The Life Room, page 5
William looked after one or two of the buildings his father owned. He spent mornings helping his father go over the books, then collecting rents, and in the afternoons building his stone wall in the woods with his dogs. Before Eleanor left, she again encouraged him to go to veterinary school (because she did not think he could be content building stone walls), but he said he couldn’t handle having to put an animal to sleep. “Even dogs should be in charge of their own dying,” he said, in a peculiar not-quite-in-the-world voice. He sent her packages filled with tiny stones from the woods or dried butterflies, their wings held back with pins, but there were no letters. She sent him dried flowers and poems that expressed her affection. Still, he would not speak to her.
The stipend from the university wasn’t enough to pay rent in New York City. She didn’t have enough money to buy herself a new pair of boots if she also wanted to eat. Couldn’t they just sell her one boot, and the next month she could buy the other? She saw an ad in the Village Voice for figure models, and the idea intrigued her.
She thought sitting for an artist might be a way to learn how to quiet her emotions and become attuned to her inner world. She called for an interview. She discovered, once she called, that the artist was Adam Weiss, a painter she had heard about. He was considered the bad boy of the art world. He said, “I’m looking for someone serious. It’s not just about the body. Modeling takes concentration. It’s about getting in touch with the artist.” Oh, Eleanor thought. Well, why not.
On her way to meet him she stopped to look at herself in the reflection of a shop window. She wore a black beret and a camel hair coat she had picked up at a thrift shop, and had applied two quick lines of burgundy lipstick. Her blue eye looked muted. Her green eye was luminescent. She worried that her face showed signs of her loneliness. How did others see her? In New York she had a handful of friends she went to films or parties with. Sometimes they met for cheap dinners at the diner on her street and drank cup after cup of coffee; she went home buzzing with caffeine. But she was a private person who kept her thoughts mostly to herself. When she looked at her reflection, she was relieved to see that aside from her eyes and her brilliant red hair spilling out from her hair band, she looked fairly normal. She thought of those days and nights she sat in the easy chair in the sixth floor of the library by the window, watching the other students her age, trying to understand who she was in comparison to them, and wondering if looking too closely caused damage.
One striking couple she used to watch became the archetype. They came to the library nearly every evening and sat at the same table. They looked almost like twins, both with dark hair and small features and dimples in their cheeks, with premed textbooks spread out on the library’s long shellacked tables. Inadvertently one distracted the other and then, feeling the heat and liquid rush, the beautiful girl rose from her chair and put herself in her boyfriend’s lap and they kissed unself-consciously, finding, it seemed, ways of touching they hadn’t uncovered before, until one pulled away from the other, reluctantly at first, and then with more determination, and they turned back to their books, occasionally glancing up at each other and smiling.
She began to see the couple everywhere, kissing in the corridors of buildings, underneath trees on the college lawn, in the Thalia Theatre where she went to see old foreign films. It was as if they were there for only one purpose, to show her what her life was lacking. Even when she was with William, she had always felt a distance, as if there were a hidden shadow dividing the two of them. She loved him but she realized he was not of this world.
Eleanor apologized for being late. She took a seat across from Adam Weiss at a little table in Café Dante. She noticed him carefully observing the contours and angles of her face. He looked too long at her earrings, a pair of pearl posts. She touched one and twisted it with her fingers.
“They’re crooked. One earring is higher than the other.”
She’d had her ears pierced with a pinch gun in a shopping mall when she was sixteen. This was the first time anyone had called her on the imperfection that had always troubled her. It was unnerving. He continued to observe her. An empty espresso cup was pushed to the side of the table.
“I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”
“I’m not uncomfortable.” She was sweating.
“You mentioned on the phone you were a grad student?”
She explained she was in her first semester, getting her doctorate in literature. She had her paperback copy of Anna Karenina she brought to read on the train still in her hand.
“My father was a literature professor before the war. When I was a child, he read that novel to me in front of the fireplace.” He took the book from her and opened it. “All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’” He looked at her without breaking a smile. “What’s unique about your family’s unhappiness?”
“I didn’t say my family is unhappy.”
He slowly stirred his espresso.
“And your family?”
“I paint to forget about my family. But they turn up anyway.” Adam brought the cup to his lips. “So you’re reading Tolstoy? Are you as passionate as Anna?” He smiled slyly. “I like passionate women.”
His body was too big for the small café table and he looked uncomfortable as he crossed his legs. He wore black work boots with paint splattered on them. She thought he was arrogant. And you? She wanted to ask. Are you as reckless with women as Vronsky? But she restrained herself and said, “Anna was seduced. It was Vronsky who was reckless with his passion.”
The waiter stood over their table. “What are you going to have?”
“Mint tea.”
“Mint tea in an Italian café? That must mean you haven’t been to Italy.” He stopped. “I’m sorry. A scholar of literature should go to Italy,” he said, more gently.
His hair was thick and combed back behind his ears. His sideburns were slightly gray. His prominent nose was strong and noble looking. He sat with his legs crossed. His eyes gave no indication of his thoughts or emotions. He wasn’t compelled to fill the quiet pauses in conversation. She couldn’t tell whether she thought he was attractive or not.
