Art on Fire (34 page)

“Twenty-nine years.” She sighed and turned toward the window.

Vivian looked at the EMT. “She's thinking of my father. He died twenty-nine years ago, almost to the day.”

“Poor Mama,” Alfonse patted her knee.

Evelyn could remember, though not so well anymore, when her life hadn't included these people. “That's right,” she said, pointing at Vivian. “You weren't even born.”

“That's not true,” Vivian smiled at the EMT, then faced the window, her expression turning to stone.

Evelyn watched New Haven snap past the small windows at the rear of the ambulance. She knew what happened to ladies like her, old ladies still subject to an occasional fit of youth, the urge for a tantrum or to dance across a long room barefoot, toenails painted bright red, perfume on the pulses. She'd volunteered at the Jewish Home, brought cards and chocolates, watched adults invert into helpless, frustrated babies. As the age between her and the patients grew less distinct, she came to fear the Home, its waxed floors and fingers of dust on the molding. It appeared in her dreams amid other incongruous locales: The nurse's desk waited at the end of a long corridor in Sheridan High School; an orderly pushed a cart stuffed with dirty linens into the deepest part of her own basement. Eventually, she'd stopped volunteering on the floor and requested a job in the gift shop.

“And you'll have a TV, a beautiful view of the Sound, and a lovely roommate. What's her name, Viv?” Alfonse asked cheerfully.

“What?”

“The roommate. Mama's roommate. That nice lady.”

“Mrs. Knoblovsky,” said Vivian.

“That's right,” he snapped his fingers. “Mrs. Knob—”

“Mrs. wha—?” She glared at Alfonse, as if it were his fault. “What is that, Polish? I thought this place was for Jews.”

“Not everyone in the hospital is Jewish, Ma,” said Vivian.

“Why not? It's a Jewish hospital,” Evelyn replied.

“Well, she may very well be Jewish. Some Polish people are Jewish,” said Alfonse.

“That's ridiculous.” But Evelyn could not remember what they were discussing. “You remind me of my granddaughter,” she said to the woman next to her. She patted the woman's hand, then wrapped her bent, veiny knuckles around it. There they remained. Vivian and Alfonse looked at the woman and they, too, recognized a similarity to Francesca—the Francesca of yore, the one they remembered, not the one they had seen in a newspaper photograph. Each of them realized—separately, always separately—that they knew nothing of Francesca today except the few facts they'd read, that she was alive and even thriving and seemed to suffer no ill effects from their deficient parenting. Vivian liked to think she'd done a pretty good job after all, and had in some way set the stage for Francesca's success.

The ambulance arrived at the gate of the Jewish Home and idled behind several wide American cars, all awaiting entry.

“See that?” Alfonse patted Evelyn's knee. “For security.”

“Forget about what's outside. I'm worried about what's inside,” Evelyn scowled, her heart pounding wildly. Like being awake for major surgery, she thought. Locally anesthetized, seeing them cut you open and manipulate your innards. Not that she'd ever had major surgery, but she'd heard enough about it from the ladies to know.

“They'd better be Jews,” she said. “And I don't just mean the doctors.”

“I'm sure some of the nurses are, too,” said Alfonse reassuringly.

“That's asinine,” Evelyn waved him away. He's so stupid, she thought. He's always been stupid. She turned and peered through the
meshed windows of the ambulance at the cinder-colored building. Poor Sylvia, she thought. Now she understood how terrifying it must have been for her best friend, newly widowed, still stiff with tan and salt from the Florida sun, to be captured at the airport and dumped here. No wonder she'd died the next day.

Reality Has Intruded Here
New Haven, 1989

Ten feet tall, suspended from a thick wooden beam,
Reality Has Intruded Here
is a huge, throbbing work, set apart from the other paintings in the FdS museum, lit from behind by a spotlight. The trees, drawn by dark ropes of paint, suggest a deep, dead winter: the red, thick sky recalls tensely knit hats and down jackets, scarves wrapped again and again against the white cold.

deSilva created the huge and beguiling
Reality Has Intruded Here
after several weeks of isolation. It is an odd, anomalous work, particularly as it launched her final year of painting, during which some of her greatest pseudo-realistic pieces were completed (
Woman with Stool
and
Bunyan
are other extant works from this period).

Upon a door confiscated from the remains of a neighborhood Cape that she watched being torn down, deSilva tossed and splattered bright, thick colors. Lines, dots, splashes fill the door in an assault, even a war against what lies inside, namely privacy. In the lower right quadrant of the door is a bullet hole, a central detail that is, ironically, missed by many who view the painting (and, it would seem, fail to read their brochures). The hole appears to be simply a surface defect, perhaps the result of water damage or a neighborhood bully's BB gun. Only she who succumbs to curiosity by pressing her eyeball to the hole in the door is treated to the truth of the painting, i.e., what deSilva needed to say. At this point, the painting takes on the properties of sculpture. Beyond
the bullet hole, visible only when the eye is flush to the aperture—a disconcerting sensation in itself—a small shoebox contains a diorama, such as a child might make in grade school.

