Novak was singing in a surprisingly melodious baritone while Richard was on his knees before Pamela as if proposing marriage. Pamela’s head dropped back and her laughter gushed like a bouquet of yellow flowers. Cyril drank more wine. Now one of the matrons who had given Richard her card was writing him a cheque and Pamela was putting a red sticker beside one of the crabs. There was a sparkling fountain of laughter and congratulations. Novak joined in, clapping Richard on the back and clinking his glass.
Cyril looked at the door. How clear and cool the air would be outside. He discovered that his glass was empty yet again and that his head hurt. As he moved toward the bar Pamela caught his elbow and turned him back in the other direction. They stopped before his drawings.
“I don’t know about those Stalins,” she said, “but I do like the others.” She compressed her lips and nodded once, as if reconfirming this strange but undeniable fact. Her white clip-on earrings were ivory—Cyril could see the grain—and they were carved in the shape of tiny ears. “I especially like this one.” She pointed to the woman with the braid down her naked back. Cyril tried seeing it through Pamela’s eyes. Her eyes, he noted, were heavily veined, as if with incandescent filaments. “Yes,” she said again, “I like it.”
Cyril heard himself ask, “Why?”
She turned and regarded him with a bewildered and yet bemused smile. She sucked her teeth. She turned back to the picture. For a full minute they stood side-by-side staring at the woman’s naked back and long braid. Finally she shrugged. “Like I said, I don’t know. I just do.”
“Thank you,” said Cyril.
“No, no. Thank you.” She placed her hand on his forearm. “Wait here.”
Cyril watched her go off through the crowd and then return a moment later holding something between her thumb and forefinger. She held it up as though it was a gem. “I want it—you will sell it to me?”
“Of course!”
“Good.” She put a red sticker by the picture. “Congratulations,” she said. “To both of us.”
Cyril felt as if he’d just lost his virginity.
“Breathe,” she reminded him, then smiled again, one corner of her mouth curling upward. “Oh.” She opened her bag and found her chequebook. “I suppose I owe you money.” She wrote his name and five hundred “and one dollars,” she said aloud, and slipped it into his shirt pocket and gave it a tap. “Keep the commission.”
Seeing what was under way, Novak and Richard joined them along with others.
“I’ve just bought a work of art,” announced Pamela.
There were murmurs of approval and renewed interest in Cyril’s pictures. Novak gripped him by the back of the neck and gave it a hearty squeeze. Richard slipped away. The gallery was now packed, the air simultaneously sour and fragrant with perfume and bodies. Cheque in his pocket, red sticker by his drawing—by his work—an elated Cyril floated toward the bar to treat himself to another glass of wine and tried not to smile too widely.
SIX
CYRIL SLEPT LATE and when he went onto the porch with his coffee, discovered that the saucer was empty. He scanned the cemetery with the opera glasses but there was no cat. It was Monday morning and the city was at work. He felt no guilt. As he trained the opera glasses on his mother’s grave he only wished she could have been at the show last night. In the end he’d sold three pictures: two gravestones, one Stalin. Three sales; fifteen hundred and three dollars. He could have danced. In fact he had danced when he got home last night. That Richard had also sold three in no way diminished his sense of triumph.
Gilbert hadn’t shown, which was curious because it was just the sort of event he thrived upon, a combination of new people, new contacts, and free liquor. He’d have been all over Pamela, having long been an admirer of her father’s business smarts.
Cyril refilled the saucer then returned to the gallery to take down his pictures. Empty wine glasses sat on ledges and in corners. There was a bow tie and, bizarrely, a pair of grey slacks. Pamela was there with Novak and a few others. Pamela wore embroidered kung fu slippers, baggy black pants with ties at the ankles and waist, an Oriental jacket with gold stitching. When she saw Cyril she left Novak and caught Cyril’s face in her hands and air-kissed him once, twice, and the third time square on the mouth. Her hands were cold but her eyes radiant. She gripped his elbow and they proceeded to perambulate the gallery apart from the others.
“You have arrived,” she said. “You must consider your future, your career, and have a show of your own.”
Cyril nodded bravely. “Right.”
She tightened her hold on him.
“Get a room,” called Novak.
Pamela said in a voice loud enough for Novak to hear: “A disgusting creature. We should get him deported.” As they continued their perambulation she became reflective. “You’re at a good age for an artist.” Her voice rose another notch, “unlike some people. Old enough to be mature but not so old as to be old.”
Cyril nodded as if he’d been thinking the same thing. Was she offering him his own show? Before he could ask her, Richard arrived looking severely hungover in ragged jeans and torn t-shirt. Pamela gave Cyril’s elbow one last squeeze, reminded him to breathe, and sailed off to capture Richard. Gripping one of Richard’s biceps, she growled. “Nice arms, kiddo.”
When Cyril got home the saucer was empty and the cat crouched in the corner of the yard, regarding him from the safety of the thorny yellow roses. He got his pad and did a few sketches.
He spent the next morning in Steve’s office going over the psychologist’s report. According to Borgland, Cyril was a man capable of caring and reflection and sensitivity, with a deep sense of justice and injustice. He was also angry and conflicted and prone to violent, impulsive behaviour that could result in harm to himself and to others, as well as lead to financial ruin. Thirteen pages of single-spaced text was summarized under a subtitle: Conclusions and Recommendations. It is best for all concerned that control of the estate be given over to Steven George Andrachuk.
“All that from one session?”
“You bailed,” said Steve. “I mean in some ways I can’t blame you. Not exactly fun getting grilled like that.”
Cyril considered his nephew, trying to gauge his level of sincerity. Ever since the conditions of the will had been revealed, Cyril had been thinking about what the house meant to him, trying to measure his degree of attachment to it, the way someone might attribute significance to an heirloom or a piece of land. His father had not built the house, but he had done extensive repairs, and Cyril had spent his childhood there, it was the site of memories, such as his parents dancing one New Year’s, not Ukrainian New Year but December thirty-first, the shouts and horns blaring up and down the street, Cyril banging a wooden spoon on a pan, Paul lighting firecrackers on the porch. That would have been about 1950, the only time Cyril could ever recall his parents dancing. Still, it was just a house, one of dozens of identical boxes on the same street, a heap of aging wood.
“The only thing to do is carry on,” Steve continued, “and the best way to carry on—for all of us—is by placing a reverse mortgage on the house.” He began explaining the details but Cyril interrupted saying that he knew what a reverse mortgage was.