Death of an Artist (3 page)

When Van and Josh came for a visit, theoretically they stayed in the rear house where Van and Stef both had grown up, but usually Josh stayed with Marnie. The arrangement gave Van a little time without the responsibility of being a single mom.

When Van pulled into the driveway at the rear house that day, she was tired down to her toenails. All she wanted to do was go to bed the minute Josh did and sleep for ten or eleven hours. She unbuckled her seat belt as Josh was climbing out of his car seat, and shouldering their two backpacks, they entered the rear house. Stef met them at the door.

“I thought you'd never get here,” she cried, embracing Van, then stooping to catch Josh up in a hug that he endured without struggling this time. Sometimes he wriggled out of it.

“Well, come on in and tell me what's new, what's exciting in Portland. Dale's here already. Dinner's in half an hour,” Stef said gaily. “Just leave those packs anywhere. You can take them up later.”

She was a thin woman, sharp faced with prominent bones. That year her hair was hot pink, straight and down to her shoulders, and she wore no makeup except for her eyes. Cleopatra eyes, heavily mascaraed with heavy eyeliner. Her eyes looked unnaturally blue against the paleness of her face and the black eye makeup. She was wearing a bulky black sweatshirt and baggy red pants. Van thought she looked like a clown.

Van and Josh left the backpacks by the stairs and followed her into the living room, taking off their jackets as they went. After nodding to Dale, who nodded back just as coolly without leaving the deep chair he was in, Van went straight to the windows that made up most of the ocean side of the room and drew in a long breath. It was getting dark, but she could see the froth breaking over the stacks out there, and already she was feeling a bit looser, the way she always did when she came to the coast, as if one knot after another were untying itself. She turned back to the room again.

“How's the boy?” Dale was saying to Josh, who did not respond. Van suspected that Dale had forgotten his name.

At the same time Stef said, “Van, darling, you look absolutely exhausted. You're doing too much. I keep telling you, you don't have to do it all at once. Slow down a little and take your time. We're having a martini. Can I fix you one? Or a little wine?”

“Nothing for me,” Van said. “I'm fine.”

“Gramma,” Josh said. “Can I paint a fence pink if I want to?”

“Of course you can! Or green or striped or anything else. Why do you ask?”

“Miss Blakey said farmers don't paint their fences pink.”

At the window Van felt the knot tie itself again. She hadn't realized it had bothered him for his teacher to say that in front of the parents who had attended the open house that week. She should have known, she thought. She should have understood.

“Darling,” Stef said, “is Miss Blakey an artist?”

“She's my teacher,” he said.

“Am I an artist?”

He nodded.

“Well, I'm the boss about art. And I say you can paint the damn fence any way you feel like. Tomorrow, tell you what we'll do. We'll go to town and buy you an easel and your own paints, and you can paint anything you want to, any color you want to. How does that sound?”

She meant well, Van thought distantly, hating the promise that would more than likely have been forgotten by the next day. How many times had she heard that same phrase while growing up? Stef meant well. Van had come to accept the truth of it. Stef really did. Her impulses were well-intentioned—and seldom carried out. If she didn't get the easel and paints, Van knew she would do it herself. Kids didn't forget. Josh was nodding and looked excited by the promise.

Scowling, Stef said to Van, “Yank him out of that art class.”

“It isn't a separate class, just something they do in the course of the day.”

“Then take him out of such a school. That teacher shouldn't be allowed near children.”

“Stef—” Van let it go. Don't get Stef started about schools, she thought, especially not in front of Josh. “We'd better get our stuff upstairs and wash our hands,” Van said. “We'll pop in to say hello to Marnie and be back in a few minutes.” Stef's forecast of dinner in half an hour could mean anything, Van well knew. She had given Josh a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich to eat in the car on the drive over.

Upstairs, two bedrooms were separated by a hall that continued to a door at the end that was to Stef's studio, which made up half of the upper floor. After washing their hands, they went down the hall to the studio and through it to the outside door to the passage to the front house. Marnie's door wasn't locked, and after tapping lightly, Van opened it and they went inside.

