An End (13 page)

more wine?”

“Mmmmph,” she muttered as she turned over in bed, pushing aside proletariat sheets and exposing pert young breasts that were not yet distorted by the birth and suckling of his bastard son. Her hand moved down her front, fingertips absently tracing between her breasts as she rolled on to her back and looked up at the water-stained ceiling.

“Jemie?”

“Hmm?” He was behind the easel, painting something again. The sudden inspiration had nearly interrupted their lovemaking, or perhaps it was just fucking, but regardless, she suspected that the possibility of female orgasm, or even remote satisfaction, had again become secondary to her lover’s obsession with his oils and brushes and canvas.

“Do you love me?”

Gently, daintily, he applied white to the canvas. Little dabs of pigment, or lack thereof, smoothed, roughed by the brush’s bristles.

“Hmm.”

The room smelled of sex and turpentine and Paris in the summer: sweat and cheap parfum and wine. He poured another glass as he sat back and surveyed his work.

“Needs more white.”

“Jemie, answer me!”

He frowned, turned his attention to his mistress, now sitting up in bed.
She is just a child
, he thought, but her breasts and the unmistakable vice of her thighs begged otherwise.

“Don’t call me that, Jo.”

He turned back to his canvas. Jo
harrumped
and covered her body with the sheets again. No need to give this
artiste
a free view of her sex.

“You son of a bitch, James!”

Again, he glared at her.

“Leave my mother out of this, Ms. Hiffernan.”

Jo wrapped the sheet around her naked form and walked over to his precious canvas. She took his glass, drank his wine.

“What will it be?”

James took his time answering, rolled a cigarette, lit it, inhaled and exhaled.

“It’s you, dear. Don’t you see it?”

She took his cigarette from him, puffed. “Will it make more sense if I drink more wine?”

He grinned that acid grin and pulled her close. She sat on his lap on his painting stool and looked at the canvas. Gesso, a hint of gray, and a single white form blocked out in the center.

“That’s me?”

“That’s you, my dear white girl.”

Jo smiled that Irish smile, dimples in full effect, and he felt something for her... Or perhaps it was catarrh.

“I believe I love you, Mr. Whistler.”

He hugged her a little closer.

“And I, dear Ms. Hiffernan, believe I need more wine.”

Helen sobbed.

Hunter sat there in the gravel, a child of traumae, his little hands grasping pieces of stone, reaching out, dragging pieces of stone into piles, his gaze never averted from the west, where the phase trebuchet was retracting into the planet. The clouds were wounded, torn apart and thrust aside, now a circular incision cut into their midst. The child sat in the dirt, in the dust, scraping at gravel, looking at sky, hearing mommy weep beside him and behind him. She was rocking in the rocks, on her knees, helpless hands moving from face to hair, one hand reaching out to touch her son’s shoulder, instead pulling back, covering her mouth, sobbing.

Hunter knew that his father was dead.

Helen knew that her husband was dead.

The world shuddered as the phallic tower of the trebuchet receded into its mantle cavity, satisfied in its success. The phased slugs of planet interior would work their way toward target over thousands of years through space/time. Helen knew, she just somehow
knew
that he was dead, the man she loved, out there somewhere across the divide of eons. The trebuchet had fired at something in the Outer... And Windham was there. Dying, dead, thousands of years away, millions of years dust, just now watching the fire arrive on target, just now gasping in liquid hell, just now ceasing and releasing electricity into void.

Sirens. City alert. Hunter blinked from reverie and looked back at the apartment complex, leveled. The majority of the buildings he could see were strangely canted on ancient foundations. Bricks sat in the driveway, in the streets. There was rich black smoke coming from somewhere to the east. He could taste that fire. He could taste that danger. One would think that such a little boy would be crying right now. One would think that

because Jo was Whistler’s mistress, she would have been depicted in a warmer way, but Whistler was not like other artists, or other men, for that matter. I feel that Jo is depicted in a very neutral way that almost makes her become part of the background of the painting. There is no evidence of a love for Jo, or a warmth or fondness for her. She simply stands there, arms at her sides, no facial expression, eyes looking out but not quite at you. Richard Dorment contends that Whistler intended that his model’s face should lack expression, that Jo should assume the facial equivalent of the non-color, white. Whistler did not want to focus attention on her face. Reducing emphasis on the face reduced the tendency to read an emotional reaction into the model’s appearance. Whistler was in essence making Jo an object in the painting, instead of a human being. She becomes just another compositional element upon which to explore the tonal variations of the color white upon white. This objectification of a woman is a characteristic of not only Whistler’s
The White Girl
, but it could be argued that in his young manhood this is how he viewed women.”

Page turn.

