June 09, 2022
Still Life
by Pam Wolfson
Alone now, I work in my studio every day. By the window, by the mad blue water on this summer evening, I draw a teapot and two onions. As I sketch the spout’s shadow with charcoal, my wife’s velvety voice fills my ears. Very nice, Harry. Good volume in the pot. Rich values, mon amour. Her tongue taps behind her perfectly aligned teeth. Be vigilant. Don’t let your darks vie with the lights. So many “v” words from Deirdre, my soulmate for fifty years who was plucky and tender until the day she died two years ago.
Today would have been Dee’s eightieth birthday.
“My life still hurts,” I whisper, wiping my smudged hand on a rag. “Yet you’d be proud, Dee. The front desk lady calls me every morning to see if I’m still breathing. I am.”
Shhh, Harry. Dee’s breath warms my cheek as she holds my fingers, fat with age. Focus on your work. A wide earth-toned caftan covers her black tights. Her hair, once blond, curls in wild auburn streaks and her skin is pale. Dee has let loose in the afterlife and she visits me daily. I yearn for her real body.
“It’s not so easy,” I say. My failing eyes see more fragments now, letting life come together as it may. As I spray my under-drawing with fixative, fresh air from the window clears my irritated eyes. The beach’s edge shines silver as the sun begins to set. Living in this retirement community without Dee, giving up our roomy home, has been hard. My small apartment and studio occupy a second-story corner. My balcony has two plastic chairs and a pot of rangy herbs.
I peek out my slider door into the courtyard below. My neighbor Naomi, with her confident stride, passes by. I wave but she doesn’t see me. She lives in Building B and we chat by our mailboxes often. Tickled that we are both grandchildren of Russian immigrants, she invites me to supper on Saturdays. She brags about her grandma’s determined step across East Side tenement roofs as she nursed the sick. I tell Naomi about my Grandpa Andrei’s store on Broadway with its humped glass cabinets of penny candy. We make believe we can still visit those long-ago days.
The phone rings. Dee hoists herself up on my pine chest, wrinkling her caftan. Must be one of the boys.
One twin lives nearby to keep an eye on me, the other in London. I won’t answer that pesky call now.
Harry, Dee stretches her arm over her head, tipping deeply to one side. Why not pick it up?
“Shhhh,” I say. “Rob called earlier when I was eating fat-boy sandwiches and joking with the guys on the patio.” I blush, remembering our off-color jabs. We men without wives, our little club in this gossipy “high school” known as assisted living. “Then, Chris rang when I napped. ‘It’s a special day, Dad, a tough day. Anything you want?’ he asked.”
I had swallowed hard then. To trade in my body for a newer model, to bring her back in the flesh. To banish the biting breast cancer that spread to her bones.
“No more chatting with our sons today,” I tell Dee. “An old man missing his wife is a private affair.”
Tsk, tsk.>I can tell by the tickle in her voice that she is flattered. I open the window more. Delicious salt air from the Sound cools me.
Flat-edged pastels crowd my easel. I stare at Deirdre’s teapot with its glossy behind and round belly. Bought on a cool day in Seattle for her seventieth birthday, its earthy green soothed us. The scent of Jasmine tea filled it. When I lost my footing and knocked the pot off the table, Dee rebuilt it, joining its fragments into a scarred whole. During our marriage, she tended to wounded things— her arthritic mother, five stray cats, and her clients’ plant beds gone to seed. Dee grew purple vinca in the shade, wisteria in the sun, and vast beds of white gardenias everywhere. She often thrust a trowel skyward. Gardens are full of hope, she had beamed. A trampled stalk and then bam, a new bloom.
Against Dee’s green pot, two onions lean. One is red, the other gold.
The sun sets and light splinters the sky. Dee and I had dreamed of holding an eightieth party tonight at the beach. We wanted to hire a big band, Dorsey style, order up martinis, and dance beneath strung-up lights. Our birthdays were so close. Mine, a few months earlier, was awful to endure alone.