Marnie welcomed them with her arms outspread. Josh never ducked her embrace. He hugged back fiercely. Tipper circled them excitedly, and Josh released Marnie and dropped to his knees to take the squirming dog in his arms. “Can we take Tipper to the beach tomorrow? I brought a new ball for him to play with.”

Boy and dog rolled over with Tipper licking Josh's face. Marnie didn't tell Van how tired she looked. Van knew well how fatigued she was. She was not beautiful in any sense of the word, but she was striking with long black hair, fine high cheekbones, straight, heavy eyebrows, and deep-set, dark-blue eyes that seemed to be looking at the world with a question mark.

Marnie smiled at Josh and nodded, then said, “Molly's niece is coming in tomorrow. That girl is always looking for a way to make a few dollars, and I was happy to let her take my place. I want a day off to play ball on the beach with Josh and Tipper.”

Van laughed and felt another of the knots untying itself. “We can't stay now, but we'll drop in again after dinner. Okay?”

“You know it is. Is Dale already here?”

“Yes, and he looks pretty sour.”

“Stef says business at the gallery is down. I suppose he's worried.”

“I think he sucks lemons,” Van said. “Come on, Josh. We'll go eat dinner and come back later.”

“Can I wait here?”

“Nope. Your gramma invited you to dinner. Marnie will be here when we come back.”

After they left, Marnie ate her own dinner and thought about Dale. Husband number four, a few years younger than Stef, and gloomy. That would end it fairly soon, she decided. Stef could not abide gloom and doom. Dale was handsome, with a fair complexion and platinum-blond hair, and was an impeccable dresser, usually in a handsome business suit and tie, and now and then in designer jeans and whatever boots were in style and a cashmere sweater. Van called him Stef's pretty boy, her Ken doll. He was a partner in a Portland gallery that had Stef's art on permanent display. He handled the business end of the gallery, while the other partner, Winifred, Freddi, managed it. Dale lived in Portland and was no more than a visitor when at the coast, and both Marnie and Van had an almost visceral dislike of him. Opportunist, Marnie had thought at their first meeting, and nothing since had changed her mind about her first impression.

She had not been invited to dinner that night and would have said no if she had been. Early on she had said to Stef, “You two have so little time together, a third wheel would just get in the way.” Stef got the message and rarely asked Marnie to join them.

Van had no choice about it. After all, Stef was her mother, and Silver Bay had been her home and would be again after she got her license. She wanted Josh to have family around. So she returned for visits when she could make it—holidays, spring break, and over the summers. She ignored Dale as much as possible and spent a lot of time with Marnie, who had been her mother more than Stef had ever been.

Van and Josh were back with Marnie before eight that night, and he was carrying his little backpack. “Can I sleep here tonight?” he asked Marnie.

“If you'll share the bed with Tipper,” she said.

He whooped and raced to the second bedroom with Tipper at his heels. When he came back, he was carrying two plastic boats. “They were on my bed,” he told Van, holding them up for her to see. “They're racing boats.”

“Now, who on earth would come in here and leave boats?” Marnie said. “Let's have a look.” She examined one, then exclaimed, “Windup boats. See? You wind this up, and if you push this, it must move the boat or something. I guess they need water to work.”

“Can I take a bath now?”

Going with him to the bathroom, Marnie showed him how to turn the rudder to make the boats go straight or in circles, how to release the catch to let a rubber band spin a propeller, and in a few minutes she was back in the living room with Van, who had accepted a glass of wine.

“Marnie, there's something I wanted to talk about with you,” Van said slowly. “Did you know that Stef's work is for sale? She never mentioned it to me.”

“What work? I know she said some things could go, some of the charcoal sketches, at least.”

“Not just them. Freddi called me and mentioned it and I stopped by on Wednesday. Everything has a price posted, all of it.”

Marnie was taken by surprise. Stef had always been adamant about her work not being for sale, except for the few things she no longer liked or felt represented her real art.

