Art on Fire (30 page)

“I was expecting Suzy Bishop.”

Lisa smiled, pleased with herself. “Suzy Bishop. That was fucking brilliant. Right?”

“Yeah. But I knew.”

“You did not.”

Francesca nodded, turning away from Lisa, her face cracking into a sly smile. “I did,” she whispered. “Not consciously. But somewhere in here,” she pointed to a place between her heart and her stomach, “I knew.” Slowly she pressed her mouth to Lisa with lips ajar, as if this modicum of restraint would preserve her. But Lisa leaned in and with one heavy breath, parted Francesca's lips.

There in the cabin, where Francesca felt more like a man than a woman, more like an artist than a man, she kissed Lisa in the intimate cool of autumn, surrounded by her paintings and the late afternoon light. She felt herself float out of her body, out of the world. Her existence became only this: kissing Lisa. Hard. Then harder still, mouth straining open, tongue venturing as far as it would go. She tasted the inside of Lisa, licked the still familiar wide lips, the square teeth. Instead of the lavender oil Lisa wore in her dreams, the faint odor of smoke and onions lingered on her fingers and lips.
Francesca's body flooded with desire. With longing, and sadness and, no matter how she tried to deny it, tidal waves of genuine, never-to-be-duplicated love.

One cannot discuss
Study of White Figure in Window
without first addressing the more complex issue: How much does knowledge of an artist's personal life skew our interpretation of her work? Would this painting hold even a fraction of the interest it has generated if we knew nothing of deSilva's tormented relationship with her sister, her struggles with depression and a less than nurturing childhood spent largely in an attic room, the fact that the painting was hidden beneath her bed, that deSilva returned to New Haven shortly after its completion and there died in a strange fire, the cause of which has never been determined?

deSilva completed
Study of White Figure in Window
during her final months in Truro. Upon finishing the work, she hid it under her bed where it gathered dust; the corners of the stretcher became reinforced by cobwebs. The wood grew slack from swelling and shrinking with the changing seasons. It was not until after Francesca's death in 1989 that Charlotte Wallace happened upon the canvas. Ever since its discovery, the quiet, arguably unremarkable painting has been the subject of relentless probing and analysis.

In his essay, “Live Fast, Die Young, Watch the Vultures Feed,” Phillip Hamil expresses his deep dismay about the “junk addiction”
⁷⁹
he claims has afflicted both the academy and the public. “I'd like to think this lowly preoccupation is a misguided quest for truth. But I am convinced it lays bare a
more insidious problem: a culturally sanctioned lack of curiosity that impels us to simplify works of art never intended to be simple. Art is not a code meant to be deciphered, as in ‘this object correlates with this object in the artist's childhood,' and so forth.

What would be the point of art if all it required for its appreciation were a catalog of illicit facts? Imagine if, upon visiting a museum, we were handed such a pamphlet, detailing not where the artist trained and with whom, his influences and colleagues, the various evolutions of his work, but instead with whom he slept, whether or not he cheated on his wife and molested his children, his various mental maladies, concluding, perhaps, with some chatty anecdote about the time he slept it off on the village green, or a neighbor's account of how his father beat him nightly with a two-by-four.”
⁸⁰

At first glance,
Study of White Figure in Window
is almost commonplace in its subject: A ghostly, faceless woman is huddled beside a tiny attic window. Her rounded shoulders abut the sloped wall behind her. She is faded and blurred as cotton washed a hundred times, and stares wistfully out the window and down at something unseen but clearly important. Covering her form, bumpy as a rock buried in riverside soil, a thick white robe gathers in folds. The belt is unknotted, hangs down with defeat; its edges graze the dirty wooden floor. Rainy light, the color of watered-down wine, shades her face, shrouds uncertain cheekbones and a blunted chin. A wilted wasp nest of hair balances precariously and heavily on her head, as if it were something she could not shake (representing, perhaps, the constraints of
femininity). The strands are faded, the ends ragged as tinsel. She is enervated, resigned; she no longer resists or pursues anything. She appears atrophied, frozen in the same position for an eternity.

It has been speculated that the subject is a prisoner, a madwoman in the attic, someone's crazy aunt, even Charlotte Perkins Gilman (an author both Isabella and Francesca admired). Whoever she is, she seems suspended between life and death, her eyelids barely open, her mouth parted just enough to permit entry to only the slimmest sheathes of air.

This quietly devastating work asks many questions and answers none. The prevailing interpretation is that
Study of White Figure in Window
is a portrait of de-Silva's estranged sister, Isabella: The white bathrobe, the positioning of the subject voyeuristically peering out the window, the despondent posture all support this theory. Still the same details could as easily position
Study of White Figure in Window
as a self-portrait. Lucinda Dialo writes extensively about
Study of White Figure in Window
in
Women Paint
!:

“The artist's treatment of her gentle painting is tremendously significant. deSilva banished the painting to a dark and dusty fate. This act serves as a metaphor upon a metaphor. The exile of the painting furthers its meaning: that of a woman locked away because she is inferior, a woman who cannot confront the harsh censure and ostracism of an insensitive society. The painting, analogously, reveals too much about its artist, makes her vulnerable and, it might be said, occasions its banishment to a space under the bed where it can be both protected from public scrutiny
and prevented from bringing shame upon its creator.

    
“The feminist content of
Study of White Figure in Window
cannot be overstated. The subject is not Isabella or Charlotte Perkins Gilman or Jane Eyre, nor is it Francesca deSilva herself: it is Every-woman. Everywoman who could not assimilate, could not marry and push the stroller down the cheery street, who prefers a life of isolation to the untenable pain of exposure. deSilva hid the painting away to protect herself, sensing, and with eerie accuracy, that the public would not appreciate a simple, sad portrait of a woman.”
⁸¹

Hamil's rant against junk addiction notwithstanding, it is difficult, if not impossible, to turn a blind eye toward the odd parallels between the subject of
Study of White Figure in Window
and each of the D/deSilva sisters.

