The Studio What a view he had from that huge window He could see eleven islands if you counted a couple large rocks He used to let me in to look This is what you could do with lots of money I thought Build this enormous room and hang it on a cliff With the whole bay spread before you Gulls and cormorants and seals lining the ledges and mackerel schooling And a rich wife back at their cottage making lunch... The man was a pretty good painter... He couldn't draw but he wasn't a bad colorist His work was understated… Very subtle and labored He worked mostly from postcards… Color shots that were sold to tourists He'd steal a little from one and a little from another and come up with something clever I thought it kind of strange when he had this great view to work from But he spent hours alone in the studio Noodling away at pictures of abandoned saltwater farms And broken wharves and isolated harbors.,, There were never any people in his pictures Because the postcards didn't have any either... His wife was an elegant lady. I heard stories when I first arrived That she was worth millions. The two of them though never put on airs Pretty soon we got sort of stand-offish friendly I would stop by in my skiff if I saw them lounging on their lawn And I was invited in to tea and english biscuits Their house was supposed to be the oldest house on the island It looked it. All low ceilings and lintels. I guess when it was built more than two centuries ago All the islanders were smaller. I never saw any of his pictures hanging on their walls Only a portrait of her father...Mean looking old man… Sometimes I walked along the shore to their place and climbed the cliff to the studio They couldn't see me because it wasn't close to their cottage There was this copse of cat-spruce and birch and alders that hid one from the other And I would look through that great mass of glass at his meticulous layout Paint tubes set in spectrum order… Brushes arranged by tip and width Canvasses stacked by size… This expensive easel in the center of the room Without a stray dollop of paint on it… And the postcards of the week Tacked to it above the work-in-progress… They had no kids. Only a cat named Cora Every spring they had someone drive them up from New York in a rented limo A fisherman would load their baggage in his boat and ferry them over to the island They were both good-looking people He was tall and sharp-featured and smoked a pipe She was small and wiry and wore almost no make-up They used a double-ended dory for mainland trips She would row the mile or so to keep her figure she said… He never rowed. They seem more like brother and sister than husband and wife And their days and nights would run together without change… Then early one summer when I stopped by he wasn't there She was alone with her cat… She told me he passed away that winter I didn't know it but he had a bad heart I guess that's why he never rowed that double-ended dory. She didn't last long either. Died that fall in New York. Then I read in the paper that she'd left these millions to the local museum To build a wing for her husband's paintings... She'd also left word I was to be invited to the opening When I went with my wife to see those pictures again they looked priceless All lit up in magnificent frames with soft music by a string quartet from Boston And these elegant people had come up from New York for the exhibit We drank champagne and ate tiny lobster rolls And kept admiring all those shimmering and expensive postcards… Later I found out the studio had been there long before they'd bought their place It was built by some fellow who designed depression skyscrapers in New York He and his wife also had no kids and spent their summers sketching the island On rainy days I was told they worked up these corny watercolors And gave them away to friends who visited occasionally Some of them were movie stars like the guy who played the French cop in Casablanca And on the day after Labor Day They closed everything up and went back to Park Avenue… After the war I guess the skyscraper business changed Art Deco was out and glass boxes were in and the architect got old He sold the place to this rich arty couple I've been telling about And he and his wife went to live in a retirement community in safe and sunny Florida The place was run by a homicidal doctor and his nurse who conned old people With no kids or relatives into signing over their money in return for perpetual care And then disposed of them… Of course all this was before my time The story about the unfortunate architect and his wife made headlines years ago The local paper ran it again as an aside When it wrote about the museum's million-dollar windfall That's how I found out about it By and by as there were no heirs the rich widow's lawyers sold the property To close out the estate… It was bought by a couple of really rich old lawyers from Boston There won't be any kids around the place this time either as they're both men They only come up for a couple of weeks in late summer This big seaplane drops them off right smack at their new wharf Together with some of their men friends… Except for one or two loud parties on starry summer nights No one uses the studio anymore… | 
Premium