Paloma will recognize most of the names, substantial people in the art world: curators at three New York City museums; gallery owners, three based in Chelsea, two out in refurbished sections of Brooklyn, all representing new and young artists on the ascent, and selling a ton of work; the second-in-command of a Los Angeles museum, which, according to an article she read in the New York Times, is enduring much squabbling among board members. Also on Theo’s list will be three writers, for Art Forum, Frieze, and October, and a Parkett editor involved in artist monographs and catalogues raisonnés that Paloma has read with approval and pleasure. She personally knows two of the people on the list, the Floridian matriarch and patriarch who commissioned works from her in 1991. Physical giants, their raison d’être is the collecting of modern art—paintings, sculptures, video installations of people doing the same thing again and again. They own many thousands of pieces, lately keen on flashy sculptures, derivative works by a man who cares much about his looks and oversees an army of technicians. The family owns so much art they built their own museum, now open to the public, the surf not far in the distance. Paloma sculpted two pieces for them. The first, two stacked onyx cubes, each five feet square, with dicelike holes. The juxtaposition piece, in stark alabaster, was five squares and rectangles piled high, but much carved away from their centers, the dice holes writ large. She spent two weeks in Florida as their guest, left in peace in their three-story beach house. Eventually, the work was placed on a high dune, sea grass surrounding it, which could be seen through the back picture window, sand and sea and grass moving through the seasons, rising and falling, ever visible around and through the empty spaces.
Only three names will mean nothing to her, and Theo will explain that Mikhail Marovich is his friend, and he is bringing his wife, Vanessa, and a friend of theirs, about whom Theo knows nothing. This, Paloma will realize, is the first time Theo has invited any of his friends to the loft, though she has told him he is free to do so, as long as he does not permit them to disturb her, does not bring them down to the studio whether she is working or out.
What Paloma will want to know is how Theo knows these people, well enough to have their email addresses, familiar enough to invite them to a dinner party two nights hence at her loft. A dinner party on a Saturday evening in late August when most people who can afford to be gone from the hot city that never quiets are long gone, which includes all the names she recognizes.
She will wonder how her Theo—who works for veritable nickels, for a place to live and readily available food, for the educational course in the history of sculpture that she has set for him—crossed paths with any of them. In the normal course of his day working for her, never would he meet such people at the art stores, galleries, and museums she sends him to.
And how has he emailed them and received affirmative responses so quickly, every one of whom must have altered weekend plans to attend?
“Explain to me, Theo, how you know these people.”
Looking down at the dusty cement floor, Theo will say, “Don’t ask me to explain. But will you trust me?”
He will not lift his eyes to meet hers.
Paloma will think that if he had met them all at some arty shindig, he would have told her, but as far as she knows, Theo does not receive invitations to parties.
It is then she will wonder if these people are related to Theo’s secretive nights out of the loft. Surely, the Floridians are not, but perhaps he has met the rest in a way that does not give him satisfaction or pleasure, that prevents him from telling her the truth, and yet he wants them to meet her.
This moment, Paloma Rosen will realize, is the moment, when she proves to both Theo and herself the love she has for him. An internal battle will wage inside of her. She will not want to be involved in any of this, not at all, and the forecast of unhappiness it will bring into her world.
After the wiry tension strings far out between them, she will finally say, “Oui, je vais tu faire confiance.”
“Does confiance mean confidence?” Theo will ask. “That you have confidence in me, that you will go through with the dinner party you agreed to?”
They will stare at each other for a long moment, and Paloma Rosen will look back to the butternut wood and think there is so much to do to get the carving truly under way, and then, that a dinner party at this stage in her life, with such people coming to dine, specifically to meet her, is completely at odds with the philosophy by which she has worked as an artist. She does not need them, or want them, fears what might happen if she opens the door and lets them in. The Floridians are a different story, but Paloma rarely mixes with her collectors once her work is set in place.
She will return to Theo, to all of that longing in his face, his eyes wide and hopeful, and she will see that he wants this for her, and although she does not, she says what she knows she must say.
“Oui, Theo. For you, I will do it.
“Maintenant, did you water my grounding grass? Even from here, I can see it looks parched.”
Joan pictures a long, rectangular concrete container, filled with aerated dirt, organic fertilizer, and grass, in the middle of Paloma’s studio. Paloma Rosen’s grounding grass, which is Theo’s responsibility to water twice a day, with a hose that reaches from a deep, old-fashioned stone sink in the northwest corner. When she feels herself too lost in creation, or overly indulgent, Paloma eradicates those extreme impulses by kicking off her work boots and socks and stepping onto the grass, sinking into the loamy earth, the bottoms of her feet arched, then flat, against the soft grassy blades, until she feels rooted again.
Joan is far ahead of herself; she and Paloma are still in France, married to Jean-Pierre Beson. New York, in Paloma’s life and in Joan’s writing, is in the future. The old Duncan Hines factory that Paloma Rosen will buy and live in for decades is still churning out cake mixes that scent the neighborhood in vanilla, chocolate, strawberry. And Theo Tesh Park, whatever his original name may turn out to be, he has not yet even been born.
She looks down at the notes she has taken, at the poor sketches she has tried to draw of Paloma’s remarkable sculptures, and realizes she is thinking of her own mother for the first time in years. Is it because Paloma speaks French—the language of Eleanor Ashby’s rare warmth and kindness—or is it because Eleanor thoughtlessly became a mother knowing she felt not the slightest maternal instinct, while Paloma, who kept herself free from children, possesses, deep down, both the heart and the nature to provide that specific sort of sustenance, of care?
Joan shakes Eleanor Ashby from her head while she washes her face, brushes her teeth and her hair, pulls on a wrap over her pajamas, socks on her feet, and retrieves her morning tray from outside the door. Eleanor Ashby is gone by the time Joan places on her desk the day’s flower, an orange vase holding an unopened yellow bud, drinks the hot tea, eats the steaming lentils that warm her up, powers up her laptop, and begins another workday.
*
At one, she takes a deep breath, leans back in her chair, and reads through what she has written.