We climb the four stories up to the studio.
Sunlight moves around the room, lighting up this painting, then that, then flickers out as great clouds travel slowly across the skylight.
David shakes his head slowly.
“They are magnificent, Pamela.”
Joy—and relief—hit me like a blow to the back of the knees, and I’m afraid I might stumble. I feel weak and pathetic. Never in my life have I so thirsted for praise.
“Oh, yes,” David goes on. “We shall have a show. My only regret is that I can’t bring this changing light into my gallery— what a drama!”
A few days later David shows my paintings to Robert Rosenblum, a professor at Princeton who’s just published a book about cubism. The book’s been very well received. Rosenblum says he’s intrigued by my work, says it’s refreshing to see art that seems to pay absolutely no attention to current trends. And he agrees to write the introduction for the catalog.
Fantastic geometries . . . disquieting magic . . . the explicit imagery of hallucination . . . where the simplicities of one-point perspective unexpectedly oblige us to tumble into a rabbit hole. Very rarely, an artist emerges whose work seems blissfully ignorant of the twentieth century. Pamela Bianco’s painting startles and refreshes for just this reason.
III
In May 1961, my exhibition opens at the David Herbert Gallery. The opening party is a blur. I am blind with nervousness. Despite all my lectures to myself, despite my deepest convictions, I teeter on the brink of panic. I haven’t a shred of confidence. I make David and Georg promise to stand by me the whole evening, to prop me up if necessary.
Afterwards, they assure me the affair went well, but I remember little.
My worries come to nothing. The critics are wildly enthusiastic.
They compare me to Balthus, to Magritte!
Just as when I was a young girl, leading lights of the art world come to see my paintings. And I sell a great deal, more than half the paintings in the show. David is ecstatic. He is thrilled, too, by the roster of purchasers: Joseph Hirshhorn, Edward G. Robinson, the Museum of Modern Art, the Chase Manhattan Bank, Gloria Vanderbilt, Zero Mostel.
The sales of my paintings bring in the first decent bit of money that Georg and I have seen for a long, long time. There have not been many luxuries over the years. But now we intend to celebrate.
We go to Balducci’s and buy whatever strikes our fancy. Perfect Bosc pears and a package of coffee from France. Paté de campagne with cornichons. Butterflied lamb and chutney and spaetzle. Italian cheeses and risotto. Petits fours—two chocolate and two white—and Harlequin biscuits. A bottle of Veuve Clicquot.
We toast our good fortune.
1965
IV
Georg is dead.
I still cannot comprehend it. Such a sudden thing.
I found him that day, his head resting on his drawing board. I thought he’d fallen asleep.
I tried, for a very long time, to waken him.
I didn’t handle his death well. The blackness returned.
I was in a hospital for quite a long time, in the city.
Even now I’m not sure I’ve recovered, not all the way.
I don’t tend to things well.
It’s difficult. The bills pile up.
Now my eye settles, as it does so often, on the little picture across the room. Georg’s etching. I never tire of looking at it. It’s a portrait of me, but there’s so much of Georg in it. I can hear him telling me that he’s caught me exactly, if he does say so himself, that he’s captured that wary look I have—and a certain smugness. Smugness! I’d say, I don’t believe it for a minute. And we would laugh.
Things were bright all round, then.
Georg is dead.
part seven
???
???
January 1977
428 Lafayette Street
New York City
pamela
Friday, January 14
I
There’s no use reading the letter again. It’s etched in my brain by now.
Could we have a cup of coffee, at least? We can talk about anything you like, but of course, I am thinking of Lorenzo. Time, I’m afraid, is running out and it would be nice to round things out, finally.
I have your telephone number, and I’ll call you when I get into town.
I have to make up my mind, decide what to say to Robert when he calls.
Damn him. He’s got no business writing after all this time. Such a stupid letter, putting Lorenzo in as an afterthought. An aside.
But the phone is going to ring any day now, any minute, and I will have to say something.
The letter sits on the table, a constant bother, niggling at me like a spider you’ve discovered in the corner of the room and you can’t quite decide whether to smash it and flush it down the toilet, or just let it be. Hope it will go away. But it won’t, of course. It’s still there somewhere, isn’t it?
What on earth should I do? Should I see him, hear what he has to say? Or tell him no, it’s too late. I can’t think. It’s so unfair to do this now. Despite the ridiculous letter, the talk of his friend’s book collection, this can only be about Lorenzo.
But . . . forty-six years—it’s simply too late! If Robert had wanted to find his son he could have. At any time. It would have been no trouble at all. In all these years, we’ve never moved beyond a mile radius of Greenwich Village. All he had to do was to call long-distance information. How many Lorenzo Schlicks are there in Manhattan?
It’s too late!
This last-minute business is so typical. He’s thinking only of himself, his needs. People never change, do they? Most likely I wouldn’t recognize him if he walked by me on the street, but one thing’s clear—he’s just as selfish and impulsive as he was all those years ago. And just as careless, thinking he can get away with anything.
At any rate, I suppose I have him to thank for this: he brought my mother back to me today. If it hadn’t been for Robert, I wouldn’t have had that little accident, and I never would have given Mam’s book a thought at all.
This morning, the spilled tea, it all began with that. I was rattled—I’ve been so jumpy and distracted ever since I got Robert’s letter. I poured my breakfast tea and carried the cup and saucer to my office—just a corner of the parlor, really, with my writing desk and the tall bookcase. I had a vague idea that perhaps I’d open the bills I’d been avoiding, but really my mind was still on Robert, turning over and over what I might say if he called and would I talk to him at all. I reached over to set the cup on top of the bookcase. It was an automatic gesture, I didn’t really look. The teacup tipped over and the hot liquid raced right towards Mam’s rabbit.
I was in a panic. I swiped at the tea with the sleeve of my blouse. If Tubby got wet, I knew, it would be the end of him. Such a fragile and insubstantial creature, and so old—almost a hundred years! A soaking would turn him to nothing more than a little heap of mush. A dreadful thought.