CHAPTER 22
sher got up and walked to one of the front rooms that served as his office. He closed the door behind him. Theo put down hisA coffee cup, rose from his chair, and stood hesitantly for several seconds, uncertain of which stack or corner to visit first. Street sounds, muffled in the distance, reminded him there was life outside the sanctum of the studio. But he was heedless of it all as he returned to the front hallway and began his tour of Asher’s world.
An array of framed items, displayed higgledy-piggledy, filled the left wall, floor to ceiling: a feather, a page torn from a book with the word “dulcet” circled, small framed pieces by artists named Sutphin and Lanier, various certificates from art organizations and civic groups, and a child’s stick figure with the words “you are my best Dabby in the werl.”
Theo turned to look at the opposite wall. Only a few items hung there, all of them precisely arranged.
One of those items, displayed at eye level, was an oil painting, two feet square, of a lone tree in a field. It seemed to be more a study than a finished work.
The colors and foliage in the painting indicated a spring day. A splash of crimson was on the ground. A blanket? In the field, slightly right of center, was what appeared to be an artist’s easel. Behind the easel stood a barely visible figure, presumably a woman. Only the arms and legs could be seen. At the bottom of the canvas were the words, written in freehand, “Me, painting you, painting.”
Judging from the frame, and the slight yellowing at the edges of the canvas, the piece was old.
That painting was surrounded by four handwritten letters in separate frames. They came from four different writers, on stationery of various sizes and tones. Each was addressed to Asher who, judging by the dates of the letters, must have been a young boy when they were sent to him. They all acknowledged Asher’s hope of being an artist someday. One was from his grandfather. The others were from artists — renowned artists — prosperous enough to have engraved stationery with letterhead, office addresses, and gallery listings.
Theo knew the names on the letters; even people unfamiliar with the art world would have known them. As he read what they had written to the young Asher, he was impressed by the warmth of their tone. Theo’s own experience with artists had led him to the unflattering belief that they were often detached and impersonal, sometimes pompous and self- important. These letters were an argument to the contrary. They used words that a child could understand. They were short, the longest just a couple of paragraphs. At the bottom of one, the writer had drawn a small bird and a lightning bolt.
Theo continued down the hall. A dozen, twenty, fifty objects begged for his attention. He hoped that, in time, he might be granted an unhurried opportunity to revisit the studio and study all that was there.
The drawing that captured Theo’s attention, the one nearest him, was a pencil rendering of a female figure, waist up, bare except for a scarf that covered one shoulder. Her face and eyes were turned slightly upward. There was a dreaminess about her countenance. Each feature — the unbrushed hair, the half-open eyes, the prominent cheekbone, the porcelain lips and tapered chin, the curved neck, the lift of her breast and torso, the veined hands and delicate fingers — was an intricate matrix of lines, some razor thin, some bold, all delicate, and all as sensual as the Song of Solomon. Together, the features and line strokes created a technically precise, ethereal composition. The beauty of human flesh, “fearfully and wonderfully made,” radiated from the frame.
The drawing was done on gray bristol board, paired perfectly with a
wide ebony frame.
The frame.
How is it, Theo wondered, that a piece of paper — a letter, a photo, a ticket stub, a sketch, a painting — is suddenly transformed by placing it in four bits of wood beneath a pane of glass? What does it mean that we place permanent boundaries around transient moments? What does it say of humankind that we take such trouble to freeze specific memories, that we devote such energy to capturing and preserving the “minute particulars” of our lives?
Theo could hear Asher’s muffled voice behind the closed door of the office, but he paid it no mind. He was immersed in all that was before him. He intended to move along, to see Asher’s other works, but he remained at the drawing of the woman, obedient to his conviction that it was better to see one thing well than many poorly.
He became conscious of a sound down the hall — a chair sliding on the floor — and could tell from the intonation of Asher’s voice that the phone call was winding down. Moments later, the office door opened.
“Theo, I’m sorry that took so long.”
“Oh, I could not have been more pleased. I feel like I’m swimming in an ocean of stories, even if I don’t know what they are.” He nodded at
the feather, the page with the single word circled, and the others.
Asher chuckled. “Well, you’re right; they all do have a story, even if I’m the only one interested in them.”
Theo said, “Ah, my guess is that many would be interested. The mind of the artist is a place of fascination to most of us, you know. All that mystique and all those visions. But maybe some of the stories are best
kept in the vault of secrets, yes?”
Theo knew that vault well.
“Sometimes I wonder about all that talk about mystique,” Asher replied. “The artistic temperament and such. I mean, I know there’s such a thing, but if an artist has a family, he learns that art has to wait its turn sometimes. Housework and skinned knees and soccer games do wonders for keeping one’s feet on the ground around here. There’s not much mystique to being a member of a family.”
Asher chuckled. “But I do have to admit, mystique, even if it’s a pretense, can be helpful for business, can’t it? I think sometimes that serious art buyers aren’t very interested in paintings by someone as ordinary and unmysterious as me. Maybe if I were a little more brooding, buyers would take my art more seriously.”
