Art on Fire (31 page)

“That's a nice offer.” Lisa put her hand on Francesca's.

“You could move in there by yourself, I'll bet.” This was a rare
moment between them—no sex, no sarcasm. Genuine, almost innocent acknowledgement of love. Lisa nodded, as if watching it unfurl.

“That looks pretty,” she said. “But I'm not gay. I could never live a gay lifestyle. And look at you. You are so gay.” She laughed a sharp—and once again sarcastic—laugh.

Francesca looked down at herself, as if Lisa had given her an instruction. She wore worn carpenter's pants and clogs. What was so gay about clogs? “I'm wearing clogs,” she said. “Don't you ever wear clogs?”

“I don't happen to like clogs.”

“But they're not gay. Lots of people who wear clogs aren't gay.”

“It's just what you are,” said Lisa. “It's the way you carry yourself, and the look on your face—silent and separate from the regular world. And your giant hands. And your paintings. They're so gigantic and audacious. Straight women don't paint like that. You're going to be so famous.” Lisa stubbed out the joint, licked her thumb and forefinger, and squeezed the tip of the roach, then dropped it into a film canister she kept in her pocket. “Drive.”

“You drive.”

Lisa shook her head. “We can sit a few more minutes while you tell me about your girlfriend.”

“No.”

“Is she pretty?”

“Yes.”

“Is she smart?”

“Yes.”

“Do you love her?”

“No. She's just someone to be with. You can't be alone all the time.”

Lisa nodded. This was a good answer. Of course Francesca couldn't spend her entire life alone. In a way, the knowledge that Francesca was cared for by others was a relief. Lisa knew she couldn't stay; she recognized her limitations. She had to get back to her father. With each day she was away, there would be more anger to deflect, more humiliation, more tasks he'd have saved up for her return: dirty laundry, plates and bowls with lichens of food along the edges, ashtrays to empty. He would grill her as he always did when she stayed away overnight, and she would lie. Chess tournament, she would tell him (she'd already
rehearsed it, practiced sternly sticking to her story in spite of his leery expression). But just the idea of it exhausted her.

They switched seats. Lisa turned the key in the ignition, but the car wouldn't start.

“Oh God. What did I do?” Francesca asked.

“You didn't do anything. I'm surprised this piece of shit even got me this far. It should have died a long time ago. I don't think I've changed the oil in about ten years.”

“You haven't been driving for ten years,” said Francesca, climbing out of the car and sticking out her thumb. Lisa lit a cigarette and waited in the driver's seat. She was worried this would delay her departure and relieved, too, knowing she'd have at least another night with Francesca, maybe several. The longer she stayed away from Mr. Sinsong, the less real he became. Whatever dreariness awaited her couldn't multiply infinitely; after a while, they'd have to plateau. He'd have to tire of hating her and be glad she'd returned. Perhaps if she stayed away longer, he'd appreciate that she'd come back. And if not, she could always run out again, hop a train out of New Haven, back to Francesca. Maybe she'd do that anyhow. She sighed, crossed her foot over her knee, pulling at some loose white threads hanging from the hem of her jeans, and glanced at Francesca through the cloudy windshield, certain that she was the most beautiful creature walking the planet.

The mechanic confirmed what Lisa had said. It was a miracle, he told them, the car had run this long. He said it wasn't worth fixing, and anyhow, he wouldn't even have a chance to look at it until the end of the week.

“But I can't wait that long,” Lisa said. She turned to Francesca. “My father's going to kill me.”

“Your father's going to kill you?” Francesca repeated, certain that Lisa, in her infinite intelligence, would hear how ridiculous the statement sounded. But Lisa only nodded.

“I have to take him to the club. He plays poker on Thursday night.”

“So he'll take a bus,” Francesca said.

Lisa shook her head. “I have to get back there.”

Francesca felt like she'd bitten into some intoxicating confection that she could not stop eating. She ate and ate of it, long past the point of sickness, caring about nothing except making it last as long as it could. Even after all these years, Lisa still stirred a longing that was pure and lethal.
Longing for what
? Francesca didn't even know. She still imagined they would get away—but from what? They would go somewhere—but where? Someplace different, where their circumstances would be erased and they could grow up again, into the people they might have become, had they been able to evolve, unhampered. She looked at Lisa now, Lisa gone, at her pale skin and tinged eyeballs, her thin, abandoned body. She did not feel lust. She wanted to protect Lisa. The idea of bad things happening to Lisa—as surely they had—was too much to bear. She would kill—even then, in that moment—anyone who harmed her Lisa. She would kill Mr. Sinsong with her big, paint-stained hands. Look, she wanted to say, holding her wide palms in the air, look what I'd do for you.

