“The Amsley sisters never married and instead became avid collectors of art.”
“Is this the one about the boy with the red hair?” the granddaughter bounced on the big white bed.
“No, this is a new one.”
“Is it the one about the flower princess?”
“No, darling, just listen.”
“Can you tell the red hair boy one after?”
“Aren’t you tired of that one?”
She sat perfectly still and smiled, “No.”
“Alright sweetheart, after.” The grandmother cleared her throat and leaned into her, “The Amsley sisters never married and instead became avid collectors of art. Their manse represented the plethora of their collection, and each sister had a wing unto her favorite and herself.”
“What’s a manse?”
“It’s like a great big house. Like the White House.”
The granddaughter’s eyes opened wide, “And they lived in it?”
“Well, not the White House, but a house just as big,” and the grandmother went on to tell the story.
Laura Amsley had made her wing of the manse (after all they were the granddaughters of a nineteenth century Welsh industrialist) an homage to Rothko (she herself had expanded the collection after being completely bored by her grandparents’ art). Aside from the paintings, the walls were stark white, as was all the furniture. That day, like most days, she was lying languidly and perpendicular on a white divan staring up at two red rectangles next to a crème one that was affixed to the ceiling.
“Moon sun! Moon sun!”
An Asian girl (although Laura insisted on calling her Oriental) dressed in full Geisha costume waddled toward her on wooden platform shoes. “Yes, Mees Amsey?”
Miss Amsley lifted up her head from where it had been previously dangling off the side of the divan, “Could I get my miso soup?”
“Yes, Mees Amsey,” she bowed.
Laura plopped her head back, “Thank you Moon Sun.”
“You know if all you ever eat is miso soup, you’re going to waste away to nothing.” Meredith Amsley walked into the room obstructing the view of nearly half of it.
“Yesterday I had some seaweed salad. And besides, that’s the point.” She stood up, the blood rushing down making her lightheaded, “the incredible lightness of being,” she lifted her arms, “they feel weightless!” She pushed her right arm up with her left hand and watched it fall over and over again.
“Suit yourself,” and Meredith Amsley walked back to her wing of the house, leaving her sister spinning in circles and giggling, her arms and her endless hair strewn about her. Meredith Amsley was a much more practical woman than her anorexic sister. She enjoyed great masterpieces that marked times in history. She liked how at one time painting could change the story. For instance, at Josephine’s coronation, her mother-in-law wasn’t really there because she hated the child, but she was painted in because it was the right thing to do. Meredith thought maybe when she died, someone would paint in a husband. Perhaps someone dark and brooding. A Delacroix, or Corbet. And they’d paint her in yellow. On a horse. But aside from these masterpieces and the one that would hang after her death, Meredith Amsley’s wing was decorated with sconces. And mallards.
She herself resembled the hunting dogs in her paintings. She was large, she could sniff out mischief, and she seemed trustworthy enough to lead horses in a hunt. And, of course, she barked.
The third sister was, surely, a romantic. Not as in Romantic, but as in, Impressionism. She liked to watch the steam from the trains at St. Lazare, letting the fog transport her back to a time that only existed in her imagination. She liked to fancy herself like Berthe Morisot, standing behind the green gate of a suffocating house. She had never married, true, but she was somewhat younger than her two sisters, and although she never told anyone, she hoped that one day, perhaps….well, she tried not to let herself think about it too much. Sometimes she felt like Berthe, but in a postmodern sense. She didn’t have to struggle between a career and marriage; she already had a career as an art collector. But she did not like the idea of being kept. She didn’t like the idea of “to have and to hold”. Well, she liked “to hold”, but not “to have”. Why must someone have her? Couldn’t they just be with her? Yet, on the other hand, she did not want to end up like her sisters. Perhaps it was fine for Laura, because, well, at least she was thin, but Meredith…oh, Alice grimaced at the idea of being matronly.
“I’m going to go outside,” Alice announced that night at dinner.
“Whatever for?” Laura picked up a soup noodle with her fingers, tilted her head back and dropped it in her mouth.
“Because my paintings…they don’t have the right frames.”
Meredith Amsley took a large bite of her shepherd’s pie, “You have lovely frames, Alice.”
“Well, maybe, but they’re not right. Pissaro wouldn’t have wanted a gilt frame, neither would Degas or Cezanne, or even Morisot. They’re too gaudy and conventional. They don’t complement the thinking or the colors or the lines—“
“My pictures have no frames,” Laura turned to her right. “Yes, Mr. Rothko I know you prefer them that way. What? Yes, and your women slender.” She smiled, “Miso soup!”
Meredith Amsley rolled her eyes at her crazy sisters, “Our grandfather left us those frames, and quite frankly, I think they are perfectly complementary.”
