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Paint

Phyllis Green

    My daughter, Barbara Vivier, age 63, has informed me she is pregnant. She has been living with me for a year. She has spent the entire time in a deep depression because of the death of her husband, actually ex-husband, and of this time she has been in bed, alone. So I’m thinking, this sounds biblical.
    I was relieved when she came to live with me because I have become afraid of a young man who took painting lessons from me. He has taken to sitting in his car in front of my house and staring. He has sat there for hours. I have reported him to the police but they say they can do nothing unless he does something. This seems ridiculous. He should not be there. He should not be staring at my house. I find it strange and frightening. I am eighty-six, not strong anymore. I don’t have a gun but I’m thinking of getting one. Perhaps he is mentally deranged. Did I say something that offended him when we painted? Did I not praise him enough? Did I praise him too much? What does he want with me? Why is he always there?
    So having Barbara move in made me feel more secure but he, the former student, Horace, worries Barbara too.
    If we go to the grocery store, he is lurking by the produce. When we have a doctor’s appointment, we think his car follows us. We drove to Seaside one day and he was sitting on a bench on the Promenade. This cannot be coincidence. I took my car to the dealer so they could look for something attached to the bottom that would let him trace our moves. They found nothing they said... unless he got to them first. Yes I am paranoid about him. My thoughts flit to conspiracy.
    Barbara has three children from her marriage to the professor. She was a student who fell in love with Professor Vivier and had two children when he finally agreed to marry her and then they had another child. I don’t know what she saw in him. But she adored him. He left her for another student when the oldest child was eight. Barbara taught first grade and raised the three children. The Professor sent money. Barbara remained in love with him. He has now died and she is in mourning. She was not invited to the funeral although the children were. She is inconsolable.
    And now she is pregnant. At 63! I have heard a famous TV star gave birth at 59. With twins? Anyhow Barbara has become a different person since she found out. She is laughing all the time. It is lovely to hear her musical laughter after all the moaning and tears. But a baby at 63! It will tire her out and I won’t be much help. I get very tired and need my sleep.
    We go to see her father and my husband in Astoria. Lars Sanderson. You have heard of him. Yes, the famous painter who demands and receives over six figures for his paintings. Yes he is the one and although we started out together living in hovels and giving up food to buy pigments, brushes, and canvases, he became a sought after painter and I stayed a teacher and my paintings muster no more than $5000 if I’m lucky. But he is good to me. We live apart and have for years. I think Barbara was only three when we took up these arrangements. I live in Portland and Lars resides at the meeting of the Columbia River and Pacific Ocean. We spend every Christmas together and we cuddle now that old age has set in. I love him. Just can’t live with him. We gift each other with a painting at Christmas. He doesn’t have to sell mine so he keeps them. He says he cherishes them. That is so sweet. I hold on to his as long as I can but then I need money and I have to sell. It breaks my heart because they are so beautiful.
    Lars doesn’t like my former student stalking me. We have come to call it that even thought the police don’t. He phones or texts often now to make sure Barbara and I are okay. It’s very tender. But he is old too, eighty-seven. We are old and crotchety
    Barbara has started to paint! The amazing pregnancy I assume. She had painted as a very young child but when Lars left she stopped, wouldn’t enter the studio (the closet I called my studio where I painted). Her paintings are primitives reminding me of Grandma Moses but not of farms. Barbara’s are of the seashore and waterfalls and lavender fields, all very Oregon.
    I have just lost my teaching job. Rather, I gave it up because of an incident. I became suspicious of a let me kindly say obnoxious student with brassy red hair that looked like a wig whom I suspected of being Horace, my stalker, in disguise as a transgender. I rushed out of the classroom and phoned police and pointed him out and asked the police to arrest him. They dragged Horace away struggling and screaming to the police station and when a police woman oversaw him undressing, a pudgy woman was under the red wig—yes it was a wig so I was right about that— but it was not a man and it was not Horace and it was just an obnoxious woman who was taking my painting class. I felt I had to resign. Of course the woman is suing me and the police department and it got to the newspapers of course and all the mortification that goes with that so now I, Karin Nilsson, am not teaching painting anymore and I am a bit of a laughing stock. Even I can laugh about it but not about the lawsuit.
    Barbara’s pregnancy has now become clearer. It is not biblical after all. When the professor left my daughter she begged him to leave her sperm which she then had frozen or whatever you do with it and then she had the doctor inject them into her sixty-three year old womb and viola! Modern science, what will they think of next.
    So we go to her doctor as she wants me to see the ultra sound. I think it is quite fuzzy but Barbara and the doctor see an embryo and they identify it as a female. I will have another granddaughter. Barbara names the embryo Grace. When we exit the doctor’s office I catch a glimpse of The Stalker, Horace, rounding a corner. “Barbara, look,” I say. “It’s him!” And once again I become nervous and apprehensive.
    Barbara’s grown children think the pregnancy is wonderful. So all is well there. They phone her at least once a week and are very solicitous. They are scattered about the globe. Ryan is studying at Oxford, Teresa teaches second grade in Houston, and Melanie is backpacking in Thailand.

