A Peculiar Grace Read online

  He followed the scholastic and athletic achievements of the Nussbaum children. The perfect boy and perfect younger sister. John and Nora. He did not clip these pieces but read carefully through. Not admitting he was searching for some glimmer of discord, some registered childhood unhappiness. The boy looked like his mother while the girl—poor child!—resembled her father with dark hair and a round moon face. He wouldn’t admit that running across her picture and not knowing her parents he would have thought her pretty and likely to be one of those girls who comes into her own significant beauty later than her school companions. Sometime in her twenties.

  And no way to know that even as he sat while the day sank toward evening, in the Bluffport pressroom an obituary and news story of a tragedy were being composed. All he knew was he was hungry and ready for a beer and only then remembered the girl left sleeping in a guest bedroom. He stood and stretched while he surveyed the yard below. Then headed down to see what he would see.

  THE VW SAT where they’d left it that morning but she was now walking on a stretch of the hardtop road beyond his driveway up and down similar to her walking in the woods earlier; a to and fro that had something of the mnemonic in it. Wearing his sweatpants which as he came close he saw bagged and dragged so her bare feet were covered in coiled bunches and his T-shirt so big the neckline almost revealed her left breast—the shirt twisted as she had made some attempt to tuck it in but only in front so it was badly skewed and flapped down behind her butt. Her hair was pressed flat on one side and high over her crown from sleep. A red pickup with work racks went by her, slowing and crossing the solid line to give her space—Roger Bolton would be talking about her next morning with his coffee at the store but if not Roger then someone soon.

  Going down the drive he noted where it emptied into the road marked a rough halfway point of her march so he simply walked out on the blacktop and waited for her. At the moment she was still walking away from him. Her head down and her arms not flailing but describing patterns balletesque in the air before her. She turned and saw him, dropped her arms and stopped.

  He knew she was not going to move. It was warmer here, out of the breeze and the blacktop radiated the day’s sun warmth back upward. The road curved beyond her. If not for that he would’ve waited her out but all it would take was one person to come too fast around that curve. So he walked, slow as he could make himself down to her. Three feet away he stopped. Hoping not so close to threaten but close enough to grab and drag her tumbling into the roadside ditch if he had to. She’d locked her fingers together over her lower belly and was digging them gently into the folds of his shirt. He guessed this was for comfort not for hurt. Someway to keep her sense of where she was. He had no idea.

  “Hey, Jessica,” he said easy as if they were on the porch. “I set out those old clothes of mine because I didn’t feel comfortable putting yours in the dryer. You get some sleep?”

  “You gave me a blanket too.” She went right on. “That room downstairs scared me. And my feet were cold so I came out to walk.”

  Already knowing he said, “What room downstairs?”

  Now the bright fire of earlier came back into her eyes. “The red room. It’s strange in there.”

  Steadfast externally he recoiled inward, not wanting to know her assessment. He said, “I sort of know what you mean. But my father did that work and we all doubt our father’s wisdom. What do you say, why don’t we walk back to the house and I’ll get some supper cooking? If you want we can walk together through that room and maybe I can explain it a little bit.” He reached out and feather boxed her shoulder. “Come on Jessica. Unless you helped yourself to something you haven’t eaten since early this morning and truth told I haven’t either.”

  She said, “What is it you want of me?”

  “Not a thing in the world. Nothing more than maybe sitting together and eating and maybe talking a little bit. If you want to.”

  Swiftly, “Who’ve you been talking with about me?”

  “Not a soul. If there’s some reason I should I one don’t know it and two wouldn’t know where to start. But I do have a question for you.”

  “What would that be?”

  “I’ve got part of a freezer of local meat but it’s getting slim pickings since I ate out of it all winter. And I didn’t even think to take anything out to thaw. So we’re going to have to make dinner out of cans—baked beans maybe with some bacon and new asparagus I cut this morning.”

  “I don’t eat meat. And I’ve had to eat plenty of food from cans. As long as I see it opened.”

  Only a half beat below the skittery paranoia he was inclined to agree. So he reached and took one of her hands and said, “Come on, let’s get off the road. Now, would you drink a beer with me? I like a beer sometimes the end of the day.”

  She looked at his hand wrapped around her own and said, “You let me pop the top.”

  That was enough. Her hand was a small tremor within his and he let go and turned back to the drive without waiting to see if she was following. But as if it was the most natural thing in the world he answered over his shoulder, “Of course you can.”

  Suddenly with his own tremor. Remembering the days when he would crouch in the aisle of the liquor store testing the seals on the bottles. Trusting nothing.

  OPEN BOTTLES OF beer in hand in the red room. So called because the plaster walls had been painted with numerous coats of simple barn paint. As well as the wide pine floorboards. The ceiling had been left pale oystershell plaster and the only light as if opposing the intent of the room was a slender old single-bulb unit with a knob-twist switch on the wall. Once accustomed to the room there was no other viable option—a measure of his father’s vision. But until that moment came it seemed there was not enough light to see those stranded wonders spread along the wall. A pair of deep leather armchairs sat almost back to back—the leather old and supple and constructed so whoever sat was within the rising folds of the arms with head tilted back so the walls were the only thing to see. Incongruous within the room for the standing observer, perfect once settled into. In the same way the light fixture diffused at perfect angles to the four walls.

