Robert's one-bedroom apartment close to campus had always seemed just the right size to him. But yesterday Mona had begun to complain about the lack of space, rearranging the furniture. Today, she was going on about his clothes
"Why don't you throw away that old brown sweater," she said. "It's all worn out." She sat across from him curled up on the sofa, the red University of Wisconsin blanket covering her from head to toe.
"What's wrong with it?" Robert said. He pulled the sweater down across his torso. His sweater fit perfectly.
"Oh, nothing, I don't know why I brought it up," she said.
"Something else wrong?" Robert asked.
"It's been three years since Gary died," she said. "So, what else do you know about Gary's death?" She pushed her short hair back behind her ears, smoothing it in place.
"Just what you told me. I wasn't there." Robert crossed his arms, leaned back into the stiff chair. He felt like he was moving into a trap.
"You were there before he died," Mona said. "You saw how he tried to bait me, hurt me."
Mona's silver earrings flashed in the light. She put her feet up on the coffee table, and, with her toes, pushed his sketches aside, and bent the corner of one of them. Her granny glasses hid her eyes from him.
Robert swirled his wine in the glass, then took a big swallow. He moved the sketches from the coffee table to an upholstered chair. The bent paper bothered him, but, if you loved someone, you put up with the little things. Still, something was definitely wrong. He looked at the surface of the mirrored table, where he saw her face profiled, that great high forehead, straight thin nose, a silver earring swinging back and forth.
Her face framed by the same silver earrings caught his attention in the fall semester of l968, when she walked into the sophomore drawing class. She looked the part of an artist, with her hair pulled back, a rawhide pin holding it in place. She sauntered up to the front of the classroom, carrying a heavy burgundy coat and a white knitted hat. She dumped those in the corner of the room, and Robert saw her ivory batik dress with blue and ivory horses moving in strange directions. Later she told Robert that she didn't have enough material for the horses to run around the skirt in a circle, so she paneled them so that they marched up and down her back, toward her long brown hair at one end and toward her feet with Jesus sandals at the other.
Robert watched her and waited to see what would happen. She was twenty minutes late for the first class of the semester.
In the small classroom, unless you whispered, you could hear what everybody said. He heard her tell Professor Bainbridge that she had to have the class.
Professor Bainbridge looked her over. "Where's your portfolio?" he asked.
"I forgot it," she said.
Professor Bainbridge tore off a piece of paper for a roll sheet. "Bring it whenever," he said
Professor Bainbridge was, after all, pretty casual. The students could call him "Gary." He wasn't tall, maybe five foot six, stocky, but in pretty good shape for someone whose long black hair was starting to turn grey. His face was broad, and his eyebrows rose perpetually as if he were questioning everything before him. Through the art grapevine, Robert had already discovered that Gary wasn't much of a pencil/pen person. He abhorred charcoal, loved painting in oils, and hated teaching beginning drawing. Robert also knew that Gary disdained students who put on airs and wore black, even though Gary himself always wore all black, including a heavy black leather jacket.
Gary's loud voice interrupted Robert's thoughts. "It is very tiresome for me to teach you. The vast majority of you art students imagine yourselves as artists and dress like you think all artists should dress. But because of all your other classes you have no time to develop the technique that will turn you into artists."
Robert tuned out from the rest of Gary's speech and waited for the yellow roll sheet to come his way. He looked for Mona. She had pulled a sketchbook from her backpack, and was looking for a seat. Her nose was crinkled up, her eyes checking out the four empty stools left. She headed toward Robert. He shifted his stool over to make room for her. She slid toward him in her sandals, her toenails polished a bright red. She landed on those perfect toes first, then her heels.
"Hi," she said, dropping her notebook on the drawing table. She put out her hand.
He took her hand, surprised. Formal, this one, he thought.
"I'm Robert Larson," he said. Her hand held his. Soft, cool, refreshing. Something intense pulsed through him. Did she leave her hand in his unusually long on purpose? Finally, she withdrew her hand, without saying her name. He looked at her notebook on the drawing table. The cover had hundreds of tiny drawings, one on top of the other. They were smeared where her hand curled around the cover. She peered out from over the top of her granny glasses, small with round lenses. Her brown eyes, flecked with green, seemed sad. She raised her eyebrows as she pulled a pen from her backpack to sign the roll sheet. Robert added his name to the list in pencil, noticing hers written in black ink.
