The Swan Thieves

After art school I did any job I could find until I finally got some teaching in DC. Now and then I showed a piece of work, or received a small fellowship, or even got into a good workshop. The workshop I want to tell you about is one I went to a few years ago, late August. It was held at an old estate in Maine, on the coast, an area I had always wanted to see and maybe paint. I drove up there from Washington in my little pickup truck, my blue Chevy, which I've junked since then. I loved that truck. I had my easels in the back, my big wooden box of gear, my sleeping bag and pillow, the duffel bag from my father's military service in Korea stuffed full of jeans and white T-shirts, old bathing suits, old towels, old everything.

Packing that bag, I realized I had come a long way from Muzzy and her education; Muzzy would never have tolerated my packing job or what I'd packed, that nest of fraying clothes and gray tennis shoes and boxes of art supplies. She would have hated my Barnett sweatshirt with the cracked lettering across the front and my khakis with the torn pocket flap on the back. I was no grunge, however; I kept my hair long and shining, my skin supple, the ancient clothes very clean. I wore a gold chain with a garnet pendant around my neck, I bought new lace bras and underwear with which to adorn myself under the ratty surface. I loved myself like this, slim swelling roundness dressed up in secret, out of sight--not for any man (I was tired of them all, postcollege)--but for the moment at night when I took off my paint-stained white blouse and the jeans that my knees showed through. It was all for me; I was my own treasure.

I started very early and followed back roads toward Maine, spending the night in Rhode Island at a half-empty roadside motel from the '50s, little white cottages with a sign in fancy black script, the whole place uncomfortably reminiscent for me of the motel in Psycho. There were no killers in the place, though; I slept peacefully until almost eight, and had fried eggs in the smoke-filled diner next door. I sketched a little in my notebook as I sat there, recording the fly-specked sheer curtains tied back on either side of window boxes full of artificial flowers, the people drinking coffee.

At the Maine border there was a sign for moose crossing, and the roadsides became crowded with evergreens, which pressed in on either side like armies of giants--no houses, no exits, just miles and miles of tall firs. And then the very edge of the road showed a drift of pale sand, and I realized that I was getting close to the ocean. It gave me a stabbing excitement, like what I used to feel when Muzzy drove us to Cape May in New Jersey for our annual vacation. I imagined myself painting the beach, the landscape, or sitting on rocks by water in the moonlight, all alone. In those days, I still thoroughly enjoyed the romance I called "by myself"; I didn't know yet how it gets lonely, picks up a sharp edge later on that ruins a day now and then--ruins more than that, if you're not careful.

It took me some study to find the right road through that town and out to the retreat; the workshop flyers had a little map on them ending at an inlet away from civilization. The last couple of roads I took were dirt, pushed through dense pinewoods like logging cuts, but mellowed, too, pine seedlings springing up on the shoulder in the shadow of the forest. After a few miles of this, I came to a gingerbread house--it looked like one, anyway--a wooden gatehouse with a sign on it that said rocky beach retreat center , with no one around, and a little farther on I found myself rounding a bend toward a stretch of green lawn. I could see a big wooden mansion with the same gingerbread trim under the eaves, woods, and a glimpse of ocean just beyond. The house was enormous, painted a dull pink, and the lawn was not only a lawn but gardens, trellises, paths, a pink summerhouse, old trees, a flat area where someone had set up croquet, a hammock. I glanced at my watch; I was in plenty of time for registration.

The dining hall, where everyone met that night for the first meal, was in a carriage house with its dividing walls knocked out. It had high, rough rafters and windows edged with squares of stained glass. Eight or ten long tables were arranged on a peeling wood floor, and young men and women--college students; they already looked younger to me than myself--were moving around setting out water pitchers. There was a buffet at one end of the hall with a few bottles of wine on it, glasses, a bowl of flowers, and next to it open coolers full of beers. I had a queasy feeling; it was like the first day in a new school (although as a child I'd gone to the same school for twelve years), or like my college orientation, where you realize that you know no one at all and therefore no one there cares about you, and you're going to have to do something about it. I could see some people talking in little groups near the drinks. I made myself stride over toward those beers (I was proud of my stride in those days) and pluck one from its bed of ice without looking around. When I straightened up to search for a bottle opener, my shoulder and elbow hit Robert Oliver.