I draw over my sketch with red and ochre pastels on thick, toothy paper. A rhythm leaps into me as I loosen up, as big and little shapes emerge. I feel pure joy, and then I pause, tired. My eyes blur and I shake my head. I must not lose my way; I need to finish my tribute to Dee today. If only I were a master artist; taking up pastels late in life has been hard.
Don’t be afraid, Harry. Dee urges me. Take a step back and look. She strokes the thick seam of her heavy tights on this summer night. The afterlife must be chilly.
I walk away and squint. Yes, art is like lovemaking, I decide— passion and then a pause.I can do this. Back at the easel, I attack the background, slash in burnt umber and maroon. My shoulders rock, my arm swings hard. I forget everything as I work, even her. I stop. By God, the shadow behind the teapot looms too large, ready to eat my objects. I ramp up the pot’s brightness with orange and yellow. It gets fuller, better. Yet the spout screams. I must downgrade it from a hurricane to a tropical storm.
Harry, Deirdre chides me. Slow down. Don’t ruin it.
Easy for her to say. I grab a mustard pastel when I want deep red. Damn. It’s the wrong hue for my background, the wrong feel for my paper.
Tsk. Dee slides off the pine chest and hands me the right red stick. She pushes tangles of curls from her face. Fiery pigment, left on her fingertips, streaks her cheekbones. Ah, what a change. The woman I married strove for a precise beauty.
My hand moves close to her right ear. “Remember how you used to make up your lips and eyes every morning? Your face became a painted canvas.”
“You called it my higher self, Harry.”v
“But why did you darken your brows to swim at the gym? You only showered and then sprawled half-naked in the sauna. That’s real beauty.”
Oh me. I think of her ample thighs back then and blush. Dee lost fifteen pounds by the end of her earthly life.
The grays in the sky intensify. I turn the knob on my studio lamp to make it brighter. I boss my objects. Don’t get dull and moody on me. Show me a gradation from light to dark so my pot will seem round and vivid. Light and dark. We artists need both. Each contains the shimmer, the possibility of the other.
Dee paces in the corner. There, you go. On your way. With that, she vanishes.
I rush to the window. Not a trace of my wife. But Naomi is back in our facility’s excuse for a garden. A single spigot in an oval basin thrusts water into the air. Naomi plucks a daisy. I admire her long neck, her slim and well-proportioned body. Her capris show off her fine ankles. I’d like to wrap my arm around her waist.
Back to work, Harry, I sass myself. I bend my knees and twist my stiff body side to side. Better now. At my easel, my drawing flares with hot color. My teapot wants more grounding. The red onion squirms like a feisty piglet with a coiled tail, and the gold one floats light as a crystal ball. Nothing coheres. I have failed in value and vision. Dee, where are you to guide me now? I suck in my breath. With a blue pastel, I darken the pot’s gold edge. It settles down. My stomach grumbles. I’d better eat dinner.
I stir hot water into dry pea soup, peel my tangerine, and chew rye toast. My old man’s quick meal. To honor Dee, I light two candles as in the past. “In your light, I see light,” I whisper, invoking our daily evening prayer. On the wall, the candles’ shadows ripple, cross, and morph into a flying black demon. Long ago, as I hurried to finish a legal brief before symphony, as Dee zipped on a new silk dress, as our young boys rushed towards her with a “project,” their ink bottle flew skyward and stained her dress. “You little stinkers,” I cried out. Dee stamped her left foot, thrust up her arms as if scaring off a bear, and later hid the blemish with a Turkish shawl.
The sky blackens now, and the wind sweeps the Sound. Waves crash upon the shore and my cracked window rattles as if it will break. Cruel spirits. Why don’t you send me Dee’s nude body tonight, as supple as when we first met? I snuff out the candles and long for her. After her breast cancer had spread to her bones, after we could not sleep in the same bed, I used to wake up at all hours. I paced the kitchen or waited outside her bedroom door in the morning. Wake so we can talk, I murmured, so our eyes can meet.