"Mona, Mona Griffin," he said.
She looked up and nodded, smiling
Robert wanted to ask her out right then. He breathed in the lilac scent she wore.
* * *
Now, as Mona shifted on the couch across from him, he still felt her warmth catch him, her vitality like a sponge, pulling him along with her. The lilac scent was gone, replaced by lilies of the valley. She said nothing, just sat there, playing with one of her earrings. Maybe she was a little crazy.
* * *
By the sixth week of the semester, Robert and Mona had become friends. Robert sat on his stool, patiently drawing a still life-a sewing machine covered by a draped white sheet. Those minute folds in the drapes drove him crazy. Finally though, he understood the lights, the darks, the angles.
Gary said, "You've got some good things happening here." Then he moved on to the other side of the classroom.
Mona leaned over to look at his drawing. Lilacs closed in around him. She nodded and touched his sleeve. Robert glanced at her work. She had drawn the cloth and the actual sewing machine. You could see it right through the cloth. And she had done it in ink.
"My Polish grandmother had one," she said. "Before she died, she shipped it over to my mother."
She drummed her black pen on the drawing table. Out of the corner of his eye, Robert saw Gary frown, then hurry over to Mona's drawing table.
"Mona, Mona, why can't you just do the assignment?" Gary asked. "Why do you have to try my patience?"
The pen drummed on the table. Mona didn't speak. Everybody stared at their drawings. Robert felt as though he wanted to protect Mona from Gary's outburst and criticism, but he, too, just sat there.
Gary grabbed Mona's arm and held her hand until she stopped drumming. Then he let it go. Mona threw the pen on the drawing table.
Gary's arm went around Mona, his hand brushing past her breast, her neck, flicking strands of her hair. Then he moved around her to talk with another student.
Mona's earrings swung, gyrations of movement, her head shaking. She looked over at Robert.
"Do you want to go for coffee?" she whispered, so soft that he almost couldn't hear the words.
"Sure," he said. The class was uncomfortably silent. "When?"
"Now," she said, gathering up her things.
"We can't leave in the middle of class," he said.
"Sure we can," she said, putting her pen in her purse. She left the drawing on the table and started for the door.
Gary was busy talking with a student about line and shape. Robert quietly followed Mona out into the hallway.
"Gary and I are sleeping together," she said. She stared right into his eyes. "Do you think everybody knows?"
Robert shrugged. "I didn't know," he said, feeling as if everything was in slow motion, like it was when he fell playing hockey and broke his arm.
"I've been pretty careful, avoiding Gary in public places," Mona said.
Robert felt tense. "Right," he said, "but it might be kind of obvious, the way he treats you."
"He doesn't treat me any different from the other students," she said, starting down the hallway. "If anything he's harder on me than on anybody else."
Robert followed her down the hall. She was right. Gary was harder on Mona. But she was still sleeping with the professor. That had to count for something on a grade.
"Gary and I are in love," she said.
"So," Robert said. It wasn't a question. His face was hot, his heart beating fast. He pulled his hat down tight on his head.
Mona had caught the tone in his voice and tossed it back at him.
"So maybe not in love exactly. But we are together. He's been supportive of my pen and ink work," she said. "He's married though."
Robert's breath caught in his throat. He didn't know Gary was married. No ring. What was Mona doing? Robert leaned over. Without knowing why, he kissed her.
Mona drew back, touched her hand to her mouth.
"Why did you do that?" she asked.
Robert shrugged. He had no idea. "I didn't mean to offend you," he said.
Mona turned away and started down the stairs. Robert easily caught up with her. He was afraid that Gary was using her, on some kind of power trip. But he let Mona slip away from him, out the door to the sidewalk and street beyond.
In the following weeks, student riots damaged campus buildings. There were street demonstrations. The Army National Guard patrolled campus with bayonets. Every day, Robert walked around them and their serious faces.
One sunny winter day, Robert saw Mona on the grass near the stone fountain, drawing. Robert hunched up his shoulders and walked faster, determined to just walk by.
"Hi," she said, looking up, her pen moving fast on the paper.
"Hey," he said. Maybe things were okay between them.
She brushed his hand with hers. He felt it only for a second, and then it was as if her body was no longer alive. Her eyes and body, rigid, focused on the guardsman in front of her. All of the energy poured out through her hand. He watched her sketch one drawing after another. Now an emotionally charged face holding a weapon, now one guardsman almost asleep, then a line of guardsmen in ink, blocked, cross-hatched. Robert said nothing. She was so good, much better than he was. He felt jealous of her ability to withdraw from the world to focus on her work.