  Four pieces each side by side on three of the walls. The fourth held smaller works that ran in an ascending random ladder from close to the baseboard to within inches of the ceiling in the opposite corner of that wall. All that was left. From time to time a letter from a curator would arrive, even these long years after his father’s death. Hewitt had a letter of response so often used it took him no more than five minutes when he did deign to respond—all the finished work had been sold in his father’s lifetime. And, with regrets but obeying his father’s demand upon his death all studies and sketches had been destroyed if you have further questions please contact and here Hewitt inserted the name and address of the family attorney who mercifully had died ten years ago. This arrangement pretty much took care of things. The red room was a secret from the world. As were the metal map cabinets his father had installed in the basement room with temperature and humidity controls that held several thousand sketches and studies ranging over his entire career. Even the one drawer that held his childhood charcoal sketches of Lympus and a handful of Amsterdam. All this according to Thomas Pearce’s disaffection with the art world in the decades preceding his death—no matter that his work consistently sold. His dictum was upon his death what work was not out in the world should remain that way. “The vultures,” he proclaimed, “may swoop but not land. If they dismiss or categorize me now, offer them nothing toward their careerist reflections.”

  He’d been compared to Wyeth without that artist’s draftsmanship; a colorist of the pastoral; a bold relic of social realism; an artist whose range and temperament could not comprehend the postwar explosion of bounds. “I’m not Pollock,” he’d said. “And have no interest in attempting to be.”

  For Hewitt of most importance was knowing however bad things got he had his own refuge to go into. No longer a midnight black thick
et but the place of controlled fire and heat. Where things could be reshaped. Or find the shape they sought. Or his shape found within them. And knew it had been the same for his father. A studio; a forge.

  BUT SHE DIDN’T know or understand the forge yet. It was enough to be sipping beer together and following her through the room. She would peer at some things and then step away without speaking and others she’d lean close and study. She said, “This is so strange.”

  He offered no help. He spent only a few evenings a year here now, mostly in winter. His friends knew better than to ask admittance although the door, always shut, was never locked. Some likely considered it a shrine best not mentioned. The only exceptions being his old girlfriend Amber Potwin who’d grown up knowing his father, and his friend Walter who had literally saved his life.

  After her first comment she said nothing more but wandered slowly around the room, stopping, studying, moving away and then back. Sometimes abruptly stopping her circuit to cross back to view again one painting or another. After a while he became aware she was traveling between three paintings, two full size and one of the small ones on what he called the ladder wall. At this point he decided to leave her—this was a person whose relation to time was as skewed as her sense of direction and place. He still didn’t know why she was up a back road in Vermont trying to get to Texas.

  In the kitchen he popped another beer and went into the pantry and considered the shelves. All he had to go on were the stalks of asparagus and she did not eat meat. He stood blank. Then realized he wanted to give her comfort, some food simple and pleasant that would give her a sense of well-being, so quickly settled on a can of cream of asparagus soup with the asparagus steamed quickly and cut bite-size to float on top. Cheese toast—a light spread of butter and mustard on the bread under the cheese and paprika on top. That should do it.

  Out the kitchen windows the long twilight settled so the sky in the west mirrored faintly the deep green sudden and new over the land. He glanced at the old radio on the shelf over the sink but left it off. The Trading Post call-in was not wanted this evening. He was not alone in the house. He couldn’t hear her, her bare feet on the floorboards but this didn’t matter. She was there.

  Instead of the ease of the propane burners he walked through the pantry and down five steps into the woodshed and split stovewood and gathered kindling and returned to build a fire in the range. He opened the soup into a saucepan and pushed it to the rear of the stove which would warm soon enough but without the sudden surge of heat that would require his attention. He prepared the bread and cheese and laid them on a cookie sheet to wait for the oven and very nearly the moment to eat. The fire was popping now. He opened the firebox door and added three splits of firewood and then lifted the cast-iron plate from the rangetop closest to the firebox and set a pot with a half cup of water directly over the fire. He cut the asparagus and dropped the pieces in to boil, watched them turn bright green and drained the water off, running cold water over the stalks to hold them until the soup was ready.

  EMPTY SOUP BOWLS with a membrane of pale greenish white dried on the inner edges, small plates with darkened crumbs of toast. Hewitt had considered the small candelabra of white porcelain decorated with tea roses and fragile petals but rejected it for fear of appearing romantic and settled on the frosted fixture above the sink with its forty-watt bulb that threw a soft slantwise light over the room. She declined another beer but of her own accord had taken a mason jar and filled it with the bitter-cold spring water and standing at the sink drank it down and filled it again before coming to the table. She thanked him for the food before they sat down and she opened her paper napkin and spread it over her lap, a subconscious gesture, oddly touching given the filthy condition she appeared unaware of when found this morning and he saw a younger different version of herself. Again the contrast as she leaned over her bowl in intense concentration suggesting that if she looked away the soup and toast might disappear even as she swept her spoon gently through the soup away from her before lifting it easily to her mouth. Table manners. Carried with her through times and places he could only guess at.

