Art on Fire (27 page)

“JALOPY?” Francesca laughed. She was high, thank goodness; her mood was greatly improved. “Let me guess: they're upset because I don't drive. They're opposed to nondriving lesbians who look like men.”

Shanta ignored Francesca, not amused, focused on deconstructing the acronym, one letter at a time, as she pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant where the dinner was taking place. They waited behind two other cars for valet parking. “I think it's . . .” She spoke slowly, “
Jews . . . and Lesbians . . . of Pride
—Yes! Something like that.”

“What's their fucking problem?”

“They object to your internalized anti-Semitism.”

“What internalized anti-Semitism?”

“Well, you are rather quiet about the whole thing.” Shanta pulled up alongside a young boy wearing eyeshadow and a light green suit. She handed him the keys and winked at him. “You look fabulous, sugar.”

“And so do you, honey.” He batted his lashes.

For a moment, Francesca did not know who she was, where she'd come from. Was she Jewish? Had she forgotten that she was Jewish? Why had she never thought of this? She shook her head and giggled as a tall—very, very tall—couple of middle-aged men in taffeta crossed before them. Shanta introduced them as Joan and Bette. Shanta knew everyone at the event, it seemed. The greetings rolled in, one after another, while Francesca stood smiling—a reluctant icon of her community—which seemed to be all that was required of her.

Abandoned when deSilva left Cape Cod to return to New Haven on March 9, 1987, the gargantuan
Bunyan
is a wry parody on the paternalistic folktale of the same name. Like
Reality Has Intruded Here, Bunyan
was executed upon a door appropriated from a demolished house down the street from Charlotte Wallace's home.
⁷⁰
But unlike
Reality Has Intruded Here
, which lures the viewer closer,
Bunyan
demands that the viewer step all the way to the back of the museum to survey the 10' x 4' work in its entirety. In its simplest incarnation,
Bunyan
is a portrait of the behemoth American folk hero; upon closer inspection, and in conjunction with the endless deconstruction to which it has been subjected,
Bunyan
is a complex self-portrait, a cultural, personal, and political parody in which the artist hyperbolizes her gender rebellion, transforming herself into an “American ultra-butch,”
⁷¹
a deviant icon, blatantly embodying classic, stereotypical male attributes: size, strength, masculinity.

Writes Phillip Hamil in the 1990 essay “Deconstructing deSilva,” “[In
Bunyan]
. . . deSilva's suit of armor is in-deconstructible . . . no matter from what angle she is attacked—e.g., her choice of the mega-male, hyper-American folk hero as an alter ego—she subverts our need to censure and destroy. She invites our castigation, assures us she can take it, that she is tougher than any man.”
⁷²
Hamil goes on to liken public resistance to
Bunyan
to the myopia that greeted Van Gogh, Beckett, and James
Joyce before their work was, finally, sanctified.

Bunyan
, as deSilva portrays him/her, is tall and broad, with huge feet firmly planted in creased black boots, the toes encrusted with hardened, red mud. One shoe is unlaced, lending an unexpected humanity to the work, a feeling of daft imperfection, even slovenliness—characteristics not usually attributed to the legendary logger, the tireless worker, fantasy of the American Dream. Woolen pants cover Bunyan's sturdy legs, held in place by matching red suspenders. He/she wears a faded black Henley underneath a red and black checked flannel hunting jacket. His/her hands are giant, dirty, with thick, yellowed nails. One elbow is bent, the forearm resting upon a huge ax, its metal gleaming, even in the smoky afternoon light of the Pacific Northwest. The other hand rests modestly at his/her side, sporting a gold wedding band. The name of Bunyan's beloved blue ox,
Babe
, is printed in dark blue clouds across the hazy sky, though the animal itself is nowhere depicted.
⁷³

And then, lo and behold, resting upon the Leviathan shoulders of this American icon of masculinity, is the faintly bearded face of Francesca deSilva. “One is simply in shock,” writes Clara Feinstein in her review of the deSilva Retrospective at the Whitney, “rather like a surprise encounter with a charging bull . . . The viewer is forced to stand with his [sic] head snapped back, gaping at this monstrosity that stretches nearly as high as the ceiling . . . [its] crude face mocks you for paying it any attention—which, of course, it does not deserve. It is less a painting than an assault.”
⁷⁴

