Authors: Christine Sneed
When I gave it to her that evening, asking if she knew whose it was, she nodded. “Mine,” she murmured with a small, embarrassed laugh. She didn’t meet my eyes. But what did I care if she and her husband, having emigrated from Poland forty years earlier, as I eventually learned, had chosen a more French-sounding name? Isn’t everyone, to some extent, trying to leave behind their past, their former selves, with all the ancillary pain and doubts? Madame Latour could have asked me to call her Madame Mitterand for all it mattered to me. She was kind to my children, to Anne-Claire and me. Kindness is not so common, you realize, as you leave behind childhood and move farther into adulthood, with its treacherous landscapes, its ambushes from enemies known and unknown. There is also the aging body and the sense at times that you will be crowded out, or worse, trampled, by the sheer mass of other people alive at any one time. Of a hundred people, two hundred, a thousand, how many names, how many faces, will you remember a day later, a month later, a year?
Among the two or three hundred faces that passed before my eyes in New York on the November evening when André and I were expecting rainstorms and poor attendance for our new gallery’s vernissage, Jayne’s face was the one that stood out among all the others. “I would like to paint you,” I might have said if I were still a painter. How many men have used that line to lure a beautiful woman into bed? It is not a bad line, as these things go. There are certainly worse:
You remind me of my daughter
. Or,
May I buy that zucchini for you? And afterward buy you a drink?
She had an alert but soft look, her eyes a little tired, as if she had spent some time that day being scolded by a boss (or a therapist?). She was unsure of herself and her beauty. Whatever it says about me, I like that. I admire confidence but am more impressed by modesty, or maybe it is humility. In any case, the awareness that one has limitations, while at the same time believing they might be overcome—this is a quality that I find both rare and good. Her hair had been cut recently, I also remember thinking. Its satiny ends gleamed a rich dark brown. She stood very straight, her posture a dancer’s, though she told me later that the only dancing she had done as a girl had been in her room to pop music, alone or with her little sister, and later with her girlfriends, the door now locked against annoying younger siblings. I could sense too that she did not sleep soundly every night—her mind seemed to be clicking away with unsolved or unsolvable problems. It was clear to me that she did not have a lot of money, despite how well-groomed she was, how carefully her blouse and skirt had been chosen, how well they fit her young, lithe figure. Having money yourself, you often learn to spot its absence, and the gestures toward it, in others.
Perhaps the most interesting detail about the way she circulated through the gallery: when she looked at the paintings, she knew something about how they had been made. The fingers of one hand tapped her thigh, a nervous, impatient motion she might not have realized she was making. In profile, I could see that her breasts were not large, but they were high and round, and I could imagine their weight in my hands, their softness too. These thoughts and impressions form so fast in a man’s mind—much faster than it takes to write them all down. Her face reminded me of some of Renoir’s young models, her cheeks flushed, her skin soft and clear. I wondered for a moment if she was already married but could not see a ring.
Then, unexpectedly, twice I turned to find her looking at me too. The first time you exchange a meaningful glance with a beautiful woman, well, I suspect it is obvious—this is the sort of thrill it is difficult to imagine yourself ever tiring of. I was in that gallery to sell art, and I was certain that she wasn’t there to buy any of it, only to judge it, but I didn’t care. Other people would buy it, and that night, several did.
I also felt sure that if I asked her to dinner she would say yes. She would say yes to most everything I asked, once she trusted me. Or rather, once she trusted me enough.
Something that is not often discussed: when a person falls in love, this does not mean he (or she) will no longer be in love with someone else. Love is an expansive element, and like helium and other gases, when fire is applied, it becomes volatile. But these concerns were all far away on that evening. When you meet an exciting new woman, you think about her, not the other woman or women you love, wherever they are. I sound guilty of something, I’m guessing, but I wasn’t. I wasn’t married anymore. The woman I was last close to, Sofia, was across the Atlantic, traveling through Italy and Spain with a friend, a man who was more than a friend, though Sofia claimed she did not take him seriously. He was a banker, not an artist, not a gallery owner, not an actor, or a director, or a fashion designer. “How can I take a banker seriously?” she asked me, laughing at my jealousy.
