Art on Fire (38 page)

“Maybe we get it from Papa. He loves the outdoors.”

“Maybe.” Francesca groaned and stood up. “Well, if Mom and Papa ask where I am, say that I went to do some errands. Could you scoot over so I can back out?”

Isabella looked up at the car, unconvinced that her location precluded this. “Can I come? Please? I won't even speak. I'll just sit quietly and watch things out the window.”

“Alright,” Francesca said. “But let me get some of these paintings out of the car so there's room.”

“What paintings?” Isabella stood and peered into the car. Sure enough, piled willy-nilly on the floor of the passenger's side, the back seat, tucked into all the floor spaces, even resting up top on the rear ledge, were paintings—many, many paintings—some taken off their
stretchers and rolled into loose cylinders, fastened with shoelaces, others stacked flat and tight. “Tell me those are not
your
paintings.”

“Of course they are. What other paintings would I be driving around with?”

Isabella punched Francesca's arm playfully. “You're fucking kidding me, right? Your paintings are in that little hunk of tin? What are you, nuts?”

“I didn't want to leave them on the Cape.”

“That's crazy, man. What about those? You took them off the frames?”

Francesca shrugged. “I couldn't fit them in the car on their stretchers.”

“No,” Isabella shook her head. “That doesn't make sense.”

“Help me bring them inside.”

“You wanted to show Mom.” Isabella pointed at Francesca, grinning. Something about this idea thrilled her, that her sister, like her, could be driven by some pathological need to impress their mother.

“Are you coming or not? Because if you're not coming, I'll just leave them there.”

“Of course I'm coming. Duh.” Quickly, Isabella covered her mouth. “Mom hates when I use that word.”

“Yeah, well, it doesn't bother me. You can say ‘Duh' every five seconds for all I care.” Francesca opened the passenger's door and pulled out several of the paintings. There were twelve rolled and tucked into the front floor space on the passenger's side.

“Can I help?” Isabella asked, rubbing her hands together.

Francesca handed her sister the cylinders, one by one, passing them carefully, as if they were babies. “Just put them in the garage.”

“The garage?” cried Isabella. “What are you, crazy? That garage is about to fall down all over itself. We can't put them in there. Imagine if it collapsed while we were at the funeral and all of your paintings were destroyed?”

“I don't want to imagine that,” Francesca said.

“We'll put them in the house. In the basement with you. Or in the attic if you want. It's very dry up there.” Isabella coughed to emphasize her point. Francesca continued to pile paintings on Bella's out-stretched
arms. “I don't understand this at all,” Isabella said, pulling away to indicate she had enough to carry. “What if you'd crashed and your car had exploded?”

“Then I'd be dead.”

“What about posterity?”

“I don't think about posterity, Isabella.” Francesca shook her head. Her sister was so strange, but compelling. There was something about her mind that Francesca wanted to understand, to follow, and her responses to things couldn't be called emotional or intellectual, but were something else—instinctual. You could feel the intelligence ricochet off her like electricity. But it seemed to have no reason for being and nothing to do.

They brought the first batch of paintings down into the basement and deposited them on the card table. Isabella sat on the daybed, winded from the effort and enthusiasm. She rubbed the gritty bedspread with her hands. “You hated this bedspread,” she said.

“I know.”

“Do you think Mom put it here on purpose?”

“No,” Francesca said. “Do you?”

“It wouldn't be unheard of. She does that sort of thing—tiny, passive-aggressive gestures. But I don't know why she'd do it to you. What does she have to be angry with you about? Except that you left the family and never called to say you were okay.”

“No one ever tried to find me,” Francesca said, lighting a cigarette. She leaned against the wall and stared at her sister.

“Yes, they did. They tried to find you.”

“How do you know?”

“Duh . . .” Isabella covered her mouth, then remembered she didn't have to. “I remember them talking to the police.” Isabella stared at the paneled wall, wincing with shame. “But I was in the hospital. So they were distracted.”

“What the hell happened anyway?”

“I tried to kill myself. Didn't Lisa tell you?”

“Lisa?” Francesca asked, startled at the sound of Lisa's name uttered by someone else, uttered anywhere other than inside her brain. “Yes, she did. But I thought it was something more recent.”

“Oh. Right. There was that time, too.” Isabella stared at a crack in the paneling. She pushed her index finger into the slat where the plastic had separated and tried to widen it. “I have an allergy to life,” she said sadly. “I tracked her down, you know. When I heard you were alive. I called every Sinsong until I found her, then told her what I'd read in the paper. And she said she'd get in touch with you. Did she? Did she get in touch with you?”

Francesca nodded.

“Could I have a cigarette?” Isabella asked, thinking her sister looked cool.

Francesca held out the pack. Gingerly, Isabella took one and leaned in for a light. She sucked on the cigarette, smoke puffing out like stuffing from all directions. “Is this where you slept?” she made a sympathetic face. “It reminds me of a prison.”

“Yeah. Me too. The whole house reminds me of a prison.”

“Want to come sit next to me?” Isabella patted the bed.

Francesca moved slowly across the room, then sat on the daybed beside her sister.

“How is Lisa Sinsong?” Isabella asked.

