The Glass Cafe (2 page)

CHAPTER THREE

I
'm not going to blame art because art isn't a thing that can be blamed but that's what started it. Art, pure and simple, because I love drawing and I was sitting in art class one day and Ms. Klein who teaches art was talking about figure studies. Ms. Klein has a way of getting excited about what she teaches so that everybody or nearly everybody in her class gets excited along with her and she had brought in a book from home that was about figure drawing and she passed the book around to the class and she said:

“All great artists spend much of their time studying and painting the human figure.”

The book was all figures, mostly nude except not in what Ms. Providge would call a “provocative” way except of course some of the boys who weren't into art giggled and pointed at bare parts but when the book came to me a strange thing happened.

I decided to be an artist.

I don't mean I thought I was great or would ever be great or would grow up to do A, B, C and D as an artist. I mean I decided that I would always like art and would always do art even if I did something else for a living like be a muscle car racer or a doctor or a rich person, which has always intrigued me—just being a rich person, but that's an aside—and so I decided I had to begin to study the human figure.

Ms. Klein talked all that day about figure drawing and when the book had gone around I went up front and studied it and I found that most of the artists must have decided the female figure was better for drawing than the male because the drawings of nude women outnumbered the drawings of nude men about eleven to one. I asked her about it.

“Yes, that's true, and it's strange. It was much easier to get men to model than women. Michelangelo had to use male bodies for models for female sculpture because he could not get any women to pose nude, which made for some strange-looking women, and yet even with that most artists preferred painting the feminine figure. Perhaps because they have better lines, more active and curving lines. In my life drawing classes, we use mostly women.”

Well, I thought, I won't have a problem there because of all the girls I knew who worked with Al. Of course they weren't girls at all but Al always called them that. That night I asked Al at dinner if I could come to the club some night and do some sketches of the girls.

She studied me for a long time. “You can't come in the club proper—you're too young.”

“Just in the dressing room. And only if they don't mind.”

Another look, a long look. “And this is really just for art class?”

I shook my head. “Not only. I saw the book and this feeling came over me like no matter what I did with my life I should be an artist and Ms. Klein said that all artists study the figure and that you're never too young to start and I thought how great it would be to come to the club and do sketches that I could finish later.”

Al asked everyone first if it would be all right and explained that I wouldn't do anything wrong or vulgar. They all agreed that it would be all right and so I took a drawing tablet the next night and sat back in the corner of the dressing room and I want to say right here and now that it's not what some of you are probably thinking.

I mean I am, well, I guess, normal. I mean certain things make me think certain thoughts and cause certain things to happen to certain parts of my body just like anybody else but this was all different.

I mean I knew all these ladies because I'd been there before and seen them sometimes with their clothes off or partly off and it wasn't like when those other things happen because of the magazines in Foo Won's or the scenes on some of the shows on television that Waylon watches and I sometimes see.

This was like work or something, like I was suddenly a doctor or, well, maybe an artist because I didn't see the girls as men would see them in the club but somehow I saw inside of what they were:

Muriel leaning on the dressing table dabbing at bits of sweat that were running down her chest between her breasts, her eyes all tired and her makeup messed but a soft smile there too, a smile of knowing something that maybe was a secret or some new thing she had learned, just a soft smile and the curve of her arm as she dabbed with the tissue, that curve and the line of her back and neck and I tried to draw that line, that curve and the look on her face, and it didn't work. Not at first. So I tried again and again and finally I could see the curve working, the line, and that night at home after dinner and homework I took out the sketch tablet and worked on different versions until I thought I had it close and I showed it to Al and she took a sharp breath and looked away and said, “How did you know that?”

“What?”

“That Muriel has hard miles on her. Don't show her the drawing, all right?”

“I didn't know that about her.” And I was telling the truth. I didn't know those things but I could see it in the sketch even if it wasn't in my mind so I knew it without knowing it and I went back to the club the next day and didn't take the sketch but did other drawings of Helen by the air cooler blowing into the dressing room with the wind from the cooler moving her hair around her face so the lines didn't show and Patty looking out the back window of the dressing room which was painted black but looking as if she could see things outside anyway and Penny leaning back against the wall by her seat at the dressing table sound asleep, as sound asleep as if she were home in bed and not on a ten-minute break between dances and Sally who was really named Eugenia but took Sally for a stage name sitting nude with a guitar in her lap playing flamenco with her long fingers flying on the strings to make the chords. I took all the sketches home and worked on them each night after homework until I had nine drawings that I thought were as good as I could do. At least as good as I could do then. I put them in a folder and I took them to class on a Monday and turned them in to Ms. Klein.

She was busy and so I put the folder on her desk and I went on to another class without her having a chance to look at them. I was home that night sitting at the table with Al talking about Dickens which wasn't really fair because she knew everything about him including an operation he had on his butt before he took a sea voyage to the United States and how it made him feel about life and literature and I had only read
A Christmas Carol
once for class. The phone rang and it was Ms. Klein.

“Tony.” She said it flat. Like did I know I was Tony.

