The front room of the exhibition offers the prosaic Self-Portrait with Nora Making Coffee, Self-Portrait with Nora Bathing and other tranquil, domestic scenes. From there, Walker delves into the darker aspects of his personal life. Self-Portrait with Nora in Cell is a frightening, claustrophobic image of his former muse beside the artist in a shadowy, tunnel-like space. In another powerful, untitled work, Nora is depicted, disturbingly, as part mythical beast looming threateningly over the sleeping artist in their marital bed.
The back room of the gallery introduces Walker’s new source of inspiration by way of homage to Ono and Lennon. The jubilant Self-Portrait with Pregnant Helene (interestingly, not for sale) has an entire wall to itself. Hanging opposite is the show’s pièce de résistance: the artist sketching Nora, who lies curled on the floor of his studio, having discovered the fact of his mistress’s pregnancy. Walker titled it Self-Portrait with Nora, Knowing.
Walker manages to capture the deep psychological pain and turmoil that comes when a marriage unravels, as well as the hope new love can inspire, all while pushing the aesthetic boundaries of the self-portrait form. This is a masterful show. Don’t miss it.
Chapter Three
Two dark blue Crown Victorias with county police seals were parked in front of the garage. Alongside them, a white county coroner’s “Crime Scene Section” van. Aunt Lada’s opera glasses provided a fragmented view of the entire spread in a series of close-ups that I could piece together for the bigger picture. Panning from left to right, I came across one of Pequod’s police officers standing guard in the driveway. He looked like Lt. Crawley but it was hard to tell if it was him for sure. He had the hood on his yellow slicker drawn up.
Crawley knew me from my weekly drop-ins to the station. Editing the police reports for the Courier’s Police Blotter was part of my job. When I picked them up at the precinct, I’d usually find him reading the sports pages and resenting the interruption. Besides Crawley, I counted eight county officers in gray Stetsons and black rain gear patrolling the woods that shielded Hugh’s estate from the road. Without a doubt, this was a murder scene.
Rain pelted the roof of the blind as I continued to scan, hands shaking from the cold and jiggling the opera glasses so that everything blurred. I should leave immediately. Since that May night, I promised myself I’d never play Peeping Tom again. What more could I actually learn out here? I should hike out and drive home right now, or head for a bar. Instead I wrapped the army blanket around my shoulders more tightly and tried to steady my hands as I examined the scene.
Not even this ugly weather could diminish the grandeur of the house and property. The operatic great room’s glass walls shot up to the treetops, offering dramatic, one-hundred-eighty-degree views of the secluded woods and cove. The other walls were constructed of large stones and trimmed with honey-colored timber that blended in naturally with the landscape. At the far wall, I could see a hallway that led to the rest of the house. The place was so large, there must be rooms and rooms and rooms back there. A separate three-car garage was situated to the left. A slice of another glass-and-wood building was visible on the right behind the main structure, past the pool. Hugh’s studio, I surmised. It was built to take advantage of the views as well.
A tall, bald man in a brown tweed sports coat and a tie gestured animatedly in the center of the great room while talking on his cell. He must be the lead county homicide detective. Around him, figures wearing hooded white jumpsuits and blue plastic gloves crawled on the floor marking, measuring and putting random items in Ziploc bags. I knew this to be forensics procedure, but it looked like performance art.
As I panned back to the fireplace, a white light suddenly exploded in my eyes. I dropped the glasses and blinked at the orange balloons floating on my retinas. They faded quickly, but bursts of light continued to strobe across the choppy waters. Camera flashes. The police were taking pictures of the crime scene.
I picked up the glasses and peered through them again just in time to catch the bright red of an ambulance rolling up the drive. Who needed an ambulance? The news hadn’t mentioned any other victims who’d survived. And if there were survivors, why were the EMTs arriving so late? It took a moment before I grasped that the ambulance must have come at the county coroner’s request. To cart Hugh and Helene away for autopsies. I shuddered at the thought.
With a little maneuvering, the vehicle turned and backed up to the house, revealing a Pequod Volunteer Ambulance insignia on the side. The driver’s door opened and an unmistakable head of thick, snowy hair appeared. Grace’s husband, Mac, had gone gray at twenty-five. “He thinks of emergency calls as a vacation,” Grace had said when Mac first signed on for the ambulance team. After leaving his job on Wall Street to move to Pequod, he began day-trading from home. Mac has attention deficit disorder, and like many people with the affliction, he gets calm and laser focused in high-stress situations. That’s why he’s drawn to trading and EMT work.
Mac climbed out of the ambulance and drew his hood up against the rain. Another man came around from the passenger side to join him. Al Rudinsky. I knew Al volunteered with the ambulance corps, but I don’t think I’d ever seen him out of his bright blue Tidy Pool coveralls. Like Mac, he wore jeans and a red crew windbreaker.
A third man in the same outfit clambered out of the double doors in the back. I was surprised to see Kelly’s husband, Stokes. When had Stokes joined the ambulance corps? I wouldn’t have expected him to give up his bowling time.
“He’s dreamed of running an alley ever since his first bowling party at ten,” Kelly told me the morning I interviewed the couple for my piece on Van Winkle Lanes’ reopening. “He’s a maniac about bowling,” she said of her athletic but baby-faced husband, who barely said a word. “He practices every day. At least three hours. Even when he isn’t competing.” I remember thinking that could explain his freakishly overdeveloped right arm.