Educating Simon (8 page)

I nodded like I understood. “Are you sure those are the right notes?”

“I have perfect pitch.” And she played the three notes on the keyboard at her side.

So there was no question in her mind that I would ever challenge her reduction—that is, whether those three notes accurately represent the sonata movement by Schenkerian rules—just the actual tones she had hummed. I might have met my match for arrogance.

Then she added, “I might try Berg next, though. The Beethoven was too easy.”

Nope. She has me beat for arrogance. I can't even
listen
to Alban Berg's music. “Let me know how that goes.”

She looked at me, briefly, without expression, and then away. Remembering what BM had said about her lack of expectations regarding empathy and politeness, I decided to give it a test, hoping she wouldn't go into one of her tantrums.

“I took placement exams for my school today.” Still no response. No
How did that go?
I plunged ahead. “Most of it was pretty easy, of course. Though I'm not sure about the history section. It's . . . well, it's rather upsetting, actually. I mean, I'm very good at history. But I'm worried about this test, because it was mostly about US history. The proctor said it's to see how much I know, coming from England.” I paused and got nothing. “Do you know who shot Abraham Lincoln?”

“John Wilkes Booth.”

So she was listening, anyway. I didn't let on that I hadn't known. “I did really well on the English section, of course. I had to use the words
irenic, nugatory, neologism, sartorial,
and
ersatz
in as few sentences as possible.” I was about to describe how I'd done it, but she got up and wandered over to an end table. She picked up a glass object that looked like a bird of some kind, and sat on the chair beside the table. I had to reposition myself to be able to see her. She didn't say anything, though, and she showed no signs of exploding. She was looking at the glass bird so intently it was almost like she was meditating on it. But I wanted to talk more about my day, and GG wasn't here. I didn't want to talk to Mum or BM, and Ned was busy. So I just kept talking to the un-protesting, unresponsive Persie.

“Then they had fifty uncommon words, some of which were misspelled, and I had to correct those.
Iliopsoas
gave me pause, but when I considered that the
p
might be silent, I knew it was Greek and I should leave it alone. And I almost missed an incorrect one, but then I realised it must be Greek too, so I added an
r
and got it right.”

Persie was still intent on her bauble. I didn't know whether it was her silence or my knowing that she didn't care at all what had happened to me today, but I ended up telling her something I would probably not have told anyone else. Even GG.

“That Greek word was
arrhostia.
I thought I was correct in leaving it alone. But the proctor, Dr. Metcalf, came by and said that I'd made one mistake in the whole list, and that if I found it he'd give me credit. I was shocked that I'd missed something, actually. Shouldn't have been, maybe, because I hadn't seen some of those words before. I hadn't ever seen
arrhostia.
For a minute I suspected Dr. Metcalf of playing a trick on me.”

No response to that. So I tried another test. “
A
is pale yellow.
R
is bright red, so it's bright red twice after I made the correction.”

Something about what I said caught Persie's attention. She watched my face as I went on. “
H
is cream;
o
is terra cotta;
s
is blood red;
t
is bright blue;
i
is bright yellow; and the final
a
at the end is another pale yellow. So the overall effect is creamy yellow, with a brownish-purple swirl. That swirl is almost brown if you take out that second
r
.”

“Because of less red with the blue, and the brown tone of the terra cotta.” She looked away again.

“Exactly.” These are rules. Rules for letters, to be sure, but I'll bet the concept appeals to her.

“What colour is
p?”

“Black.”

“What colour is
e?”

I knew where she was going. “Your name is black, lilac, bright red, blood red, bright yellow, lilac.”

She laughed. Actually laughed. And clapped her hands a few times. “It's like a painting by Clyfford Still!” Before I could ask
Who's Clyfford Still,
she was up, out of the room, and pounding up the stairs. I wasn't sure whether I should follow her or not; could she get herself into some kind of trouble? But—BM left her alone sometimes, and it wasn't like she was an imbecile or something. I took the stairs two at once, just the same.