“Yes.” I didn't recognize her voice at first. “This is Tony. Who are you?”

“Oh . . . this is Ms. Klein from art class. I was just looking at your drawings tonight. I brought them home and I was just looking at them, you know, kind of studying them . . .”

She kept sort of repeating herself that way which I'd never heard her do before, and finally she came out with it.

“Did you copy them from someplace?”

I shook my head and then remembered I was on the phone. “No.”

“Perhaps from a magazine or an art book?”

“No. I . . . I took them from life.” The truth was that nobody at school really knew where Al worked. I wasn't ashamed of it or anything but like Al said, what we did, how we lived was pretty much our own business. I once asked her about my father, why we never heard from him, and she just said, “It's none of his business to know us. He's gone.”

“Just exactly what kind of life would that be?” Ms. Klein asked.

“Could you wait a minute?” I held my hand over the phone and turned to Al who was sitting at the kitchen table with a notebook where she'd been writing some different points she wanted to make about Dickens and how he was the first true novelist even though Cervantes and Balzac had done novels before him and Sir Walter Scott but they hadn't really done novels. She said.

“Al,” I said, “it's about the pictures I did for art class.”

“What about them?”

“Ms. Klein wants to know where I did them.”

And here Al made one of those mistakes you make because you don't think there can be anything wrong with the idea. “So tell her.”

And I did. There was a long silence on the phone and then Ms. Klein said:

“Your mother works at the Kitty Kat Club?”

“Yes.”

“As a waitress?”

“No. She dances there.”

“Oh. Is she one of the women in the drawings?”

“No. Those are the other dancers who work there. Why, is there a problem or something?”

“No, no. Tony.” Again, like she was telling me my name. “Do you know . . . I mean to say these drawings are really good.”

“Well, thank you.” Maybe that meant I would get a good grade. That would bring the average up because the math grade would take it down and then I thought, hey, I was using math, figuring the average out and maybe if I thought of it that way, as math being something I could use . . .

“I mean I think these drawings are
very
good, Tony. I think you really have talent. Is your mother there?”

“Yes.”

“Could I speak to her?”

I handed the phone to Al and she said, “Yes?”

And then. “Oh, really?”

And then. “Well, I'm very impressed. Thank you for telling me.”

And then. “Well, yes, I'm all right with it but you should talk to Tony.”

She handed the phone back to me and Ms. Klein said, “Tony. I want to submit your drawings to a kind of competition at the art museum downtown.”

“You mean a contest?” I had never had any luck at contests except one where I drew the head of a pirate that was on the back of an old matchbook and sent it in and a company wanted me to send them money to make me into a top commercial artist but I thought it was strange. If I
won
the contest they shouldn't be asking me for money. So I blew it off. I don't normally say that but it's slang and Ms. Providge says it's all right to use slang now and then because it helps develop the character. My character. Besides, I think it's kind of cool to say it—I just blew it off.

“It's not a contest, really . . . well, perhaps it is at that. You don't compete with others so much as just yourself. If the panel thinks your work is good enough you can get professional training and scholarships.”

“I'll have to ask Al . . . my mom.”

“She already said it was all right.”

“Oh. Well, if it's okay with her it's okay with me.”

Which is just exactly how it started.

CHAPTER FOUR

I
don't want to give the impression that everything in my life just stopped when I did the drawings or that we just sat and waited to see what would happen. My life had a character arc before I did the drawings and it kept on arcing and is still arcing.

I found out for instance that maybe Melissa really liked me but was playing hard to get because she had read in a magazine that boys didn't like girls that came after them and I learned this because she told a girl named Kimberley and Kimberley told a girl named Janice and Janice knew Waylon's sister because Waylon's sister sometimes did baby-sitting for the people next door to Janice and they would sit and talk and talk and talk and Waylon's sister let it slip right after breakfast that she heard from Janice who heard from Kimberley that Melissa liked me and Waylon told me.

You couldn't have known by how she acted. She still would only go to the movies one out of four and sometimes five times I asked but it made me feel good anyway.

It was along about then when I almost got rich. This is how it happened. I sent in my name on a big publisher form that came in the mail and they sent me back another form. It had a picture of some old guy who used to be on television all the time, saying I was one of sixty people being considered for winning a huge amount of money, over a million dollars, and that if I sent in the next form I would be in the running and I did and they sent me back
another
form saying I was one of only twelve people and they had all the other names there so I thought how it would be great to get in touch with all of them and agree to split the money among the twelve so we'd each get over a hundred thousand dollars. But I couldn't find their addresses so it all kind of fell apart and I didn't win the money. I guess one of the twelve got lucky. There's all that math again. Just about when I think I don't need it some number thing pops up like trying to figure odds or averages or dividing over a million dollars, and I find a use for it. I guess I'll have to work at it harder because I'd hate to be that close on a contest again and not get it right. People will take advantage of you if they think you don't know something. Al says that all the time and she told me she ought to know although she never explains just
why
she ought to know.

