Some days, they would be in their separate spaces and the house would seem quiet, but Duncan and I could sense a kind of tingle or hum in the silence, a potent energy. Because we knew that, in their separate spaces, in their own different yet specific ways, both of our parents were creating. That feeling of applied industry, of work, permeated our awareness in those years before Dad’s death.
Which is not to say that our parents didn’t take joy in their creations, or want to share them. But there was a space to work and a space to share their work. The living room served as that latter area. If either wanted to share in the flush of post-inspiration, out the pages or painting would come to the living room. On that neutral ground, they would present their findings and receive their praise. Dad would read from the loose-leaf pages crumpled in his hand while Mom would murmur, “Lovely. Inspired. Very original.” Or Mom would unveil a sketch or study or painting and discuss the spark that made it coalesce into being, while Dad would say, “Wonderful use of color. I love the way you’ve drawn that figure. Beautiful.” {Such compliments would be tenfold in intensity, Janice, should you or I share our early experiments. I can still remember how much praise they lavished on you for your first paintings. They loved your work unconditionally.}
In that separate space and that shared space, I think I can see the secret of their happiness. Each could feel the other’s presence in their separate spaces as powerfully as in their shared space.
But the living room also served as a place to seek assistance. If stuck, if faced with conundrum or puzzle, dead words or dead paint, one would stomp out into that middle ground and, by certain signals, make it clear the other was needed to brainstorm possible solutions.
On our dad’s part, the signal involved much crinkling of papers and long, deep sighs {I perfected my own sigh listening to his}, perhaps even an artificial propensity to make noise by banging into furniture. On Mom’s part it was more direct, because to get to the living room she had to pass Dad’s office. A quick slap of the palm against his door on the way to common ground usually got his attention.
What always surprised me is how quickly the other parent would halt in his or her own labors and come out to the living room. Sometimes it was just to listen to the other vent, sometimes to offer practical suggestions.
Only once, to my knowledge, did one or the other cross a boundary. Our dad one day decided to try his hand at sculpture, but not just any sculpture. He wanted to use wire and canvas, to combine sculpture and painting, in a sense. I could see from the expression on Mom’s face what she thought of this idea, but she loaned him the supplies and for a week he worked on his own New Art. You could hear him bumping into things in his office, cursing sometimes, coming out to beg more supplies from Mom. Duncan and I both expected great things. {Or, at least, something—or, as Janice put it at the time, some thing.}
Finally, Dad had finished, and we all gathered in the living room for the unveiling. The sculpture stood on a table near the couch, covered by a bedsheet. Mom stood to the side, arms crossed, while Dad explained the concept.
“I wanted to reveal the true shape of everyday things. This is the first of a series of studies that combine painting and sculpture into a new hybrid,” he said.
With those words, he pulled the sheet away, to reveal…a canvas mushroom, wires under the canvas giving it a shape.
“A mushroom. Made of canvas,” Mom said.
“Well,” Dad said, “I haven’t painted it yet.”
Mom went back into her studio.
I went back to reading.
Only Duncan had the decency to walk up to our dad and tell him how much he liked it.
Dad never crossed the line into the arts again.
I don’t think I was fated to be granted the kind of connection our parents often had, and I don’t know if I learned enough from our parents’ example. The dynamic changed too much after Dad’s death, and our careers took us too far apart to allow it, but I imagine this connection, this understanding, is something that Mary and Duncan shared before they grew apart. {All too briefly, I’m afraid. Some months it was there, some months it wasn’t. You need to know a person for a long time to develop that kind of trust. We didn’t have enough time.}
“Nativism,” Duncan said to me once, “is like a prolonged case of mass suicide.”
I mention this because History and my reincarnation as a tour guide continued to intersect in a number of ways, against my wishes. For example, evincing a cruel kindness, Sirin managed to finagle me a nonpaying position on the toothless horror that is the Ambergris Tourism Board, in a nod to my past status as an “iconic figure in society in general, etc., etc.,” as one of the other board members greeted me before slumping back into a kind of half-drool, half-reverie that looked quite pleasant.
I joined the board at the perfect time: it seemed to be trying to make itself obsolete. The first day I reported for service, the board decided to mount a rather muddled campaign to discourage tourism in the city because, as one gout-ridden veteran of many a real or imaginary war put it, “These fools. Must protect them. Too many deaths. At Festival time. Darlings deserve better.” I almost pointed out that fewer tourists meant more of a chance, statistically, that local residents would be the targets of violence or “odd events,” as the broadsheets now sometimes termed encounters involving gray caps. But I kept my mouth shut. After all, it was only my first day on the job, and I wasn’t yet sure I wanted to burn any bridges. {If you’d taken your duties more seriously, perhaps some of AFTOIS’ positions would have received a sympathetic hearing from those old bastards. As it was, I can’t recall you doing anything at the public meetings of the board but taking up space.}
As a result, for two years, in the months leading up to the Festival, the board paid for posters to be put up that depicted dead dogs in a variety of unkind and teeth-grimacing positions, complete with titles such as DEAD DOGS. DEAD TOURISTS. IT’S ALL THE SAME TO US. STAY OUT OF AMBERGRIS AROUND FESTIVAL TIME.
The posters appeared to result in insulted—but not fatally insulted—tourists, if the large number of people letting me lead them around the city and babble about dead people and old buildings was any indication. I certainly didn’t mind this change, but posters or no, a more profound and negative transformation had begun to change Ambergris. The invisible yet necessary buffer between the professional and the personal slowly eroded, and for this I blame Nativism.