Nude in the Window

Nude in the Window

Harry Buschman

No one in Parkinson’s Gallery paid attention to Kate O’Riley that winter afternoon. One or two might have given her a passing glance if she stood between their line of sight and the paintings on the gallery walls. If they did, they quickly looked away if she happened to catch their eye.

No visitors spoke to her that afternoon. She was shabbily dressed––like a cleaning woman at a dress ball. Really! So out of place in Darien, Connecticut, especially here at a retrospective exhibit of the paintings of the late Simon Hedges.

She bought a catalog at the museum desk and she consulted it frequently. She wore a plastic strap on her wrist, showing she had paid the admission fee of ten dollars, and she displayed an eager, almost gluttonous interest in each painting.

She was an old woman, quite bent and she shuffled when she walked. In spite of the bitter cold outside she hadn’t worn a winter coat. Instead, she wore a collection of sweaters, one over the other topped with a man’s woolen jacket that was closed tightly at the neck with a safety pin. Her wiry gray hair was tucked under a knitted wool cap and she scratched her head thoughtfully whenever she saw something that puzzled her.

She muttered under her breath from time to time and referred to her catalog. Settling her glasses on the bridge of her nose, her head bobbed from painting to catalog and back to a painting again. Sometimes she shook her head as though in disagreement with one or the other. At such times she looked about for someone to speak with, but people would turn away.

Her name was Kate O’Riley, and she was the cleaning woman, cook and lover of Simon Hedges ... in Brooklyn many years ago.

Success came late in the life of Simon Hedges. He struggled like all artists did in the thirties and didn’t reach his potential artistically or financially until late in the last century. Most of his early efforts were discarded or lost, therefore this exhibit revealed a blank spot in time––a situation that retrospective exhibitions always strive to avoid. The appearance of this strange old woman kindled a spark in the imagination of the curator of Parkinson’s gallery. He was acutely aware of the old woman and he decided to question her––she was a potential embarrassment to the gallery on this otherwise successful afternoon ... or, a pot of gold!

Mr. Parkinson, the curator of the heavily mortgaged gallery, was a small intense, and financially stressed artistic director. A few sales, an oil or two from the past by Simon Hedges ... the gallery might be able to wiggle its way out of chapter eleven. He wore a chaste black tailor made suit––so tight fitting that few men in Darien, Connecticut could have squeezed his way into it. It fit Mr. Parkinson like a glove.

As if to establish his authority, he approached the old woman somewhat tentatively ... from the flank. She was looking at a painting of a woman brushing her hair. As Mr. Parkinson approached her, she seemed to grow taller and more formidable.

“Lovely exhibit, isn’t it Madam. Such a sensitive treatment of the female figure ...” The old woman was now forced to divide her attention between the painting, her catalog and now this man dressed like a haberdasher.

“Was you a friend of Si’s, sonny?”

“A disciple you might say.”

“How long ago was that?” She asked.

“The last five years of his life ... while he lived here in Darien. I had the rare privilege of watching him work.”

“Was he still a pig? He was a pig back when me and Flo lived with him and that’s a fact. Left his dirty underwear in a heap by the side of his bed––never washed a dish in his life.”

“Really. Well ... artists, you know.”

“Yeah. Me and Flo, we got to know a lot about artists, lemme tell you. He and this sculptor friend of his ... “

“A sculptor? He lived with a sculptor? I wasn’t aware...”

“Lemme sit down fer just a minute, my back is killin’ me?” She let herself down slowly on a leather cushioned bench that stood at a discreet viewing distance from the painting of the woman combing her hair. “I come up here all the way from Brooklyn Heights on the New Haven train. It’s a long trip for an old woman, young man. But I seen your ad in Friday’s paper fer this exhibit of Simon Hedges!” She shook her head in disbelief. “I ain’t seen or heard his name in forty years. There was me and Si and Flo and I can’t rightly remember the sculptor fella ... Archie somethin’.”

“Good heavens!” Mr. Parkinson’s eyes lit up hopefully. “Was it Archipenko?”

“Beats me, mister, I never paid much attention to him. I had my sights set on Si.” She narrowed her eyes and studied Mr, Parkinson more carefully and silently asked herself ... “Why is this man payin’ attention to me?”

“Tell me, madam ... they must have been wonderful days ... did Simon leave any of his pictures with you ... I mean when he moved on, there must have been things he left behind?”

The old woman shifted her position on the bench and looked Mr. Parkinson straight in the eye. “I bet I know what’s on your mind,” she mumbled to herself.

Mr. Parkinson’s eyes darted left and right. He reached in his breast pocket and produced a business card. “If you have anything of Mr. Hedges ... anything at all. You could be a wealthy woman Madam, I promise you. I will pay top dollar ... in cash ... for anything, subject to verification of course. Call me collect ... I will handle all the details.” He forced the card in her hand. She might have been a deranged old woman, but he couldn’t be sure. It was best to cover all the bases. Suppose somebody else got to her first ... Christie’s or Chelsea’s.

She looked at the card blankly and put it in the pocket of her jacket. “No. There wasn’t nothin’ worth savin’. He just rented a truck one day and drove off in it. ‘I’ll send you word how I’m doin’ Kate’ he said ... and I never seen nor heard from him no more––not once.” She looked around the gallery from her vantage point on the bench and wished she hadn’t come after all. These people in their fancy clothes––it looked like a fashion show! What did they know about Si?

