Forty-five

THE FIRST BATCH OF PLASTER was stabilizing for application on Monday after Thanksgiving. I’d have four weeks of painting before we left for Nebraska for Christmas.

With Doc’s help, I got Morgan and Adolfo to assist me on the project. They got class credit and a stipend for their work and would be recognized at the dedication and in my book. We were using traditional techniques and they did all the plaster work, preparing my cartoons, and transferring them to the wet plaster before I got to paint. We spent three days before Thanksgiving doing the arriccio layer on the first few panels. We’d worked together in Doc’s class over the summer, but this involved a trust that the plaster and pigments would be mixed correctly and applied smoothly.

The arriccio—first layer—is applied directly to the substrate several days before the painting so it has time to cure. The final coat—intonaco—is a fine wet plaster coat that takes pigment. Morgan and Adolfo would transfer my sketch to the intonaco as soon as they had applied and smoothed it, then I’d climb up and paint on the wet plaster. I brought them coffee and donuts and thanked them frequently. They had to get to the chapel at six to have the panel ready for me to paint at seven-thirty. They hung around a while, sometimes mixing more pigments so I didn’t run short or if I needed a special color. I needed the whole day to do one panel. It was a giornata—a day’s work.

When you think about Michelangelo painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel—believe me, my friends had all made jokes about me and Mike—he was only able to paint an area about two by four feet each day. It’s no wonder it took him years. That ceiling and surrounding sibyls and prophets covers an area about half the size of a football field. the wall that took me months to paint with a huge crew two years ago was a tenth that size. The first day after the Thanksgiving weekend would be a long one. Monday and Wednesday I had Doctor Bychkova’s class and papers to grade. Tuesday and Thursday, we were scheduled in the chapel. Friday and Saturday, I would be in the studio sketching and writing, often with models as I tried to stay ahead of where I was painting. We’d have three weeks of hell before we broke for Christmas.

“So, in the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus is being tested by the lawyers who are trying to trap him into saying something that is against their scripture and tradition. But Jesus turns the question back on the lawyer. He tells him the story and then asks the lawyer to answer the question of who the neighbor was. The lawyer was trapped and had to say that it wasn’t the priest or the holy man, but the scum of the earth. It’s one of the great parables that Jesus used to include everyone in the Kingdom of God,” Andy said. We met twice a week in his office, usually on Monday and Wednesday afternoons. He indoctrinated me with parables and I twisted them into stories. We were collaborating on the work, mostly by challenging each other’s perceptions. It was some of the most stimulating intellectual conversation I’d ever had.

“So, what’s the lesson?” I asked.

“For all their holiness, it isn’t the holy who do the work of God.”

“Really? Look at that guy by the side of the road.” I talked and storyboarded at the same time on a big sheet of newsprint. Doc used to have us make multiple small drawings on a big sheet of paper so we could find our focal points. “Mugged—means he’s rich, probably going home from the opera where he’s got hundred-dollar box seats and can be seen by important people. He’s currying favor. Thinking that if he’s a big supporter of the arts, it will help him in his upcoming campaign for city council. After the opera he heads for his Lexus with his very expensive date thinking he should have paid for valet parking, and he gets mugged. She takes one look at what’s going down, hikes her skirts up around her waist, and takes off running and yelling “Fire!” so someone will come and save her from potential rapists. That pisses the muggers off, so they go extra hard on the guy and he’s pretty badly crippled up and lying there naked on the floor of the parking garage. The muggers take the thousand dollars from his wallet, all his credit cards, and his Rolex.” Andy was scribbling notes as fast as I was talking, so I just kept going.

“A cop who’s out on the night beat hears the yelling. The girl comes running past him and he turns his back on the parking garage to go to her aid. He calls for back-up because he isn’t going into that parking garage alone. Besides which, there’s a beautiful girl running naked down the street. That’s got his attention. Meanwhile, the muggers have what they want—except for the girl, but you can’t have it all—so they take off and our rich dude who wants to be on the council watches his Lexus drive off while he’s lying there naked and bleeding. This homeless drunk comes along and sees him, plops down beside him and offers him a drink from his bottle, which the dude gladly accepts because he’s in frickin’ pain. When the EMTs get there, so does a reporter who snaps a picture of the would-be councilman lying naked in the arms of a homeless drunk. That hits the front page of the morning paper.” I was having a blast with this story. And Andy was still writing.

“So now our society man has to explain why he was out drinking and carousing with a homeless drunk who might even be gay. He’s embarrassed. He’s embarrassed more by being helped by a drunk than he is by having been beaten, forsaken by his girlfriend, and ignored by the police. But he can’t get it out of his head that the drink of sour wine he got from that guy was the best thing he’d ever tasted. The dude’s condition is temporary. OnStar locates his car. Homeowners’ insurance replaces the thou he lost and reported as fifteen hundred. Once he gets stitched up and cancels his credit cards, he’s back in business with a girlfriend even more expensive than the one who deserted him and a seat on the city council. The question is, what happens to the drunk? Who is a neighbor to the Samaritan?”

Kate was painting the Stations of the Cross and by Thanksgiving, her first one had gone to the ceramics lab to have tiles fired. Leave it to Kate to have specific ideas on how she wanted the mosaic done. She’d been having long conversations almost daily with Erika out in Georgia and I wondered just where that relationship had gone while she was there. Neil. Erika. Were there others?

I could drive myself crazy thinking like this. I found myself reaching for her whenever she was near, and several times we held hands without either of us having made a conscious move. When it happened, we got suddenly shy, looking away, but unwilling to break contact. Kate was no longer confident and controlling like when we first got together. She was shy and waiting—I don’t know—maybe for a sign.

Thanksgiving was chaotic. That’s one holiday that always seems to spin out of control as soon as someone says, “Let’s eat.” This year, our table included Whitney, Rio, Allison, and Bree along with our family and the boys. Accompanying Rio was her boyfriend, Matt. She’d brought him back from Idaho with her after the summer break and it was obvious they were crazy about each other. Matt got his computer science degree at Idaho State in Pocatello. It turns out he’s some kind of quiet, brilliant computer guru and when Rio dragged him to Seattle, he’d landed a job at Google.

“What is it you do, Matt?” I asked. “I mean Google’s like a search engine. What do they need a computer scientist for?” Everybody laughed. Apparently, I was the most backward user in our family.

“I’m a hacker,” Matt laughed.

“I’ll bite. What do you do?”

“Google’s especially concerned about security. It’s no longer just a search engine. It has email, blogs, social sites, and books. It’s vulnerable to attack. Everyone from weekend spammers to the Chinese government wants into Google’s databanks. And China isn’t the only country that tracks people’s Internet use.” He let that information hang there.