Maud's House (7 page)

I came to think of George as a thief. He stole moments. And hearts. Sometimes I wonder what I saw in George. And then I remember how charming he could be, how his voice soothed people like Ella when she became harried and forgetful during the Christmas rush.

George had ambition and a great body that moved with a planned quickness, like a stalking puma. I think he had political aspirations (although he never admitted to it and never actually set his sights higher than town moderator). In a calculated way, he wanted to be liked. And I didn’t help him a bit. I got drunk during his speech at the annual convention of the New England Association of Accountants and Tax Preparers. I never wore the correct clothes. (I was the only woman at the convention in black leather.) I wanted to make love at all the wrong times (such as in the elevator after the tax speech). George only made love at night, in the dark, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Or so it seemed. Actually, we probably made love on the occasional Wednesday or Friday, but for the life of me I can’t remember a time. I only remember his voice.

His voice, when he talked to me, always had a patient quality: “Now, Maud, you know that is inappropriate behavior.” Sesame Street jive. I deserved it, of course. I was horrible and lazy and worthless. George took over the cooking, mastering the gadgets he bought for me, the food processor and microwave oven and pasta maker. He read their instructions to the last letter. Manuals were George’s idea of bed-time reading. “You know, Maud, if we had a large enough microwave, we could probably defrost a whole cow in less than three minutes.”

He wanted, more than anything, for me to be a great painter. “Realize your ambitions, Maud,” he said, standing surveillance over a bag of popcorn expanding its horizons in the microwave. He sniffed the air, which was filled with the warm smell of butter, and smiled. “Ambition is like the microwave; it radiates the inside and, soon, you’re cooking.”

George encouraged me to spend hours at my art. If George had a fault, it was that he was too helpful. He organized my work space. Once it spread wildly about the farm like some kind of growing thing. George contained it in the attic studio. It was a dream studio. There were shelves and jars for everything. George cut a hole in the roof and put in a special window that let the light pour in from the sky; it was cathedral light, holy light.

It was perfect.

And impossible to work in. I spent all morning in there, until George came home for lunch. I listened to him start lunch, throwing the pork chops into the microwave. (George believed there wasn’t anything you couldn’t microwave.) And when I descended the stairs to gnaw on those chops with the mixed-up molecules, George knew by my expression it had been an unproductive morning. “Cheer up, Maud, you’ll get it right tomorrow,” he said. “I know you will.”

“Probably,” I pushed aside the glass of milk he had poured and fetched a beer from the refrigerator.

He was so patient. He should have left me much sooner than he did. I know he was tempted, especially during my criminal period. There was a time when I stole things. It lasted only a few months, at a time when I couldn’t even draw cows, and I was never caught. I took little things that I never remembered taking.

George liked to drive into Burlington and catch the red light specials at one of the discount department stores. But for awhile there, maybe six months, whenever we walked out of the store, I found things in the pockets of my parka. Little digital alarm clocks that you stick on the dashboard of the car, earrings (clip-ons, not even pierced), a bottle of Calamine lotion.

“Where did you get those, Maud?” George asked in his patient, grating voice.

“I don’t know. They seemed to have just appeared in my pocket. Like magic.”

“There is no such thing as magic, Maud.”

The shoplifting never amounted to much and George kept down the proceeds by holding my hand in the store. We strolled through cosmetics, shoes, hardware, from one red light special to another, looking like lovers, avoiding crime. Petty larceny didn’t shake George’s cool.

Actually, the only time he ever lost his temper with me, the only time I ever went against his wishes, was when I took the job at the Round Corners Restaurant. I became a waitress because it gave me an excuse not to be an artist. Although I still entered the attic every morning and played chicken with a white piece of canvas, my life didn’t revolve around cows in flip-flops anymore (or their equivalent subject matter back then). I expanded my horizons to cooked cow: smothered steak and filet mignon.