Psychiatrists May Jones and Ann Particip claim, even insist that
Study of White Figure in Window
gives credence to their hypothesis of the “inexplicable connectedness among siblings. Evident in this painting,” the scientists posit, “is the seamless merging of personae. The figure, dressed in the white robe and peering out the window—much as Isabella might have done in Francesca's memory—is situated in the attic, Francesca's childhood room. Even more uncanny is that during the time deSilva worked on
Study of White Figure in Window
, her family of origin, with whom she'd had no contact for eight years, was in upheaval: Isabella was institutionalized, Alfonse and Vivian separated for a time, and Evelyn was suffering the onset of a devastating illness. How do we explain
this synchronicity in the face of prolonged separation and emotional distance, if not through a genetic connectedness, one impervious to external circumstances?”
⁸²

“This is one of those things someone should have taught you a long time ago,” Lisa said, pulling her car up alongside the pay phone and climbing out. “Scoot over.”

Francesca shook her head.

“Francesca, come on. You need to be able to drive. What, are you going to ride a bicycle to your show in New Haven?”

“I'm not going to go to my show in New Haven.” She crossed her arms.

“It's very easy.” Lisa tapped on the window and motioned, once again, for Francesca to shift over into the driver's seat. She opened the door and took from Francesca the two large coffees, assumed custody of the grease-stained bag of oversized blueberry muffins. “Move over,” she said, calmly.

Francesca obeyed, then sat stiff in the driver's seat, waiting for further instruction. She put her hands on the wheel and felt the old car rattle under her fingers. “Don't make me do this,” she said.

“You love when I make you do things.”

“Yeah. Not this.”

“Move the seat back. Go on.” Lisa bent over and pulled back on the lever attached to the driver's seat; gently she pushed the seat backward. “Ready?” she asked. Without waiting for Francesca's reply, she shifted the car into drive. Slowly, it began to drift. “Just steer, and when you're ready to go faster, step on the gas. Gently.”

“Do you know how many women have tried to get me to drive?” asked Francesca.

Lisa shook her head. “How many?”

“At least three. My grandmother. Charlotte. This friend of mine. And you. Four. And you're the only one who has succeeded.”
Francesca grabbed the wheel and let the car putter along the side street, eventually accelerating to 30 mph, hugging the side of the road, panicked each time a car neared on the opposite side of the street.

“How's it feel?”

“I hate it,” said Francesca. “It feels unnatural.”

“Of course it does. It takes time.”

Francesca shook her head, disbelieving.

“Pull onto Route 6. Go on,” Lisa said.

Francesca clutched the wheel with both hands as she sped up and pulled onto the highway. For a quick moment she removed her right hand from the wheel to adjust the rearview mirror, which she checked repeatedly as she crawled along in the right lane.

“You have to go faster,” said Lisa. “The speed limit is 45. You need to go at least 35.” She put her hand on Francesca's knee, for comfort.

Francesca reached 35, then 42 before pulling off at the first rest area and parking—roughly—beneath the spattered shade of a pine tree. “Man,” she sighed and pushed in the cigarette lighter.

“It doesn't work,” Lisa said, finding an old book of matches on the floor. “I hate this car.”

“I'll get you a new one.”

“I hate my life,” Lisa said. “Would you get me a new one?” She removed a bent joint from her shirt pocket.

“You should play chess again,” Francesca said. “Maybe by denying yourself chess, you are sabotaging your happiness.”

“That's very American,” Lisa said, “But not at all Chinese. We don't worry about happiness.”

“But you are American.”

Lisa shrugged. “In this way, I am Chinese.”

“So you're never going to play again?”

“I play. I teach these old guys where my father goes during the day. I play with them. I just don't want to compete.”

“Since when?”

Lisa hesitated. “I don't want to tell you this. I've never told anyone this.”

“Tell me.”

She took a long hit of the joint, exhaled, then waited for the pot
to alter her mood. Even a little. “I haven't wanted to play since I lost to this kid a few years ago.”

“What kid?”

“This faggot kid in this gymnasium in Bridgeport. The game was on the twelfth floor in this decrepit factory building with only one malfunctioning elevator that stopped just a few feet above the floor, so you had to hop down. There were huge dusty windows all the way across the length of the gym, flooding the room in this steely, depressing city light. I told myself I was doing it for the money—there was a $3,000 prize—but it was more complicated than that. I needed to win. My ego needed a win.

“My father came and sat a few feet away and nodded his head every time I did something right—there weren't too many instances of that. The rest of the time, he stared straight ahead. At nothing. Other than our being the only Chinese people there, you'd never guess we were related. Finally, I followed his gaze to see what the fuck he was looking at—” Here she traced the air with her finger, remembering. “All the way across the gymnasium. There was a sign that said:
Return Basketballs to the Closet
. That's what he stared at. A fucking sign.”

“He's a prick. He's always been a prick.”

“Yeah. Right.” She took several hits of the joint, licked her forefinger and tidied up the rolling job. “So, I never think about my mother,” Lisa exhaled. “I don't let myself think about her. Because what's the point? But all of a sudden, in the middle of this high-stakes chess game, I could think of nothing else. And I started to cry. And I wanted to throw myself through the windows and over the side of the building. Like my mother. You want some more?” she asked, offering it to Francesca for the first time.

Francesca shook her head. “You know,” she said, “just because I live in that shack doesn't mean I have to stay there. Charlotte built a beautiful cottage behind her house and she's always after me to move in there.” This was as close as Francesca could come to what she wanted to say.