“What was it about Whistler’s childhood or young manhood that resulted in a tendency to objectify women? I suspect that, in part, the religious fanaticism of his mother and her insistent meddling with James’ personal affairs and disapproval of his bohemian lifestyle may have created a bitterness or perhaps an uneasiness with women that lasted well into his adult years. If we examine his relationships with his models, Fumette, Finette, and even Jo, we can see that he never truly established a long-term relationship with any of them, and although they may have truly loved him, he never had any intention of reciprocating that love. Whistler used these women as he needed them, to model, to keep his house for him, and as it is rumored in the case of Jo, to bear or care for an illegitimate child of his, but he was always emotionally detached from them. I feel that the early influence of Whistler’s mother created within him a general distrust or indifference toward women that resulted in his objectification of them.”

Sip of water.

“
The White Girl
is not Jo Hiffernan.
The White Girl
is a study of white on white. I feel that Whistler would agree that an artist does not have to explain his or her intentions or actions when creating a work. An artist creates art for themselves, not for critics or the public. Whistler created
The White Girl
to study the tonal changes of white on white, and in the process revealed quite a bit about his feelings toward women that perhaps he had not intended to reveal. If this painting displays any narrative at all, I believe it is the sad and bitter tale of an artist who cannot find love, and to whom women or relationships of any meaning at all for that matter are nothing but trivialities, an artist whose showmanship and extraordinary personality are perhaps a defense mechanism against an internal strife brought about by overpowering or meaningless relationships in his youth. I must say that Whistler is not the only artist whose art tells a sad tale.”

Clear throat.

“
The White Girl
is a study of white on white, that is all.”

They clapped, although he knew they didn’t want to be there, didn’t care about what he had written, didn’t watch the slides as they were projected. Nine artsy souls in a sweltering room meant for storage but converted into a “conference room” by a stingy university, used by upperclass
menandwomen
in special topics seminars heralded by big numbers in the four-hundred range on registration slips and add/drop slips and all of the other fun fun bureaucracy of college life.

Betsy had that grin on her face from behind the dreaded bound green gradebook in which she was keeping notes on each presentation.

“Paul, that was marvelous! It really felt like you could relate to your research topic. Don’t you think?”

“Well, I—”

“I knew you’d love Whistler. You have so much in common.”

He blushed, grinned. “Well, that’s what Jo tells me.”

Betsy’s smile faltered. She leaned forward, almost imperceptibly. “What do you mean?”

“Didn’t you realize, Doctor?”

“What?”

“I contain multitudes.”

“What do you mean?”

“Perpetual autumn. It’s coming. A world of gray, silence, nothing. I can hear it.”

“Jean—”

“She’s down there right now, planning it all. Planning the extinction. She’ll need both of us for this to work.”

“Who?”

“She’ll need me for the arrival, and you for the discovery. The pursuit.”

“Jean, who?”

“Notre
Mère
, mon amie. Elle est prête pour le
divinity
.”

“Oui, commandant.”

Reynald looked up at the young man who was not his son, but who was the closest thing he had ever had to family. He tenderly reached out and took Windham’s left hand, regarding the silver ring.

“Your Helen?”

“My Helen.”

Reynald smiled, patted Windham’s hand and let go.

“Get out of here. Go home, son.”

“Jean, I—”

“
Vont
, mon fils.”

“I’ll be back. As soon as I can.”

Reynald smiled.

Gray streets. Windham pulled the collar of his overcoat up, protecting his neck from the bitter lick of the wind. His heart was beating in his throat, not from the pace of the walk, but from that distant look in Jean’s eyes... Reynald was looking beyond this world, seeing a time and place that Windham couldn’t begin to comprehend. He was seeing a world through eyes that became more clouded with the silver each time that Windham visited. The old man would be possessed entirely, soon. What then? What information could the creature at the center of the planet reap from his soul upon his total dissolution that she had not yet been able to take already?

Dead leaves on weathered sidewalks, scritching and scratching wing-man trajectories on either side of Windham’s feet, some crushed underfoot, some leaping into the air on a sudden gust, that last gasp of flight, that final yearning for transcendence.

It was a long walk from the veteran’s complex to the Windhams’ humble apartment. The wind was biting, bringing tears to eyes, or perhaps simply enabling tears to eyes, begging the knees to buckle, the strong legs to give out, the weary soldier to crumple to park bench as he tried not to sob for his father-figure, old and wasting and silver.

Windham
wiped a tear from his left eye, the cold silver of his ring playfully touching the tip of his nose in the process. He regarded his hand, with its lace of scar, nails once bitten to the quick by adolescent nervousness, white line across the palm where hand-to-hand combat had suddenly and painfully involved a blade of polymer and a hand of flesh, a simple silver ring that symbolized his love for a simple, book-loving girl named Helen, whose nose he loved to kiss, a simple, childish gesture that made her smile, and in the silence of so many nights, that smile was conveyed more through the liquid opening of her lips heard in the black than the actual viewing of the adorable act. He kissed the tip of her nose and knew that she smiled.