Theo grinned. In such a short time, the elderly man and the young artist were talking like old friends. They remained standing in the entrance hallway.
“I don’t mean to be impolite,” the gentleness of Theo’s voice dispelled any chance of that possibility, “but would you tell me about these?”
He nodded and gestured toward the painting of the lone tree in the field and the four framed letters.
Asher nodded. “I’ll try. The letters are easy. When I was a little boy, I told my mom I wanted to be an artist. Somehow, she got the addresses of these famous guys and helped me write letters to them. I can’t imagine what I said, but those three responded. The fourth is from her father, my granddad. He didn’t give much credence to the notion of artistic temperament and could be pretty hard on my mother at times, but he was really nice in his letter to me.
“My hunch is that she wrote cover letters and put them in with mine.
She was a great encourager. I think every obscure artist, which is most of us, needs at least one of those. Anyway, she had these letters framed
for me when I graduated from art school. It feels a bit like name dropping to have them here, but, really, they say more about her than about the artists who wrote them.
“I had the idea once that, if I ever made a mark in the art world, I’d write those guys to tell them how their letters helped me. I’m not even sure they’re alive anymore, and I surely haven’t made a mark in the art world.”
“Asher, I’m sure they would be very pleased with what you’ve
accomplished.”
“Thank you for saying so.”
Theo pointed to the painting. “And the tree in the field?”
“Yeah, that one is a bit of a mystery. It was one of Mom’s favorites, but she would never tell me much about it. You see the inscription here? ‘Me, painting you, painting’? I don’t know who the ‘me’ or the ‘you’ are, but it’s nicely done, don’t you think?”
Theo nodded. “It is. Do you think she might be the girl at the easel?”
“Funny you should say so. That’s my theory, but whenever I asked her about it, she just laughed and said she would neither admit nor deny the allegation. Once when I asked her, she pulled her dress above her knees and said, ‘Do these legs look like those?’ So who knows? It was certainly like her to stand in a field painting. I just don’t know the when or where or why of this one.
The two men stood for a matter of seconds studying the small
painting.
“How about another cup of coffee?”
They returned to their chairs and, for the next couple of hours, shared a sprawling, meandering conversation, in which a random word or phrase would trigger another story and another, ad infinitum. Theo offered more than once to leave so that Asher could work, but the artist asserted his independence, claiming that, as his own boss, he could work whenever he wanted.
“This conversation is my work today,” he said.
As part of that work, Asher tried to learn details of Theo’s life. But, just as Shep and Tony and Minnette had discovered, the old man proved to be an artful dodger. It was Theo who continued to ask most of the questions, and it was the young artist who was somehow lured
into giving long, revealing answers.
For instance, “Asher, how did you settle on portraits as a specialty?”
Asher nodded. “Well, I had just gotten out of school; undergrad, master’s, doctorate. I had lots of education, but I didn’t have any customers.
Unlike Mr. Van Gogh, I was hoping to sell some of my work before I died. And, as I mentioned, I’ve always liked to draw people.
“There used to be a little restaurant called the Magnolia a couple of miles from here in an upscale part of the city. It was where lots of the well-to-do women in town used to eat lunch after their morning bridge games. My mother was friends with the young couple who owned the place. Well, that couple had twins, a boy and a girl. I had just gotten back to town and my mom, God bless her, volunteered me to do a portrait of them. But she insisted that the owners hang the portrait in the restaurant, right behind the cash register, for at least a month before taking it home.
“So, I did the portrait, delivered it, and helped the owners hang it properly. Even that little bit of self-promotion was uncomfortable for me, but by the time I got home, five calls and five commissions were waiting for me. I was elated. Mom was too. I suspect she had something to do with those five phone calls, since they all came from family friends. That’s about the closest I’ve come to ‘marketing’ myself, even after all these years. Mom’s strategy worked. The calls never stopped after that. So, there you have it. The story of Asher, the portrait artist.
“Now, Theo, let me ask you a question. I’m doing too much of the talking. Really, why are you buying the portraits at the Chalice? I’m grateful, but I’m curious too. Do you know the people whose portraits you’re buying?”
Theo shared the explanation, the mysterious impulse, behind his purchases. He was good at telling his story by then.
“No, I don’t know the people. I don’t meet them until I give them their portraits. But before I deliver the portraits, I look, look, look at them. Don’t laugh, Mr. Asher — excuse me, Asher — but sometimes when I eat my meals at home alone, I bring a picture to the table and set it across from me. And while I eat, I study that face.”
Theo tapped his forehead. “Maybe I am a crazy old man? Voílà! But
by the time I meet them at the fountain, I feel as if I know them, at least a bit. That’s why I find your work so interesting. It’s as if you make it possible to look not merely at the face but through the face, to the heart of the person. To the possibility of the person.