I hear a knock. It’s after nine, an odd time for someone to drop by. I open the door. Naomi asks if she can come in. “Sorry to just show up, Harry.” She points to her stomach. “My innards have been feisty. My doctor wants me to get a colonoscopy soon.” Soft gray curls frame her narrow face, the perfect foil for her angular nose. Her hazel eyes, betraying irony at life’s poetry and nasty pinches, are worried. “I’ve never had one. I don’t want a foreign probe stuck inside of me. It’ll break me.”
A prickly tingle stabs my spine. I want to tell Naomi to go. I long to finish my still life before midnight. Why can’t Naomi visit tomorrow? Yet from her erect posture and keyed-up gaze, I can tell she’s worried. How can I, a single lonely man, argue with an intelligent woman’s need? My hand guides her to the studio sofa and Naomi sits down. Her palms cross over her belly. I feel flattered by her trust in me.
“It’s just a light through red walls,” I say. “Your colon on the Fourth of July, Titian red. Nothing to fear.” I smile at her. “How did you manage to escape getting this test for so long?”
“I refused it.” v
Ah, a woman with a strong mind. “Do the prep and let them sedate you that day. You’ll be fine.”
I pour her a glass of water, cut up another tangerine and lay it on a glass plate. Naomi takes one slice of tangerine, then another, seeming thirsty for its juice. Then, she wipes her hands lightly across her pants. How can a woman wear a tailored, perfectly ironed white shirt tucked into faded jeans? Dee wore slimming sage slacks, never jeans. Hmphf. I like it, after all.
I cross the room and lower the window shade. Outside, white clouds whirl over the Sound. The streetlamps flicker in the parking lot, marking our diminished world, our units so much plainer than the homes we once lived in. I turn my easel with my still life toward the wall. I cannot show Naomi my unfinished work. I’d be embarrassed and besides Dee should see it first.
As I return to Naomi, her eyes focus on a streak of red paint on my right hand. “Been working, Harry? Will you show me something?”
I dip a rag into my water glass and rub my hand. Why not bring out my newly completed series, something close to my soul?
I prop five pastel paintings against chairs in the middle of the room.
Naomi squints in anticipation, pulling her silver necklace, its green stone picked up on a trip to Bali she told me about once. She sets her feet on the floor. Those slim ankles, lean and fine-boned, catch my eye. I’d kiss them if I could.
We look at the long curve of Deirdre’s back (a purple line); her head of blond hair tilting down; her right arm angled in the sunlight; her size 8 feet, with the impeccable nails, crossing; her singular breast, a moon against black. After her surgery, Dee used to lather her hollow chest with scented foams. Maybe I’ll get a rose tattoo, she confided to me in the shower, but she never did. Inks could not defile her pure flesh.
“Ah,” Naomi nods, and “ah” again as if she understands all. “Interesting, Harry.”
My lips chew on that word. Interesting can be a neutral yet evasive descriptor, a slippery dodge from saying a negative truth.
“Your sense of form and color are strong.”
Ah, good. Naomi has a keen eye. She taught physics at the university and used to make black and white lithographs of women. She has shown me some. Her brave ladies hugged boulders or danced in the woods. “I drew my women into the limestone with a grease pencil. Then I inked the stone and pushed heavy rollers over it. I cranked a hand-driven press to make my prints. My body worked so hard.” Naomi smiled with pride.
Art as exercise! Naomi wasn’t one to just sit and think; she loved to exert herself. I remember well that raspy laugh she let loose when she told me about her trip to Outer Mongolia. She and her burly husband hiked the Flaming Cliffs and then slept in a round yurt, inhaling spiced yak. “We ate like beasts,” she said.
The ferocity of their great appetites inspires me now. Feeling bold, I rise and rearrange my pastel paintings. I put all five in sequential order: brow, upper arm, breast, back, foot.
