Many painters would have left it at that, glad enough to disturb the wealthy elite who would see the work and for a few hours feel ennobled by their guilt. Eva Vaughn, however, had gone one step further. As one studied the farm worker, the huge flat field, the hot blue sky, and came back to his face, gradually the feeling grew that this man was deeply, sublimely happy, in a way that someone with a choice could never be. "Well done, thou good and faithful servant" came to mind, and Kate had left the gallery much shaken. Strawberries had never tasted quite the same ever since.
Afterward she and Lee had gone to a nearly empty coffeehouse, and for an hour they had talked about Eva Vaughn and women in the world of art.
"Why do you think there are so few great women artists?" Kate had mused.
"Didn't you even look at that Germaine Greer book I gave you?" Lee chided. "Yes, I know, anything that doesn't have the word 'forensic' in the title gets pushed to the back. You do remember what the title of this one was, don't you? The Obstacle Race, right. That should tell you what her thesis is. Men start off on a flat track, half the time with the proper shoes, starting blocks, and coaches. Women have to climb and struggle the whole way, mostly against the circular argument that women artists are minor artists, and therefore if a painting is by a woman it is a minor painting. Training of techniques, not just of art but of the craftsmanship that makes a painting last, the apprentice system, patronage—" Lee was launched on a monologue that left Kate far behind, catching the occasional familiar name—Rosa Bonheur, Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, Suzanne Valadon—and a flood of others. "There've been any number of extremely competent, even brilliant women artists. Look at Artemesia Gentileschi—an infinitely superior painter than her more famous father. Or Mary Cassatt: some of her stuff is every bit as good as some of the male artists who were—and still are—better known than she was. Maybe if she'd had less of an emphasis on mothers and babies… I don't know. I'm afraid that women have to be ten times as good as men to overcome their early training. Little girls are raised to be cautious and sensible. Even tomboys like you are too busy fighting their upbringing to leave it behind, and it's the complete, passionate absorption in one single thing, like painting, that allows genius to produce. If you have to worry about folding clothes and constipated babies—if you have to worry about having babies at all—you can't concentrate on one important thing. Geniuses of any kind are always impossibly bloody, single-minded bastards, and women have never had that option, not as a class, not until very recently."
"What about Eva Vaughn? Or wouldn't you count her as first rate?"
"Oh, God, yes, especially considering that she's only in her thirties and getting better all the time. I don't know about her, why she doesn't fit the mold, except that maybe her genius is just so exceptionally great that it rules her. Nobody knows much about her. Even that article in Time said that she wouldn't meet with the person who wrote it, although they talked on the phone a couple of times. Remember the rumor that Eva Vaughn was actually a man? That one's still around, by the way. I heard a couple talking about it in the gallery."
"You don't think it's possible, though?"
"There'd be no point in it. The work is so good it makes no difference if it was done by a man or a woman. No, I'm sure she's a woman, a woman who's somehow managed to break away from caution." Lee tapped the photograph of Strawberry Fields that lay on the table, and looked wistful. "I'd love to meet her, to know how she's done it, how she was raised to be that free."
And now Kate knew how it had happened. Eva Vaughn would have been a fine painter any time, any place, but nearly a decade in a tough women's prison, convicted of a crime intolerable even to the other inmates, had flayed her of her caution, had cut her loose from any of the expected possibilities. A normal woman would have gone mad, or retreated into the anonymity of ordinariness, or died. Instead, Vaun Adams, Eva Vaughn, had become empty of herself, had become a pair of all-seeing eyes and a pair of hands that held a brush, and she had channeled the pain and the beauty of life into her canvases. She was a murderer who had strangled a small girl, a child who would now be a woman of twenty-four had she lived. Nothing Vaun could be or do would make up for that, and deep down Kate could never finally forgive her. Painful as it was, she knew that her own work, her own humanity, demanded that she pit herself against the woman who had painted those magnificent visions of the human spirit. It was a bitter thought, as filthy and oppressive as the night outside.
On the outskirts of the city Hawkin woke and reached for the thermos.
"Not letting up any, is it?"
Kate pulled her thoughts back into polite normality with roughly the effort of pulling a boot from deep mud.
"No," she said. "No, if anything it's worse. The wind certainly is, even on this side of the hills."
"Ah, well, it'll blow over soon." He seemed almost cheery, disgustingly so considering the night and the thoughts that had been in possession of Kate's mind.
"Do you always wake up so cheerful after a nap?"
"Always, if it's a nap. Sleep is a fine thing. You should try it sometime." Kate hadn't had a nap since she was five years old.
"Not while I'm driving, thanks."
"You're probably right. What's that line about Brother Sleep?"
"Something from Saint Francis, no doubt."
"No, it's Shelley. 'How wonderful is Death, Death and his brother Sleep.'"
"A comforting thought," she said drily.
"Isn't it? Isn't it just?" He took a swallow of the coffee and made a disgusted noise. "Goddamn goat's milk again. What's that you're listening to?"
She reached over and switched off the mumble of voices.
"A discussion of how to prepare for a catastrophe."
"Appropriate. Drop me at the station, would you? Then go home and get some sleep. You've done well today."
She tried to find the words patronizing, but in the end succumbed to the little glow of warmth they started up in her.
"We aim to please."
"Wish I thought the same of Trujillo. Christ, what a miserable night."
The garage was empty, which gave Kate a moment's pause until she remembered that this was a third Thursday, Lee's night working at the med center. Hell. The automatic door rumbled shut behind her, and she gathered up an armload of debris from the car—sodden clothing, sandwich bags, thermos and two cups, handbag, shoulder holster, jacket. Plodding up the stairs she thought, I have been on duty or reading files for fifty hours out of the last seventy-six, since six o'clock Monday night. I am tired.
With that thought came another, something that had occurred to her as she drove home. She glanced down at the boxes of newspapers and magazines piled at the back of the garage awaiting recycling, and then shook her head firmly and went on. Nope. Not even for Al Hawkin. It would wait. She needed to sit still, think of nothing, eat something. One word of praise from the man was not going to turn her into a fanatic.
At the top of the stairs she unlocked the door, stepped into the house, dropped the armload in an untidy heap on the floor, turned, and walked back down the stairs.