  She looked up from the empty bowl.

  “Was he terrible?”

  Hewitt wasn’t sure how to take this. “How do you mean?”

  “For somebody to see things that way. It bunches my brain just looking at those pictures. I can’t imagine what it would be like to make things like that. Was he terrible to be around?”

  “Well,” Hewitt said, treading carefully. “When he was working we knew better than to bother him. And if things weren’t going well, if he was having a hard time with a piece he could be quiet and sort of lost from us for however long it took to work things out. But no, he was not terrible. Of course you never know what a person hides from their children.”

  Very fast. “Oh yes you do. You most certainly do. Children always know. Didn’t you? Nothing’s ever hidden.”

  He said, “First of all they’re paintings not pictures. And maybe you’re right about things not being hidden. Or being able to be. He had his moments, his sorrows.”

  She squinted at Hewitt. Then said, “Do you care what I think about those paintings?”

  “Sure. I’m always curious.” The truth being he had long since stopped caring about theories and opinions. But not hers. Whatever she saw might be different, surely was.

  “I think part of his soul was burned. And the paintings were the only way he could find through to the other side of that and then they came forth and he …” She paused and he waited. She said, “Rested. They allowed him some peace.”

  Hewitt paused. Her idea was simplistic, near absurdly typical. What was arresting was her choice of words. That long-ago fire. By random synaptic collision of her own experience she’d struck upon something he was not about to reveal.

  So he nodded and said, “I guess you’re right. He never would talk about why he made what he did. But then, not many people do.”

  “You think?”

  “I do. Mostly.”

  “Because it took the power away from him?”

  “I couldn’t say.”

  She was quiet and then said, “So those paintings. Are they the only ones he made?”

  “They’re the only ones I still have.”

  “So there were others. What happened to those?”

  “Well. He sold a few.”

  She cocked her head as if this was somehow a new idea. “Did he make a living from them?”

  Casual as could be Hewitt said, “I guess it helped some when he sold one. I wouldn’t call it a living though.” A small fortune was more like it and none of her business. He reminded himself to turn the key in the red room door that night. If she stayed. Which was seeming more likely. And then decided when she did leave, that night or the next day or whenever, he’d lock things up for a few days. Because if nothing else he’d learned over the years that the more fractures in a person the greater chance some were hidden for good reasons.

  Her voice was sudden, abrupt, that deep sweet voice scraping with frustration. “I would give anything to be able to do something like that, some way I could take even the smallest portion of what’s inside and get it out in a way I could see. I’d think, every time you could do that, it’s got to cut back some of what pours round and round. I wish I could. But I wouldn’t know where to start.” Then she laughed. “But it wouldn’t be painting. I had an art teacher in eighth grade tell me I had no sense of perspective. Now that I think about it, that was probably the sum of my education. No perspective. You know what I mean?”

  He said, “I always thought real perspective depended on where you’re standing. Move ten feet and it changes. Half a mile and it changes again.” He paused and took a chance. “A thousand miles and who can say?”

  She smiled and this time it was just a smile and she was a pretty girl. “That’s good,” she said. “I like that.”

  They sat silent. Hewitt liked that she had relaxed. There was no reason to thin
k she would stay that way but he didn’t want to be the one to break it, to take it away. Both needed this moment of grace and both, wordless, knew it. Burning wood popped in the range.

  “So Jessica,” Hewitt finally said. “How did you end up here? It’s not on any route to Texas or much of anywhere else, as far as I can figure.”

  “I got turned around.” Her eyes wide, bright.

  Well yes turned around. Hewitt understood that well enough. But wouldn’t quite leave it there. “So.” Drawing the word out. “Did you think it was a shortcut somehow when you went up my hillside into the woods last night?”

  “I saw the track went on and there weren’t any cars around and anyway I had to quit. I was done in. That’s the truth.”

  No arguing with that. The firebox was dying down but the bulk of the stove was warm and the room was gaining that soft glow. If it radiated from him that was fine—it was enough that it came at all. Balanced against these soft evenings were the years when whisky was only so good it allowed him to weep. That he now looked back upon not with embarrassment but something more akin to wonder. The melancholy of loss when that terrible raging subsided—the loss yet one more small deprivation from what he regarded as his rightful essential self. From that sprig of time his life thus far was laid out. As if planned. Except that he was patient. Things had changed more than once and this, reasonably speaking, meant the odds were they might turn yet again. A foolish heart perhaps but better than no heart at all.

  He nodded and said, “I know how that feels.”

  “Don’t you be taking those medications.”

  “I don’t. But it sounds like maybe you have.” Casual as could be but still he watched her and saw movement of some sort. A tightening. Constriction. Her face had closed.

  She stood and walked to the sink and stood facing the dark version of her face in the window over the sink and then she turned and said, “I can’t ever have babies.”