Things were not going well with a watercolor of three limpkins in a buttonbush, and after an afternoon spent pacing back and forth in front of the painting and eyeing it warily, her two hands clutched in her armpits and her teeth clenched, Delia had gone out into her little neglected yard and ferociously snatched up clumps of daisy-type chrysanthemums by the back steps to give to Hilma. But pulled away from their neighbors, the little plants looked scraggly and sparse, unsuitable as a gift for a new friend, Delia thought, and with dirt still under her fingernails she had gone over to the university to hear a concert of medieval music played on period instruments. She had thought that she would be soothed by these small sounds, tweaked and puffed from violas and krummhorns like the music of civilized insects, but the next day when she faced the limpkins once again, she imagined that she could still hear the relentless whine of the hurdy-gurdy buzzing in her ears.
She had been working on this picture for so long that she had felt her style shifting as different areas of the painting neared completion, and now that it was almost finished, the sections began to merge ungraciously, with rattling edges. Delia felt shaky and uneasy, as if she might never be able to paint again, but would instead live a squashed and stunted life, crippled by odd nervous tics, strange twitches, and repetitive gestures.
“She's peculiar,” Meade said to Hilma. “That way she has of walking, as if she's being blown along by a gusty wind and at any moment might veer around and head off in another direction.”
They were picking through the tangle of chrysanthemums Hilma had found on her back steps, their roots wrapped in wet newspapers. “Oh, look!” Hilma had said. “My favorites—the pink single ones.”
“Bare roots,” sniffed Meade, “and in full bloom. They'll never make it.”
“They needed thinning,” said Hilma, taking up her trowel and the little plants.
“How strange,” said Meade, “to leave them here on the steps, without even a note.”
“When they bloom next October we will remember this gift,” said Hilma.
“If they live,” said Meade.
Delia did have an unpredictable gait, Hilma noticed, a sort of gawky meandering saunter. She might come unexpectedly to a complete halt, or she might wheel around and walk backward for a few steps, looking intently into the sky at nothing at all. It was a cool fall afternoon and they were taking a walk with Roger in the park and talking about bird identification and the concept of “jizz.”
“I love that word” said Roger,” ‘a distinct physical attitude totally apart from any specific field mark, essentially an amalgam of shape, posture, and behavior, in some cases more reliable than rote observation of detail.’ ” He had been admiring the limpkins in Delia's troubling painting. “But that's just how limpkins do!” he had boomed encouragingly. “They hobble around on the limbs of trees just like that, looking frail and gimpy.”
But it wasn't the posture or the attitude of the birds that worried Delia, and well-meaning words of praise just jangled in her head without a purpose and made her wince. “It's not the birds,” she said, and she tried to explain about the clashing transitions and the unpleasing contrasts.
“Remember your chickens,” said Hilma. “You need to sleep on it, my dear.”
But even in her sleep Delia breathed in frightened gasps, and in the morning she woke up feeling dense and heavy. All day she felt an urge to keep herself close together, her thumbs curled secretively beneath her clamped fingers and her arms tight at her sides.
In the evening, after the early sunset, she crept to her drawing table for the first time that day and switched on the light. The dabs of paint she had mixed when she last had a hope that the painting could be salvaged, and the sponges, razor blades, and brushes optimistically lined up in neat rows now seemed like things that a foolish stranger might have left there long ago. Without even looking at the picture, Delia took it up from the table, and with a pair of orange-handled scissors she cut it neatly into eight little pieces and stuffed them away deep in the trash basket.
That night she slept a dark and peaceful sleep, and in the morning when she went outside, for the first time that year she heard the thin quavering song of the white-throated sparrow. She stood still for a minute, breathing easily in and out, and suddenly she thought of the concert of medieval music, and she remembered how at the end of each piece the young musicians had looked up at the audience with amazement and delight, as if they themselves could not quite believe that they had actually made music with those little buglike instruments.