Art on Fire (13 page)

“You would know.”

“You could draw me instead.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“Anyhow. I came to see if you want my stuff.”

“What stuff?”

“Any of it. I'm giving all of it away. I'm giving it away . . .” she had rehearsed this lie, “because I'm joining a new religion.”

“What religion?”

“It's complicated. It would take too long to explain. And you're working. Suffice it to say, whatever you don't take, I'll be giving away to charity.”

Francesca stared at her sister, searching for the truth. She didn't want to go to all the trouble of taking off her headphones, pausing the needle at the fourth cut of Born to Run, and following her sister down the hallway, just to be hoodwinked.

“I've already called the truck,” said Isabella.

“What truck?”

“The Goodwill truck! I told you!” She padded down the three steps and out into the hallway, then gestured emphatically—a big sweeping wave of her arm—for Francesca to follow. Slowly, cautiously, Francesca traversed the hallway and stepped into the white room. There was only one thing she wanted, and she spanned the walls until she spotted it hanging from a hook on the back of the door. She pointed to the white robe, faded to a tired yellow.

“That?” said Isabella. This was going to be harder than she thought.

“You said anything.”

Isabella had not expected to give away her fluffy bathrobe that always smelled so good, like fabric softener and bleach. Before she could reconsider, she popped up, rushed to the door, took down the robe from the peg, and draped it over her arm. She brought it, like a baby, to Francesca.

“Are you sure?” asked Francesca.

Isabella smiled for the first time in days. Her skin stretched in new directions. “You could wear it while you draw.”

“Thanks,” Francesca said. She patted Isabella's shoulder a few times and left quickly, holding the robe to her cheek. She bolted the attic door behind her.

Isabella felt a profound lack of clutter, like a cool breeze passing through the center of her body, where previously had been an obtrusion. Craving bigger change, she slipped her body between the twin bed and the wall and pushed with all her strength, until the stiff wheels
of the iron frame screeched across the whitewashed floors, etching gray tracks into the middle of the room. She swung the bed around and pressed it against the other wall, suddenly remembering the tiny window at the base of the wall, just inches above the floor of the old and oddly configured house. Panting from exertion, she slapped herself in the head. “Why didn't I think of this ten years ago?” she exclaimed as she bent down and peered through the smoky window, like Alice at the threshold of the tea party. Her giant knees pressed against the pane.

Through this porthole could be seen the very inside of the house next door, the kitchen nook, where the blinds were conveniently open. The light was on over the kitchen table; newspapers were scattered. Isabella reached into her nightstand and removed the opera glasses she'd received one year for Christmas. Through the lenses, she peered at specks of dust on the drop-leaf table, studied its well-oiled surface. A butcher-block counter joined two corner walls, its surface cluttered with mail. The door to the pantry was ajar, probably because someone had been in a hurry. Or else, there was a slob on the premises.

She discovered that by moving her face all the way to the right of the window, she could see into the living room as well. She concentrated her gaze on a figure sunk into the futon couch. It was the blond, leaning back plaintively, her eyes closed, her mouth barely moving. What was she doing? Isabella struggled to release the rusted window lock, then with a grunt, lifted the window up several inches along the rusty chain. Impatiently, she swatted away cobwebs and gritty black fragments of leaves, and lifted the storm window. She heard—very soft, soft as a breeze—a soprano singing an aria in a voice strained with impossible heartache and loneliness. It brought tears to her eyes. She watched the blond neighbor, her head in her hands, her bent knees spreading wide apart, as if they could no longer keep themselves together.

She didn't even notice herself reaching for the miniature spiral notebook with its shiny green cover, nor did she remember sliding the Bic pen off her nightstand and pressing it down until the ink sprang to life. Quietly, she wrote:
Opera at 2:30 pm. Faded jeans. Blond hair with M-shaped cowlick
. As she scribbled, the Big One entered the living room and sat timidly at the other end of the couch, her big
hands spread over her knees.
Footsteps big enough to shake the house
, Isabella wrote. They seemed to be discussing something very terrible, perhaps death or the loss of love after all these years, and she longed to know what it was that plagued them in the middle of the afternoon, in such a quaint, quiet house.

She jotted these questions in blue ink, invented their answers in red: The blond, a.k.a. the Little One, had loved an opera singer, Thalia, who tormented her, threw things at her, made passionate love to her, then left her for a man. Sappho, the golden retriever, was a stray who showed up one day on the doorstep. If the Big One had her way, she'd have brought home every stray in sight; she carried biscuits in her knapsack to curry their favor, preferring animals to all people. Except the blond. And who could blame her? She began to imagine the daily rituals of the lesbians next door, who had suddenly become her reason for living:
Grape-Nuts for breakfast. One reads, other brings in laundry. Hangs clothes on drying rack: jeans, sweaters, bras. Holds hips, moves her to side. Raises arms overhead, big yawn. Butt shaped like pumpkin
.

Mrs. Val Noonan was ecstatic when Isabella finally accepted her call. “Isabella! Darling!” she effused, her voice a tightrope of tension.

“I'm working on a new book.”

“That's fabulous! Marvelous! I knew you'd come around. You see? Isn't it all worth it, then? This being a genius? Isn't it? When you finally sit down and let it all spill out on the page?”

So many questions, thought Isabella. Clearly they're not meant to be answered.

“Tell me what it's called.”

“It's called . . .” Isabella hesitated, inventing a title. “It's called . . .
A Gift to the Universe
.”