“A body,” Naomi says with a surprised laugh. “I’m impressed.” I can tell by her warm voice that she means it. She points to a shadow in my painting of the arm. “It needs less heft, Harry. A limb wouldn’t cast such a big shadow.”
I bristle. Who is she to criticize intimate renderings of my wife? Deirdre, my love, knew color and shape supremely. Besides, I set out to create an impression of Dee, not a real body. A vision in parts.
“Perhaps,” I say, certain that I won’t make a change. “Sometimes it’s better not to tamper with what feels done.”
“Hmm.” Naomi sinks back into the sofa. “After I made my lithograph prints, I had to grind my original drawing off the stone so I could reuse it. I hated to see my work vanish. One day, I leaned in close and found a ghost image of my drawing in the stone. What a wonder. It had lived on.”
A sound deepens in my throat. I am floored by Naomi’s statement, by her innocent summoning of the spirit world. Can she sense Dee here now?
The front of Naomi’s cotton shirt tilts open, showing the top of her breast. I’d like to reach in and touch it, to caress that small mound. Naomi’s wiry body fits her brain and personality so right. She carries a toughness that tempts me. My heart squeezes with confusion. I have not had sex in a long while and my touch may be way off. Surely, instinct and experience will guide me. My fingers tingle, eager to stroke Naomi’s flat belly. What unholy thoughts on my wife’s birthday. My eyes sting with guilt. Forgive me, Dee. Does your soul feel my base desire?
A rustle distracts me. Deirdre, in a tawny pants suit, settles between Naomi and me. Black beads dangle from her ears. She crosses her legs, careful to pull her foot away from Naomi’s. She taps my palm. Harry, if you want to kiss her, I don’t mind. I’ll leave.
I feel my nose turning shades of red and pink. Rubbish. If Dee didn’t care, she wouldn’t be here.
Dee tilts her mouth to my ear. Naomi’s eyes are shining. She yearns for you in a way that she won’t own. Why not push me off and take her hand?
Oh great, love coaching from my deceased wife. Dee’s words scrape against my heart.
Dee rises and strides toward our bedroom. Try a kiss. But no more. I couldn’t bear it. She shuts the door behind her.
My confounded wife. She doesn’t know what she wants. Shall I go on with my life without her? Or stay loyal to our love forever? We tried to talk about such feelings before she died, but it was too hard for us both. The absurdity of such conversations. There is no how-to manual for parting.
Naomi’s chin rests in her hand. Once again, she studies my images intently. “So full of feeling, Harry.” She turns toward my flushed face and squints at me. “You okay?”
“Moody. Toody,” I mutter. “You know how it goes. Waves of the past.” I can’t tell her that today is my wife’s birthday, that Dee is a devilish spirit.
“Yes.” Naomi nods and her gaze softens.
We have talked before of the cost of losing someone. Months ago, we sat in the main lobby downstairs as a pianist played silly sentimental tunes. Naomi dug her fingertips into the wing chair’s arm.
Her husband had died of congestive heart failure a few years ago. “Such a long hard decline,” she said.
I touched her shoulder and told her about Deirdre.
“It’s not worth it to ever want again.” Naomi’s hands pressed into the air. “Loving someone, getting dependent, the pain afterward.” Naomi’s mouth shut hard.
My stomach clenched then. Such resolve, maybe not as easy as she wanted me to think.
The bedroom door opens. Dee steps out. A dark shawl covers her head. She tiptoes behind the five images, bending over each, bemused. She has only glimpsed at this series before. Now that it is complete, a small hmm, her sound of affirmation, emits from her throat. She twirls a long curl down her cheek and winks at me. You capture my loveliness.
“Don’t get too vain,” I chide Dee.
“Me?” Naomi looks puzzled.
“Oh, no.” My ears redden and burn. “Sometimes—” I must find the right words. “Sometimes, my wife’s desire to be beautiful was too much. You know how it is.”
“Not really.” Naomi whisks a white hair off her forehead. “But never mind.”
I am a fool. I should have whispered to Dee, like always.
