I thought, he might have left New York, traveled west to California, and found work with the great Walt Disney instead of in a windowless back room at Macy’s gentlemen’s department. But as the people of the Old Country say, Il destino mischia le carte, ma siamo noi a giocare la partita. Destiny shuffles the cards, but we are the ones who must play the game.”
“That could just as well be a Yiddish proverb,” Miss Arnofsky says. “But destiny has certainly been kinder to you than it was to your father. A successful painter, the director of a museum.”
I nod. Smile at my guest. “Overseeing the Statler’s collection and hanging shows in its gallery hall is what paid our bills. But painting has always been my primary calling.”
“And there’s ample proof of that,” she says, scanning the room. She asks if I have children. One son, I tell her. Giuseppe. Joseph. “And has he followed in your footsteps?”
“As an artist? In a way, I suppose. He works in television out in Hollywood. Directs one of the daytime soap operas. And that calls for a kind of artistic style, too, of course. Television is so much about the visual.”
“Do you see him very often?”
“Not as often as I’d like. But I’ll see him next weekend. He has to be in New York on business, and so he’s coming up for the weekend. In fact, he’s bringing me to Annie Oh’s wedding.”
“Sounds nice. And you’re a widower?”
“Yes, my Anja died in 1989. Heart failure. One day she was here, the next she was gone.”
“And since then? Any other women in your life?”
“No, no. I suppose you could say that in old age, my work has become my wife. Or maybe this was always so.”
“Two long and happy marriages then,” Miss Arnofsky says.
I nod. “Long, happy, and somewhat mysterious.” My guest cocks her head, waiting for me to explain. “One’s wife, one’s art: you can never know either fully. After Anja died, I read her diaries and learned things about her I had never known. That she wrote verse—lovely little poems about her village back in Poland. And that once upon a time she had loved a boy in her village named Stanislaw.”
“And your paintings? They keep secrets, too?”
“In a way, yes. Sometimes I’ll work on a composition for weeks—months, even—without knowing what it is I’m searching for. Or for that matter, after I’ve finished it, what finally has been resolved. After all these years, I still can’t fully explain the process. The way, when you are deeply involved in a composition, everything else in the room fades away—everything but the thing before you that is calling itself into existence. It’s as if the work on your canvas has a will of its own. When that happens, it can be quite exciting. But disturbing, too, when, as the painter, you are not in control of your painting.”
“Forgive me; I mean no disrespect. But the way you describe it, it sounds almost like you experience a form of temporary madness yourself.”
“Madness? Perhaps. Who’s to say?”
Miss Arnofsky points to The Dancing Scissors and says she recalls Annie Oh telling her something similar—that she began creating her collages and assemblages without really knowing why or how she was doing it.
“That was true of Joe Jones, too,” I tell her. “As I said before, he told me he had begun painting because he had to. That something was compelling him. All I know is that at such heightened moments of creativity, I feel as if my work is coming not so much from me as through me. From what source, I can’t say. The muse, maybe? My father’s spirit? Or who knows? It could even be that the hand of God is guiding my hand.”
“So your talent may be God-given? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Well, I’m afraid that sounds rather grandiose.”
“Quite the contrary,” she says. “I’m struck by your humility in the face of all you’ve accomplished.” For the next several seconds, we stare at each other, neither of us speaking. Then she smiles, closes her notebook, unplugs her tape recorder. “Well, Mr. Agnello, I shouldn’t take up any more of your time, but I can’t tell you how grateful I am. This has been wonderful.”
“I’m just relieved to see that you still have both of your ears. I was afraid I might have talked them off.” She laughs, says she could have listened to me for hours more. “Oh, perish the thought,” I say. She rises from her chair, tape machine in hand, and I tell her I’ll see her out.
“No, no. I can let myself out. You should get back to your work.”
I nod. We thank each other, shake hands. From the doorway of the studio, I watch her disappear down the stairs.
But I do not return to my work as I’d intended.
The sun and the conversation of the past hour have made me sleepy. When I close my eyes, the images I evoked for my guest play on in my head: Rufus Jones, bereft at his brother’s funeral … Papa’s cartoon drawings coming to life before me at the piazza with the Fountain of Gaia gurgling nearby, water spilling from the mouth of the stone wolf into the aquamarine pool … Annie Oh’s strange collages that day when I first came upon them. Suddenly, I remember something else about that day—something I had forgotten all about until this moment. I had been wavering about whether to give the top prize to Annie or to an abstract expressionist whose work was also quite impressive. But as I stood there vacillating, a gray-haired Negro appeared by my side—a man who looked eerily like an older version of Josephus Jones. It wasn’t Joe, of course; by then, he had been dead for years. “This one,” the man said, nodding at Annie’s work. It was as if somehow he had read my mind and intuited my indecision. And that had clinched it. The “best in show” prize was hers …
“Mr. Agnello? … Mr. Agnello?”
When I open my eyes, my housekeeper is standing before me. She says my lunch is ready. Do I want her to bring up a tray?
“No, no, Hilda. I’ll be down in a minute.” She nods. Leaves.
Half-asleep still, my eyes look around, then land on the unfinished painting resting against my easel. It confuses me. Why does Fanny have angel’s wings? When did I paint those? I rise and go to her and, on closer inspection, realize that her “wings” are only the clouds behind her … And yet, winged or not, she is my angel. Seventy-odd years have slipped by since I spotted her that day in Chicago, and yet she continues to skip rope in my mind and on my canvases, raising her dark, hopeful face to the sky, innocent of the depth of people’s cruelty toward “the other”—those who, for whatever reason, must swim against the tide instead of letting it carry them …
Well, that’s enough deep thinking for this old brain. My lunch is ready and I’m hungry. I get up, balance myself. On my way out the door, I turn back and face my easel. “I’m too tired to do you justice any more today, little one,” I tell Fanny. “But I’ll be back tomorrow morning. I’ll see you then.”
On the stairs, I remember that I still have to send back that response card. Let Annie know that Joe and I are coming to her wedding.
