See What I See

I
see my life in paintings. Right now I see my mom as a painting by the artist de Kooning, a scribbled woman, all angry eyes and open mouth with sharp teeth. We're both standing in the kitchen of our trailer, which means we're inches from each other. “Don't do this!” she shouts at me. “I've spent the last twelve years of my life protecting you from that man.”

She's talking about my dad, her emotions bubbling over with a combination of hatred for him, fear for me, and anger with herself for not having the money to send me to art school. I understand, but I'm going to go anyhow. “He's not ‘that man,'” I say. “He's my father, and staying with him is the only way I can go to art school. I'm going to school so I can come back. Honestly, Mom, you know everything I want to paint is right here.” I look out the small trailer window at the line of birch trees. A few of the leaves have already turned yellow. Bronze yellow, I decide, with a touch of brilliant yellow green. I match everything against my chart of acrylic paints.

“Your father hasn't had anything to do with you since you were a child. I don't care what optimistic story you've invented about him; the last thing he'll want is his daughter moving in with him, interfering with his work and spoiling his latest romance.”

I know Mom is right. Last spring, as soon as I was accepted, I wrote to my father in Detroit, begging him to let me move in with him while I go to school. I told him that not only had I been accepted at the school, but after they saw my work, I'd been promised a scholarship too. “I don't need money from you,” I wrote Dad. “I certainly don't want to cash in on your fame. I just need a place to stay.” In my letter I told him that I knew how important his work was and I swore I wouldn't get in his way. I even offered to clean his house and cook for him. He never answered that letter, or the others I sent, in spite of the fact that I've led my mother to think he agreed to my coming. I'm just going to knock on his door. I can't believe he'll turn me away. It's amazing what you can talk yourself into.

If I'm going to be an artist, I need to get to know my dad. He's a famous painter; I want to know his secrets; I want to learn from him . . . but there is something else. He's my
father
. After all these years of being curious about him, why wouldn't I want a chance to know him?

Because of how Mom feels about Dad, right after the divorce Mom changed my name to her maiden name. I'm Kate Tapert, not Kate Quinn, daughter of the famous Dalton Quinn. I don't blame Mom. She and Dad grew up here in this northern Michigan town of Larch that's so little it isn't even on a lot of maps. They married right out of high school. Mom has thrown out all the photographs that have Dad in them, but years ago I went to the library and looked through old issues of the
Larch Chronicle
until I found the account of their wedding. Wedding pictures are full of promise. Mom was looking at Dad as if he was a movie star, and Dad was staring down at her with a foolish grin like a kid with a new puppy. They were eighteen, the same age I am now. Bad things shouldn't happen to people that age.

After they got married, they moved into a small frame house right on Maple Street. I see it whenever I go to town. They left that house a long time ago, and for a lot of years it was run-down and empty, but a young couple bought it last year, fixed it all up, and put a swing on the front porch. Sometimes now, when I walk by the house, I pretend that I'm just a kid again and that Mom and Dad live there and that they're happy.

When they were newlyweds, Dad worked for his father's construction business. Some days he wouldn't turn up. He'd stay home painting instead. Soon he began to sell his work in the galleries of the nearby tourist towns of Traverse City and Petoskey. His dad didn't approve of his painting, and when the construction company got in trouble because Dad played hooky too often, causing the company to fall behind on a job, Granddad and Dad had a big argument and Dad got fired.

That's when my parents headed for Detroit. Mom worked in downscale restaurants that smelled like grease and served coffee in chipped cups. Dad painted. I've heard often enough from Mom what that was like. Mom smiled hard all day at creeps to get tips so she and Dad could scrape by, and Dad painted all day and drank all night. And there were other women. Dad was furious when I came along and began to interfere with his work.

I've blocked out a lot of memories of those days in Detroit. The three of us were like a series of paintings by the Dutch artist Karel Appel. The paintings are of two adults and a child, and in each one the three figures become more and more distorted, more chaotic. When I first saw the series, it grabbed me and I know why. That was our world. It was mostly arguments. The words I had to listen to were so cruel, I didn't want anything to do with words. I stopped talking when I was five, and Mom had to take me to a psychologist. In her office the psychologist had a large dollhouse with tiny lamps that actually lit up and little dishes for the tables. At first I loved to play with it, but as I moved the dolls around, she would ask questions like “Why is the mama doll angry?” or “Why isn't the papa doll home?” That spoiled the dollhouse for me, and I wouldn't answer her.