George disliked my new career move because it wasn’t “furthering my artistic goals,” as he put it, and because it was there I met Freda Lee. Freda Lee irritated George with her talk of soap operas and afternoon sex with Lewis Lee. She was so busy having fun with Lewis Lee, she was oblivious to the other things that made the world go around—the depression, the anger, the deviousness. I liked her immediately.

Lewis Lee was the center of her life, her focus, her salvation. She supported him and three children on what she made at the restaurant. Lewis Lee seldom worked. Everyone, except Freda, called him lazy. Lewis was not a well man, she said. And he had the paperwork to prove it. Lewis Lee always found a doctor somewhere to swear he was sick or at the very least possibly dying. One time he had to travel all the way to Boston (and in his condition) for a reasonably poor prognosis. Still, Lewis Lee was Freda’s life. He was the air she breathed. And, in my mind, that was job enough.

Freda’s sensuality slid over her body, fitting her tiny waist and lush hips; it whispered, like her tight polyester waitress uniform, as she walked. She fascinated men with her blonde hair, soft skin, and easy-going temper. She laughed, turned down their offers, dodged the occasional wandering hand. It wouldn’t occur to her to take them seriously. She was so wrapped up in Lewis Lee she wasn’t even aware she was flashing signals hot enough to melt the sky on a cold, snowy night.

George considered Freda a bad influence, contributing to my already tenuous grasp on respectability. “Don’t be so stuffy,” I told George, balancing a large, glossy coffee table book (
The Joy of Impressionism,
I think) on my head. Since the Impressionism text was no great challenge, I also juggled four pine cones. Pine cones were tricky. The spikes, you know.

George did not juggle, and the only books he balanced were his clients’. He was particular about appearances, his clothes, his ideas. He hated to wear the same pair of underwear two days in a row when I forgot the laundry. And he cringed when I became loud at softball games.

“Kill the sucker, George! All right! No batter no batter no batter. Wooooeeee!” George sought dignity even in spikes. We drove home from those games, George staring straight out the windshield, tight-lipped; me coming down from that boy-did-we-slaughter-them high and miserably remembering all the rotten things I’d said about the other team’s mothers.

“I don’t know what you want, Maud,” George said in a defeated voice.

I was silent. Apologies, by then, had dubious value.

“You know, I want you to be happy, Maud.” More Sesame Street therapy. “I want you to be the best you can be.”

That was the attitude that got me in my present predicament.

George the patron saint of the arts was 150 percent behind Odie Dorfmann’s reelection plans. They plotted the entire campaign together during an Expos game in our living room. Odie was always at our house either talking or watching baseball. He was the pitcher of the Round Corners Royals softball team; George was the third baseman.

One night while the Montreal Expos were kicking butt Odie announced his campaign plans for reelection. He leaned forward, looking us in the eyes, and whispered: “Culture.” That was Odie’s campaign strategy. He was going to bring not only leadership, but culture to Round Corners. This was about the time The Burlington Free Press ran an article on the explosion of the arts scene in Vermont.

When I told Freda, the next day after work, she couldn’t take it. She laughed so hard she almost fell out of the booth, where we were sprawled, tired and dirty. The doors were locked, and we smelled of hamburgers. There were two sodas on the table and an ashtray. “Culture,” Freda sighed, wiping the tears from the corners of her eyes and lighting a cigarette, “It’s good Odie is sticking to something he knows.”

George died shortly before Odie was elected. Odie took it hard. He and George had met in Vietnam, two scared, green kids with faces full of pimples and a shared love of baseball. At night as they listened to bombs in the distance, they whispered baseball statistics to each other. George had been visiting his old Army buddy Odie the day I met him.

In the aftermath of losing his best friend and winning his second term, Odie forgot about his cultural mission. Until now. Our period of mourning was over, as was half of Odie’s second term. Even Odie can figure out a calendar. And the issue of the Round Corners mural was heating up. People liked the idea. When they talked about the painting—what it would look like and who would be in it—they discovered they felt closer to each other. “What about that painting” became the popular greeting, comparable to sports salutations such as “What about those Bosox” or “What about those Expos” (depending on your baseball persuasion). The concept of the painting grew in the town’s mind. Odie envisioned something the size of a city block while the last thing I had done with any confidence—the greeting cards—was no bigger than a brick. You could say I was feeling the pressure.