“You would,” Alice said under her breath.
“Excuse me? Do you have something to say?”
“Look, Meredith, you like gaudy and brooding and rule following and classical distribution of color. But for me…for my collection, there should be something more than that,” and once again, Alice was lost in the fog of her thoughts.
Usually, the framers came to the house along with everyone else, and there was rarely a need to leave the gilded gated premises. Alice had been out for funerals and births, and one time for a Christmas parade when she was quite young, but that was all. But today she decided she was going to take her favorite rendition of Gare St. Lazare to Monsieur Fournier. She wrapped the painting in antique silk scarves that used to be her grandmother’s and placed it delicately in her satchel. She herself got carried away with the scarves and tied a bright blue one round her hair and put on her big dark sunglasses.
“Darion!”
He appeared before her, wearing a white suit, “Yes, Miss Alice?”
“Darion,” she said behind her sunglasses, “we are going to go outside today. Please get the car ready as I’ll need you to drive me.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Oh boy!”
Darion was their guard/driver who was also the son of their parents’ guard/driver who was the son of their grandparents’ guard/driver. His job at the Amsley manse, though akin to that of being a receptionist at a place where phones don’t ring, allowed him time to work on his tap dance moves. Today he was very excited to actually be going somewhere. And to get to drive the 1942 Duesenberg.
After Darion drove the car around, Alice put her satchel in and sat next to it. From an entryway window, Meredith Amsley, stroking the back of one of her favorite mallards, pulled back the curtain and watched the Duesenberg chug its way out the front gates.
“Darion.”
“Yes Miss Alice.”
“The first stop is Monsieur Fournier,” she had three names and addresses she had found in her grandfather’s address book printed on a 3x5 card. “He is located at 610 Madison Avenue. I heard it is very difficult to park in the city, so you may have to drive around the area while I am inside.”
“Whatever you need, Miss Alice.”
“Thank you, Darion.”
Monsieur Fournier worked for a gigantic company called Les Frameurs. A little like Henri Bendel, Les Frameurs was a designer department store with a great place to have a luncheon on level two. Darion parked out front and leaned against the Duesenberg, leaving the radio streaming the sounds of Chet Baker. Alice removed her incognito attire and went inside.
“Mademoiselle Amsley!” Monsieur Fournier called out from the top floor, and quickly ran all the way down the five flights of spiral staircase to meet Alice. She was surprised by his swiftness and speed and not even a single bead of sweat dripped from his forehead. He was fresh as a cucumber and greeted her the French way. “So, I hear you have a painting…” He nudged her and smirked as if painting stood for something you weren’t really supposed to say in public.
“Well, yes,” she carefully lifted the Gare from her satchel, de-scarved it, and showed it to him.
“Oh Saint Lazare!” he laughed at his own joke, “And to think you’re walking the streets of New York with this!”
She was going to tell him that actually they were driving, well, Darion was, but she decided not to waste time with unnecessary particulars. After all, they were here for the art.
Monsieur Fournier put his hand over his mouth and creased his brow. He tilted his head to the right. Then to the left. Then to the right. Then he opened his mouth as if to speak but closed it again, tilting to the right, left, right. Where he paused. “I have the parfait chose,” he ran swiftly up to the third floor and while he gathered a frame, Alice wondered if they didn’t have an elevator.
He came down as fast as he went up, holding the frame behind his back, beaming with excitement. “Are you ready?”
“Yes!”
He looked as though he might explode, “Here it is!” From behind his back he took out a large frame, thick and gold, with elaborate cartouches of leaves in the corners. He may as well have brought her sister Laura a hamburger.
“Soooo?”
Alice chose her words carefully, “I don’t think, this is exactly, what I am looking for.”
Fournier’s whole face fell, “You don’t like it?”
“It’s not that I don’t like it, it’s just, I don’t think I like it for me. For this,” she was afraid to look at M. Fournier.
He was crestfallen, “I thought you’d love it,” he looked as though he was going to cry.
“No, Monsieur Fournier, really, I think it’s a beautiful frame, I just—“
“No,” he put his hand up to stop her, “No, it’s okay. I understand. It’s not you, it’s me.” He turned and started up the stairs so slowly that Alice wondered if he’d ever get there to put the frame back. She felt badly but she didn’t know what to say, it wasn’t the right one. “Thank you Monsieur Fournier, I’m sorry this didn’t work out.”
She heard a faint “Mm-hmm,” and then she rewrapped her picture, put it back in the satchel, and turned to leave.
Darion had started shuffling off to Buffalo on the sidewalk and hardly noticed when Alice stepped back in. Alice sat back in her seat in the Duesenberg. “Darion!”