Naomi clears her throat. “Why not keep your group of paintings arranged just this way, Harry? I feel Deirdre’s strong presence. And I didn’t even know her.”
Dee smiles and heads toward the window. She is getting ready to depart. I wish she wouldn’t leave me after I have embarrassed myself. She’s a sharp one, Harry, Dee says as she pushes up the pane. Don’t let her go.
“Thank you,” I say to them both.
Dee rises and turns back to blow me a kiss. Take a chance on love.
Such a sentiment. I press my stiff spine. Does Dee want me to risk everything? Naomi is my friend. My life, with its routines, works. I stay in my studio like an old bat. At lunch, my buddies cajole me with jokes. On weekends, we men, yes we men, ride the bus to ball games and concerts. We hear string players murder Bach’s sonatas yet infuse deep life into Ives’ harmonies. And Dee, you visit me at all hours. I won’t give all that up.
Oh, Harry, Deirdre scolds me. A kiss can change all that?
Go ahead, make fun of me. A breeze blows back her head scarf, and she disappears.
Naomi checks her watch. “I’d better go.”
I extend my hand, and she takes it willingly to rise to standing. She gives me her plate of tangerine rinds. I set them down and bend forward. I plant not a peck but a full kiss on Naomi’s lips. They feel soft, and my hand hovers over her white hair, angled at her chin. Naomi’s upper body jerks and she steps back. To my surprise, tears pop up but do not fall from her eyes. She touches my right cheek with her fingertips. They are tender yet cool. Then, as if to say, enough Harry, her lips shut and the fine line between them becomes dark.
“See you Sa— “Naomi stammers. “Saturday.” Her cheeks flush. The door clicks shut.
A jag of panic fills my chest. I sink into the sofa, still warm from Naomi’s weight. Have I offended her? Does she want me or see me as an old goat? A bottle of tepid Merlot leans into the sofa’s side. I uncork it and drink the last sips. Already, I miss Naomi’s presence, her daring mind and wit. Perhaps she liked my kiss. Dee, you didn’t goad me onward so Naomi would flee from me? What a thought. Shame on me.
I squint hard at my art and see Deirdre in fractured moments. A
The phone rings twice and cuts out abruptly. My sons are on to me. Their ring code, after several tries, alerts me that I can call them whenever. Tomorrow, boys. As my eyes flit from pastel to pastel, I think of we three, without Dierdre, sitting upon the green sofa facing her gardens. We each vowed to carry forth her special quality within each of us— my first born (by a mere twelve minutes), her moral vigor, my second one, her humor. And me? Dee’s exquisite commitment to beauty.
The sky is black now. I should climb into bed but do not feel sleepy. I must finish what I started. I turn two spotlights toward my easel. The teapot breathes too loudly for its own good. Feisty red marks streak its lid, and the blue foreground opens wide. The onions crackle. Perhaps I stroked the paper too hard, or worse yet, not enough. I angle in blue and orange lines, creating a warm gray that calms the shadow behind the teapot. My marks are right. The word “right” feels wonderful. It is different than perfection.
I soak my hands in warm water in the kitchen sink. Naomi must be reading in bed. I see her white shirt, now wrinkled, flopping into a laundry bag. Her toes twitch. She asks herself how to set new limits to manage me. She wonders if she should put me off altogether. I hope not. Naomi, please understand that life is not so neat. I will call her later this week to inquire about her colonoscopy; I will check on her bowel and will screw up my courage to ask how she felt about my kiss.
I dry my hands on the dish towel and dive into bed. My cold legs roll beneath the sheets and I lie awake. Dee, I finished my painting for you at the stroke of midnight. It is a new day now, you are eighty. Rejoice. Don’t be mad at me for wanting to wrap my arms around another woman. Naomi, sleep well. Let the silent hours soften your opinion of me. We are old warriors now, but we can take a chance on love. I flick off my night light, praying for dreams of vivid colors, of forms in motion, of bodies caressing bodies in the dark.