Inside the shoebox appears a kitchen similar to Evelyn Horowitz's: a small table covered by a checked cloth, four metal chairs with vinyl covered seats, and a Tupperware of baked goods set out on a placemat. An old woman—created from a skeleton of pipe cleaners—is seated at the table alone, drinking coffee. Puffs of frantic gray hair rise in a cloud around her head. This world, unlike the cold, violent one around it, is calm and small, if strained with expectation. The woman's bent posture and cramped quarters seem to be trapped in time, as though she'd given up on anyone ever visiting, awaiting only the incontrovertible arrival of death.

Lucinda Dialo noted, “This is a painting that must be confronted; even the title is aggressive. deSilva wants the viewer to step up and assume the role of the intruder; as in
Virgin
and
What She Found
, she has us experience the scene from both sides. In
Reality Has Intruded Here
, we are peering salaciously through an old woman's peephole. What we see inside is so ordinary and private—the inevitable indignities of old age—that, in hindsight, our curiosity feels that much more prurient, as if, having peeked, we have violated a basic tenet of respectability.”
⁸³

Reality Has Intruded Here
seems to blatantly, even desperately, defy description at the same time that it makes an “accurate interpretation” (were such a thing to exist) impossible. The painting refuses to provide a definitive narrator or an inhabitable point
of view. “The truth is, this is not simply an abstract painting,” asserts Dialo. “The title prevents it from being such. If we are to be true to the artist's intentions, we must ask ourselves, what reality has intruded? We are the reality. We are intruding upon the small life behind the opaque door. We may not have made the hole; but we peer inside it. And to what end? So that we may know everything. So that we may steal from this poor old woman her solitude, her self, and finally, her home. This work is concerned with existential crisis, the moment in time when one recognizes that not only hasn't she fought to relieve the despair of those around her, but she has become a proponent—no matter how reluctant—of that anguish. She has ceased to be an agent of change and become, instead, a part of the problem.”
⁸⁴

It was the hub of night, the richest, thickest hours. Francesca's favorite time to work. Charlotte rapped on the cabin door.

“Your mother called,” she said. “At 3 a.m.” She shrugged. “She claimed it's urgent. She wants you to call back right away.”

“How did she find me?” Francesca put down her paintbrush, thick with gray oil. Her body froze, as if after all this time on the lam, she'd been discovered.

“She saw the article in the paper and tracked us down. She said she's been meaning to call anyway. But now this . . . whatever this is.”

Francesca shrugged and reached for her cigarettes. Without another word, she adopted a nonchalant gait and headed toward the door. She had a feeling something like this would happen, what with the publicity in
The New Haven Register
. She was asking for trouble by agreeing to do the New Haven show, inviting, if indirectly, the reentry of her family into her life.

“I'll wait here,” Charlotte said, yawning. She ducked her head and sat on the bottom bunk, checking for cobwebs overhead.

Francesca entered the booth of the pay phone. She wiped her forehead on the sleeve of her jacket. The panels were open, the bottom buttons of her shirt were unfastened, and she pressed her naked stomach to the metal phonebook shelf. She still remembered the number.

“Hello?” It was Vivian.

“It's Francesca.”

“Francesca! Oh, goodness. Honey, thank you for calling back.”

“Charlotte said it was an emergency.”

“Well . . . your grandmother. I'm afraid your grandmother—”

“Yes,” Francesca interrupted. She'd known in some way.

“I hope you'll come to the funeral,” said Vivian. “Though, of course I understand if you can't be there.”

“I'll come.”

“You will?” Vivian choked up quickly and Francesca could hear it in her voice. “Oh, your grandmother would have been so happy. She felt so terrible about everything.”

“Really?”

“We all do. That doesn't even describe it: terrible. Heartbroken. It was a real tragedy. But your father and I, we're so happy you've done so well.”

“What about Isabella?”

“Bella? She'll be beside herself when she hears you're coming home.”

“So she's alive?”

“Oh, heavens, yes! She's just, well, you know your sister. She's prone to big gestures. Wait 'til I tell your father. He's over at the Home collecting Grandma's things. You might want some of them. I know she'd love you to have them. Maybe some of her jewelry.” Here, Vivian thought of the girl in the picture, aware of the absurdity of that suggestion. The girl in the picture would never wear the thick gold brooches shaped in roses or the charm bracelet with little ballerinas and pianos dangling from its links. A good thing anyhow, since she was hoping to keep them for herself.

“I should pack,” said Francesca.

“Okay. Take your time. The funeral isn't until Monday. Grandma only passed away an hour or so ago, but it's the Jewish Sabbath so we have an extra day.” She sighed. When Francesca hung up the phone. She felt glad her sister was alive. The others left her empty as an echo.

Charlotte was waiting in the cabin, still on the bottom bunk, though she was leaning against the back wall, falling asleep. There was one candle glowing on the table, its flame jostled by the wind that followed Francesca into the room.

“My grandmother died. So I have to go home.” Francesca lit a
cigarette, then stood in the center of the room, turned in all directions to survey her work. Without saying a word, she took
Pay Phone
from where it was stacked against the wall and leaned it against the front door. Charlotte watched in silence; she could think of nothing to say, nothing wise, nothing comforting, nothing that she felt certain wouldn't turn Francesca irascible and distant. For there was surely something volatile in the air.

“Is it safe to drive this time of night?” she finally asked.

Francesca grabbed
Birds, Everywhere
and leaned it against
Pay Phone
. “This is the safest time to travel. No passengers on the road.”

“You can't possibly mean to take those paintings with you. I have a truck hired to bring them to the exhibit.”