It was certainly Robert. He stood there in three-quarter profile, talking with someone, moving out of my way, sidestepping the interruption that was me without even glancing around. He was talking to another man--a man with a thin head and a graying thin beard. It was absolutely, positively Robert Oliver. His curly hair was a little longer in the back than I remembered, with some new silver making it glint, and one of his elbows showed brownly through the hole in his blue cotton shirt. There had been no mention of him in the workshop catalog; why was he here? He had paint or grease on the back of his light-colored cotton pants, as if he'd wiped his hand on his buttocks like a little kid. He was wearing heavy slip-on sandals despite the cool of the New England summer evening already reaching in through the door. He had a beer in one hand and was gesticulating with the other to the man with the narrow head. He was as tall as I remembered, imposing.

I stood frozen, staring at his ear, at the heavy curl of hair around that ear, at his still-familiar shoulder, at the blade of his long hand raised in argument. He half turned, as if he felt my gaze, and then went back to the conversation. I remembered that solid, graceful balance from his perambulations around the studio. Then he glanced around again, with a frown, but it was no double take from the movies; it was more as if he had misplaced something, or was trying to remember what he'd come into a room to look for. He recognized me without recognizing me. I edged away, averting my face. I found it an alarming idea that if I wanted to, I could walk over and tap his shoulder through the blue shirt, interrupt his conversation more firmly. I dreaded his perplexity, the vague Oh, I'm sorry--where do I know you from?, the Good to see you again, whoever you are. I thought of the hundreds (thousands?) of students he had probably taught since then. Better not to speak to him than to find myself one more blur in the crowd.

I turned quickly to the first person whose eye I could catch, who happened to be a wiry young man with his shirt unbuttoned to his breastbone. It was an impressive breastbone, tanned and prominent; it sported a big chain with a peace sign lying on it. His tanned, flat breasts curved away from it like two lean cuts of chicken. I raised my eyes, guessing he would have long retro locks to match the pendant, but his hair was shorn to a pale stubble. His face was as stark as the breastbone, his nose a beak, his eyes light brown, small, flickering uncertainly at me. "Cool party," he said.

"No, not particularly cool." I was filled with dislike, which I knew was unfairly left over from that moment of seeing Robert Oliver's shoulder turn toward me and then away.

"I don't like it either." The young man shrugged and laughed; his bare chest caved in for a moment. He was younger than I'd thought, younger than I. His smile was friendly and it brightened his eyes. Perversely, I disliked him again; of course he would be too cool to like any gathering of human beings, or at least to admit that he did if someone else disagreed. "How do you do-- I'm Frank." He put out his hand, renouncing all the retro cool in a moment, a mama's boy, a gentleman. The timing was impeccable, disarming. There was deference in it that recognized my-- oh, six years -- seniority; there was a spark, too, that said I was a sexy older woman. I had to admire the skill of his admiration. He seemed to know I was almost thirty, elderly, and to tell me in the dry warmth of his hand that he liked thirty, he liked it very much. I wanted to laugh, but I didn't.

"Mary Bertison," I said. Robert had moved, at the edge of my vision; he was making his way toward the dining-hall doors to talk with someone else. I kept my back turned. My hair made a partial curtain, a cloak, which protected me.

"So, what made you come here?"

"Confronting past lives," I said. At least he hadn't asked if I was one of the faculty. Frank frowned.

"Just kidding," I said. "I'm here to take the landscape workshop."

"Very cool." Frank beamed. "Me, too. I mean, I'm taking it, too."

"Where did you go to school?" I asked, trying to replace the distraction of Robert Oliver's profile with a sip of my beer.

"SCAD," he said casually. "MFA." The Savannah College of Art and Design was becoming quite a good school, and he seemed pretty young to have finished his degree already; I felt a flicker of respect in spite of myself.

"When did you graduate?"

"Three months ago," he admitted. That explained the college party manners, the recently practiced smile. "I got a fellowship to do the landscape course here, because I'm teaching in the fall and I need to kind of add that in to the picture."

The picture, I thought, the picture of me, Frank the gifted artist, and my wonderful future. Well, a few years out of art school would cure him nicely of his picture; on the other hand--he already had a teaching job? Robert Oliver was entirely out of my range of vision now, even when I tilted my head and my perspective shifted. He had gone somewhere else in the room without recognizing me at all, without even sensing in the room all of my longing to be recognized. Instead, I was completely stuck with "Frank."

"Where are you teaching?" I asked, to cover my internal meanness.

"SCAD," Frank said again, which gave me pause. He had been hired straight into the faculty of his own program, as a graduating MFA student? That was quite unusual; maybe he was right to dream about his future. I said nothing for a few seconds, wondering when dinner would start and how I could sit either as far away from or as close to Robert Oliver as possible. Far away would be better, I decided. Frank was scrutinizing me with interest. "You have great hair," he said finally.