As best I can remember, Karin Nilsson.

MORE PAINT
    My daughter, Barbara Vivier, has grown quite large. The doctor ordered another ultrasound and four more embryos were discovered. Quintuplets. We are trying to get our thoughts around this. Barbara must have total bed rest now. And she must consider having some embryos aborted surgically so the ones that survive will be healthy and free of physical disabilities. It is too much for me to fathom. I am too old for this. Now Barbara is back to weeping. She doesn’t want to part with one embryo. She finally decides no, all or nothing. No messing with her uterus. She believes the babies will somehow make it. She is determined.
    I get a phone call, very disturbing. Lars has had some kind of spell and he is in an ambulance coming to Portland’s St. Vincent’s. He wants me to meet him at the hospital. I phone my neighbor, Mickey, and ask her to come stay with Barbara. She hurries over. I rush out the door with my purse and car keys and I see coming toward me that miserable Horace, The Stalker. He is in my way and he is holding out something in front of him.
    He says, “Teacher.”
    I think he is going to block me and so I either push him or brush by him and he falls backwards and I hear his head crack against my sidewalk. I concentrate on getting to my car, climbing in, starting the motor and backing out the driveway to meet Lars. I can still hear the crack of his head and I glimpse a dark splotch on the sidewalk. Is it blood? He still lies there. Have I killed my stalker? I push hard on the gas pedal and zoom toward the hospital.
    I wonder if I have killed a man. Did I push him or brush him? I used to think all black and white and now I am thinking gray to save my butt. I dial HOME on my cell phone and tell Mickey not to let anyone in the house. Then I dial 911 and say, “I think the stalker might be in my front yard.”
    Lars has had a small stroke. He is able to write me a note to go to his house in Astoria and make sure it is locked with all his paintings safely inside. It is a two hour drive. I go.
    Lars’s house is open and empty. I am so tired and bereft. Then his neighbor, Harry, comes toward me and whispers “Got them all in my place. Safe and sound.” I collapse. “I was just getting ready to lock his place up.”
    Harry invites me into his cottage and makes me a cup of Earl Grey tea and then I drive back to St. Vincent’s to report to Lars.
    “Harry took care of everything,” I say. “When you get out of here you must come and stay with me. I will take care of you, darling.” I stay with Lars as long as I can and then I go home.
    There was still what looked like blood on my sidewalk but no Horace. I still did not know what happened to him. Did the police find him? Is he dead?

As best I can remember, Karin Nilsson.