George had been oblivious to pressure. “A person can do anything he wants to or can afford,” he said, straightening his tie and heading out the door for the closing of a house. I remember the day because it was the biggest house George had sold yet. He was extremely proud of that transaction. “Maud,” he said, “this is a Renoir of a real estate deal.”

The irony of the situation was that Odie wouldn’t lose the election if he didn’t produce a town mural. My spiteful side was denied even that satisfaction. The voters weren’t irate. They wouldn’t feel cheated if their cultural consciousness wasn’t raised another notch. And if they did, what choice do they have? Odie was running unopposed, again.

So I should have been able to tell Odie to stick that painting where the sun doesn’t shine—in his L.L. Bean thermal underwear.

What’s stopping me, George? I’ll tell you what’s stopping me… it’s the look of excitement everyone gets in their eyes when they talk about the mural… it’s this sense of bonding that has begun to permeate the town… it isn’t my mural… it’s theirs.

Everyone wants a piece of this dream. They say it will put Round Corners on the map again. For once, people will stop here for more than a hamburger between downhill ski runs or for a break from heavy-duty leafpeaking. They’ll come to see the mural.

Just like once they came to see my house.

I leaned back and studied the painting in front of me. I had put away the Hatteras Holstein and started again. The new painting was beginning to look suspiciously like another cow, only this one had two heads.

What does it look like I’m doing, George? You’re dead, not blind.

Of course, it’s not right. I don’t know how to fix it, George; if I did, I would. Yes. It’s a good thing I still have those cute little greeting cards. The tourists love them just as you said they would. Now, go away. Please? What do you mean what is that red glob in the middle? George… George? George come back here and explain. Damn, you always do this to me. If you weren’t already dead, I’d probably kill you.

T-Bone once told me his dancing was like a thing clawing inside him to get out. If he didn’t listen to it, he said, it would destroy him. There was something inside me lately, tearing, mad, slashing through arteries, muscle, and organ. I studied the softly forming cow and gave in to all the despair and heartache and frustration. I hurt inside and cried from the pain. Little sniffles at first. Then mighty sobs. I couldn’t watch another cow birth. I raised my hand to my eyes. It was dripping with blood.

Great.

On the floor was a shattered jar and on the table where I had slammed my hand through the glass was the red imprint of my palm.

Downstairs someone was pounding on the front door. I wrapped paper towels around my hand until it looked like a huge paper paw and answered the door. “I don’t want any.”

The man standing on the porch smiled.

“Look, I’ve got my hands full right now and…”

He glanced at the paw, which was reddening, soaking up blood faster than spilt coffee in a television commercial. The smile slipped. The man promptly turned green, folded into a pretzel, and threw up.

H
is name was Thomas. And he came here looking for the pictures.

“What happened to the house?” he asked, driving back from the doctor’s office.

“The house?” I said.

He thrust a photograph under my nose. Unthinkingly, I took it with my bandaged hand and winced. The local anesthesia was wearing off. I needed a Rolling Rock; make that six.

The photograph was a picture of my house taken years ago when it had been swimming in scenes and portraits. A man stood in front of the house, smiling. He had blonde hair, down to his shoulders, scraped back from his face with a leather headband. He wore scruffy jeans, a work shirt, and love beads. I knew by the composition that the photo had been taken by my father; it was shot from a slightly skewed angle, making the man in the picture seem to tilt like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

I didn’t remember that particular photo session. It was one of hundreds in my childhood, especially in my teen years when the house really began to rock. By then, I was running out of space. Scenes crowded the surface of the house, impressionism rubbing elbows with realism, realism back-to-back with abstract expressionism. The house reflected me, my moods, the mile-a-minute changes going on inside my teen-age mind. It seemed I changed styles weekly. And so, the house changed, too.