Read Online Pictures at an Exhibition by Sara Houghteling - Free Book Online
Authors: Sara Houghteling
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dirtyand weak. May and June passed in this way. But I could think of nothing but Rose and the heat that radiated from her skin without my hand even touching it.
“Why not?” I begged, one night in July.
“It's reckless,” Rose said. “Everything could happen too fast.”
“You make me feel like being reckless,” I said. Her face below me was so close her features blurred.
“It's easy for a man to say that. I'm the one with something to lose.” A kiss on the forehead, maternal, without heat.
My intentions were otherwise—that she would not lose, that I could save her from whatever strangeness she might have felt as employee, as sweetheart, as houseguest, as apprentice, and so on. We could run the gallery together.
I had in my possession a family ring, its diamond modeled on the Dresden White.
“For whom?” Mother had asked when I requested the jewel.
“Rose, of course.”
“I find it bad practice to give people what they do not want and then expect something in return,” she said.
A ringing telephone woke the household at five-thirty the next morning. Mother, convinced it was news from Warsaw, answered in Polish. The caller hung up and rang back a moment later. I groaned, rolled over, and returned to my dream of playing tennis knee-deep in a field of mud.
I heard a tap at the door and felt a cold touch against my cheek. There was Rose, pale and shaking in her dressing gown, sitting at the foot of the bed. In the town of Saint Etienne de Saint Geoirs, some 560 kilometers away in the Isère, her mother had suffered a stroke. She had been rushed to the hospital, where her life hung by a thread.
“I have not spoken to my father in five years,” she said, “and there was his awful voice on the telephone. The train to Grenoble leaves tonight at ten and does not arrive until the next morning. I can't delay sixteen hours. Mother may not wait.”
“We can drive the Delage,” I said, and she looked at me with a mix of fatigue and gratefulness. We left at quarter past six. It would be a twelve-hour drive if the tires held out.
ROSE WAS SILENT FOR MOST OF THE TRIP. I NATTERED on about my dream from the night before; about my friend Bertrand, who always called me “old man,” and his mournful sister, Fanny; about a bullfight I had attended as a child; and so on.
“Do you want me to be quiet?” I asked her, somewhere in the hills near Dijon.
“God, no,” she said. “You're a wonderful radio that switches frequencies without me having to change the dial.” In another sixty kilometers, we did listen to the radio, but the news was nothing but reports of executions in Spain and whether the death toll was ten thousand or ten times that. Eventually, we switched back to my babbling and then, once it grew dark and my eyes tired of staring at the road, we were quiet. It seemed as if we were driving away from history and the talk of war.
Once, I ventured, “You have never spoken of your father.”
“He disapproves completely of my life. He didn't think I should even go to university. He did not go himself. One of those men perpetually resentful for not having had a son. Art, to him, is only an indulgence.”
“That hardly seems a cause for such a falling out.”
“It is my single true joy,” she said, and I felt a sadness at hearing this.
The tires finally capitulated when we skidded over a cattle break on the outskirts of Saint Etienne de Saint Geoirs. We left the car, right side sagging, on the rutted road, and went the rest of the way by foot. Rose clung to my hand.
We tiptoed on the strip of high ground between the muddy path and the farmer's fence to our left. We passed a stand of poplar trees, then a makeshift camp. A single child's shoe, without laces, waited by the road.
A cobblestone square with a concrete fountain appeared before us. A café and a restaurant, both with grimy windows and tattered awnings, showed signs of life at either end of the plaza. One emitted tinny music. A dog
“Why not?” I begged, one night in July.
“It's reckless,” Rose said. “Everything could happen too fast.”
“You make me feel like being reckless,” I said. Her face below me was so close her features blurred.
“It's easy for a man to say that. I'm the one with something to lose.” A kiss on the forehead, maternal, without heat.
My intentions were otherwise—that she would not lose, that I could save her from whatever strangeness she might have felt as employee, as sweetheart, as houseguest, as apprentice, and so on. We could run the gallery together.
I had in my possession a family ring, its diamond modeled on the Dresden White.
“For whom?” Mother had asked when I requested the jewel.
“Rose, of course.”
“I find it bad practice to give people what they do not want and then expect something in return,” she said.
A ringing telephone woke the household at five-thirty the next morning. Mother, convinced it was news from Warsaw, answered in Polish. The caller hung up and rang back a moment later. I groaned, rolled over, and returned to my dream of playing tennis knee-deep in a field of mud.
I heard a tap at the door and felt a cold touch against my cheek. There was Rose, pale and shaking in her dressing gown, sitting at the foot of the bed. In the town of Saint Etienne de Saint Geoirs, some 560 kilometers away in the Isère, her mother had suffered a stroke. She had been rushed to the hospital, where her life hung by a thread.
“I have not spoken to my father in five years,” she said, “and there was his awful voice on the telephone. The train to Grenoble leaves tonight at ten and does not arrive until the next morning. I can't delay sixteen hours. Mother may not wait.”
“We can drive the Delage,” I said, and she looked at me with a mix of fatigue and gratefulness. We left at quarter past six. It would be a twelve-hour drive if the tires held out.
ROSE WAS SILENT FOR MOST OF THE TRIP. I NATTERED on about my dream from the night before; about my friend Bertrand, who always called me “old man,” and his mournful sister, Fanny; about a bullfight I had attended as a child; and so on.
“Do you want me to be quiet?” I asked her, somewhere in the hills near Dijon.
“God, no,” she said. “You're a wonderful radio that switches frequencies without me having to change the dial.” In another sixty kilometers, we did listen to the radio, but the news was nothing but reports of executions in Spain and whether the death toll was ten thousand or ten times that. Eventually, we switched back to my babbling and then, once it grew dark and my eyes tired of staring at the road, we were quiet. It seemed as if we were driving away from history and the talk of war.
Once, I ventured, “You have never spoken of your father.”
“He disapproves completely of my life. He didn't think I should even go to university. He did not go himself. One of those men perpetually resentful for not having had a son. Art, to him, is only an indulgence.”
“That hardly seems a cause for such a falling out.”
“It is my single true joy,” she said, and I felt a sadness at hearing this.
The tires finally capitulated when we skidded over a cattle break on the outskirts of Saint Etienne de Saint Geoirs. We left the car, right side sagging, on the rutted road, and went the rest of the way by foot. Rose clung to my hand.
We tiptoed on the strip of high ground between the muddy path and the farmer's fence to our left. We passed a stand of poplar trees, then a makeshift camp. A single child's shoe, without laces, waited by the road.
A cobblestone square with a concrete fountain appeared before us. A café and a restaurant, both with grimy windows and tattered awnings, showed signs of life at either end of the plaza. One emitted tinny music. A dog
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