“It is? That's fabulous! What a wonderful title! I'm so pleased for you, honey. You're such a tremendous talent. I knew you'd find your voice again. Pick up that pen. And not a minute too soon. It isn't fair, Bella darling, but if too much time passes between volumes, well, the public is very fickle. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” lied Isabella, who had long ago stopped listening, distracted by the entire book unfolding in her brain. “I have to go,” she said.

“Go. Go ahead. Skedaddle! Happy writing! I'll call next week.” Isabella wrote love poems to the blond in which she made observations about her sorrow. She mused how someone so beautiful could be so sad. She imagined the neighbors' morning routine (had to, since they closed the shades at night and often did not remember to open them again until early evening, when one or the other arrived home from work), describing how the blond—dressed only in a T-shirt, the hem reaching just below her underwear, tickling the tops of her thighs—delicately dipped two slices of rye bread into the toaster slots, poured steaming hot coffee into a round, white mug, then wrapped her clean hands around the bowl and sipped. Her breasts were firm. Her skin glowed like the inside of a burning candle.

Isabella seemed no longer to need sleep. Still, the thought of total sleeplessness made her nervous—as though sleep were one of the few vestiges of humanness she still possessed, and here it was, slipping away like all the others. Determined to rest, she'd switch off her bedside lamp at three or four in the morning, only to find herself wide-eyed and sharp-brained. She'd flick the light on again, retrieve her pen, masturbate once, twice, sometimes four times, continue to pour the words out on paper as if the book were already written in her head, just waiting to be captured like some witless animal. When she could not write, she reorganized her room, read Sylvia Plath, shaved her legs, curled her hair, applied her mother's makeup, removed it so she could apply it again. Sometimes, late at night, she'd run downstairs in sweatpants and a sweatshirt, barefoot, and take a few swigs of Smirnoff before heading out under the opalescent sky. She'd run her fingers across the neighbors' dusty aluminum siding, play with their driveway gravel, tickle their flowers. Sappho would bark. Mrs. Weinstein's cat flared its eyes from atop a metal trash can. Energy flushed her like fever. Even liquor was rendered impotent against her vim.

Sometimes in the afternoons, when Francesca returned from school, Isabella would knock briskly on her sister's door. She'd sit on the edge of Francesca's bed, knee shaking, and in a high-pitched voice, her eyes lit like jack o' lanterns, ramble in comma-less sentences about
her book. And then this will happen, she'd say. And when that happens they'll do this, which will make everything—here she'd mushroom her arms up above her head instead of uttering the word (it seemed, to Isabella, more powerful). Francesca would tolerate these chatty intrusions, mildly interested. Most of the time she would continue to sketch, half-listening to her record player, not ungrateful for the company, and aware that her sister was somehow afflicted.

Barely breathing between paragraphs, Isabella described her book to Mrs. Val Noonan on the telephone: “The two women have a picture-perfect life: whispered affection and hours of gentle caresses, pillow-talk late at night, long walks and gourmet meals. One cooks, the other does the dishes. Everything blissful. Got it? Until one day a runaway teenage girl climbs up onto the front porch, deposits her wrinkled, brown paper bag behind the pot of geraniums, and rings the doorbell. She throws herself into the blond's arms, tells some crazy story about having been raped by someone who called himself Jesus.”

“Jesus?” interrupted Mrs. Val Noonan.

“The women are devastated,” Isabella continued. “They take the girl in, draw a bath for her. Later, as they watch her sleeping like an angel, clutching a teddy bear, they think despairing thoughts about humanity. Their faith is shattered. They know it wasn't really Jesus, but still.”

“Yes, still.”

“Who would call himself Jesus and do that to a little girl?”

“Indeed—” Mrs. Val Noonan took a long drink, scribbled something on a piece of paper.

“They give the girl her own room at the top of the stairs, storing, you know, the sewing machine, the tool chest, musical instruments, etc. etc. But the girl ends up sleeping between them in the queen size bed, reassured by the two warm bodies on either side of her, the syncopated breathing.”

“So they're, are you saying they're . . .”

“What,” interrupted Isabella.

“They're not lesbians?”

“Of course they're lesbians. What—am I going too fast for you?”

She described the minutiae—what sort of lamp was beside the
girl's bed. What sort of cocoa she drank at night. She was not yet sure, she explained at a pace quicker than cricket's legs, whether the girl left the lumps floating around in the top of the cocoa or massacred them into submission. Also, she wasn't sure whether the blond smelled like roses or spice. And how often did the women have sex? What sort of sex did they have? Where was the girl while they did it? Who placed the gob of Herbal Essence shampoo on the girl's head when they bathed her? There was still research to do, she explained.

Mrs. Val Noonan had long since stopped scribbling, finished her drink, and poured another.

“Fall passes into winter, winter into spring,” continued Isabella. “And then, tada, in April, the Big One, sporting new gardening gloves the blond gave her for Christmas, goes outside onto the porch to turn over the soil in the geranium pot. (This, I guess, is what you people call the climax.) She pulls the pot toward her and discovers, behind it, pressed against the front of the house, the brown paper bag left by the girl so many months ago. She lifts the bag, soft as tissue, and opens it slowly, expecting an old sandwich or rotten fruit. Instead she finds $20,000 in hundred dollar bills.” Isabella stopped, breathless. “And that's all I know,” she said.

There was silence on the line. Isabella heard ice crack under the heavy heat of scotch. “Tell me, dear,” said Mrs. Val Noonan, “Where does the money come from?”