"Thanks," I said. "I grew it out in third grade so I could be the princess in my class play."

He frowned again. "So you're doing landscape? It should be great. I'm almost glad Judy Durbin broke her leg."

"She broke her leg?"

"Yeah. I know she's really good, and I don't really enjoy that she broke her leg, but how cool is that, to get Robert Oliver?"

"What?" I glanced around in Robert's direction in spite of my best efforts not to. He was standing in the midst of a group of students now, head and shoulders above nearly everyone, his back to me--distant, distant across the room. "We get Robert Oliver?"

"I heard when I got in this afternoon. I don't know if he's here yet. Durbin broke her leg on a hiking trip--the secretary told me

Durbin said she could actually hear the bone crack. Bad break, big surgery and everything, so the director called his buddy Robert Oliver. Can you believe that? I mean, lucky. Not for Durbin."

A sort of film reel went snapping and spinning around me -- Robert Oliver walking in the fields with us, pointing out angles of light and fixing the perspective on those low blue hills inland, the ones I'd driven past. Could we see them from the shore? I would have to say to him the first day, Oh, hello, I guess you don't remember me, but... And then I'd have to paint all week with him right there, walking around among our easels. I sighed aloud.

Frank was looking puzzled. "Don't you like his work? I mean, he's a traditionalist and everything, but, God, can he paint."

I was saved from this by the heavy clamor of a bell apparently rung outside to announce the meal, a sound I would hear twice a day for five days, a sound that still goes straight through my stomach when I think about it. Everyone began collecting around the tables. I hung back next to Frank until I saw that Robert had sat down at the table closest to his little group, as if to continue the conversation. Then I edged Frank into a seat as far away as possible from Robert and his illustrious colleagues. We sat together and critiqued the dinner, which was the very definition of wholesome, followed up by strawberry pie and cups of coffee. It was served by students Frank said were work-study artists who were in art school or college; there was no waiting in line, just these beautiful young people putting down our full plates in front of us. Someone even poured my water for me.

While we ate, Frank talked steadily about his classes, his student show, his talented friends who were scattering from Savannah to big cities all over the country. "Jason's going to Chicago--I might join him for a while next summer. Chicago's the next big place, that's pretty obvious." And so on. It was deadly, but it kept my confusion at bay, and by the time the strawberry pie came I felt safe for a whole night from being either recognized by or unrecognized by Robert Oliver. I could sense Frank's muscular shoulder next to mine, his mouth coming closer to my ear, his unspoken Maybe this is the beginning of something I My room is down at the far end of the men's dorm. During dessert the director of the program stood up behind a microphone at one end of the carriage house--he turned out to be the bullet-headed man with the thin gray hair--and told us how glad he was to have such a fine incoming group, how talented we were, how hard it had been to turn away all those other fine applications. ("And all those other workshop fees, too," Frank muttered to me.)

After the speech everybody got up and milled around for a few minutes while the work-study artists darted in to collect plates. A woman in a purple dress and huge earrings told Frank and me that there would be a bonfire behind the stables and we should come hang out there. "It's a tradition the first night," she explained, as if she'd been to these workshops many times. We walked out into the dark--I could smell ocean again, and the stars were showing overhead--and when we came around the edge of the buildings, there was a tremendous shower of sparks already raining upside down, toward the sky, and lighting up people's faces. I couldn't see beyond the trees at the edge of the yard, but I thought I could hear the pounding of waves. The application brochure had said the camp was a short stroll from the beach; tomorrow I would explore. There were a few paper lanterns hung in the trees, as if we'd come to attend a festival.

I felt an unexpected wave of hope--this would be magical, would erase the recent long tedium of my low-level teaching jobs, one at a city college and one at a community center, would close the gap between my work life and my secret life at home with my paintings and drawings, would end my hunger for the company of fellow artists, a longing that had grown unchecked since I'd finished my degree. Here, in just a few days, I would become a better painter than I'd ever dreamed I could be. Even Frank's cheerfully disdainful comments couldn't derail my sudden wild hope. "A mob scene," he said, and used that as an excuse to enclose my arm in confident fingers and steer us both away from the smoky side of the fire.

Robert Oliver stood among the older people--faculty, regulars (I recognized the woman in the purple dress)--also out of range of the smoke, a bottle of beer in his hand. The bottle had picked up the light of the fire, which made it glow from the inside, like a topaz. He was listening now to the director. I remembered that trick he had, which possibly wasn't a trick, of listening more than he talked. He had to bend his head a little to listen to almost anyone, and that gave him an intent, attentive appearance, and then he looked up or away with just his eyes as he listened, as if what the speaker was saying was printed on the sky. He had put on a sweater with part of the neck frayed away; it occurred to me that we shared an affinity for old clothes.