The door to her rooms was open, but I didn't feel I could just wander in. I peeked in, though, and it looked really lovely. Lots of pastels, all used to very good effect. I called out, “Hello?”

“Here it is. Here it is. Here it is.” She repeated this phrase several times and then trotted out and sat at one end of a love seat in the upstairs foyer, her hands flying over the keyboard of a laptop. “Here it is. Here it is.”

“May I sit at this end?” I knew I had to ask for permission.

“Yes. Here it is. Here it is. Here it is.” And finally, triumphant, she turned the laptop so I could see the screen. And she was absolutely right. There was a painting,
Untitled, 1974
. It must be oil, must be huge. It's abstract, and the effect is the same as if Still had painted the entire canvas black and then added jagged areas of a purple colour with swirls of creams and pale yellows and reds in it, and finished it off by adding small but equally jagged areas of bright red, bluish white, and just a dab of sunshine yellow.

I looked up at Persie, and she was grinning from ear to ear. I had to smile, too; couldn't help it. “Yes,” I told her, even though the purple was more purple than lilac. “This is you.”

“Simon,” she said with finality, not like she wanted to address me, more like it was just a word. “What colour is
m?”

“Brick red.”

“What colour is
n?”

“Coral.”

Evidently she remembered the other letters that make up my name, because she was back at her laptop again. “Here it is. Here it is.” When she turned the screen again I was dumbfounded.

The painting is called
1947-R-No. 1,
and the Web page said it's just over five feet square, a little taller than wide. Blood red overall, large irregular edgy shapes in terra cotta, a squiggle of yellow, and a small starburst of orangey-coral. There are also areas of edgy black and a squiggle of white, but they don't upset the total effect. I was staring at it in a kind of trance when I heard BM's voice from downstairs.

“Persie? Simon?”

“Here!” Persie's reply made me think it was one of their routines : He calls; she answers immediately and with just that word.

“Simon?”

I looked at Persie, who was looking at me. I called out, “Here!”

There was a moment of silence, almost like BM didn't know what to say next. Then I heard, “Dinner. Now.”

Persie jumped, slammed her laptop. “Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.” This went on as she ran back into her rooms with the laptop, back out, and down the stairs. “Oh no. Oh no.”

I was halfway down, going more slowly than she went, before I saw on my watch that it was two minutes past dinnertime. I guess Persie doesn't allow even herself a grace period.

Mum, BM, and Persie were seated in the dining room, deep white soup bowls with pyramid piles of tiny, pea shapes of carrot at each place setting. I took my assigned chair. While Ned went around and ladled bright green chilled soup over everyone's carrots, BM looked at Persie, then at me.

“You weren't in Persie's rooms, were you?”

“No. The love seat on the landing.”

“I can't wait to learn what on earth captured her attention so profoundly as to make her late for dinner.”

“Late,” Persie said between spoonfuls of soup, but she was talking to herself, not shouting. “Late. Late. Late.”

BM leaned towards her. “It's all right, Persie. Don't worry.”

I said, “This soup is amazing.” The colours were striking, but the flavours were so well blended I couldn't quite tell what they were, other than fresh peas making the soup so bright green swirling around the little orange “peas.”

“So,” BM said, “what was so fascinating?”

I looked at Persie, but she didn't seem to want to explain. So I did. “I described my synaesthesia to her, and she ran upstairs for her laptop. We sat on the love seat, and she showed me Web pages with images of paintings by Clyfford Still. She seemed to think they represented something similar to how I see words.”

“And did they?”

I nodded. “She found one for her name right away. Then she found one for mine.”

BM put his spoon down and stared at me. “She did what?”

How would I know what he wanted? “What part didn't you get?”

“She found a painting for
your
name?”

“Yes.”

“Did you ask her to?”

“No.”

Now he was staring at Persie, who had about finished her soup. “Persie, you looked for Simon's name?”