He left her and went to class. She came in late as usual, and he stared at his work and didn't say much to her. Even with the guardsmen on campus, classes went on. And Mona presumably went on with her affair with Gary. In class, Mona didn't speak to Robert, but kept doing pen and ink sketches of broken windows, guardsmen, torched police cars. She didn't speak to Gary either, even when he critiqued her work. The grotesque human forms in her drawings had heavier and heavier black outlines. Her light, airy, quick touch was gone.
Finally, one day, Robert couldn't stand it any longer. "Hey," he whispered, tugging on Mona's grey shawl.
She pulled away. "I'm busy," she said, sketching the model, posed on a platform in the center of the room.
"Fine, but let's go for coffee," he said.
"Gary would mind if I went with out with someone else," she said.
"It's just for coffee," he said. "Besides, what business is it of his anyway?"
Mona leaned away. He leaned towards her. The lilacs caught him, held him close.
"Sorry," he said and put his hand on hers. She stopped drawing. He could feel every inch of her body, tense, through her hand. He didn't know whether to lift his own hand or let it be.
"Gary wants me to paint in oils," she said. "He's tired of my pen and inks studies. But look at these. She pulled her hand away, leaned over, and took out sketches from her canvas bag. Guardsmen, weapons, torched police cars, broken bicycles, and broken store windows. Her drawings had followed the events and eventually showed boarded up buildings without any windows at all. Some of the sketches had something else in them as well. They showed old buildings with barbed wire fences, old people lying inside the buildings. You could see them through the doors that she left open in the drawings. They were thin, starving-asleep or dead
"What do you think?" she asked.
Mona was truly gifted. What if Gary were jealous of her work, like he had been, like other fellow students were? What would Gary do? Make her take on things she didn't want to do and have her talents turn to failure?
"They're good, really good," Robert said. She still hadn't said she'd go for coffee. "Coffee after class?" he asked again.
"Why not," she said. It wasn't a question.
When Gary walked back in, Mona stuffed the drawings into her canvas bag. Corners bent, papers creased. Robert winced. Such fine work being handled so carelessly. What was Gary doing to her? Or was she doing it to herself?
Gary came up behind him, peering over his shoulder, his large hands cradling Robert's drawings. Robert felt pretty good about his sketches. Still, he felt like Mona must have felt, needing and wanting Gary's approval.
"Looking good," Gary said, flipping the drawings back on the table. His breath touched the back of Robert's neck. Robert felt on edge. He wanted to hit something or someone. Then Gary crossed the room to work with another student. Robert went back to his drawing, but found it hard to concentrate.
Mona leaned over. "Hey, this class is over," she said. "Let's get out of here." Out of the corner of his eye, Robert saw Gary frowning at him. Was it because he was leaving with Mona?
On the way to the Student Union, Mona said that Gary was just being Gary. The wind blew cold off Lake Mendota, and Mona pulled her arms around her, hugging her canvas bag. She seemed vulnerable. Maybe she needed him. He shifted to her other side, blocked some of the wind, and put his arm around her. She didn't move away.
Now what? he thought. They picked up coffees in the cafeteria and took a table looking out at the lake. It was late in the day and only a few students sat in the cafeteria. No one he knew was there. Robert sipped his coffee. What to say? And how?
"You have a lot of talent," he said.
"Thanks. Gary doesn't think so," Mona said. "At least not yet."
"Not yet?" Robert asked. "We're all jealous of you. You must know that."
"You know Gary set me up in his studio?" she asked.
Robert shook his head.
"When his wife, Niccole, isn't around," she said. "She's an artist too."
It figured. Another person for Gary to train, like a parrot, to mimic him and do as he wished. Robert was convinced now that Gary wanted to control Mona's space, her life, by having her paint in his own studio.
"He's been trying to get me into oils for weeks," Mona said. "He expects me to work on large canvases right away without my getting used to painting in oils."
"He should give you a chance to just work with colors on small canvases," Robert said. "That's what I think, anyway."
"I like you, Robert," Mona said. "If I act weird sometimes, it's just me, okay? Not you." She put out her hand.