“I’m certain that some of the people see themselves clearly for the first time when they look at your drawings of them. I wish you could be there when I give them their portraits. It’s so wonderful.”
“Well, Theo, that’s awfully nice of you, but I have a hunch it’s your words that are bringing the portraits to life. Some of them have been on the wall, speechless, for months, and nobody seemed terribly moved by them. From what I can tell, you take them down, cast a spell on them, and, all of a sudden, they have something to say. My niece, Minnette, sure thinks so.”
Theo shook his head. “Asher, it would please me greatly if that were the case, but I think you give me too much credit. I simply help people sit still long enough to see what is already there.”
He took a sip of lukewarm coffee, gathered his thoughts, and then returned to Asher’s question. “But why? You ask me why I do it? Well, as I have said, I feel as if the idea came from elsewhere, as if it was given to me. But regardless, I’m certain, now more than ever, that giving the portraits is a good and loving thing to do. That is a more than adequate reason to do it. Asher, I can’t do what you do, but I can make sure that what you do fulfills its purpose. I confess that at first I did it hoping to make someone else happy. Now I fear that my reasons are almost entirely selfish. I do it because it brings such happiness to me. I don’t know if I’ve ever done anything I enjoy more, and I’m just beginning.”
Asher nodded pensively and smiled. “I’m happy it makes you happy.
Which portraits have you bought so far?”
“Just a few, but I have only been here a short while, you know.
Minnette, Kendrick, Frankie, some others. I’ll do another tomorrow.
I’m thankful you write their names on the back of the frames. It helps me find them. So, only a few thus far, but if I have my way, and if I live long enough, I will empty the Chalice. You just keep working, young man. I’ll buy all the ones there now and then any others you put in their place. At my age, what good is money in the bank?”
Asher said, “Your kindness is not just a gift to them, you know. It means a lot to me.” He paused. “You know, when Shep and Addie and I came up with the idea of putting some art in the Chalice, and I started the portraits, I thought they would sell quickly, like jump-off-the-walls quickly. I priced them really low so that people could afford them.
Some of the people I’ve drawn probably don’t have money to buy their pictures — you know, like students and homeless folks — but I know a lot of the others pretty well, and they spend more on a single meal or a concert ticket than the portraits cost. If I’m honest, the project has been a little bit discouraging. I’ve wondered at times if Shep just doesn’t have the heart to pull the plug on it.”
Asher grimaced. “Gosh, Theo, I’m sorry. I know I must sound like I’m whining. I usually just share my frustrations with Brooke. Seems like unmet expectation is one of the hazards of this line of work. From what I can tell, lots of artists and creatives, especially little-known artists, wrestle with it.”
The old man struck a sympathetic tone. “No need to apologize. I think all of us wrestle with those feelings about one thing or another.
Unmet expectations have a clever way of showing up at every stage of life. I appreciate your candor.”
“Theo, have you met Basil yet? The guy who plays guitar on the sidewalk near the Chalice?”
Theo’s eyebrows arched upward. “So, that’s his name? I can hear him from my balcony, but I haven’t met him. Basil, like the herb?”
“Yeah, Basil Cannonfield. His portrait’s in the Chalice. Anyway, he told me one time about his life as a musician, about how disappointing and embarrassing and pointless it feels to work so hard for tip money.
He’s really good if you ask me. But I know how he feels. My work is more stable and predictable than his — at least I have something tangible I can put a price tag on and sell — but the life of an artist can be pretty deflating at times. It can make you want to cut your ear off.”
They both laughed.
“Maybe you could look at it this way, Asher. If your expectations had worked out as you’d hoped, I would have been denied a great gift. I would never have had the pleasure of buying the portraits, of having meals with the subjects, of finding the people and meeting them at the
Fedder. I would never have had the chance to tell them something good and true about themselves. Some wonderful conversations would have been unspoken.
“Perhaps, when you were drawing the portraits, you were drawing them for me, even though you didn’t know me yet. There is a mysterious choreography at work in our lives, yes? Talk about mystique! And now our paths have crossed and we get to do this together. For my sake, selfish as it might seem, I’m sorry for your discouragement, but I’m very happy that the portraits did not sell
before I got here.”
Asher smiled.
When Theo finally stood to leave, the slanted light of early morning had become the vertical rays of early afternoon. His legs, a bit stiff from sitting for so long, required some stretching and rubbing before he and Asher walked past the framed letters and the painting of the lone tree in the hallway. They shook hands with a firmness that indicated a desire to seal their new friendship. Each put a free hand on the other’s upper arm and looked one another in the eye. Something
deeper than words passed between them.
“Asher, I thank you so very much.”
“And I thank you, Theo. Let’s do this again sometime soon.”
They stepped out of the house onto the porch. Asher walked Theo down the steps, an act of respect and affection, patted him on the back, and then re-entered the house. The old man opened the gate, turned onto the sidewalk, blinked hard, and walked to the river.
There was, and would be, much to ponder.
Much to cherish.
Much to lament.