There are good memories, too. Mom found a restaurant where the owner felt sorry for her and let her bring me to work, so I wouldn't get in Dad's way. I'd sit on a tall stool in the restaurant kitchen chewing on raw carrots and watching Ed, the short-order cook, flip burgers and put the potatoes in the fryer. The potatoes came out a rich shade of gold. When Mom's back was turned, Ed sneaked me some. I can still remember the taste of the salt and the crisp and soft of each bite.

I remember Dad as a force of nature, like a wind that comes without warning, rattling windows and bending trees. His voice was loud, as if he dared you not to listen. Watching him work was how I got interested in painting. If Mom didn't take me to work, Dad would give me a scrap of canvas and a brush and some paint to keep me occupied. It made Mom crazy, because the paint would get all over my hair and clothes. Even after all these years the smell of paint brings back the image of my father, like some genie escaping from a lamp—an evil genie, Mom would say.

When a gallery in New York City sold one of Dad's paintings, he took the money and followed the painting east, leaving us behind. Mom and I came back here to Larch, and Mom kept waitressing. Her uniform this time was dark green with a white apron that she had to wash and iron every night, no matter how late she got home from work, because she had only the one.

Dad never wrote; he never sent money. People told Mom to get a court order for child support, but she was too proud. Dad came back to Larch just one more time, when his mother—my grandmother—died. I was nine. I hadn't seen Dad in years, but because he was famous I had seen pictures of him in newspapers and magazines, had, in fact, searched for those pictures. He was a big-shouldered man, tall with sandy hair and a fierce, impatient look.
Why are you wasting my time?
he seemed to be demanding of the photographers.

Dad had arrived at the church for his mother's funeral wearing jeans and cowboy boots, as if he had come from Montana instead of New York City. His hair was long, curling around his shoulders. He didn't look like anyone else in Larch, and he certainly didn't look like he was at a funeral.

It made Mom so angry just to be in the same room with him that her hands were clenched. I betrayed Mom by edging away from her a little, thinking if I did, he might come over to me. He didn't, but I caught him looking hard at me as if I were some new plant or animal life. He didn't stay for the church lunch but hurried away immediately after the funeral.

A couple of weeks later I received an elaborate French doll. It came with a fancy silk dress and a coat trimmed in real fur. Letting me keep the doll must have been one of the hardest things Mom ever had to do. I wrote a long thank-you note right away, telling Dad all about me and what I was doing at school, what books I was reading, and what treasures I had found in the woods. I struggled to write it in cursive and copied it over twice before I was satisfied. I even drew a little picture of pine trees and enclosed it in the letter, wanting to show my father I was an artist too. Seeing him again that day in church made me want to be an artist, because it would finally give me some connection to my father. He never wrote back.

My first big argument with Mom came when I spent my babysitting money on a paint set. She almost threw it out. I couldn't blame her. Here I was reaching for the very thing that had more or less ruined her life. It was as if my dad had been a murderer and I had gone out and bought a gun.

Then last year I saw a short article in a Detroit newspaper saying Dalton Quinn had moved from New York back to Detroit, was broke and living in an old house, and had become a recluse. He even refused an interview with the reporter who covered the Detroit art scene. The article listed Dad's awards and said, “Dalton Quinn was once considered one of America's most well-known artists, but after a fast lifestyle, and then rumors that he was no longer painting, he dropped out of sight.” The article mentioned the street he lived on, and there was a picture of his house with the number above the door.

Mom saw the article too. She was suspicious and nervous about Dad's moving to Detroit. Although he was two hundred miles away, he was in the same state. After a couple of months went by and we heard nothing from him, Mom began to relax.

Then I applied to the Detroit art school, and now I'm planning to move in with my father. Naturally she hates the idea. Our trailer is filled with trip wires and land mines. There are explosions all day long. Mom even accused me of wanting to go to the school just so I can be with Dad. But I'm going because painting is my life. How can I make her see that? I don't know.

Our arguments end like they always do—with us crying and hugging each other because we're all we have. Plus we live six miles from town in a trailer. It's close quarters, and there's not much room to sulk. So we cry a little and make up.

Our trailer is planted on an acre of cutover land. All around us are miles of woods. The woods are like a house, and I wander from room to room. There is the birch-tree room with acres of white trunks slashing across green mosses. There is the pond room with its family of beavers. There is the swamp room with cedar and larch trees growing out of black water and the feeling that some hidden thing is watching you. The woods are the house I truly live in. And they were where I headed as soon as the school bus dropped me off in the afternoons. When I first started painting, they were what I painted: the white birches, the black water, the reflection of a giant pine in the pond.