Robert took her hand. He stroked her long fingers, pulling her hand toward him. She didn't pull away. He felt a change in energy. Her touch went from electric to static. He looked at her face. She had turned off her feelings.
"Mona, I care about you," he said. She focused on her hands, as they squashed her white paper napkin and jammed it into the coffee cup. She was ready to leave.
He got up, restless, aware of how much he wanted her, but knowing he wouldn't say anything. He wouldn't dare. He caught the door and held it open for her. She smiled, moved through and without waiting for him, headed down the street. He watched as she stopped, leaned her portfolio against her jeans, threw her grey shawl over her jacket, and pushed her wool hat down on her head. He walked in the other direction, the wind pushing him toward his apartment.
The next day, late in the afternoon, he walked to Gary's studio. He had signed up for the first individual critique, hoping to see Mona working at Gary's studio. He worried that his work wouldn't be deemed good enough. He rang the bell. Nobody came, so he pushed the old door with its broken lock, and went up a flight of worn stairs. He stopped in the doorway. In the center of the room, Mona sat on a stool, staring at a very large canvas before her. Her brush was poised in midair. She seemed afraid to touch the surface. She didn't say anything to Robert, but looked over at Gary, then back at the white surface. Her face didn't move, only her eyes darted back and forth.
Robert held his breath. Mona and Gary's affair was their problem. Not his. He stepped in. Mona turned around, faced him, then turned back to the canvas. She tried to touch the brush to the canvas, but didn't.
"I don't know what to draw," she said. Her brow furrowed. "Maybe I'll try a guardsman standing under a tree near the Student Union."
She stood up.
Gary turned from the window, and moved toward her. "Mona, what are you doing?" he asked. "This isn't drawing, this is painting. Please, please start painting. This canvas has been waiting for you for weeks, and I have been waiting for weeks for you to move into oils. Just do it. Robert, put your work down."
Robert leaned his portfolio against the wall. He was sweating and wanted to leave. His shirt stuck to his underarms, his jacket was too hot. He unzipped it, stood there, not knowing what to do.
He could tell that using color was too much for Mona. She was already so intense, her pen and ink drawings powerful and crisp. To take on color in a world that was perfect for her in black and white would be impossible.
"Go on," Gary said, his tone patronizing.
Mona stroked one green line of paint on the canvas. Then another. Soon she had covered one section in green.
Gary headed toward her. Robert moved closer to the door.
"I'll be with you in a minute, Robert," Gary said. "Stay where you are."
Robert stood still.
Gary stood over her now, his height diminishing her. "Mona, I'm afraid this is not acceptable work for an apprentice." He was scolding the child who had disobeyed him.
Mona didn't look at Gary. She brushed repetitive strokes, painting the green over and over.
Robert scooped up his portfolio and walked out. He knew he'd hit Gary if he said one more negative thing to Mona. His breath came in jerks. At the foot of the stairs, he heard a stool hit the floor. He started to turn back. Listened. He didn't hear anything else. He waited. He started back up the stairs, then paused, went back down, and closed the door, pulling the latch as tight as he could.
Back in his apartment, he tossed his portfolio in the corner. Drawings flew out across the floor. Maybe he should call Mona at Gary's and ask if everything was all right. He paced for a while, then lay down, knowing he would be late for his night class. He punched the pillow under his head. None of this was his business.
The phone rang. Robert glanced at the clock radio. It was 5:00 a.m. The phone kept ringing. Robert picked it up. Mona spoke at once. She was coming over. Then she hung up.
Robert got up. There was nowhere to sit except the bed. He needed chairs. The kitchen. One unbroken chair there. He fetched it placed it next to the bed.
* * *
Now they sat with a coffee table between them. They had a separate bedroom where they made love and had carved a small hollow of living together. That's all that had changed really. She brought back the past, expecting what from him?
She had killed Gary in self-defense, but why was she going on and on about it?
"There was so much rioting going on that night," she said. "I'm surprised you could sleep through the noise. But the police finally showed up at Gary's, and they found me holding the knife."
"It's crazy to keep going over the same old story," Robert said. He wanted to hold her, to tell her everything would be all right, but all he could do was shift in his chair.
"Gary made some stupid remark, and I threw the paint. He knocked the stool over and stood staring at me. I started to get turpentine to clean up the paint. Then he came up behind me and put his arms around me, and turned me around, hard. "I said, 'Don't touch me.' He backed off his palms in the air, this smirk on his face. That's when Niccole came in. She didn't know about me and Gary, but she understood everything all at once."