“Sorry, Miss Alice,” he blushed and slid back into the driver’s seat. “Where to next?”
Alice was a little discouraged, but she still had another name from the address book. “Mr. Petrovsky. He lives in Hell’s Kitchen.” As they bumbled along the crowded streets, Alice dreamt of the cobblestone of Zola’s Paris. She wished they could drive over a bridge in the rain. And she wished she could find just what she was looking for.
Mr. Petrovsky lived in a wooden tenement house that looked like the big bad wolf could blow it down. It seemed to quiver in between the other buildings, but perhaps more with energy than with weakness. Darion looked back at Alice, sensing her timidity, “Would you like me to go with you, Miss Alice?”
Alice stared at the house with wide eyes, “No thank you, Darion, this is something I have to do by myself.”
“I’ll be right here for you, if there’s any trouble in there.”
When Alice knocked on the thick wood door, it fell open. In the back of the room, there was a great potbellied stove, and a little man with overalls continually poured coal in to keep the heat going. A large man in a black fur hat looked up at her, “You! You want frame?!”
Alice clutched her satchel, “Excuse me? Are you Mr. Petrovsky?”
Mr. Petrovsky’s large nose glowed red like the fire, “Da. You have picture,” he stuck a stubby finger with black fingernails at her satchel, “You want frame. Mikhail!” The little man in the overalls jumped to attention in military fashion.
“Girl want frame.” Mikhail scurried behind the fire and brought out four pieces of wood and a giant hammer.
“Let’s see picture.”
Alice carefully unwrapped the Monet and handed it to him.
He squinted as though trying to see through the fog. After a minute he handed it back to her, “I make you frame.”
He took the wood and hammer and slammed the boards together, making Alice jump as though it were she he had struck.
“Here. Frame.”
Alice was completely bewildered, “I’m sorry sir, but this, I wanted something maybe a little more delicate?”
“You don’t like frame?”
“Well, it’s not that I don’t like it—“
“Look, it is very simple. I show you, “ he took the Lazare and stuck it inside the “frame” he made, “Look, picture fit in frame. Frame fits for picture. Just make sure it’s straight, you know?” He tilted the picture back and forth with his large hands.
“Da, good.” He tossed it to her, “I like the trains.”
She looked at the man and the picture and then back again at the man. This was like putting the stepsisters’ shoe on Cinderella. How on earth could this man even think…? But she didn’t want to hurt his feelings, so she gave him a twenty and took her botched up painting.
“You tell your friends. They want frame. They come to me.”
She smiled politely and turned to go.
“Wait!” She turned back. “You have headshot?”
She looked at him as though he had actually spoken in Russian, “What?”
“Headshot, photograph,” with his arm he made a sweeping gesture around the room, and it was then she noticed signed photographs of various men and women, mostly Asian, in plain wood frames around the room.
“No.”
“Next time you come, you bring photograph. I make frame and hang it,” he pulled his lips back in a smile to reveal a mouth full of teeth, some white, some gold.
She smiled knowing she would never be back, “Thank you, Mr. Petrovsky.” And she left.
Alice had had enough for the day. She got in the car and sighed, “Darion, take me home, please.”
“Of course, Miss Alice.”
And as Darion drove her back, she wretched her precious Lazare from its wooden hands, leaving splinters and nails like breadcrumbs along the way.
As soon as Alice sat down for dinner, Meredith Amsley peered at her from behind her Lancashire hotpot, “So,” she said feigning ignorance, “did you find what you were looking for?”
Alice moved her food around on her plate, “No.”
“I did!” Laura offered Marcus a noodle, and when he apparently refused, ate it herself.
“Well, I had a productive day. I dusted my Ingres and Gericaults and I even had time to feed the ducks.” Meredith Amsley took a satisfied bite.
“How lovely for you.”
“You know Alice, you don’t have to be mad at me that you didn’t find your perfect frame, although I did tell you the gilt ones were the most beautiful that you would find.”
“I’m not mad at you,” she paused, “I think I’d like some wine.”
“Oh so you take one step outside and now you drink? I told you it wasn’t productive to leave if it wasn’t necessary, I told you—“
“Arquivos, outros. Ocre y Amarillo, rojo blanco, y marron!”
Alice and Meredith Amsley stared at their sister. Spanish hung in the air like a bullfighter’s cape.
“Arquivos, outros. Ocre y Amarillo, rojo blanco, y marron!”
Meredith Amsley was the first to speak in English, “What on earth are you doing?”
“Mark and I are practicing our Espagnol, isn’t that right, Marcus?”
“Laura,” Alice said softly, “I’m not sure Rothko’s full name is Marcus.”