“I don't know if I should bring it up, ask her outright, or just leave it alone,” Van said. “Are they hurting for money?”

“No more than usual, I guess. Don't bring it up. Relax this weekend. Put it out of mind. I'll talk to her on Monday.”

Relieved, Van sipped her wine and closed her eyes briefly. “I really have to go or I'll fall asleep on your couch,” she said apologetically.

That night after Josh was in bed asleep, with Tipper on the bed with him, Marnie thought again about what Van had said. All of the work in the gallery? She didn't believe it. One of the pieces was titled
Feathers and Ferns,
and she thought it was the finest picture Stef had ever done. She didn't believe Stef had agreed to sell it. She couldn't believe that. Stef was possessive of her work and didn't really want to sell any of it, but especially that one. Marnie was afraid that a major storm was brewing.
Monday,
she told herself firmly, after Van and Josh were out of it, after Dale was back in Portland.

But what if he got a buyer before then? Then what? She didn't believe he could sell it without Stef's consent. She had to agree on a price and sign a form of some sort. The storm could wait a few days.
Monday,
Marnie repeated to herself.

She thought of her earlier assessment. If Dale was being gloomy, and now this, it could well mean that the end was even closer than she had suspected.

 

3

O
N
M
ONDAY
MORNING
Marnie went through the passage between the houses to the studio, where she expected to find Stef. Stef always was up early, and if she painted, it was before noon; later it was impossible to even guess where she might be. Some days she drove up to Lincoln City to shop in the brand-name outlets—Gucci, Jones New York, Givenchy … Later she might come home with a shopping bag stuffed full, or empty-handed. Often she would thrust an overflowing bag at Marnie, saying, “It's for you.” A few days later Marnie would return it all and have Stef's card credited. Stef was just as likely to head over to the valley, to Salem or Eugene, and prowl through thrift shops for hours and return with outlandish items, things she never looked at again. Or she might spend a day on the beach somewhere. But at ten in the morning, she was most likely to be in the studio.

She was working on a painting she called
Ladies in Waiting.
Four women were strolling in the picture, one wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat, one carrying a sun umbrella, all with long-sleeve blouses, fashionably arranged hair, the essence of turn-of-the-century primness and propriety from the waist up. Their skirts were diaphanous, transparent, revealing pregnancies in advanced stages. The bulging bellies were shocking in the setting of a genteel garden party. Two of the women were barefoot, their feet swollen and red, angry looking, their ankles like sausages. The other two wore misshapen sneakers without laces.

Marnie hated the picture. It was a cruel mockery, a travesty. That morning she kept her gaze on her daughter, who was wearing a man's oversize shirt, the one she always wore when she was working. It was badly stained and to all appearances had never been laundered. Stef didn't glance Marnie's way when she entered the studio.

“I won't keep you,” Marnie said. “I just wanted to ask when you decided to put your pictures up for sale, and if you intend to include
Feathers and Ferns.
”

Stef stopped a brushstroke in midair and, without turning toward Marnie, asked, “What pictures for sale? What are you talking about?”

“Van said she dropped in at the gallery last week and they're all for sale. She was surprised. And so am I.”

Stef looked at her then for a moment without speaking. “Not just the charcoals?”

“All of them,” Marnie said.

Stef's face flamed red and her mouth tightened to a thin line. Savagely she flung her paintbrush across the studio and threw her palette to the floor. “That fucking asshole! That fuck of a dickhead!”

Marnie had long since ceased being shocked by Stef's cursing and her temper fits, but she still flinched in the face of it. She held up her hand, spoke, and was ignored. Cursing, Stef yanked off her shirt and flung it down with the palette. She wore nothing under it, and bare-breasted, she dashed from the studio, down the hall with Marnie following.

The torrent of curses continued as Stef raced downstairs, through the house to the bedroom, where she grabbed a sweatshirt and pulled it on. “I'll show that motherfucker who owns that work! He thinks he can go behind my back like that, I'll kill him. He's dead meat!”

“Stef, for God's sake, stop acting like a maniac! Calm down. Where are you going?”