“You don’t have to,” I said. “But you do take his money seriously, I am sure.”
“Oh, Laurent,” she said. “Always thinking the worst of me!”
Did her banker know how talented she was? Did he know that if she did not allow herself to get pregnant and distracted, she would have an important, maybe even a tremendous, career?
One of the reasons I have allowed myself to become close to Jayne is because she is not interested, at least not at this juncture in her life, in having a child. We had a minor argument about my view that artists, especially female artists, should put off childrearing for as long as possible, or at least until they and their work are firmly established, although that often takes many years, and there is of course the risk that an older woman will not be able to conceive when she makes up her mind to do so. Last July, Jayne and I went to see Sidonie Clément, one of the three artists to whom I give a couple of thousand euros every month. She lives in an apartment off the boulevard Vincent-Auriol and paints in a closet-size second bedroom, its graying white walls fissured with cracks.
When we arrived at her door, she threw it open before we had finished knocking, startling Jayne and me both. Sidonie greeted us with a nervous smile, dressed in blue jeans, a paint-streaked black blouse, red flip-flops. I could see as soon as I set eyes on her that she was pregnant. Almost five months along, she confirmed, her thin laughter an apology of a sort as we followed her down the gloomy hall to her studio with its low ceiling and one dusty window that faced the neighboring building’s eastern wall. Her boyfriend was living with her now, an Austrian boy named Stefan who works in the kitchen of a restaurant near place Pigalle—Chez Patric or Pascal; I haven’t had dinner there yet, and can’t ever seem to remember its name. He is training as a chef, and is responsible for the soups and broths, an important role in any kitchen, needless to say, and I was impressed when Sidonie told me this but have learned to keep my enthusiasms about my artists’ personal lives to myself. If I portray myself to be a friend more than a patron (I am thinking of the French meaning of the word, “boss,” more than the English meaning, “benefactor,” though I am that too), my artists tend to expect more leniency when I express displeasure with their productivity or the directions in which they are taking their work.
Sidonie was not making the lush, deeply personal paintings she’d been working on when I began giving her money a year or so earlier. She was wasting her time and talents on foolish-looking wood carvings and thematically related paintings. In her studio, scattered on two rectangular worktables, one gouged by the chisels and carving knives she was learning to use, were wooden animals about ten to fifteen centimeters high, in various states of evolution—a leopard, an elephant, something that resembled a llama, a horse with a foreleg cast onto which
ROBERT + CAROLE
had been carved. The llama-like creature had one large bulging eye, the other eye a question mark. The elephant had an open umbrella for a trunk.
The new paintings in progress were other breeds of strange animals—one creature half tiger, half jackrabbit; another a black cat wearing the frilly neck ruff of an old-fashioned clown, its tail a pig’s. The series was called
La loi naturelle
—“Natural law,” she said, glancing from Jayne to me. “Our environment has many problems, and people have no sense of the sacred anymore. We are changing all our genes with chemicals and the scientists in the labs who want to clone everything. Pretty soon there will be no authentic creatures.”
“And of course we’re told that it’s all in the name of making the world a better place,” said Jayne. “These are so good.”
“Thank you,” said Sidonie, smiling and relieved, it seemed to me.
I said nothing.
“Money is an exciting word, but a dirty one too,” she added.
I made a small coughing sound. I couldn’t help it.
“The more money, the fewer moral questions asked,” said Jayne, ridiculously agreeable.
“Exactly,” said Sidonie, still smiling at Jayne, before glancing over at me. Her large, pretty brown eyes were so anxious that I made myself say something.
“Your new paintings are okay,” I said. “But your landscapes and the portraits are better.”
“Oh, yes, I know,” said Sidonie, crestfallen. Her hands fluttered over the horse with the cast, over the llama with the goggle eye, brushing off flecks of sawdust. “I am still working with those paintings too. I have not abandoned them.”
“I hope not,” I said.