“You’re young,” he said, breaking the quiet. “When you’re my age you’ll understand what kind of character Tolstoy had in mind for Vronsky. He’s driven by his passions. He can’t see clearly.”
“And what about Anna? Should all women have to suffer because men can’t see clearly?” Eleanor looked at the pastries in the glass cabinet, the cakes and Italian cookies, tiramisu, and Italian cheesecake, rows upon rows of sweet luxuries.
“We all have to suffer.”
“But a person can decide when and how to act.”
“This holds for Anna also. You can’t blame only the seducer. Would you like a dessert?”
“No.” She wanted nothing. She looked back at him.
“Do you really think we can control our passions?” he said, more gently. “Isn’t that rather rigid?”
She looked at his hands. They were freckled with paint. At another table, a woman read by herself and sipped her cappuccino. By the window, a trio of young women were engaged in conversation. A man was writing in a notebook. The walls of the café, papered with panoramic photographs of Florence, had absorbed endless hours of conversation, of smells, of young women and men who had come to the café with heavy hearts and had left buoyed by the feeling of companionship and life the cafe’s very walls inspired.
“I’m not rigid.” Is that why her body was always clenched? Why her shoulders and neck ached? She had thought it was from studying in uncomfortable chairs. “You call it rigidity, but isn’t it a question of morality?”
“This dynamic is good for my work.” He put down his cup. “The role of the artist’s model is to be a conduit to allow the artist to draw from her. To connect her energy to the canvas. It’s a shared bond.” He leaned over the table and looked at her closely.
She looked back unflinchingly.
“Will you be at ease being naked in front of groups of people? Art students who sometimes come into the studio to watch?”
“I’ll be fine.” Her hand was unsteady as she raised her cup.
“I once had a model who thought it would be no problem, but once she was in my studio and saw me gazing at her naked body, she ran out shaking and crying. Will you be able to take it?”
She nodded, barely able to swallow.
“I will know why you wrinkle your brow. The lines in your neck. The shape of your breasts. Does that disturb you?”
Her hands were in tight fists on top of her thighs. She felt slippery inside. “Are you asking me if I think I’m qualified for the job?”
“Even experienced models sometimes take on a personality change once their clothes are off. I’ve seen even the brightest become edgy and anxious. I’ve seen a model come in my studio thinking one thing about herself and finding out something else.”
She struggled not to betray any emotion.
“You have the most enchanting eyes. The blue one looks joyful. The other aches. What did you say your name was again? Eleanor Cahn?”
She nodded, feeling a slight weakness inside.
“An artist’s model has to work by the artist’s schedule. She has to give in to the artist’s whims. She has to allow herself to be subjected to the artist’s process. Does that scare you?”
“Only if I don’t like your work,” she said, surprised at her own boldness.
After Eleanor accepted the job (she was intrigued by his arrogance), she went to the library and read some of the reviews of his work on microfiche. She discovered that he was thirty-eight. And that he was married. She noted that he had not mentioned his wife, nor had he worn a wedding band. His work was controversial. He had made paintings that were sensational, that, as he described in one interview in Bomb, were born out of intense anger. In one called Provocateur, a young boy stared unflinchingly at a naked woman old enough to be his mother. In another, a middle-aged man leered at a topless young girl combing her hair at the sink. In Bearing the Weight of History, a naked boy hid behind a Greek statue on the lawn of a manicured suburban estate.
Adam’s studio was in Tribeca, in an old warehouse. The studio was drafty. Two long windows blocked with dark blue velvet drapes were on each side of the room. The concrete floor was splattered with dried paint. Stretched canvases were stacked against two walls. In the center of the room stood a long table made of a piece of antique pine. On the table sat jars of brushes and paint. It was private and intimate like a bedroom, except for balled-up oily rags on the floor. Next to the sink was a hot plate. Overalls hung on hooks by the door. A dirty pair of gym socks were bunched in the corner.
In spite of how frightened she was that she’d have to take her clothes off, Eleanor was mesmerized by the different colors of paint smeared on Adam’s palette (how many colors of paint it was possible to create!), by the way he arranged his colors from the tubes in the same rainbow every time he set up his palette, by the dexterity with which he applied a color to produce a specific emotion on a canvas. At one end of the room was a daybed with a bolster that formed a backrest against the wall, and across from it stood a cranberry velvet chair, with matching ottoman, that was worn at the seat and looked like it belonged once in an old Tudor mansion. And in one window was a beautiful stained glass, making the room churchlike and holy.
“Let me tell you about a life room. It’s the room in a university where models sit for students. The rooms vary from having an array of props to having none. Ideally a life room should have different boxes and pedestals, ropes and poles, that the model uses to extend her range of poses. Would you consider posing with a rope, Eleanor? Would you do that for me?”
“If that’s what’s required.” She felt queasy.
“When I work with a live model in the studio we create our own intimate world of fantasy and imagination. Our own life room where anything can happen.”
