The Prodigal
Twenty-two
WENDY AND I GOT BACK to Seattle to find chaos. There was an immediate family meeting to which Doc Henredon, Bob Bowers, Clarice, and Jack were all invited.
While Wendy and I were enjoying being out in the sun and working on a house, Kate had flown to San Francisco. She had met Doc and Clarice there and they went into the gallery to close out Kate’s show. Mr. Gillette had prepared papers that he expected Kate to simply sign that were the same as mine. He wasn’t expecting Clarice and when she snatched them away, Kate threw a fit. If it had been anyone but Doc there with Clarice, Kate probably would have signed the papers without hesitation. It sounded like such a good deal.
When they packed Kate’s remaining artwork, the inventory didn’t match the sales. Gillette insisted it was because our original bill of lading was off and refused to release Kate’s check. Clarice called an attorney and paid something like triple time for him to file suit and get an injunction against the Gallery. They were prohibited from selling or accepting money for any work of art by Katarina Mirela until the suit was settled. As several pieces that had been marked ‘sold’ had not been paid for, Kate and Doc packed them and shipped them to Seattle. Clarice cleverly pulled and photographed the sales tickets with the names and addresses of the buyers. Gillette could neither legally accept payment for the artwork, nor could he deliver it.
Kate was still steamed. So far, she had yet to receive any money for her exhibition and she was going down a list of Seattle attorneys that she thought could represent her. People had her artwork and she hadn’t been paid. She was pissed.
Bob Bowers had gone to New York to retrieve my artwork and Jack had joined him straight off the plane from Omaha. They actually interrupted a shipment of two of my pieces that were listed on the inventory as “not received.” My buddy, Al Liebowitz, clued them into what was happening when they went to pack up the remaining artwork. Jack had taken a different tack and called the police. He had Mr. Caldwell arrested on the spot for attempted theft. While Caldwell was being questioned, Dominic di Mento showed up and wrote a check for the full amount of all the pieces in my exhibition, including Bacchanalia, provided they drop charges against Caldwell. Jack had the presence of mind to call the bank to verify funds and discovered the check was no good. The police were still here with Caldwell and arrested di Mento for attempted fraud. It looked like I was going to spend time in New York testifying in somebody’s trial.
It turned out that with Caldwell and di Mento both being hauled down to the police station for questioning, Al had access to everything. He immediately went through the official inventory, checked the prices of recorded sales and made sure all pieces were accounted for. All unsold paintings and prints were checked off the inventory as they were crated and shipped to our studio.
Al saw the safe in the office was open, so took it upon himself to get enough cash out to cover all my sales, less the gallery commission, figured to the penny. He paid Bob in cash since he didn’t know Jack, and Bob signed a receipt in the name of C. Bortelli Agency. He’d brought us close to forty thousand in cash.
Kate, of course, saw this as being a failure on Clarice’s part since she did not bring cash back from San Francisco. In spite of all that, Clarice had just received word that Gillette was ready to make a bank transfer for the amounts owed if Clarice would arrange shipment of the outstanding pieces and call off the lawyers. When Kate found out that there would be a deposit in her account of close to fifty thousand as soon as the banks opened on Monday, she was mollified and apologized to Clarice.
We were glad school was starting in a week and we could get back to life as normal as it could be. We felt that our first non-Seattle showings had been a war rather than an art exhibit, but we’d survived.
With a mix of emotions and hormones still raging at the house, I staggered into the studio on Monday about noon to receive the shipments from New York and San Francisco that were slated to arrive. I had some time to settle my mind and do some sketching. I settled into the recliner in the studio and grabbed a sketchbook to start recording some of my impressions from the Habitat for Humanity build. There were a couple of scenes that I wanted to capture.
I looked around the studio trying to place what was wrong. I’d been gone three weeks and something seemed out of place. Melody’s loom was set up with a new piece she was working on. The props were still set from the last painting session I’d done on the dais. There was an entire corner filled with clothing racks and plastic-bagged sportswear. Kate and I had arranged a nice storage rack for canvases and we had drawers of paint, paper, and pencils.
That’s when I saw the draped easel in the corner of the studio.
I’d finished a self-portrait that last night before I left and arranged a drape over it while it dried. The drape didn’t look right. And there was no note on it.
I lifted the drape to look at the empty easel.
God-fucking-damn it!