“Blood red, bright yellow, brick red, terra cotta, coral.
1947-R-No. 1.
”

BM sat back like he'd forgotten his own name. Mum asked, “Brian, what is it?”

“She looked for Simon's name. She never takes that step, focusing on the other person. At least never so quickly, or without being asked.” Back to Persie: “What colour is your name, Persie?”

“Black, lilac, bright red, blood red, bright yellow, lilac.
Untitled, 1974
.”

He stared at me again, more like he didn't know what else to do than for any other reason.

Mum said, “Why Clyfford Still?”

Persie answered as though she'd been asked who he was. She wouldn't know that there weren't very many contemporary artists Mum would not know about. “A leader in Abstract Expressionism. Contemporary with Rothko and Pollock. Born 1904, died 1980. Two daughters, one named Sandra Still Campbell, the driving force behind the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver, Colorado. I want to go there.”

It was no surprise to anyone that Persie would have the information about Still's life at her command, and would deliver it in an unmodulated tone. But that last sentence, in the same monotone, floored BM yet again. Watching his face, I was convinced he was trying desperately hard not to reveal an astonishment bordering on shock. Keeping his voice calm must have been an effort. “You want to visit the museum in Denver, Persie?”

“Yes.”

“Even though it's in Denver?”

“Yes.”

“Even though it's abstract art?” She looked up at her father; I couldn't tell whether she was confused about the question itself or about why he would ask it. He said, “It's fine, Persie. I'm asking because you prefer art that's more literally representative.”

“Untitled, 1974.”
And she polished off the last of her soup. “Done.”

I suggested, “Maybe the fact that these works have titles that don't try to represent the art itself helps?”

BM sounded puzzled. “Perhaps.”

 

After dinner, Persie asked me for a list of colours. “Your letter colours,” she called it. I told her I'd make up a chart tonight and leave it for her on the love seat outside her rooms. She nodded and said she was going to read upstairs. Mum helped Ned clean up despite his protests, and BM went out to the patio to clean the barbie. Grill. For want of anything else to do, I wandered out to take a look at said grill. BM saw me and nodded. “How'd your exams go, Simon?”

“Fine, I think. History was a bit chauvinistic.”

“How so?”

“It was mostly US history. I asked about it, and they said it was because I'm not from the US and they wanted to know the extent of my knowledge. Something like that.”

He grinned. “And did you know the answers?”

I gave him an abridged version of an essay that had been required for one of the questions. If he was impressed, I couldn't tell.

“That was a fascinating wine selection tonight, that prosecco. I would never have gone there, but it worked very well.”

There was that reluctant beam of pleasure again, both from this praise and also because I decided to believe it was Ned, not Mum, who'd told him it had been my idea.

I wandered for a bit around the patio. It's not very big, but from another angle I could see the entire grill. It looked formidable, dials and controls and different levels. Before I could stop myself, I blurted out, “Thanks for the iPhone.”

“You're welcome. Glad you like it.” And he turned back to his chore. I half expected him to say more about it, which I didn't want him to do. But he didn't. Did he know he'd make more points with me by keeping quiet?

Back in the kitchen, I saw Mum had left, and Ned was still working. The dishwasher was churning away. I pulled a chair out from the table and sat, trying to think of something to talk with him about. My opening was weak. “Where's Mum?”

He was finishing up the last of the hand-wash items. “Gone to the other room to read, or watch TV, or something. I shooed her out. She's done more than her share for today.”

I got up and reached for a drying towel. “I haven't.” He grinned at me as I took things out of the drying rack. I didn't know where anything went, so I set dried items on the forest green granite of the island, which Ned had already cleaned.

“When do you eat dinner?” I asked.

“Oh, don't worry about me. It varies. Depends on the meal and the degree of fussing between courses. Sometimes I eat first, sometimes after, and tonight I ate pretty much while you all did. It takes me less time than you. No conversation.”