Adam dressed in white painter’s pants and a white T-shirt. In the studio he looked bigger than he had looked in the café, broader, brutal looking. But his eyes were tender, slightly hooded. “I paint because the world is ugly. Your job is to make it beautiful.”
He asked her to sit on the daybed. Her heart was beating rapidly. Could he hear it? Was he going to ask her to take off her sweater? He didn’t say anything for a half an hour. How would she endure the silences? How could she be so still with another person in the room? She nervously brought the pearls she wore to her lip, rolled the strand around her neck.
Adam reached out and pushed her hand down gently. He made tea and offered Eleanor some dry biscuits from a box. “I want to look at your face. To see where it will take me. If you’re frightened I won’t be able to see clearly.” How much is there to see, she wondered, but she kept quiet. “Painting is about isolating the moment, reflecting the world back to us. I have to find the right moment.”
Another few minutes passed in silence.
“I’m interested in the relationship between men and women in my painting. I paint the middle class because they try so hard to hold the culture together. Because they’re so tragic and mystifying.” He spoke as if engaged in a long private conversation with himself.
“But aren’t you middle class? I mean your parents?”
“That’s not the point, Eleanor.”
She sat on the daybed, playing with the string of pearls. Remembering the work she had read about on microfiche at the library, it seemed to her he was interested in young girls and boys, but she wasn’t going to say anything. “I’m interested in exploring the hidden places, the secret of what draws men and women together, what repels us about each other.”
She moved her body, trying to get comfortable. She couldn’t find a position that let her relax. She discovered she was self-conscious watching another person staring at her. She was relieved he hadn’t asked her to undress.
He peered at her from behind his canvas. “As a painter I see with my eyes first. When I begin a study, the model possesses my childhood, my struggles. My obsessions. The person you see on the canvas isn’t the original subject anymore. She becomes my métier, my compass. She guides me. Slowly I allow myself to get closer, to close the distance.”
A wave of anxiety washed over her.
“You’ve been hurt,” he said. “I can see it in you.”
She took a lock of hair in her hand and twisted it. His ability to scrutinize her made her uncomfortable. And yet she didn’t not want to be in the studio with him. How did he know she’d been hurt? Was it etched across her face? Or was he being patronizing?
When she left his studio she was inspired and energized, filled with desire to create. She went back to her apartment and began to work on the essay she was writing, suddenly making connections in her head she had not dared before.
She went to Adam’s studio early in the morning, and sat quietly on his daybed each day for a week before he started the first painting. He paced the room, adjusted the collar of her shirt. He scrutinized every angle of her face and body. She felt his eyes on her ankle, on the little stretch of skin that showed above her calf. He asked if she would take off her stockings and shoes. He looked at her behind his easel without drawing his brush. “You have the most amazing bones in your feet,” he said. “I need to feel them in my hands so I know how to paint them.”
When he was quiet, his eyes looked only half opened. Underneath were dark circles. On days when he looked particularly tired, it might take an hour or two before his eyes would begin to grow wide and searching. She had studied him for a week, while he was studying her, alone in the quiet of the studio. Other days he looked angry or preoccupied, as if he had traveled far away in his memory. She learned how to gauge his moods, how not to take his moodiness personally.
Eleanor wore a navy blue skirt and a white blouse. Her pearls were tucked underneath her collar. Adam lifted her chin, just slightly, and then unbuttoned the first two buttons of her blouse so that the pearls were unleashed against her skin. She felt as if he’d taken off all her clothes.
Other days, as she sat on the daybed in Adam’s studio, she felt pulled into the trance he got into when he worked, losing her own luster in the process. And she thought, Do I have this in me? One day will it be possible for me to achieve in my own work what Adam is achieving in his—that perfect synthesis of who one is and what one sees? She sat on the daybed with the sunlight slowly diminishing, feeling him study her until her mind grew so blank she nearly forgot who she was, and she felt a little sick inside. The alarm clock on his shelf went off. Adam painted by it. He said as long as he gave himself three full hours, he knew he’d gotten what he could out of that day. Later in the afternoon, he returned to the studio and looked at what he had accomplished. Sometimes he adjusted certain details. Other times he stared at the work, as if he were waiting for it to tell him what to do the next time he took up his brush. “The trick is not to take yourself too seriously, and to take yourself very seriously, both at the same time. If you don’t think you can be as good as Rembrandt, why do it? Why even try? No one can be as good as Rembrandt. The whole point in creating art is to find what you have to offer, what’s special in your own soul.”
She took in the whole of his body. The gray strands of hair that sprung out from his thick, black locks—she imagined he had had even thicker hair when he was younger—the way the hairs on his thick eyebrows grew in different directions, his slightly discolored tooth that was chipped at one corner, the muscles that formed in his arms when he moved his brush. He was beautiful when he painted. Some mornings he poured scotch into his tea or coffee and she smelled the liquor on his breath when he leaned over. She told herself he was a cliché: the drunken painter who puffed himself up. And yet, she admired that he showed up every day, striving for greatness.