Lucinda Dialo asserts that one must consult the legend in order to effectively examine Bunyan. In
Artful Deviation: An Examination of Gender Treachery in Woolf's Orlando and deSilva's Bunyan
, she writes, “The original legend of
Paul Bunyan
is as perverse as any painting Francesca deSilva could have created. American as indigestion, it oozes excess, consumerism, machismo, and homoeroticism. Some renditions claim the giant's head ‘penetrated the sky.' That he ‘dismembered redwood trees and used the needles of their branches to comb his meticulous moustache.' Others report he was—only!—the size of three-story buildings, ‘towering over, but walking humbly amongst regular folk.' And while Bunyan's wife is mentioned on rare occasion—she is referred to only as Mrs. Bunyan—we are told nothing about her but that she was handsome and large. One hopes very large.”
⁷⁵

This casual disinterest in females on the part of a huge, handsome, and by all accounts kempt man has not escaped postmodernists, who speculate endlessly about Paul Bunyan's sexual orientation. Such speculation, is, of course, “supported” by selected passages from the multitudinous tellings of the legend. R. Randy Dorff, Ph.D., Transgendered Activist, Queer Theorist, and Chair of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered Department of Queer Cultural Studies at Harvard University claims that Babe, Bunyan's “faithful, huge [i.e., well-hung] blue ox is a metaphorical surrogate for Bunyan's gay lover.”
⁷⁶
He also raises the question of a “genital vacuum” in the painting, resulting in the absence of “identification of or commitment to a specific gender.
The absence of a defined link between the female head and the well-endowed masculine body points out a conflict within the artist.”
⁷⁷
He disputes the classification of Bunyan as hypo-realism (or pseudo-realism, as it would later be called) and, instead, calls it “metanarcissistic self-portraiture . . . In other words, wish fulfillment—the painter portraying her self as she would like to be seen, hyperbolizing her desire, emphasizing her wish to embody the ultimate specimen of the dominant gender—a male, macho giant. Bunyan,” writes Dorff, “attacks at the most primal level; it depicts the male's worst nightmare: a giant dyke with an ax.”
⁷⁸

To celebrate Isabella's 25th birthday, Vivian invited an array of her own acquaintances for a barbecue. Only an hour or so before the guests were due to arrive, Isabella lay with legs spread beneath the faucet of the bathtub; thousands, even millions of fingers tapped her clitoris until she shook and clenched the porcelain edges, gritting her teeth, fierce in her determination to rid herself forever of desire. How much longer could she go unintroduced to oral pleasure, without words whispered close to the earlobes, fingers pressing the knobs of her spine? She was too old to be sexless and knew she could not—would not!—live much longer. Hence, there was no point in saving herself. And though she sensed there were problems next door, she was not confident that LeeAnn Frank's (i.e., the Little One) fan of blond hair would soon be spread across her yellowed pillowcase.

Six years had passed since her suicide attempt. The details were vague: an uncooperative Mustang, her sister and the Chinese girl getting it on in the attic. She'd woken in a hospital room, an oxygen mask over her face, her head throbbing so hard it seemed someone was inside, hitting her skull with a hammer. The first sight upon opening her eyes had been Vivian blowing long gray streams of smoke out the tiny crack of an open window. She'd never felt so sick, so horrible, so repentant. She'd promised her parents: never again. No more suicide attempts. They were relieved, if not wholly convinced.

Isabella moved into the attic, where she hoped to be afforded maximum privacy with which to focus on her novel. Really, really focus, she told Mrs. Val Noonan. Still, she maintained an arsenal of pills and vodka just in case. It wasn't long before she'd abandoned
A Gift to the Universe
and begun a volume of sestinas in the voice of Sylvia Plath. But this proved more difficult than it had initially seemed. Over
and over Isabella struggled to use the word “oven” in six stanzas without resorting to mentions of cooking or the holocaust.

“Perhaps you are focusing too much on the suicide. Are you aware that she went to Smith?” Mrs. Val Noonan had suggested, always trying to work her alma mater into any conversation. Once again, Isabella had tried to articulate the importance of suicide, how it was to her what, say, Vermont was to Frost, Maude Gonne to Yeats, the Self to May Sarton.