She looked at Jayne, as if for support. Jayne met her eyes and smiled again. I didn’t think that I was being too severe, but I was not going to encourage Sidonie either. Was she wondering if I would withdraw support if I didn’t approve of her new interests? With time, if she kept on this trajectory, I very likely would.
“I like working with the wood right now. It’s a risk, I know, but—”
“That’s fine, Sidonie. We’ll see how it goes,” I said, looking down at her disintegrating flip-flops. Her toenails were unpainted and badly in need of attention, but I suppose I could be grateful that she had not made an appointment at the salon, as this would not be the best way, in my view, for her to use the money she received from me twice a month. But we did not have a contract; our agreement was only that she keep producing thoughtful work. If she stopped working, I stopped sending money. Tacit in our unofficial agreement was also the fact that I had to continue to like her work too.
With each of the dozen or so artists I have helped over the past eleven years, it is usually apparent within a year and a half that they have a real future as an artist or else are better suited for something else. One painter became a graphic designer and has done well designing logos and other corporate materials. Another, a sculptor of beautiful and alien female bodies made from small household objects, decided that she would be better off spending her life designing haute couture hats for the atelier of Yves Saint Laurent when the opportunity was offered to her. Another stopped making art altogether and moved to Saint Lucia to open a café with her mother, who had recently been remembered fondly in a long-ago lover’s will.
But most of the artists I have helped have continued to make fine art, even after my patronage ended. Some teach in art academies to supplement their earnings from the sale of their work; one is a guide for part of the year for a company that sells vacation tours in Morocco and Tunisia. Another creates and oversees large-scale mural projects for different municipalities and arts organizations.
As we were leaving Sidonie’s apartment, her boyfriend came out of the kitchen to look us over. He was not tall and had a bulldog’s neck and shoulders. He shook my hand with his ruddy kitchen worker’s hand, one that he had probably burned many times while learning his art of boiling broths and simmering potages. We stared at each other for a few seconds. In his dark green eyes I could see his fear of the future, his need for reassurance, but I knew that I was not the right person to offer it to him. He smiled and turned to look at Jayne, who had dressed up for the visit, unnecessarily, in a a black miniskirt and a tight black-and-white-striped top, worrying, I suppose, that Sidonie would be more glamorous than she turned out to be. Not every pretty woman is the enemy that other women, pretty or not, old or young, assume she will be. But I am aware of these rivalries; I am aware of the jealousy and willingness to perceive slights and the outright hostile obstructions that pit women against each other. They should not blame men for all their troubles, however—we who are said to make every rule for how a woman is supposed to look and act. If this is true, why don’t more women protest these circumstances?
In the taxi back to rue du Général-Foy, Jayne and I had a disagreement over Sidonie’s condition.
“Did you know before today that she was pregnant?” she asked.
“No, I did not.”
“I thought you seemed surprised,” she said, regarding me with suspicion.
Did she think that I had something to do with Sidonie’s pregnancy? Because I certainly did not. “I was surprised,” I said.
After a moment she said, “I like her work. She seems very nice too.”
“I am not very happy about the wood,” I said. “I think it is a waste of time.”
Jayne did not agree. “I thought that what she’s done with it so far is interesting. I doubt you have to worry about her crossing over to a kind of craft-fair art. Knickknacks, that kind of thing.”
“We will see,” I said.
“You were a little grouchy up there with her.”
I looked down at Jayne’s legs, her miniskirt riding far up her thighs. She had gooseflesh from the taxi’s air conditioning. Outside it was a hot day, 33 centigrade, maybe even a little hotter. “Sidonie should not be having a baby,” I said. “She and Stefan cannot afford it.”
“I’m sure they’ll figure it out. Their parents will probably help them if they can.”
“I do not want my money to be used for baby clothes and diapers,” I said, irate. “And those wooden circus animals. Is she planning to make art for children now?”
“I thought they were good,” she said flatly.
“Yes, for a nursery,” I cried. A song was playing on the radio loudly, one by a band my son was crazy about in his adolescence; the musicians were all screaming American males and barely talented. I asked the driver to turn it down, and he did without a word.