The doorbell rang and I went out to receive our shipment of art, carefully checking off each item and opening the crates and boxes before I let the Fedex guy leave. Everything that was on the bill of lading was on the truck. He pulled away and I was left there with a room full of partly opened boxes and crates and a sinking feeling that I’d never see that self-portrait again.
I got everything stowed correctly, stacking the empty crates against a wall. We’d probably need them again sometime soon. If it hadn’t been for the arrival of the Fedex guy, I’d have rushed home and demanded to know who had been in the studio. It didn’t look like it had been broken into or disturbed. That meant the painting had to have been taken by someone with a key—my family. The darkness I remembered putting on the canvas, slowly crept into my heart. God-fucking damn them all!
I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was the best thing I’d ever painted and I had only my memory of it. I’d been called home to face the music for my outburst before I’d even had a chance to photograph it. Lissa would never touch anything in the studio that didn’t have to do with Ice Queen Sportswear. She liked my art, but she wasn’t critical of it. Melody? Artists know art. She could have seen that painting and decided to hide it so no one else would see into my soul. That was the best-case scenario. In her current state, if Kate had seen it and felt threatened by it, no one would ever see it again. No. Kate wasn’t malicious. She’d never do anything to intentionally hurt me. It’s beyond her to destroy artwork. But she’d become so competitive—comparing my sales numbers to hers. It’s like she saw everything I did as a standard against which she had to measure up. If she’d seen it when she came back from California, she might have done anything. The painting would be safe, but it would never be seen again.
But I couldn’t confront her. I was so afraid I’d lose her. What the fuck am I thinking?
Fuck! I couldn’t let anyone know about the painting. I’d never be able to paint like that again. I couldn’t explain what the painting was or why I’d painted it. I’d have all my family suspecting each other because everyone would deny it. And I’d still be suspecting everyone else. And everyone would hate me for suspecting a family member. Kate, Lissa, and Wendy had come back to Seattle after only three days in San Fran. Shit! If anything happened to the painting in that time it was ruined. I’d put so much oil paint on, so thick that it would take two weeks to dry and a month to fully cure.
I left the studio and went to the SCU campus.
Coach Frederickson was in his office and was quick to agree to a run. I decided to run in street clothes and Coach chased me as I took off downhill straight for the waterfront. Did you see the first Bond movie with Daniel Craig? Early in the movie he chases an enemy in what can only be considered a Parkour course. They run through a construction site and up huge cranes, behind bulldozers, and just about every place. That’s the kind of run I led Coach on. I hit the docks and vaulted a fence into a restricted area. It was almost dark with Seattle’s stupid short winter days, so I figured no one would see us or pay attention and Coach was only a few steps behind me. Port of Seattle ships a lot of grain to the rest of the world and I ran up an elevator like I was back on the farm in Nebraska. There was a bridge to the control tower and a series of platforms that led me out to the dock. A barge was tied up on the north side of the dock and I hit a piling before jumping to the tarp-covered deck. No question that this was dangerous. I’d heard that some of the shippers left armed guards on their vessels, but unpowered barges didn’t seem to need that kind of protection.
There was twelve feet between the barge on this side, and an empty barge tied to the south side of the next pier. I’m no Whitney, but I can long-jump twelve feet. My foot hit the rail on the empty barge and I slid down into the pit. Damn! I didn’t realize they were that deep! Apparently being down there wasn’t that uncommon, though as there were ladders that led up to the edge about every fifty feet. I heard Coach hit the barge behind me, its hollow echo in my ears, but I made for the first ladder, was up it and off onto the next dock.
This dock was inside a six-foot security fence I had to get over to leave the protected area. I went up the hood of a dump truck and jumped for the other side. I hit and rolled and just ran flat out for campus. It was uphill and I was sure that I could hear Coach gaining on me every step of the way. I hit the entrance to the AP and collapsed next to the door looking up for Coach. There was no one there. I waited for about ten minutes, catching my breath, before I started to get worried. I headed back the way I’d come at a slow jog. If he was out of sight, he might not have known what route I used to come back so I kept looking up and down each street and alley I crossed. I was nearly back to the waterfront when I saw him hobbling toward me. I caught up with him and he reached for me for support as he limped. His jeans were torn and I could see blood seeping through.
“Are you okay, Coach?”
“That… was awesome! I have never been led on that kind of chase. You need to compete.”
“Compete in Parkour? You’ve got to be kidding. Do they even hold competitions?”
