Page 36 of Theo of Golden

Theo made no reply, other than a slight nod.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Asher continued. “I’m grateful for what I get to do. I’m a gainfully employed artist with a loyal clientele, good friends, and a beautiful family. You could even say I’ve been a successful artist. And I hope something worthwhile has come out of this studio over the years. But to answer your question, I have serious doubts about how ‘good’ I am. All of these unsold pieces around here would be an argument against me.”

Again, Theo nodded thoughtfully before speaking. “Don’t you think even the very great artists worked with many unsold pieces around them?”

Asher nodded. “Fair question. And yeah, they probably did. At least until they died.”

A phone rang.

“Theo, forgive me. I meant to tell you. I’m expecting a call about a commission. Would it be OK if I check to see who’s calling?”

“By all means.”

Asher looked at his phone. “This is the call. It might take a little while. Make yourself at home, and feel free to look around. You can dig through the stacks, or go in the front rooms, whatever you’d like. I’ll keep this as short as I can.”

CHAPTER 22

Asher got up and walked to one of the front rooms that served as his office. He closed the door behind him. Theo put down his coffee cup, rose from his chair, and stood hesitantly for several seconds, uncertain of which stack or corner to visit first. Street sounds, muffled in the distance, reminded him there was life outside the sanctum of the studio. But he was heedless of it all as he returned to the front hallway and began his tour of Asher’s world.

An array of framed items, displayed higgledy-piggledy, filled the left wall, floor to ceiling: a feather, a page torn from a book with the word “dulcet” circled, small framed pieces by artists named Sutphin and Lanier, various certificates from art organizations and civic groups, and a child’s stick figure with the words “you are my best Dabby in the werl.”

Theo turned to look at the opposite wall. Only a few items hung there, all of them precisely arranged.

One of those items, displayed at eye level, was an oil painting, two feet square, of a lone tree in a field. It seemed to be more a study than a finished work.

The colors and foliage in the painting indicated a spring day. A splash of crimson was on the ground. A blanket? In the field, slightly right of center, was what appeared to be an artist’s easel. Behind the easel stood a barely visible figure, presumably a woman. Only the arms and legs could be seen. At the bottom of the canvas were the words, written in freehand, “Me, painting you, painting.”

Judging from the frame, and the slight yellowing at the edges of the canvas, the piece was old.

That painting was surrounded by four handwritten letters in separate frames. They came from four different writers, on stationery of various sizes and tones. Each was addressed to Asher who, judging by the dates of the letters, must have been a young boy when they were sent to him. They all acknowledged Asher’s hope of being an artist someday. One was from his grandfather. The others were from artists — renowned artists — prosperous enough to have engraved stationery with letterhead, office addresses, and gallery listings.

Theo knew the names on the letters; even people unfamiliar with the art world would have known them. As he read what they had written to the young Asher, he was impressed by the warmth of their tone. Theo’s own experience with artists had led him to the unflattering belief that they were often detached and impersonal, sometimes pompous and self-important. These letters were an argument to the contrary. They used words that a child could understand. They were short, the longest just a couple of paragraphs. At the bottom of one, the writer had drawn a small bird and a lightning bolt.

Theo continued down the hall. A dozen, twenty, fifty objects begged for his attention. He hoped that, in time, he might be granted an unhurried opportunity to revisit the studio and study all that was there.

The drawing that captured Theo’s attention, the one nearest him, was a pencil rendering of a female figure, waist up, bare except for a scarf that covered one shoulder. Her face and eyes were turned slightly upward. There was a dreaminess about her countenance. Each feature — the unbrushed hair, the half-open eyes, the prominent cheekbone, the porcelain lips and tapered chin, the curved neck, the lift of her breast and torso, the veined hands and delicate fingers — was an intricate matrix of lines, some razor thin, some bold, all delicate, and all as sensual as the Song of Solomon. Together, the features and line strokes created a technically precise, ethereal composition. The beauty of human flesh, “fearfully and wonderfully made,” radiated from the frame.

The drawing was done on gray bristol board, paired perfectly with a wide ebony frame.

The frame.

How is it, Theo wondered, that a piece of paper — a letter, a photo, a ticket stub, a sketch, a painting — is suddenly transformed by placing it in four bits of wood beneath a pane of glass? What does it mean that we place permanent boundaries around transient moments? What does it say of humankind that we take such trouble to freeze specific memories, that we devote such energy to capturing and preserving the “minute particulars” of our lives?

Theo could hear Asher’s muffled voice behind the closed door of the office, but he paid it no mind. He was immersed in all that was before him. He intended to move along, to see Asher’s other works, but he remained at the drawing of the woman, obedient to his conviction that it was better to see one thing well than many poorly.

He became conscious of a sound down the hall — a chair sliding on the floor — and could tell from the intonation of Asher’s voice that the phone call was winding down. Moments later, the office door opened.

“Theo, I’m sorry that took so long.”

“Oh, I could not have been more pleased. I feel like I’m swimming in an ocean of stories, even if I don’t know what they are.” He nodded at the feather, the page with the single word circled, and the others.

Asher chuckled. “Well, you’re right; they all do have a story, even if I’m the only one interested in them.”

Theo said, “Ah, my guess is that many would be interested. The mind of the artist is a place of fascination to most of us, you know. All that mystique and all those visions. But maybe some of the stories are best kept in the vault of secrets, yes?”

Theo knew that vault well.

“Sometimes I wonder about all that talk about mystique,” Asher replied. “The artistic temperament and such. I mean, I know there’s such a thing, but if an artist has a family, he learns that art has to wait its turn sometimes. Housework and skinned knees and soccer games do wonders for keeping one’s feet on the ground around here. There’s not much mystique to being a member of a family.”