The Swan Thieves

Robert and I didn't look at each other the next day; actually, I don't know whether he looked at me or not, because by then the only thing I could think to do was to ignore everything around me except my hand on the brush. I still like the landscapes I did at that conference as much as anything I've painted. They are tense--I mean, full of tension. Even I can feel when I see them now that they have that little bit of mystery every painting needs to be successful, as Robert had once put it to me himself. That final day, I ignored Robert, I ignored Frank, I ignored the people around me at our last three meals, I ignored the dark and the stars and the bonfire and even my own body curled in the white bed in the stables. I slept deeply after my initial exhaustion. I didn't even know if I would see Robert the last morning, and I ignored my conflicting hopes of seeing and not seeing him. Anything else had to be up to him; that was how he had arranged things by not arranging them.

The departure morning of the conference was a busy one; everyone was supposed to clear out by ten o'clock, because a retreat for Jungian psychologists was arriving the next day and the staff had to clean our dining hall and stables to prepare for them. I methodically packed my duffel bag on my bed. At breakfast Frank clapped me on the shoulder, very cheerful; clearly he had gotten good and laid. I shook hands solemnly with him. The two nice women from my painting class gave me their e-mail addresses.

I didn't see Robert anywhere, and this caused me a pang but also that strange relief again, as if I'd narrowly avoided scraping a wall. He had quite possibly left early, since he would have a long drive back to North Carolina. A caravan of artists' cars was pulling out onto the drive, many of them plastered with bumper stickers, a couple of enormous old town cars loaded with equipment, one van painted with Van Gogh swirls and stars, hands waving out the windows, people shouting last good-byes to their workshop mates. I loaded my truck and then thought better of waiting in the line and went for a walk instead, out into the woods in a direction I hadn't yet taken; there were enough cleared trails for forty minutes of browsing without straying far from the estate. I liked the underbrush, with its lichened fir branches and shaggy low bushes, the light filtering from the fields into the forest.

When I emerged, the traffic jam was gone and only three or four cars remained. Robert was loading one of them; I hadn't known that he drove a small blue Honda, although I could have thought to check around for North Carolina plates. His method of packing seemed to be to shove things into the rear storage area without putting most of them into bags or boxes; I could see him jamming in some clothes and books, a folding stool. His easel and wrapped canvases were already carefully stowed, and he seemed to be using the rest of his possessions to pad them. I was planning a silent stroll to my truck when he turned and saw me, and stopped me. "Mary--are you leaving?"

I went over to him; I couldn't help it. "Aren't we all?"

"I'm not." To my surprise, he had a grin on his face, com-plicit, a teenager sneaking out of the house. He looked refreshed and bright, his hair on end but still glistening damp as if from a shower. "I slept late, and when I woke up I decided to go paint."

"Did you go?"

"No, I mean I'm going now."

"Where are you going?" I had begun somehow to feel jealous, irritated, left out of his secret happiness. But why should it matter?

"There's a great stretch of state park about forty-five minutes south of here, right on the coast. Near Penobscot Bay. I checked it out on the way up."

"Don't you have to drive all the way to North Carolina?"

"Sure." He balled up a gray fleece sweatshirt and used it to brace one leg of his easel. "But I have three days to do it, and I can make it in two if I push hard."

I stood there, uncertain. "Well, have a good time. And a safe trip."

"Don't you want to come?"

"To North Carolina?" I asked stupidly. I had a sudden vision of myself traveling home with him to see his life there, his dark-haired wife--no, that was the lady in the pictures -- and two children. I'd heard him tell someone in the group he had two now.

He laughed. "No, no--to paint. Do you have to rush off?"

I wanted less than anything in the world to "rush off." His smile was so warm, so friendly, so ordinary. There couldn't be any danger in it when he put it that way. "No," I said slowly. "I don't have to be back for two days myself, and I can make it in one if I push hard, too." Then I thought it must sound as if I were propositioning him, counting that night into the occasion, when it was probably not what he'd meant, and I felt my face getting warm. But he didn't seem to notice.

That was how we spent the day painting together on the beach somewhere south of--well, it doesn't matter; it's my secret, and almost all the Maine coast is picturesque anyway. The cove Robert picked was indeed beautiful--a rocky field crowned with blueberry bushes, summer wildflowers stretching down to low bluffs and piles of driftwood, a beach of smooth rocks in all sizes, the water broken darkly by islands. It was a bright, hot, breezy Atlantic day--that's how I remember it, at least. We braced our easels among the gray and green and slate-blue rocks, and we painted the water and the curves of the land--Robert commented that it was like the southern coast of Norway, which he had seen once just after college. I filed this away in my very small store of knowledge about him.

We didn't talk much, however, that day; mostly we stood a couple of yards apart and worked in silence. My painting went well, despite my divided attention, or perhaps somehow because of it. I gave myself thirty minutes for the first canvas, which was small, working rapidly, holding the brush as lightly as I could, an experiment. The water was deep blue, the sky a nearly colorless brightness, the foam at the edge of the waves ivory, a rich, organic hue. Robert glanced quickly at my canvas when I removed it and set it to dry against a boulder. I found I didn't mind that he said nothing, as if he were no longer teacher but simply company.

I worked my second canvas over more slowly and had finished only some background by the time we stopped for lunch. The dining-hall staff had graciously allowed me to load up on egg sandwiches and fruit. Robert seemed to have no food with him, and I'm not sure what he would have eaten if I hadn't provided his lunch. After we'd finished, I got out my tube of sunscreen and put some on my face and arms; the breeze came in cooling gusts out there, but I could feel I'd already let myself burn. I offered it to Robert, as I had my lunch, but he laughed and refused. "Not all of us are so fair." And then he touched my hair again with one hand, and my cheek, with his fingertips, as if merely admiring, and I smiled but did not respond, and we went back to our work.

As the light began to deepen and fail, the shadows changed on the face of the islands and I began to wonder about the night. We would have to spend it somewhere--not we, but I, and I could make it to Portland if I set out by six or seven, and find a motel there. It had to be cheap, and I had to have time to hunt for cheap. And I was not going to think about Robert Oliver and his plans or--I'd begun to suspect--lack thereof. It was enough, it had to be enough, to have had this day of working more or less at his elbow.

Robert slowed at the canvas; I sensed the fatigue in his brush before he stopped or spoke. "Have you had it?"

"I could stop," I admitted. "Maybe fifteen minutes more, so I can remember some colors and shadows, but I've lost my original light."

After a while he began to clean his brush. "Shall we go eat?"

"Eat what? The rose hips?" I indicated the bluff just behind us. They were gorgeous, larger than any I'd ever seen, rubies against the green of the wild rose hedges. Looking straight up from there, you saw only blue sky. We stood staring together at that triad of colors: the red, the green, the blue, surreally bright.

"Or we could eat seaweed," Robert said. "Don't worry--we'll find something."