It was also disorienting, feeling the obligation to mourn with strangers and receive commendations and American flags. I was still having a hard time accepting that my father had died over the skies of New York City when he had gotten on a plane in Boston bound for Los Angeles. I couldn’t relate to what was happening at Ground Zero at all. That didn’t feel like his burial ground to me, but at the time, I couldn’t articulate that because I was swept up in the enormity of the event. I was trying too hard to hold it together for the sake of our family name.
At first, I said yes to everything because it seemed like the proper thing to do, even these awkward counseling sessions offered by the airline for the victims’ families in Southern California. At the counseling sessions, I felt forced to care about others, when I could barely dress myself. Mostly, the talk consisted of conversations about insurance and lawsuits and conspiracy theories. I couldn’t connect with anyone there, even though I wanted to on some level. We had nothing in common except one rotten coincidence, no matter how many times the counselor talked about “the connective tissue of shared loss.” What bullshit, I thought at the time.
The last public ceremony I attended was meant to honor my father but ended up being more of a patriotic rally. It struck me as all wrong, like I didn’t need to be there at all, because I didn’t. Luther had come with me and was standing next to me as he had done so many times that fall. Halfway through a boys’ choir rendition of “America the Beautiful,” I stood up and left.
There seemed to be national mourners all over TV, on the cover of magazines, honored by the president. I didn’t need to be one of those people. Then came the group of widows fighting for victims’ rights and proper memorials, but I had no interest in their cause. They were coping the way they needed to cope. I was done with that part of the process. After that, I declined all invitations for years, except when the WAM dedicated my father’s final piece of work. The night I met Casey.
In the days after Casey left, I thought maybe I should have kept going to that counseling group with all those people who’d lost family members. Maybe I wouldn’t have clung to Casey so hard if I had acknowledged that “connective tissue of loss.” I’ll never know.
In between my official appearances and my wild trip to New England to track down my father’s notebooks, my mother pulled herself together long enough to hold a memorial for my father, mainly at the urging of friends who needed to gather in one place in Henry Blakely’s memory. He had touched a lot of people with his talent and drive, mentoring, teaching, and encouraging young artists for decades, and they wanted to come together and remember. It was over Thanksgiving weekend. My mother invited about one hundred people to share a meal and memories in the courtyard of the Motel. My grandmother hired a caterer, of course, because there would be no potlucks on her watch. There were long tables, white lights, and lots of candles, art directed by my father’s assistants, and yet somehow it struck the spontaneous “we are all here out of love” tone that my mother had wanted and my father would have appreciated.
As my father’s oldest friend, Luther said a beautiful grace and we all cried. Old drinking buddy J. D. Souther sang, and we all cried. And then Dennis Hopper, a onetime resident of the Motel, stood up and eulogized my father, reminding us all of the importance of his work, of the generosity of his spirit in taking in lost souls and making them whole, and of the love and pride he had for me, and the love and respect he held for my mother. Of course, we all cried, but no one harder than me, because finally, finally after all the hollow words from strangers and official citations, these three men who had known and loved my father had laid him to rest.
I had no doubt that the photograph in the window of the Atelier Artemesium was one of Dennis’s. I’d never seen this one, but the composition was unmistakable. Three figures walking down a cobblestone street slicked with rain. The location was hard to place, and the era looked like the late seventies, maybe early eighties, based on the clothing and hair. My father, wearing his typical carpenter pants and wool sweater, looked confident, focused. He has a full head of salt-and-pepper hair and dramatic sideburns. He’s striding forward while tugging my mother’s hand. My mother is in a slinky white jumpsuit with a gold chain belt, sandals on her feet even though the street was cobblestone. Her body is facing forward, but her head is turned behind, her famous blond hair caught midflight. She is staring at the lost young man in the jeans and the T-shirt. He’s standing flat-footed, unable to keep up with the likes of Henry and Suzi. His face was so familiar, but I couldn’t place it. Where had I seen it before? I stared at the photo for a few seconds, and then pointed. “That’s my parents. And some guy.”
Nate leaned in to take a closer look. “Is that Peter Beckman of the Ravens?” Once again, Nate surprised me with his recall. He explained. “I had a cool babysitter. She had a Ravens thing and I had a babysitter thing.”
Of course! There were several photos of Peter Beckman in my mother’s books about the Motel, but those photos were grittier, of a man who’d been on the road for a few hard years, banging out a lot of groundbreaking music and Jack Daniel’s, I suspected. This Beckman was young and beautiful. “I think you’re right. I’m pretty sure it’s a Dennis Hopper print. But that’s definitely Peter Beckman.”
Nate looked at me. “Peter Beckman . . . of the Ravens. And ravens happen to be black birds.”
“Oh my God.” I had no idea what this meant in terms of the sketchbook or my father’s notebooks, but I felt some sense of relief that this old family friend, this man familiar to me from the many times I paged through my mother’s books, was involved.
Nate pulled out his phone and started typing furiously into the search feature. “No service.”
The atelier door opened. Clearly, Jacques de Baubin had been expecting us.
“Jehanne.” The Old French name for Joan, a name I had seen in print but never heard spoken out loud. It was pronounced in two syllables. The first with the soft “J” as in the French phrase, “Je suis . . .”; the second with a hard “H” and rhyming with “yarn.” Je-Harn. A peasant’s name, but when this elegant older man said it, it sounded elegant as well. “Hello, dear Jehanne.”
The atelier was a surprise: a clean, bright space with shelves of books, two entire walls of contemporary oil paintings, and black-and-white photos for sale, most featuring religious iconography. There were modern tables and chairs arranged in groups for conversation. Obviously, at some point, the place had been nearly gutted and remodeled, but a few original touches remained. Oriental rugs added warmth to the room, the soft colors of the paint glowed in the lamplight, and a number of well-done oil paintings hung behind the desk and dominated my sight line. A still life that popped with red pomegranates and green apples caught my eye. An abstract work that looked like it could have been a midcentury French artist was of some value. And then I studied the portrait in the middle, a depiction of Joan of Arc as a peasant girl. It looked to be the oldest and most accomplished of the oils. Joan of Arc. Jehanne. One and the same. What is going on here?
“Is he here?” Nate spoke first.
“Who?” said our host, feigning ignorance to buy time.
“Blackbird. Is it Beckman?”