September 23, 2013

• 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 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…

  • 12:38 pm
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