She smiled a tired smile in Mr. Parkinson’s direction ... she saw what he was after. She knew the little bastard thought Si might have left something valuable with her. He wouldn’t walk away without leaving something behind him now would he? It’s the way an artist works––they can’t just pick up and go––something always stays put. A little something maybe, but something. She knew exactly what her something was––it was 48 pastels, 10 books of charcoal sketches, half a dozen oils of the neighborhood in Brooklyn and more pencil sketches than she could count. Everything of the young years of his life––not this candy box stuff he did up here in Connecticut ... and last of all, there was one oil, a big one, unframed, it stood in a corner of the old apartment. Too big to be hung, it was tilted against the stained wall paper across the room from her sofa. Kate looked at that one a lot. It was a painting of her, naked as a whore, sitting on a stool by the front window.

She remembered hearing him say, “God a’mighty, Kate! Look how they stand up tight and proud and free. Have y’seen Flo’s? Like milk bags on an old Gurnsey cow. And your blessed rump! Your rump is the rump of all rumps, b’God Kate you’re a wonder!”

On the train home to Brooklyn, looking out the ice covered window she remembered those days with a clarity that surprised her. Just seeing his name in the paper and on the walls of the museum made her realize how empty her life had been ever since he drove off in his rented truck. Nobody ever looked at her the way Si did, nobody else ever said she was beautiful.

It was dark when she got home and she was worn out. But she was glad she went after all. In a way it was like going to see Si again, to see what became of him. He was far less of a man up in there in Connecticut than he was with her in Brooklyn, she was sure of that ... he left the best of himself behind when he left Brooklyn.

She stopped in at Papa Wong’s for take out Chinese. It was nearly nine o’clock and only Papa Wong was there, sitting behind the counter reading a Chinese newspaper. He looked up and smiled broadly. “Miss O’Riley! There, you see I been practicing. I used to say O-LIE-REE ... you’re late for dinner. You want take-out? I got take-out. Where you been all day?

“Hi Papa. I’m done in ... I just got back. I been up to Connecticut all day. I’m hungry ... you got shrimp.”

“I’ll stand behind the pork. The shrimp ... I don’t know. I fix you something, some moo goo ... very good. Where is Connetiquette?”

“A half-a-days trip north of here, Papa. An old friend of mine ... he died up there.”

“So, a funeral. A time for passing. It is a sadder thing here than in the Chinese custom––but then we have less to stay alive for. Although maybe it’s different now. Who can say?”

“No, It was no funeral, Papa. It’s hard to explain.”

“You want some soup ... egg drop? There’s some left over. On the house ... or else out he goes with the garbage ... Bon Appetite, Miss O’Riley, may you have good digestion.” He closed the door after her.

Her apartment was dark and cold––the shades had been pulled down all day. She turned up the heat and kicked off her shoes, then set her Chinese food on the coffee table in front of the sofa. She peeled off her woolen jacket and all her sweaters but one, took off her woolen hat and mussed her hair with her fingers. She walked into the kitchen and got herself some chop sticks from the cutlery drawer, then thought better of it, put them back and picked out a fork and spoon ... the clock on the wall said 9:30. “Pretty late to be eating Chinese food ... but I got a lot to think about.”

Chinese food always made her think of Si. He loved it––nobody else did, but Si loved it, and that’s probably why she was sitting on the sofa looking at the picture of the nude sitting on a stool by the living room window––and eating Chinese food.

“... how terrible it is to see me at my best when I look the way I do now.”

She remembered posing for the picture, hoping she wouldn’t be seen sitting at the window by someone walking by outside, and all the while Si saying, “Hold it, Kate. Arm a little higher. Don’t slump! Just a minute more.” And she’d stand trying not to slump, ignoring the ache in the arch of her back, and all the time knowing full well that there would never be a better time in her life than this.

If this picture had been at the art show today it would have been a sensation! It would have outclassed everything she saw there, and maybe it should be there. She thought, maybe it’s not fair to let people think Simon Hedges was at his best in Connecticut. Look closely at that painting leaning against the wall ... no frame, just the stretcher, and the pastels stacked behind the sofa... put your nose down to them––you can still smell the fixative. Look at the color, fresh and clean as the day he sketched her bent over the bathtub scrubbing the dirty ring he left behind.

She reached in her jacket pocket and found Mr. Parkinson’s card. “Maybe I should call the little bugger,” she thought. “Top dollar, he said. I could be a rich woman. Maybe it’s not fair to Si, neither ... to keep the best of him for myself.”

“Too much for me to figure,” she thought. “If I don’t do anything, nothing will be worse than it is now ... and it’ll all be between me and him for the rest of my life ... and nobody else.” There were two fortune cookies from Papa Wong’s on the coffee table in front of the sofa. She broke one open and read the message ...

... “Let there be magic in your smile and firmness in your handshake.”

Then the second...

... “Your many hidden talents will become obvious to those around you.”

“I never did get any help outta Confucius, that’s fer sure, he’s just as confused as I am,” She looked at Mr. Parkinson’s card again ... “Parkinson’s” it said ... she didn’t trust him any more than she did Confucius, and at the root of it all, she couldn’t trust Si either. “You run off and left me here, you selfish old bastard. You never painted me, did’ja ... you painted my boobs and my butt. But me, I was inside of all that ... you never saw what was in there, did you?”

Wearily she dragged herself across the room and faced the picture of the nude in the window. “You’re all I got left of them days, young lady ... let them think what they wanna think up there in Connecticut, we know how it used to be ... I ain’t lettin’ go of you.”