Robert stood up. This was a different story. "You never said Gary's wife was there," he said.
"Sit down," Mona said, "I have to tell you the rest. Niccole grabbed the knife from the framing table and started after me. But Gary shoved her and she fell. Going down, she slashed his arm. I thought she'd never move. I could see that she was afraid of Gary. Gary didn't say a thing, just looked at his arm as if it weren't his. Then he started yelling. He slapped her, too, and called her a two-bit artist, who would never make it. Niccole didn't say anything, just stood up and rushed at him with the knife. I tried to put my arms around her to hold her back. She slashed at me, and cut my arm."
Robert remembered the smell of the gauze, the rough feel of the bandage. A wound then, an enormous scar now.
"Gary lay on the floor," Mona said, "Niccole was shaking me-saying, 'you did it, it's all your fault. You're to blame.' She told me what to say to the police. 'You killed him in a lover's quarrel,' she said. 'Got that?' She was right in my face. She said she'd back me up. Gary had a history of hitting her. She'd called the police on him before. She said if I didn't go along with her story, she'd ruin my chances of ever finishing college, being an artist. She said I'd end up in prison."
"But you didn't really believe that Niccole would have that kind of power and influence, did you?" Robert said.
"I didn't know," Mona said. "She said she knew everybody. I told the police that I'd stabbed Gary because he was attacking me."
Robert sat very still.
"He had called me a two-bit artist, too, just like Niccole," she went on. "He made me angry. He used me."
"But Niccole used you too," Robert said. "She killed him, and you took the blame."
"Not really. It was self-defense for both of us," Mona said. "It doesn't matter now anyway." Robert thought about how she had stayed with him during the inquest. During the hearing, he had felt like a cushion, with pins cutting through him, waiting to find out if Mona would end up in prison.
Now it was all a twisted mess. He thought about the barbed wire and concentration camps in her sketches that hung around his apartment. What was this woman really like? He rocked back on his chair, hanging in space on two legs.
"Why are you telling me all this now?" he asked.
"I had to finally tell someone," she said
Robert's heart beat harder. Was it because she felt something for him? He waited, for her to say that.
"I want to move out now," she said.
His chair came to an abrupt landing on all fours. "No," he said, "Stay." He had to let her know he loved her. He went on, "We can have our careers together. Look, I have your drawings up. I love your work. Everything's okay. Honest."
"I can't," she said. "I'm moving to Chicago." She turned and went into the bedroom. He got up and followed her. His hands out, trying to say the right thing, he ended up just putting his arms around her. She didn't move. He dropped his arms. She reached under the bed for her suitcase and tossed it on the bed. Then she went back out into the living room, and stretched to reach the tacks holding a drawing in place. Two hours later she was gone.
Not long after Mona moved out, Robert rented a spacious place on Lake Mendota. He had a new job now and more money. Shortly after his move, he received an announcement of Mona's first show in Chicago. The flyer showed pen and ink drawings of guardsmen with haunted faces and drawings of concentration camps in Poland during World War II.
He didn't go to see the show. He thought Mona would have branched out beyond those limited black and white sketches. But she wasn't working in color yet.
One day he looked around his studio. It was as big as Gary's, but without the large canvases to shrink the space. He pulled out a sheet of drawing paper and drew a portrait of Mona in pencil. With acrylics, he filled in Mona's face with vibrant blues, purples and reds. He was convinced that Mona should have had color in her life.
He liked the color ads he produced at his job. They were about life, about love. If Mona would do ads in color, she'd feel the same way as he did about brightening space and taking control of it. He could have turned her in the right direction. Toward color, life, love.
He glanced at his black and white end tables and the red and black pillows on the white couch. The contrast pleased him. From the light fixture, a silver mobile he had made rocked back and forth. He stopped working on the portrait. He saw Mona just as she had been that first day of class, her earrings catching the light. He felt that unsettling attractive rhythm that held Mona together, letting her be an artist without him.
Norma Sadler has published poetry and short stories. Her stories have appeared in St. Andrews Review, Chanteh: The Iranian Cross Cultural Quarterly, Moondance, Cyberoasis, The Cold Glass, and others. Currently, she is working on Ninja Hunt, a one-act play. She lives in Boise Idaho.
Also in Fiction
Turned Around