THIRD COAT
    Barbara Vivier, my daughter, who is 63 and pregnant with quintuplets, is now being sued by Professor Vivier’s widow. Elysia Vivier is demanding the embryos. She claims the Professor’s sperm belonged to her and she wants the babies when they are born. Barbara finds this to be most amusing. She is still in bed, as ordered. Her laugh sounds like bell chimes from dainty Swiss cowbells. Barbara loves getting the best of Elysia but I fear another lawsuit.
    My red headed wig lady found out I was the widow of Lars Sanderson and she has upped her demands in her lawsuit. Yes, sadly I lost my Lars. He did not get to live here but had another severe stroke and had to go to a nursing home where he only lasted a few days. I stayed with him there and my neighbor and friend, Mickey, looked after Barbara. Lars and I could not communicate with words, but we never needed words anyhow.
    I have not seen The Stalker for months. I don’t know what that means. I don’t ask. I told Barbara what I think happened and she agrees it is best not to know. But is it? Sometimes I have bad dreams. Perhaps I will go to jail.
    Lars’s paintings are very valuable. We have them in safekeeping, I cannot say where but they are in a good place with proper temperatures and they are insured and fine. We will sell one when the quintuplets are born. We will need money then. We now know that two of the embryos have something wrong. We believe, hope, the other three are healthy.
    Barbara is still painting. She lies on her side and paints scenes from her childhood. It pains me that Lars is not in the paintings, only in the one around the Christmas tree. Were we foolish to put painting ahead of love? Barbara is now represented by my gallery and she gets $500-700 for a painting. She is so pleased. I know she will soon top me and perhaps be as famous someday as her father. I would like that and I would be jealous. Both.
    Elysia Vivier came to call. She was in hysterics. She looks much older than she is, the result I think of being married to a man who cheats. She was a teenager when the Professor married her. She is serious about getting Barbara’s babies. Barbara thinks she is insane. Elysia touched Barbara’s huge stomach and then kissed it and baby-talked to Barbara’s uterus. Barbara kept snickering. I was disgusted and didn’t offer her tea or cookies. She finally went home after threatening us both.
    Barbara screamed and then I knew it was time to go to the hospital. The babies wanted to be born. We had waited too long. They were supposed to be taken early by caesarian.
    Mickey drove although how foolish we were. We should have called an ambulance.

As best I can recall, Karin Nilsson.

THE LAST LAYER
    Barbara Vivier, my daughter, and I live in Astoria in Lars’s house. My new grandchildren are three years old now. Grace, Rudy, and Peter run around the yard that looks out on the Columbia River and the Pacific Ocean. Maureen and Toby have developmental disabilities and they reside in special wheelchairs equipped with oxygen and fancy computers they have learned to communicate with to steer and to try to seem like the other children. They all smile or giggle, even little Toby who probably is the less gifted of them all. We adore all the children and wouldn’t have it any other way. Barbara has lots of hired help who tend to the needy ones and play with the healthy ones.
    We have a wonderful view. We are high on a hill. Our large lot is enclosed with iron fencing and gates. The Quints are slightly famous although we never sought that. Reporters and photographers come by once in a while, especially on the birth day but we don’t let them in the grounds.
    Horace, The Stalker, comes by with an interpreter. His name I have learned is Uris, not Horace. I can’t even spell his last name. He speaks little English. The first time he came by he wore a large bandage on his head and I noted his head was misshapen. I thought, really, it was four years ago that I knocked him to the sidewalk! But it wasn’t about that. He has a brain tumor. His interpreter informed me. I hope she wasn’t blaming me. Uris says he was trying to get up the courage to ask me what I thought of his paintings. He had not understood me in our class. Have I ever felt so foolish?
    So now every few weeks or so I give his interpreter a critique of his newest painting. Uris and the interpreter stand outside the iron fence. I am still a little guarded with him. But he seems pleased when I think a painting is good. And listens carefully to the interpreter when I explain what it is lacking. He never fails to thank me. And of course I feel like the biggest idiot. But he still does not get inside the gate.
    I am moving back to my little house in Portland. My painting has been neglected for far too long. My fingers are arthritic and sometimes shaky but I think maybe it will make me grow and maybe it will make my paintings more free. I am eighty-nine now. I must give my talent one more chance. And Barbara and the little ones will be fine here. Barbara knows it is something I must do. I will miss her and the children but we will visit.

That is how it went as far as I know
and maybe it is not entirely accurate
as I am failing and quite aware of it.
But this is what I remember and so
this is what I am telling, Karin Nilsson.

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