Fourteen

Over a month had passed since Goosie’s death, three weeks since she’d found herself in class painting a devil baby—the body red, lethal horns pointed, one long brush stroke of black down its back. She’d stared at the painting, then ripped it in half, halves into quarters, quarters into eighths, and stuffed them into her desk. She hadn’t had a nightmare about the devil baby since.

She closed her eyes and sat in front of her easel with clasped hands. She had determined that this was the day she would paint Goosie. Her heart beat a little faster as she willed the small boy with goose feathers into existence.

She began to sketch the shape of his head, a high forehead, hair that curled around his ears…the eyes were especially hard. Miss Benedict said that the eyes were the key to the soul… No, awful! Not the right shape…besides, they were too close together…

An hour and a half was gone. And what did she have? With quick, abrupt brush strokes she painted out everything. Nothing.

In bed that night she mulled over her failed attempt. Perhaps she had tried to paint him too exactly. She loved the Mary Cassatt portrait of her sister that Miss Benedict had showed them in class. Cassatt had not painted an exact replica of Liddy’s face. Instead, as Miss Benedict explained, she caught an impression of Liddy, one that you might take away after passing her in the park one day, your eye caught, so you quickly steal another look. You don’t see her in detail. Just an impression. Impression…the key word.

In class the following Tuesday Sarah promised herself that she would relax. She didn’t have to paint an exact likeness of Goosie. She began to sketch and gradually the shape of Goosie’s head appeared. Yes. The small rounded chin…the frizzy hair…a tiny stroke for a white feather.

The walls of the art studio melted into limitless white space…he should be laughing? No. Smiling, teasing… She worked, mixing flesh tones, shaping the cheeks, the ears, the chin…he had a long neck. She painted his narrow shoulders clothed in his favorite shirt, faded green with a brown horse embroidered on the collar.

Students around her were cleaning up, passing her as they left the room, but they were mere ghosts… She worked until Goosie was there, alive, teasing her for a pencil. She glanced at the clock. Five-thirty. How could that be? The class ended at four. The studio was empty, easels standing like abandoned children with paint-smeared smocks. Except for Miss Benedict at her desk, her sturdy shoes kicked off, intently reading a book and at the same time attacking a large orange which did not lend itself to ladylike eating. Her pink felt hat with its delicate spray of rose buds was resting on its crown, the better to hold the two lemons, one very large red apple with a stem and leaf still on it, a lime, and a gorgeous bunch of red-purple grapes. She smiled at Sarah who had begun to wash off her brushes.

“I’m devouring our still life meant for tomorrow’s class. You may have some grapes if you cut them aesthetically.”

Sarah met the challenge and walked home, holding one of the grapes in her mouth, not quite ready to pierce its skin and release the pungent juice. The other she wrapped in paper for Sammy.

§

Her family thought it was a fine likeness of Goosie and praised her. Sammy noticed the two tiny feathers nested in the crinkly red hair.

“Mama, will you give it to Mrs. Mahoney?” Sarah asked.

“No, Sarah. It’s your gift.”

“When you are ready,” her father said.

Sammy pulled at Jacob. “Fanny hid my horse under the chair cushion. You’re sitting on it.”

“I’m sitting on a chair, Sammy, not a horse.”

“I’m going to tickle you and make you get up. Fanny, Sarah, help me.”

Rifke looked over her shoulder as she carried clean linens into the bedroom. “It would be like tickling a whale,” she said. “Too much blubber.” She stopped and handed a pillow case to Sarah. “Cover your Goosie with this.”

Sarah fit the pillow case over the canvas and, without a word, grabbed her coat and went out the back door.

§

Mrs. Mahoney’s flat was such a sad place, Sarah thought, as she carefully skirted the puddles in the alleyway, holding the painting protectively in front of her. There wasn’t one piece of furniture to cuddle up on, no familiar easy chair with cushions hollowed to fit the curve of a father’s body, no mother carrying clean, white sheets for the beds, no smell of fresh baked challah.

The clouds shifted, revealing pink sky. As if her own cloud had lifted, Sarah felt her mood lighten, and a rush of gratitude for her home and family washed over her. She jumped the last puddle, shining pink from the reflection of the sky, anxious to give her painting to Mrs. Mahoney to furnish the bare walls of her life.