Forty-one

“THANK YOU, TONY,” Kate said as she slipped her hand into mine. We walked toward the wall Kate had helped me paint.

“You’re welcome. For what?”

“For making me talk to Clarice. I feel like a stupid kid.”

“That’s how I feel all the time,” I chuckled. “I mean, really, have you ever met such a spoiled brat as Tony Ames?”

“Tony...”

“Look,” I said. “Look at that wall. A twenty-year old kid was handed a commission to paint a fucking wall! If it hadn’t been for you standing next to me, I wouldn’t have finished. I’d have thrown a tantrum and walked away. I’d have gone back to Nebraska to make a living painting billboards. It was the trust of other people that made this wall.”

“It was your talent, Tony.”

“Talent and maturity aren’t the same thing. Did you know I was ejected from the World Games? Security escorted me out of the arena.”

“You were vindicated.”

“Not really. The ref was censored. I still acted in a completely unsportsmanlike manner. I acted with less maturity than Drew would have. I made a threatening gesture at the ref. That’s why I’m not playing this year. They reinstated me—even gave me fourth place in the tournament—but I am too immature to play in world competition. I don’t want the reputation of the kid who throws a tantrum on the courts.”

“You weren’t that way at World’s a year ago.”

“No. I was so awed by just being there that it didn’t make a difference. Just playing was enough. But just playing wasn’t enough at the World Games. I went looking for blood. I played Nationals with the same attitude, so don’t think it was just because you left. It was something that was building in me—in my immaturity.”

“But we all make mistakes when we’re young, Tony. It’s part of growing and learning.” I stopped and looked at her. We were standing in the middle of the sports field about fifty feet in front of the wall, but it was forgotten now, a backdrop to this moment.

“That’s the point, Kate. We all make mistakes when we’re young. It’s having friends—and lovers—who believe in us that assures our survival. We just say thank you and try again.”

“Thank you,” she whispered. We started walking again and I asked her more about how her creative vision had changed over the summer. She was anxious to get back into the studio and show me. She asked what I’d thought about as a final project. I described the litany of ideas I’d discarded. We walked aimlessly through campus. “What’s that?” she asked as we came on the construction site. It didn’t look like any work was being done today. I wondered why. It was only two o’clock. Maybe they were trying to reduce the chaos of the first week of school.

“That’s the new chapel. The old one was damaged so badly in the Nisqually earthquake about twelve years ago that they couldn’t use it. It took ten years to get it off the National Register of Historic Places so they could tear it down and rebuild. They’re doing a nice job keeping the spirit of the campus and consistent architecture. You don’t see too many buildings these days that have such nice masonry work.”

“It’s pretty. Can we go in?”

“I don’t know. Let’s see if the door is unlocked.”

There were four doors across the front of the chapel. The first two were locked tight. I almost fell on my ass when the third door opened.

“Wow! I guess visitors are welcome.” It was early afternoon and there was plenty of light coming through the clerestory windows. We walked through the little narthex. The screens that would eventually separate the lobby from the sanctuary would be added later. I’d read a bit about the new building—they sent students email updates at least once a month—but I’d never been inside.

“It’s smaller than I thought it would be,” Kate whispered. For some reason, people always whisper in church. You’d think it was a library.

“It’s supposed to seat about one-fifty or two hundred. It’s not for the students, but for the religious body. They’re all Jesuits.”

“The light is so soft with the frosted glass.”

“It will probably get stained glass some day when some rich benefactor wants to memorialize himself.”

We walked through the building as I rattled off names of parts that I’d learned in my online classic architecture course. Nave. Transept. Clerestory. Apse. “What’s that?” Kate asked.

“It’s called the entablature. Usually it is a series of friezes that support the roof gables or side. I think that since this stretches from pillar to pillar around the edge of the chapel, that’s what it would be called.” It was a stone beam about two feet tall divided into about fifty panels.

“You should paint a scene in each of those stone frames. Be like Michelangelo and paint a chapel,” Kate laughed. I looked around and could suddenly see it all taking shape. Scenes of parables—little stories, like the one I wrote of The Prodigal for my latest painting. Maybe not Biblical, but just stories that taught a lesson.

I shook my head and looked at Kate. She was looking at the architecture, unaware of the impact she’d just had on me. I turned her toward me and kissed her. It was a long and passionate kiss, but without our mouths open to each other. It still left us both breathless.

“You are indeed my muse,” I breathed. Kate looked at me for a long moment, then mashed her lips to mine and kissed me as passionately.

I ran to Doc’s lab on Saturday morning. I needed fresh plaster. Since our class this summer, Doc kept plaster ready for work and teaching. I prepped a surface on a two foot by three-foot sheet of half inch plywood by stapling drywall tape to it and putting a smooth coat of plaster on it. Morgan, Adolfo, and I had mixed pigments and sealed them in containers this summer. I only needed to add a little distilled water to have good paintable pigments. I went to work on my new ‘wall’—a tiny fresco. I patterned it after the thick oil that I’d painted the day after Kate came home. My image of The Prodigal, much more carefully rendered in pigment on wet plaster. When I reached the golden stage of the plaster—about seven hours later—I blended the colors to make sure each would read the way I wanted.

The fresco weighed close to forty pounds—more while it was still wet, but I hadn’t bothered with the sublayers required for a real fresco. I didn’t have time for them to cure. It would take heavy-duty hangers to hang this in someone’s home. But I could create a suite of plaster paintings that mimicked the frieze around the entablature.

My editorial committee—four women who lived with me—listened as I read my proposal, following along on their own copies and marking things up as they went. We gathered around the table to make corrections. The Jesuits would never allow me to paint the scenes in their chapel, but it was fun to create a list of sometimes whimsical and sometimes serious fables to paint. I would tell a story of tablets supposedly rescued from some remote ruins. It would be a kind of visual Carmina Burana. I would make prints of each one. Melody suggested making a book that had pictures of the panels plus a ‘history’ of the mythical cathedral. Before I could propose the project, Clarice had to take a look since it would occupy most of my painting time for the next nine months. I had to know that she would be satisfied with the exhibition and sales plan.