Vivian let Isabella borrow a light-green, ultrasuede dress to wear to the party. Its deep plunge highlighted Isabella's ample cleavage. Vivian herself donned a bright orange dress with white sandals, a bold choice that drew out her bain-de-soleil tan. Her veined hands ended in slick painted nails, manicured smooth, curved at the edges, the coffee-colored shells long enough to conjure femininity, short enough to assert competence.

The guests arrived in groups. Alfonse manned the grill, pressing down on the burgers so he could watch the fat hit the hot coals, while Vivian adjusted napkins and checked to see that the citronella candles were working. Isabella stood alone against the house, sworn to remain sober. Must not embarrass Mom, she repeated like a mantra.

And then, emerging from around the side of the house, sulking behind his parents, appeared Aaron Newman. Like an angel. He was the stepson of Joycie Newman, a partner at Kasselbaum Kasselbaum Steele, the New Haven law firm where Vivian worked as a paralegal. Vivian worshipped Joycie the way girls adore, say, Julie Andrews, always describing her as “a beautiful, brilliant black lady.” Each time she said it, she wondered whether Joycie would take offense at her including the word “black” in her description, or whether it would be more insulting if she omitted it. Joycie's four books on women's prisons, all autographed, dominated the shelves in the DeSilva living room, their stark white covers having long ago usurped the volumes on raising a gifted child.

Isabella watched as Aaron Newman skulked behind his stepmother and father, practically yawning from boredom. He was blond and thin, not quite a boy, nor a girl. Something much more interesting. She knew she could push him around if it came to that, imagined that
having him on top of her would be like a fine quilt, his weight evenly distributed, covering her limbs. His lithe body and smooth fingers made her nipples hard.

She shifted her feet and leaned her body against the house, tucked two fingers under a rotting shingle, and swallowed hard. “God,” she whispered.

“Say hello to Joycie, Terence, and Aaron,” Vivian demanded cheerfully.

Isabella forced a smile and glanced down nervously, suddenly worried that something was wrong with her dress—her breasts were exposed or she'd spilled something on the front.

Alfonse came over and shook everyone's hand. His apron, on which was printed “Life is too short to drink cheap wine,” was already splattered with grease. Vivian pointed at the stains disapprovingly, and said “Oh, Al! I can't take you anywhere,” then shook her head at Joycie. All the adults but Alfonse scattered; still Aaron remained. He stood near Isabella and faced front.

“Nice dress,” he smiled.

“Thanks. Is that your mother?” Isabella asked.

“That's not really possible,” said Aaron.

“Oh,” Isabella nodded. “Because she's black?”

“No. Because she's only 35. She'd had to have had me when she was, uh . . .”

Isabella knew the answer; still she waited. He was supposed to be some sort of whiz kid, according to Vivian.

“Thirteen,” he said finally. “Don't think so,” he flashed a sarcastic smile, then bent over and took a beer from the cooler.

“I like her tights,” Isabella said.

“Yeah,” he surveyed his stepmother. “She loves purple.”

Isabella watched as he twisted the cap. She heard the crack of gas. The cold steam curled above the brown lip of the bottle. Aaron threw his head back and took a long drink, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down like something stuck in his throat. She listened for the sound of the beer maneuvering around this huge, centrally located obtrusion, but there was no evidence of a struggle. God, she thought, I would kill for one sip. She praised herself for having had the foresight
to wedge a bottle of Smirnoff's between the oil burner and the basement wall. And then, too, there was the emergency stash in the attic.

“You look beautiful, baby,” Alfonse touched her back on his way to the grill, nodded at Aaron, scrutinizing his tennis shoes and slack, faded jeans.

Isabella felt delicate and feminine. Like a piece of glass on a windowsill refracting the late afternoon light. Like Natalie Wood in
West Side Story
. She wished she could speak in a breathy voice, laugh up and down the scale, cover her mouth shyly with two fingers. Vivien Leigh in
Gone with the Wind
. Catherine in the presence of Heathcliff. Anna Karenina. Madame Bovary. Did a woman ever run out of inimitable role models?