“Yes, it is! Marcus Rothkowitz, the Jew. He likes it when I call him that,” she turned to him and spoke as though she were cooing to a baby, “Don’t you, don’t you, don’t you?!”
“Oh.” Alice looked at Meredith Amsley, but she just shrugged.
“Soupa de miso!”
Moon Sun came shuffling into the room. She bowed, “Yes, Mees Amsey.”
Laura laughed, “No Moon Sun, I was just practicing. Adios!”
Moon Sun shuffled out as fast as she had shuffled in.
Meredith Amsley sighed, “I think you’ve been lying upside down on that divan for much too long.”
To which her sister replied, “Voros, feher, amarelo, laranja!”
The next day was raining so Alice sat and looked at her Cezannes reciting Wallace Stevens.
“Opusculum paedagogum.”
Alice sighed; she wished she played the violin. The violin would be so fitting on a day like today.
“They are yellow forms…
touched red.”
I, too, am a curving form, she thought, touch me, red.
“Tapering toward the top.”
Tay-per-innnnnnnng.
“ A hard dry leaf.”
Gold leaf.
“The yellow glistens.
Flowering over the skin.”
Over my skin, flower.
“ The pears are not seen
As the observer wills.”
I am not seen, she said, and fell into a deep sleep.
The next day was sunny again, and she had one last name in the address book. She turned the 3x5 card over in her hand. Leaving the other day had made her so tired and discouraged, and if this last one didn’t work out, where would she go? She didn’t want to be disappointed again. In the silence of her thoughts, she heard her one sister reciting Spanish and the other speaking to inanimate ducks. No, she would go.
Darion got the car ready and they were off to “Erich”, according to the 3x5. The little street was tucked away in a cobblestone alley, with a swinging white gate to get inside. It was near a factory, and although you couldn’t see the chimneystacks, you could see the smoke in whorls above it. Darion sat in the car. “I’ll wait for you here, Miss Alice?”
“Yes, Darion, thank you.”
Alice swung through the gate and when she opened the door, a little bell signified her approach, as though she were arriving by train.
Erich removed his glasses and looked up at her with a kind smile, he was an elderly man, and looked as though he lived his life with love. “Good afternoon, my dear.”
“Good afternoon, sir.”
“Erich, please.”
“Erich,” she smiled, “I have a Monet…”
“I know. You have a great many.”
“You know?”
He nodded slowly, “Your grandfather was a great friend of mine, and he told me that one day, his youngest granddaughter would be smart enough to bring a picture to be framed the way it should be.”
Alice’s eyes lit up, “He said that?”
“Yes, my dear.”
A great burden had been removed from her shoulders. She spoke at lightening speed, wanting to tell him everything, finally meeting someone who understood: “I was so tired of the classical frames and my sisters, well, they think I’m crazy, but frankly what’s the point of having beautiful art if the frames are so incongruent? And I would just sit there looking at them and I would think that that’s not the way they would’ve wanted to display their art, and that’s important, you know? Really important. And---“
“Hello.” From behind the office, a craftsman emerged.
Alice felt her entire face go red.
Erich smiled knowingly, “This is my son, Daniel. He will make the frame.”
Alice remembered her manners, “Pleased to meet you.”
Daniel smiled, “Would you like to help me?”
Alice felt her chest flutter, “Me?”
“Yes,” he paused, “we’ll do it together.”
Alice handed Daniel the painting without breaking her stare. Daniel took the picture and placed it at the workstation. They sat together and worked as though they had always known each other. Together they measured the frame, sanded a concave section of its outer edge, using sandpaper wrapped around a dowel in order to get an even curve. They cast a laurel-and-berry border in plaster in sections using a diagonal cut, so that a leaf overhung each crack. They burnished the water-gilt corner pieces with an agate stone, and Daniel stroked Alice’s arm with the brush so it would pick up just enough oil to make the gold leaf adhere to the frame. Finally they scratched the surface with a stone to make it seem as though the frame had lived haphazardly though the last 100 years.
Back at the manse, Daniel re-hung the painting and the couple held hands looking at their work.
“Which in those ears and in those thin, those spended hearts.
Took on color, took on shape and the size of things as they are
And spoke the feeling from them, which was what they had lacked.”
Daniel smiled and kissed her on the mouth.
“The End,” and the grandmother closed the imaginary book.
“I want to see the picture!” the granddaughter called sleepily.
“Well, darling, all you have to do is look on that wall.”
The granddaughter looked, and sure enough, there was a train breaking through its own steam, framed exactly the way the grandmother had described. The grandmother kissed the granddaughter on the top of her head and tucked her in.
“And the beauty of the moonlight
Falling there,
Falling
As sleep falls
In the innocent air.”
And she turned out the light and closed the door.