
The last year of Christian’s life had been the worst. The Life photographer had leaned over and under her husband as he painted. Take and retake. Vic had urged Christian to consent. Why not? A spread in Life would generate sales that would pay their bills for months; it would secure his fame. Yet Christian felt exposed and ridiculed. No one could (or should have) documented what he did. After the photographer left, Christian smashed a table and began to drink heavily after a blessed period of sobriety. “You ruined me,” he blamed Vic.
Her painting became mud. She turned to a barn wall. This time she grabbed a tin of deep blue and hurled
it at the surface. An eye, a stark black oval from her nearby painting, taunted her. See Alfred, color! A
wash of blue, the sea darkened at midnight, dripped downward. With a broom, Vic pushed the runny paint in all directions. The resistance of a hard surface felt good. That’s why Christian craved the floor when he painted. It grounded him.
Vic reached for a knife and ran it across the wall. She lifted off blue paint to create waves of motion. She guided lines of varying thicknesses upward and twisted them across each other. Yes, she was copying Christian now. “There Alfred,” she yelled. “Satisfied?”
Vic seized a rag and stepped onto a ladder. She wiped turpentine through the blue. The paint spread out, creating fresh markings that suggested sea foam. It thrilled her. She loved the act of discovery, the risks she took and the accidental gestures that stirred her imagination. Wide as the bay, this blue piqued her interest and she wished it had not. Alfred, damn him, would praise this fierce splash of blue. Go away. She kicked out her foot to banish him.
Vic stepped off the ladder. Christian, in grubby clothes, partially lit up by the moon, seemed to crouch beside her. He ran his paint-smeared hands across white paper on the floor. “Swirls for you,” he half-sang, “for my funny valentine.” She laughed. Oh, that charming croak that had deepened into a bitter sound near the end. Christian had returned from
the bar late at night, after drinking. When will you
be back? she used to ask. As she waited, her fingers had curved into hard scissor handles. She had cut up her old paintings. She had pasted pieces onto new canvas and unified disparate parts with black and gold paint. Collage, the fitting together of fragments, seemed like the only way to go forward. The result- ing creations pleased her; she had learned to reuse that which had failed her in the past.
Vic turned up the studio lights to their fullest now and his ghost disappeared. In some spots, thick drips ran down the walls into an unholy havoc. With one of Christian’s sticks, she drew huge swirls and wide circles into the mess. This piece would be called Blue Hell. She loved its vigor. She had painted with her
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