“They say they’re bringing back the National Summit this year. You’d be killer. A twenty-five foot-jump? That was unbelievable.”
“What twenty-five-foot jump?”
“Between the barges.”
“That wasn’t more than twelve feet!” I said.
“In your head. That’s where I got this cut. I barely grabbed the edge and slammed into the side of the barge. I thought I was fish bait for a few seconds. You were already across to the other side by the time I crawled over the edge. I just stood there and watched you run the dump truck over the fence. When I got to that point, it about killed me. That’s where I got the other cut. The wire on that fence was sharp. I knew which way you’d come, but I’ve been walking for fifteen minutes.”
“I still can’t believe it. We were only out for… Oh man! It’s almost seven. I need to call home.”
I called home and told the family I’d gone for a run and the time got away from me. And that I needed to get Coach doctored up. It was late when I got home. Nobody was waiting up for me and after a little snack, I crawled into the big bed and went to sleep.
Classes started at PCAD in mid-January and I was no nearer to solving my dilemma than at the beginning. I began a new suite of paintings that I called Cherokee Nation. I’d started it with sketches at the powwow out in Georgia. Something was missing. I was going to have to take a field trip and do some more sketching. What I was missing was the stories that went with what I was painting.
Doc asked Kate and me to conduct two classes on proofing prints and signing and numbering them. We’d done one before the break, everybody wanted to go through the types of ink problems that could occur again. We had a lot of fun with those classes and ended up having a mini-exhibition of our print collections. That was cool because by that time we had all the prints back from Georgia and had signed and numbered them. We showed all twenty pieces in each collection which included fifteen prints each that hadn’t been shown in a gallery yet. Doc kept the prints displayed in the print studio for a week and an underground announcement went out through the campus. Only students were allowed in to see the works.
I tried not to let my upset over my missing portrait show to any of my family, but I could feel barriers between Kate and me. We were both holding stuff back. It was coming up on Valentine’s Day and everyone knew that was my special time with Melody. But Kate and I started kissing after class on the thirteenth when we were supposed to be packing our art after the school mini-exhibition. We got the forty pieces down and in our portfolios, but we never made it home that night. Kate moaned that neither of us had a dorm room to go to, so we walked out of the college and three blocks down to the Westin and checked in. We didn’t bother with food. We were so hungry for each other that we couldn’t think of anything else.
I wanted… I wanted her so badly. I wanted so desperately to just forget about the missing art, the competition between us, anything else that kept us from being completely together.
“Tony, I’ve missed you. I thought we’d be relaxed and back together after Christmas, but it’s been more hectic and stressful than before.”
“We’ve been loving so much on our partners that we never get any time together. I need a refresher course,” I said.
“This is my eye, Tony. I wish it was violet like Melody’s because I think her eyes are such a cool color. But mine are plain hazel—almost brown. Look at them and remember how much love you see there. That’s what counts. That’s all that counts.” I did look into her eyes and I saw how much she loved me. And I knew that it didn’t make a difference if she wanted my self-portrait, I’d have given it to her.
“I don’t ever want to compete with you. Not for Wendy’s love. I don’t want to compete with your paintings. I don’t even want to see which of us can sing higher.” She laughed. We’d attended the opening of Allison’s newest show, Annie Get Your Gun, and someone was always singing “Anything you can do, I can do better.”
“Tony, save me. I’m nineteen. I’m caught up in a world I can’t control and don’t understand. I don’t want to be the bitch I’ve been lately. I don’t want to think about money and sales. I just want to paint and then be with our family. Why can’t it be like that?”
“We’re too young to be sun-room painters, love. We either throw caution to the wind and become whatever we can be, or we get regular jobs and think about painting on the weekend. I’d give it all up to be with you, though. I’d never show a painting again. I don’t want to be Frida and Diego.” Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera had one of the most volatile relationships the art world has ever known.
“I was born a bitch. I was born an artist,” Kate quoted Frida Kahlo. “What will we do?”
“Make art. Make love.”
“We could run away. We already have enough money that we could go back to the Dominican Republic and live there for years while we just paint and make love. Just you and me and Wendy.”
“Oh, babe, you know I couldn’t leave Melody and Lissa. It would kill me. I think it would kill you, too.”
“I know, Tony, but dream with me now. Pretend it’s just us on a desert island and all we have to do all day is make love.”
“Like this?”
“Like this.”
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