Page 66 - WTP Vol. X #2

Dark Passage (continued from preceding page) ing. I’ll leave you be.”
It started with a thigh. A long curvaceous one. Vic drew a harsh line down the center of her canvas and added a grand curve. Her arm swept up high. She slashed in black lines at angles and rounded their tips into thick curves. The curves became parts of a wom- an’s body—breasts, thighs, a spine dropped forward. Hers, the ingénue’s—it did not matter. Vic painted large fleshy areas of pink. The pink, which dominated the canvas, began to drip, to ooze. Christian’s torso came in from the side. She drew a black mouth on the canvas and stepped back. It all seemed monstrous. The figures’ pink bodily fluids merged into one large obscene being. Vic felt horrified that Christian had wanted Leslie to live in their home. Vic had scraped layers of gnarled paint off the side porch; Christian had sistered the side of angling metal against dam- aged basement beams. Together, they had dug irriga- tion trenches out back for their vegetable garden. And then, as if to defy the sanctity of what they had created, Christian needed Leslie to feed his lust and Vic to keep their house in order—all under one roof.
Vic worked so fast that she felt light-headed. She put down her brushes and opened the barn door to inhale the fresh air. Grace was lost in the snare of bushes beside the house, immersed in a job that Christian used to do. Steady now, Vic walked back in- side and returned to her canvas. Her monster needed eyes. Vic painted two black circles that stuck together. Eyes rimmed in black glasses like her own. Eyes that saw everything. Vic felt victorious.
She crouched. Her thumb played with a nail that she plucked from the floor. Abruptly, she stood up and scratched the edges of her canvas. These quick marks, these lacerations that had irked Alfred in the past, calmed her. Nothing more needed to be done. She signed VIC in the right corner and sank down again, bending her head into her crossed hands.
Grace stepped inside, the shears still in her hand. “Unbelievable. You’ve done it.” She leaned close be- side her friend.
Vic clasped Grace’s free hand.
Grace hesitated. “Maybe you don’t want to hear this. But Alfred may have done you a favor. These rich pinks.” Her voice stretched the word into two syl- lables, lingering on the whistling sound of the ks. “They’re part of you.”
Vic smiled ruefully. “Grace, I’m not finished with the shades of night. Don’t rush me.”
Grace put down the shears. “Let me say it a different
way. Stay with this amazing rhythm, the way you handle the paint and move it.”
Vic stood and ramped up the lights to see her work better. Her raw blue marks, still oceanic after this morning’s clean up, seemed alive. Yet Three, her new painting with its crazy forms, commanded the space. Vic felt satisfied. She shut off the lights and called to Grace, “I’m starving. Will you make me a fat omelet?”
6
Vic sat at the window of The Stable Gallery in South- ampton. Her exhibit Dark Passage was on display and the show would open that Saturday. She, the gal- lery owner Rebecca, and the workmen had dragged the huge canvases back and forth until they felt exhausted. “This order is right,” Rebecca had an- nounced with pride. The New York gallery directors, in words that echoed Alfred’s, had wanted Christian’s art first. They were far less interested in the high- lights of Vic’s artistic journey. She had felt disgusted. After months of trying, she resigned herself to another path. The Stable Gallery was different. The owner liked her daring paintings. “Why don’t we call your show A Great Wave of Dark and White?”
“No. Dark Passage,” Vic said. And it stuck.
The opening would be crowded. Grace would come early with a band of fellow women artists. The press, as well as her nosy neighbors, would show up. Al- fred’s restored Bel Air—that “humble bug” with its small rear fins—would not block the gallery’s door- way. In all their years of friendship, he had never once climbed the stairs to her upstairs studio. It had always been Christian first.
Vic clutched a glass of cold Chablis, a token of friend- ship from Rebecca. The wine tickled her throat. As she drank it, her hand smoothed her warm earlobe. She felt a deep sorrow. Christian would not be here on Saturday. To celebrate, he might have cooked up pork with sliced mushrooms and bay leaves, served on spaghetti. That had been his favorite dish. What could she do? Perhaps Christian lurked in the studio, eyeing Three. He might not like its fierce rapturous pinks. He might find her nocturnal paintings too full of turmoil. She didn’t care.
Wolfson is a Pushcart Prize nominee. Her stories have appeared in
Prime Number Magazine, The Summerset Review, Vestal Review, Other Voices, and SLAB. Pam earned an MA in Literature from the University of Toronto and was awarded a merit scholarship to the Southampton Writers Conference. She has served as an art editor for Davis Press and David Godine Press. “Dark Passage” is part of her evolving short story collection about women and art. Wolfson is both a painter and a writer.