“Why do you say it like that? Her whole name?”

Isabella turned toward her sister, panicked, as if she'd been accused of something diabolical. “I don't know,” she stammered. “I guess . . . I think . . . I like the way it sounds. I think that's the only reason. And then, too, I guess I've always been interested in Mrs. Sinsong—whose first name I do not know—because of how she died, jumping off the building and all, in the middle of New York City.” Isabella paused. “Hey,” she said, “Why don't we go visit Lisa? See? No last name that time. I can learn.”

“Because she's dead,” Francesca answered flatly, staring down at the notches of her knee, visible even through her heavy jeans.

“What?”

“She killed herself a few months ago.”

Isabella stared straight ahead while the words sunk in. Silently she rifled through a series of responses, all of them inappropriate, then sat for a moment until she could think of something reasonable to ask, something a normal person would want to know. “Did you see her before she died?”

“She'd just visited. A few weeks before.”

“Was she depressed?”

Francesca looked long at her sister, trying to remember. “I guess so. She wasn't very happy. But then—”

“Who is?” interrupted Isabella. “Certainly not Lisa. Not you. Not me.”

Francesca shrugged. “I didn't take it that seriously. I knew she was still living with her father. I knew she was still scared of her father. But I thought maybe she'd move to the Cape and we'd live together. So, no, I didn't see it coming. I didn't realize she was particularly depressed. I missed it entirely. I missed it totally.”

“No, that's not it,” Isabella said. “You can't draw that conclusion.” Isabella spoke surely, sounding for the first time like an older sister, “Some people just don't enjoy life. In the same way that some people might not be interested in children or work or love. Some people just aren't that enamored of life. It seems counter to our purpose as human beings, I know, because that's what we're here to do: live. So, it's depressing for those people.”

“Are you like that?” asked Francesca.

“Yup.” Isabella stubbed out the cigarette, thinking of poor, little Lisa, so many years ago, of her own sick fascination . . . Oddly, there was a strong current of life running through Isabella, almost a violence, something unstoppable, and it seemed she couldn't end her life even as she tried. It was the opposite of Lisa, whose commitment to her own existence was tenuous at best.

“Was it a building?” asked Bella. “Did she jump off a building?”

“No,” Francesca said. “She shot herself in the head.”

“She put a gun to her head?”

Francesca nodded.

“Wow,” Isabella said, newly impressed, her mind spinning with weird emotions—envy, admiration for Lisa's chutzpah, newfound courage to take matters into her own hands. “Where'd she get a gun?”

Francesca shrugged and patted her sister's knee. “That's enough,” she said. She gestured for Isabella to follow her up the stairs. As they passed through the kitchen, they heard Vivian and Alfonse stirring on the second floor.

“Tonight,” said Isabella, “this place will be crawling with little old Jewish ladies.”

Francesca popped the trunk and began unloading the remaining paintings. The door to the house next door opened and LeeAnn Frank stepped outside, her hands wrapped around a tall, oblong mug of coffee. Steam drifted up and into her face. Francesca noticed her at once—she was rather beautiful—and watched as LeeAnn kicked the welcome mat free from the ice that had soldered it to the porch. She wore gray sweatpants, a large, navy sweatshirt with YALE in block white letters. Her graying hair was pulled straight back into a shiny, unwashed pony tail.

“LeeAnn,” called Isabella, her voice pitched loud and desperate.

The neighbor looked up and waved.

“LeeAnn, come meet my sister,” said Isabella.

LeeAnn leaned her broom against the front of the house and patted some loose strands on the sides of her ponytail. She walked, barefoot, along the frozen ground and squeezed in between the hedges until she stood, shivering slightly and hopping from foot to foot. “Nice to meet you. I remember when you were a little girl.”

“You do?” Francesca asked, extending her hand. “How could that be?”

“Francesca,” Isabella offered her assistance. “LeeAnn has lived in that house for—how long has it been LeeAnn?”

“Twenty years.”

“LeeAnn has lived in that house for 20 years. And she's a piano teacher.”

“What's that have to do with it, Bella?” asked Francesca, fumbling for her cigarettes and, finally, finding them.

“Just that she's an artist, too,” Bella offered, tentatively.

LeeAnn began to shiver.

“Are you coming over today?” asked Isabella. “We're sitting shiva for grandma.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Grandma liked LeeAnn,” Isabella told Francesca. “We all do. She's been our neighbor for a long time. I miss Sappho, too,” Isabella said, getting wound up, beginning to ramble. She felt little shocks of impulse working their way to the surface.

“Who was Sappho?” asked Francesca.

“Our dog.”

Francesca nodded, putting the pieces together—a blurry picture of a big woman working on her car. A yapping dog. “Was it a beagle?”

“No . . . duh. Golden retriever,” blurted Isabella.

“Ah,” Francesca nodded her head. She opened her mouth, searching for something else to ask the blond neighbor, but it was too late. The back door opened and Vivian appeared in her bright blue terry robe.

“Good morning,” she called over a yawn. “Oh. Good morning, LeeAnn. Isabella, are you bothering LeeAnn?”

“No, she's not, Vivian. We were just chatting.”

“I introduced her to Francesca, Mom.”