The mechanic assured Francesca that the engine would have seized up whether or not she'd driven it. Probably, Lisa teased, Francesca had driven too slowly, and the car became confused and disoriented and, finally, convinced all hope was lost, just died.

“It's true that some of these old cars like having one driver,” said the mechanic, unwittingly worsening Francesca's guilt. As far as driving it back to Connecticut, he said it was not an option. Besides the fact that the engine appeared to have seized, the tires were all bald, the radiator was leaking, and the exhaust system was entirely rusted out, barely attached to the bottom of the car. He suggested public transportation or a rental.

“I can't afford a rental,” Lisa whispered. “I'll take a bus.”

Though Francesca did not want Lisa to leave—ever—she knew she could not keep her there. Thus, that night, after Lisa had gone to sleep, she wrapped
The Trilogy
, with which she'd been unable to part in spite of popular demand and Charlotte's urging, as if Francesca had known this day might come, in brown paper and let it lean against the wall of the cabin. She sat in a lawn chair and smoked nearly a
pack of cigarettes, her throat rough as cut metal by the time morning softened the sky. When Lisa woke, the coffee was made. Francesca used the pay phone to call and book Lisa a seat on a small plane leaving the Provincetown airport. She presented the paintings, explaining that if Charlotte were at all savvy in these matters, they'd be worth great money someday soon. In the meantime, she insisted on giving Lisa two thousand dollars to buy a used car. “I'd give you more, but I don't have a lot of cash,” she said, counting out the bills, placing them, one at a time, onto Lisa's outstretched hand.

The early morning mist muddled the roads, thick as cotton, thinning out across the runway—really just a lea with tall stripped reeds and dusty desert shrubs. Francesca handed the paintings to the pilot, then stood with her hands in her pockets while he helped Lisa climb up into the cacophonous vehicle. It would be good, Francesca thought, to run over, climb up into the cab, and plant one more kiss on her sweet morning mouth, savor the taste of separation. Instead, she removed the small box Lisa had given her for her birthday and tore off the red and yellow paper, which she stuffed into her pocket. Inside, seated on a pillow of cotton was a bottle cap, immediately familiar, still encrusted with dirt from the floor of her hut. It was from Mello Yello, rusted and dented, as the best bottle caps always are, and Francesca held it in her hand, as if it were the only evidence she'd ever seen of her life before this one.

She cried quietly as the plane punctured the stiff, egg-white sky. The deafening clamor faded to that of a tractor, then a departing motorcycle, shrinking, finally, to the white noise of a vacuum cleaner operated in an apartment down the hall. Francesca did not stop listening until it had gone completely.

Then, a hole of sunlight appeared as if through a pinprick, throwing a wet, white light on her sleepy face that made her yawn and yawn and yawn, as if only now, after a very long stupor, she were waking up.

With Lisa gone—again—Francesca escaped to her work. Half relieved to return to her familiar reclusion, she succumbed to what now seemed to be her bittersweet fate: to love only Lisa, to be loved only by Lisa, to never lose Lisa nor have her entirely. It was a confounding and not wholly satisfying outcome, but things might have turned out worse. Lisa might never have loved her at all. Lisa might never have returned. Instead, she might have birthed a pile of babies, married a beast (because surely, any man Lisa chose would be a beast), never come to visit. Or she might have gone off a building like her mother. And wouldn't that have made all sorts of wicked sense—suicide—after a life spent poor and unfulfilled, caring for a tyrannical father. Never hearing a kind word. Never hearing “thank you.”

At least they'd had five days together during which Francesca had unearthed the truth, finally, after all these years: Lisa did love her. But Lisa was even more terrified of love than Francesca was. Neither could tolerate the nitty-gritty of love, the day in and day out, the talking it over and making it up. They were not constructed in this way, with strength enough to risk suffering so grand a loss. Things between them must never get ordinary or the love they relied upon to sustain some faith in existence, a dream of how perfect their lives would be if they could just spend them together, might prove deluded and naïve. And if this were to happen, life, overall, would be too cruel to endure. Paradoxically, the one thing that could bring them happiness was off limits; it must remain untested.

Francesca had finally obtained her driver's license, though she still
preferred her bicycle in all but the most inclement conditions. Occasionally she drove the Rabbit, now repaired, into town, and descended the stairs to a seedy lesbian bar that was sprawled across the basement of a seaside memorabilia mall. The pool table stretched out like a giant bed and women huddled in darkened corners, sipping gold drinks, smoking cigarettes, and examining each other's bodies unabashedly. The femmes came in—all sleek and showered, emanating perfume as they pranced around the perimeter of the smoky room to grant anyone watching a good look. The butches glanced up surreptitiously, pretending not to care. It reminded Francesca of a movie about lesbians, the sort where the butches are all suited up and the femmes wear panty hose over thick, working ankles.