I considered stepping closer to the fire, out in its light, and trying to catch Robert's eye, and then dismissed the thought. Tomorrow's embarrassment would come soon enough. Oh yes, I (don't) remember you. The interesting thing would be seeing whether he lied about it. Frank was handing me a beer--"Unless you want something stronger." I didn't. He was pressing up against my shoulder now, my old sweatshirt, and after I'd had a little of the beer that sensation of his hard arm against mine was not unpleasant. I could see Robert Oliver's head in the starlight, his bright eyes fixed for a moment on the flames before us, his rough hair devilishly upright, his face gentle and composed. It was a more deeply lined face than I remembered, but he must have been at least forty by now; there were heavy grooves at the corners of his mouth, which vanished when he smiled.

I turned to Frank, who was pressing more distinctly against my sweatshirt. "I think I'll head to bed," I said with what I hoped was insouciant uncaring. "Have a good night. Big day tomorrow." I regretted the last statement; it wouldn't be as big a day for Frank the Great Artist as it would be for me, the talented nobody, but he didn't need to know that.

Frank gazed at me over his beer, regretful and too young to hide it. "Hey, yeah. Sleep well, okay?"

No one was in bed yet in the long dormitory, another converted barn, which held the women students in its little closed-in stalls. No privacy here, certainly, in spite of the attempt to put solid walls among the guests. It still had a faintly horsey smell, which I remembered, with a stab of nostalgia, from Muzzy's three years of enforced riding lessons for me and Martha. "You sit so well on a horse," she would tell me approvingly after every session, as if that were justification enough for all the time and expense. I used the cold-seated toilet down the hall--down the aisle, rather-- and then shut myself into my cubicle to unpack. There was a desk big enough to draw on, a hard chair, a tiny bureau with a framed mirror above it, a narrow bed made up with narrow white sheets, a bulletin board with nothing on it but thumbtack holes, and a window with brown curtains.

After standing there disoriented for a moment or two, I pulled the curtains shut and unzipped my sleeping bag to spread on the bed for extra warmth. I put my ratty clothes in the drawers and my sketch pads and journal on top of the desk. I hung my sweatshirt up on the back of the door. I laid out my pajamas and my book. Through the closed window I could hear the sounds of merriment, voices, distant laughter. Why am I excluding myself from all that? I wondered, but with as much pleasure as melancholy. My truck was parked in the lot near the camp and I was bone-weary from my long drive, ready for bed, or nearly. Standing in front of the mirror, I performed my nightly undressing ritual, pulling my T-shirt off over my head. Underneath was my delicate, expensive bra. I stood very straight, looking at myself. Self-portrait, night after night. Then I took off the bra and set it aside and stood looking again: myself, and all for me. Self-portrait, nude. When I had finished that long gaze, I put on my graying pajamas and dove into the bed; the sheets were cold, my book one I thought I should be reading, a biography of Isaac Newton. My hand found the light switch, and my head found the pillow.

1879

My darling friend,

Your letter touched me greatly and filled me with the pain of having caused you pain, which I see when I read between your brave and selfless lines. Since I sent my letter to you, I have regretted it every moment, fearing that it would not only put hideous images in your head--the ones I must live with myself--but also appear a pitiable bid for sympathy. I am human, and I love you, but I swear neither of these has been my intention. This shame makes me glad that you told me your nightmare, my dear, despite your reservations about doing so; this way I can suffer with you in turn, sorry as I am to have caused your sleepless night.

wife had indeed died in such loving arms as yours, she would have felt herself in the embrace of an angel, or of the daughter she never had. Your letter has already brought a strange alteration in my thoughts about that day, which occupy and torment me frequently--until this morning my keenest wish was always that she might have died in my arms, if she had to die. And now I think that if she could have died in the gentle embrace of a daughter, of a person with your instinctive tenderness and courage, that might have been more comforting still, both to her and to me. Thank you, my angel, for lifting some of this weight and for making me feel the generosity that is your nature. I have destroyed your letter, although reluctantly, so that you can never be implicated in any knowledge of a dangerous past. I hope you will destroy mine as well, both this one and the last.

I must go out for a while; I cannot collect or calm myself indoors this morning. I will walk a little and will make certain this is delivered in perfect safety to you, wrapped in the grateful heart of your

O.V.