My mother said, “Tell them, Henry. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.” And then to Joel and me, “Your father is doing some work that he thinks you’ll find not quite on the up-and-up.”
“It doesn’t have to do with drugs, does it?” I asked.
“Of course not!”
“It’s art,” said my mother. “But it pays.”
“For Chrissake,” said Joel, who had been consulting the pizza menu more than engaging in Everton Country Day hand-wringing. “Just tell us. How bad can it be if it has to do with, I assume, paint?”
My father said, “Shall we order first?”
We passed the take-out menu around, taking too long to choose from the café’s stylish pizzas baked in their much-touted new oven. Joel called in a Bianco for the ladies and one laden with all available meats for the men.
“So what gives?” Joel said, pouring from the first of the two bottles of red wine my father had brought.
We learned over the course of the next fifteen minutes that his hobby was not a hobby as much as, quite suddenly, a business. It had started out as a favor. He’d copied a famous painting, Still Life with Onions, for some art lovers who weren’t trying to pull a fast one; they just loved Cezanne.
“That’s it?” Joel asked. “You copy paintings and you get paid for that?”
“Are these forgeries?” I asked.
“No, they’re copies. Each piece is clearly identified on the reverse as a reproduction.”
“They’re not bad,” said my mother.
“And I make the client sign something that says they won’t misrepresent or sell it or attempt to sell it as the original.”
“Very cool,” said Joel. “How’d you think of this little sideline?”
“I personally had to refuse some clients insurance on their second homes—Florida, the Bahamas, those kinds of places—in the hurricane belts. Which meant, for the one or two who had important paintings, no coverage. So, what do you do after you’ve stored them in safe, dry places, like a bank vault, or, in one case, donated them to a museum, and you don’t want empty walls, and you miss your beloved Picasso? You commission a copy.”
I said, “Then I don’t understand what the big secret is about.”
Our mother said, “Maybe your father thinks that copying famous paintings is not art in the purest sense.”
“It’s an honorable tradition,” Dad said. “In Europe, in museums, you see students sketching and painting in front of famous works—”
“What do you get for a copy?” Joel asked.
“Depends on the size. But at this stage, starting out, two to three.”
“Thousand,” my mother supplied. “Not what I’d call a living.”
“How long does one take you?” Joel asked.
“If I’m working full-time, day and night . . . a week, ten days. The longest was two weeks.”
“Then it has to dry,” said my mother.
I said, “Dad! You’re giving us every reason why this is completely kosher and nothing to be embarrassed about!”
“Now tell them about the Chagalls,” said our mother.
The doorbell rang: pizza delivery, followed by a wallet skirmish as to who was going to treat.
We opened the second bottle of red and finally settled, silverware dispersed and pizza served. “What about Chagall?” I asked.
“He personalizes them,” said my mother.
My father explained. A client saw a copy he’d done of a Matisse for a restaurant pal and called him up. She asked if he could make a copy of a Chagall, but perhaps more lavender than blue—purple was their daughter’s favorite color—and work her daughter’s name into it, and give the angel her face, with her bangs but without her braces? She played the violin just like in the painting, and her bat mitzvah was in three months. Would he be willing to tweak it that much and was that enough time?
“Then one thing led to another . . . ,” our mother said. “Or so I’ve gleaned.”
“What your mother means is that my client exhibited Blue Mitzvah on an easel in the lobby of the synagogue before and after the service, which brought two more commissions—another bat mitzvah and an engagement.”
“Angels, brides, stars, livestock,” my mother said. “Everything from the four food groups.”
“It’s an expensive present,” I said.
“It’s for the ages! It’ll be passed down from generation to generation, or at least that’s part of the pitch,” my father said. “From across the room, your friends think you have a Chagall. And then you get closer and you see that it’s about your wedding, or your grandson’s bar mitzvah or bris, and that’s your daughter’s face on the angel.”
Joel asked if these patrons had to be Jewish.
“It doesn’t hurt,” he said. “Excellent pizza, by the way. How’s that white one?”
“Want to swap a white piece for a red one?”
Both men said sure, plenty to go around. “Maybe we should’ve ordered a salad,” said my mother.
“Not tonight,” said Joel, nodding in my direction. “We’re rewarding ourselves after a hard day.”
“And have we forgotten, despite what might be happening at school, that I’m buying a house?”
“Your mother already told me.” My father picked up his fork and pierced another slice. “By yourself, I understand. On your own.”
“It was a bargain. And my lawyer—speaking of lawyers—when I explained Stuart’s walkathon, said he would be no help at all in the eyes of the bank as a cosigner, so I might as well just go for it.” I couldn’t help adding, “You have your studio. It’s obviously not a reflection of anything . . . personal or marital.”
Neither parent picked up on that theme. Finally, my father said, “It is working out. Well, the place is a mess. It smells like paint and turpentine and cigar smoke. I feel like a real artist. It’s romantic, in a Greenwich Village or Paris-in-the-nineteen-twenties kind of way.”
“Look where it’s led,” said my mother. “Your father is the new Chagall.”
“Now tell me about the house,” said my dad. “Turpentine Lane, correct? You have fire, theft, homeowners?”
“I mean to. I will. You have to see it. It’s such a sweet little place. All it’s missing is the picket fence.”
“Of course I want to see it. It’s just a matter of when.”