The Most Dangerous Thing - Laura Lippman [82]
Until this latest project, most of Tally’s canvases were the sort of thing that makes people say, “My kid could paint better than that.” Tim Halloran said exactly that, adding: “And I mean Go-Go.” When Tim teased his kids, it never sounded quite right. Not to apportion blame, but—if that man in the woods had shown the boy any kindness, then Clem could understand how it happened. Go-Go yearned to be held by someone, anyone. Clem remembers how he used to climb Tally, seizing her hair, as if she were Rapunzel.
Despite what philistines such as Tim may think, Tally has a gift for abstract painting. She owes a lot to Rothko and Motherwell, but those are good debts. She uses cool colors in shades so close to one another that it is necessary to stand back and study her paintings to understand how much variation there is. Completely self-taught, she’s uncanny, and he’s proud of her, wishes she believed in herself enough to push for a show or even enter an amateur competition.
The painting that has bogged her down is figurative, however. No one’s child could paint this. It’s huge, an oil of two entwined children—well, teenagers, Clem has decided, because otherwise it would be almost pornographic. They belong to some other era, based on the clothing strewn through the foreground, an ancient time. The girl has a wreath of white flowers in her hair. A lion watches them from a glade. Pyramus and Thisbe? But the classic couple did not have a chance to make love before the lion entered their story. The painting is disturbing, in a good way, not at all trendy. But the faces are giving Tally fits. She clearly has tried again and again, but they are never quite right. The boy looks as if he’s in pain, not ecstasy, while the girl’s face has never advanced enough to have any expression at all. He yearns to ask Tally about what has inspired her, but then he would have to reveal that he has been sneaking into her studio.
It is an hour before dusk. Tally has retreated to the kitchen, where she will drink tea and mutter while preparing dinner. Clem loves the light at this time of year. True, he’s not a painter, but he can’t imagine anything better than walking through these hills of denuded trees. The soft gray light suits his mood. He’s not exactly upbeat himself these days. Ronald Reagan, president. A Republican-controlled Congress. It is scant comfort to live in one of the six states that Carter carried. If Tally’s depression were situational, he could better understand it, but she’s grown indifferent to politics. The only news that has affected her of late is John Lennon’s murder, which she insists on calling an assassination. Clem cannot bear to have such an important word used for the murder of a musician, and he told Tally as much. The argument spiraled out of control, perhaps because they seldom argued and had little practice. She wheeled their large dictionary over to him, showing him that it was accurate to use the word for the murder of any public person. “But for political reasons!” Clem countered. “Mark David Chapman was crazy, pure and simple. The desire for fame is not a political stance.” It was such a strange fight. Clearly, Lennon and Chapman were proxies for grudges they did not dare to address.
Now, striding across the hills in the fading light, it occurs to him that they were arguing over the fact that they were of different generations, that Tally had a stake in John Lennon’s murder, while Clem did not. But she doesn’t, not really. Although Tally is only four years older than Lennon, she is too old to be one of his true fans. By the time the Beatles came on the scene, she had opted out of her generation and joined Clem’s.
But perhaps that was the underlying cause of the fight, Tally’s lost youth—and the fact that she was the one who squandered it. He knows she doesn’t regret their marriage or the children. But she can’t stop wondering what might have been, a truly tragic affliction. Clem, born in 1923, had an old-fashioned education, the kind that involved lots of memorization and