But I was close, and that should count for something when it comes to story line and character arc. You can see how I would have acted if I had won the money and that I have certain “character traits,” like I'm not really greedy and was perfectly willing to share the money with the other winners and not just run out and buy a Corvette right away. I might even be a little responsible, although I think it's too soon to know that yet.

I got a dog during that time before the world blew up. That's how Al puts it. The world blew up. . . .

I was walking down the street kind of minding my own business having just come from nearly breaking every bone in my body with a pair of Rollerblades Waylon borrowed for the day from his older brother. They were a little too big which might explain why I kept catching the toes and splattering my face all over the sidewalk and I was glad when Waylon took them back to his brother because it was becoming one of those fun things to do that if it got to be just a little more fun it would kill me so I was walking home wondering what to tell Al about all the marks on my face when this brown dog came out of a bush and stuck his nose in the back of my knee. He took a long snuffling breath and wagged his tail and followed me home.

I forgot to say my favorite color is brown back when I was talking about what I like but it is and it was the shade of brown this dog was colored.

He didn't have a collar and kept smelling the back of my knee and following me so I named him Carlyle because Brownie would be too lame and I had read the name Carlyle in a story and Carlyle followed me home and into the apartment without my really trying.

“What happened to your face and where did you get the dog?” Al was sitting in the kitchen in her terry-cloth bathrobe getting ready to dress for work.

“Rollerblading and he followed me home.”

“We can't have pets. You know the rules.”

“I named him Carlyle.”

“Ummmm.”

“I'll take good care of him.”

“It's against the rules.”

“Well.”

She was quiet for a long time. “You think you can hide him from the super?”

I nodded.

“How many will this make?”

I shrugged. “I don't know. Maybe ten, twelve.”

“And you get caught every time.”

“But I'm getting better at it. Last time it was over a month.”

She looked at the dog. “Why is he smelling the back of your knee?”

“I think I fell in something that smells good.”

“With the back of your knee?”

“I'm not very good with Rollerblades.”

“Heaven help us when you get a Corvette.”

“That's different. I'll be older.”

“Ummmm.” And I thought she might be going to say something she says all the time about men just being bigger boys with larger toys but the phone rang. Al never answers the phone if she's busy with something else. It can ring for an hour and she won't pick it up. “It's an invitation, not a command,” she says, “and I don't have to answer an invitation.”

So I answered it, thinking it might be Waylon or even Melissa though I can't remember a time when she actually just up and called me and this woman's voice said, like she knew I wasn't a man, “Is your mother there?”

“It depends,” I said, “on if it's an invitation or a command.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Al doesn't answer commands and usually doesn't want to be invited to talk so when you say ‘Is your mother there?' it's kind of a complicated question. If we work it out, and I'm not saying we will work it out, but if we do and we decide she is here do you want to talk to her?”

There wasn't any sound for a long time but I could hear her breathing, like she was thinking about it, and then she took a deep breath and said evenly, “Yes. If we decide she's there I would like to speak with your mother.”

“And whom,” and I said
whom
and not
who
even though I'm not sure which is right, “should I say is calling?”

“My name is Judith Preston, Mrs. Judith Preston.”

“And the nature of your call?”

Another very long pause. “I'm with the state government and there is a complaint lodged against your mother that we are investigating.”

“A complaint?”

“Really, I think it would be more appropriate for me to speak with your mother. She
is
named Alice Henson, is she not?”

She had the name right. Still, Al was getting into her working mood and she didn't like to be interrupted when she was getting ready for work. She said exotic dancing, if it was done right, was a Zen kind of thing and she worked at the music, becoming tuned with the music, before she left home, breathing deeply with her eyes closed and her fingers pressed together before she even went to the club. She told me once that the audience didn't matter unless they touched you and she never allowed anybody to get that close. Conan didn't let them either. He was the bouncer and his mother took his name from a comic book.

Still, it was the state calling. “Hold the line,” I said. “I'll see if she's here.”

Of course, Al was three feet away. I held my hand over the phone. “It's the state. They say there's a complaint against you but the woman won't tell me what it is or anything about it.”

At first I thought she didn't hear me but then she breathed out, opened her eyes and put her hand out for the phone.

“This is Alice Henson.”

A pause, then:

“What is the nature of the complaint?”

Another pause, then:

“That's patently absurd.” She smiled and I knew that was because she likes to say that phrase:
patently absurd.

Another wait, then:

“It is
art,
Mrs. Preston, but if you have to do it tomorrow, eleven in the morning would be best. I work late at night.”

Then she handed me the phone to hang up. I did. Then I waited and when it seemed she was never going to say anything I said, “Well?”

“Those sketches you did of the girls were put in a display at the art museum along with a short sentence about you being a young person and some anonymous person saw it and made a complaint to the social services that somebody, meaning me, was allowing their child, meaning you, to draw pornographic pictures.”

“You mean they think the sketches of the girls are dirty?”

She nodded. “You heard me—I told her it was art, but she said even so it has to be investigated so she is going to come out tomorrow for what she called a ‘preliminary conversation.' ”

“That's crazy.”

“Patently”—she nodded—“absurd.”