White People (14 page)

So many people want this commission so much. Lucia keeps telling me I’m far too empathetic a person to make this kind of decision. But she’s the one who laid the eagle menus all over our kitchen counter and spent a whole rainy afternoon shaking her head and repeating, “Do you realize how
lucky
we are, Kermit?” Anyway, Miss McPhee, we’re wading knee-deep
through the heartbreakers, trudging onward in search of an undiscovered genius from Utah or some such place. Full speed ahead, I remain,

Yours,
Kermit

To the Art Money Handout People:

Consider a documented fact—of the 101 settlers on the
Mayflower
, only eleven were members of any church. You still think they came over here for religious freedom? Ha.

This kind of Federal spending really irks me no end. And why do these expensive projects always get put up on the
East
Coast? But if you intend to go through with this giveaway show, there’s something I must say, loud and clear.

As an atheist, I now tell this committee not to hint that so-called divine inspiration had anything to do with our nation’s founding. Any picture that even touches on the Godhead will bring cries of outrage from this taxpayer and others like myself. I will be watching this wall. If you people choose something like Pilgrims on their knees, or some ethnically mixed group all looking up while their hands are pressed together, I cannot be held responsible for what my organization might do. This should be said, this should be stressed. Forewarned, forearmed.

Dear Dorothy and her helpers at the Fundament,

A progress report: well, it’s slow going at best. My wife left this afternoon. She returned to her job at an art auction house in the city. She waited three years for this position and I’m glad she’s happy with it, but I already miss her. Lucia tried her hand at the mural entries but soon got very morose. She began blaming the National Fundament for how sad these things are.
So I took her by the wrist and literally led her away from the growing mounds of evidence.

Now I’m alone just as the sun sets. Me, and what has suddenly become another real presence here, all those envelopes stacked along our kitchen wall. All the artistry gummed into all those packets, mostly manila brown. Some are white. One of today’s came wrapped in red construction paper, bound with gold clips, like a gift. Our foyer is already jammed. The long-suffering postman daily stacks them higher, neat as firewood. Maybe I should have become a postal clerk instead of this—this, whatever I am. My job, I recognize, is simply to choose one winner from the hundreds. Obviously, that’s what competition is all about.

Could you please send me your phone number? Your home phone. That way I can reach you in the wee hours. This farmhouse always starts creaking just before dawn. I think I’m going to maybe need some encouragement.

Kermit

To Giveaway People:

Let’s face it. The
Mayflower
was a hotbed of foment and atheism. The sooner we admit this to ourselves, the better off we’ll be. Americans would sleep easier if they realized that our nation wasn’t settled by saints. Who
were
our forefathers? Europe’s overflow of malcontents, that’s who. The excess nuts and cranks and failures. Riff-raff who shot their bolt early on, drifters who were miserable elsewhere.

Stick that in your mural. Or else.

Dear Miss McPhee,

Kermit says we met at that big embassy party last August in Washington. He tells me that you’re attractive and conversant and that you graduated from Smith. So did my sister (Pepie Bainbridge McCloud, Class of ’61, the choreographer). My memory for faces is notoriously bad but, from all I’ve heard
about you, from the fact that you chose my husband as the one American painter to judge this mural business, I feel I can speak frankly.

Ten days ago, I left Kermit in our little nineteenth-cent, farmhouse in the Berkshires. I now have a part-time job as an art buyer and, since my official vacation was over, naturally I came back to NY. Now I wish I’d given up this whole idea and stayed in the country. I call him twice daily and he assures me that things are fine, but he sounds so vague and tired. Miss McPhee, nothing you told Kermit prepared him for the ordeal of judging. There should be at least three jurists.

When I left, packets were stacked upon every available surface. The few I managed to flip through just about broke my heart. I’m
still
depressed. Some ladies’ craft guild from Ocala, Florida, wanted to macramé a “Snood-type Shawl” for the entire building. One man sent his dead father’s pencil sketches, done on the backs of perfectly filthy Howard Johnson’s menus. A fifteen-year-old girl mailed us all her writings, a steamer trunk full. She’d done “paraphrases of Emily Dickinson.” The child had been through each Dickinson poem and reduced it to a pat moral lesson. For instance, poems about death (a quite large percentage) she often summarized: “You only come this way once, so while you’re at it, grab for all the gusto you can get.” Her accompanying note said, in a demure handwriting, if she didn’t win, she guessed she’d just go out and drown herself.

What kind of superhuman can withstand this? Certainly not Kermit. You hired him as an aesthetic authority, not a human-relations counselor. Kermit, despite my years of coaching, has never really learned to say No. His own painting has been going not all that terribly well lately. The last thing he needs is this extra burden of guilt concerning others’ pitiful problems. Three weeks ago, for the first time since he was nineteen, since his Socialist days, Kermit began to stammer again. Just as before, on words beginning with M. He was also becoming dreadfully insomniac. I’d get up and find him downstairs in the kitchen, drinking milk, standing before a table heaped with amateurish
drawings. His critical eye, as you—of all people—must know, is usually incredibly acute. In NY, gallery owners seek him out for advice. He can spot the slightest clumsiness or slickness. But when I was there with him, it frightened me to see how Kermit’s discrimination was slipping. He’d bring in some totally trashy sketch of a wood duck viewed from three angles. Sub-calendar art, really. He’d say, Of course, it was rough, but what energy the thing had, a primitive purity all its own. I told him, Kermit, what on earth are you talking about? If one of your students had done it, you’d flunk the kid for sure, and here you’re going to award
this
a national gold medal? He admitted I was probably right but he shuffled out still studying the ducks, tilting his head as he does only when looking at something first-rate.

Well, I’ve gone on too long, Miss McPhee. I’m sure you see my point by now. Kermit is simply the wrong man for this job. I
know
him. Essentially, he’s a child; he has a child’s simple faith that there is one right and honorable response to all situations. In what I often regard as a fairly sleazy world, Kermit is that oddity, a moral person. Or at least someone trying to be, which is rarity enough.

For nine long years, I’ve sheltered Kermit Waley. His fame is certainly deserved and since the start, I’ve enjoyed it with him. He was sickly as an adolescent. His early political days—handing out leaflets on windy street corners, sleeping in basements—nearly killed him. Kermit’s dealer and all our friends give me credit for keeping him so productive. Now I find him embracing this disaster. He doesn’t know (and must
never)
that I casually asked a congressman in my family to submit my husband’s name for this job. I thought it might be fun for Kermit, somehow relaxing and good for his work. I assumed that only other professionals would apply; I didn’t count on these strangers from the Midwest with their pathetic obsessions.

Please, Miss McPhee, be responsible. It’s like some disease you’re mailing to our farm. I don’t even know if my uncle’s influence had any effect; but however Kermit got martyred with this awful task, it’s a mistake and it must cease.

Many other distinguished painters, equally eminent, really do need the money. They would be honored to take over, even this late. Please find someone with a little more distance on human misery, someone less emotional than my over-conscientious husband.

Most Honorable Art Jurists:

Quilts are definitely where it’s at in this big land of ours right now. I was knocked dead by the Whitney’s quilt show some years back and have been a madman collector ever since. I threw over my job as an investment banker and just immersed myself in folk art. Questing for choice examples, I’ve made treks to Canada, Wales, and Iowa. Here, after months of loving work, is my design. You see it meshes and blends so many mellow American folk motifs: the star, eagle, flag, log cabin, etc. Alongside the wall in question, on the lot now used for parking, I would set up a huge circus tent (see Itemized Budget, enclosed). I’d fill this big top with sixty West Virginia mountain crafts-persons. (These women now work for me—at decent wages—making quilts and one-of-a-kind slipcovers for my three N.Y. and two London shops.) Many of these gals have never left the mountains. Think of the human-interest-news-coverage angle. Talk about “Where have you come from, Where are you bound?”!

I’d construct a huge quilting frame (three lowest bids enclosed). In our tent, the ladies would commence stitching as only they can. Their quilt will be made from Grade A nonfading fabrics to offset weather and the ravages of aging. The finished product will be hoisted, totally covering the westerly exposure. It would, you might say, give this bleak steely government building a security blanket of the homey kind long lost and, I think we’d all agree, pretty badly needed just now. During rain or snow, we’ll draw the quilt up on a massive roller like a windowshade,
only enormous and more reliable. Ours will be the hugest such comforter-coverlet ever made by mankind. (The Guinness Book of Records doesn’t even
list
quilts. That’s how unprecedented my idea is.)

My seamstresses are a sight. Some wear sunbonnets (for real!) and their faces are eroded like you cannot believe. We’re talking mega-Americana here. Small replicas of “The Official US Security Quilt” (like it?) will be sold as collector’s items. I’ve established contacts for major nationwide distribution in your finer stores. How am I sounding? A big fat percentage will get plowed right back into the ailing National Fundament itself.

During this last gasp of Cold War conditions, what, I ask, could be more reassuring than a many-colored patchwork quilt, handcrafted by women so American it hurts, a warm quilt plenty big enough for one and all?

Dear Famous Artist-Judge,

Have you read “Jenny the Wren’s Vienna Misadventures” yet? I sure hope so. In your opinion, what should I
do
with Jenny? She is quite eager for thousands of little readers. I’ve gone through so much with her. Sometimes I feel we’re the same person. They won’t let me read to the kids at the library here anymore. The lady said I was too prolific for my own good. But, on the street three weeks ago, the littlest Ralston child asked me what Jenny the Wren was up to
now?
She asked which kids in what country Jenny was helping these days? A good sign, Sally Ralston asking about Jenny the Wren!

I certainly don’t want to overuse your precious time. So, for your enjoyment, I’ve enclosed only three more of the real Jenny “classics”:

“Jenny the Wren, the Eskimo Twins, and the Yukon Dog-sledding Disaster”

“Jenny the Wren Visits (And Learns To Like) the People’s Republic of China”

“Jenny the Wren, the Santa Fe Dude Ranch, and the Morris Boys’ Aunt’s Missing Jewels”

How about a little Jenny the Wren “feedback”? How do
you
think her character could be enriched? Setting suggestions? I’m no prima donna and can take constructive criticism. Have you read “Jenny the Wren’s Vienna Misadventures” yet?

Miss McPhee,

I sent that last letter registered mail. Your secretary signed for it. You’ve chosen to ignore my request and my repeated calls. Kermit answers his phone only occasionally now. He says the postman is still bringing applications, whole cartons full. My sister remembers you as captain of the lacrosse team at Smith and, frankly, she says you were “hard as nails,” “a very tough cookie, indeed.”

Let’s look at it this way, Miss McPhee. I’m the favorite niece of Carlton McCloud, vice-chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. If, in four days, you have not named another judge for “America, Where Have You Come From, Where Are You Bound?,” I think you’ll find yourself abruptly unemployed. Uncle Carl knows nothing about art but he is inordinately fond of Kermit.