Read Online The Emerald Light in the Air by Donald Antrim - Free Book Online Page B

petite dresser near the front door, the phone—was white. There was even a white plastic television. The apartment was on a high floor, and an east-facing picture window overlooked the Empire State Building, lit purple and white at its tip. What holiday did purple designate? Easter? But Easter was weeks away. He sat on the edge of the mattress, then bent over with his head between his knees and stared down a big-headed animal that had wedged itself under the box spring. “Here, kitty.”
    â€œThey like to play,” she said.
    â€œWhich is Brunhilda?”
    â€œThat one,” pointing, “the female.”
    Then she said, “I guess we’ll have to eat on the bed.” It was true. There was nowhere else to sit.
    He said, “Or on the floor,” though the available floor space was not much more than a parquet walkway surrounding the bed (there was barely room to open the closet) and a kitchen area recessed along one wall. “Or in the bathroom?” he added.
    She’d chosen halibut in honor of their meeting. Already they were building traditions. While he kept the cats busy with a chewed-up string dragged back and forth across the floor, she cooked the fish in one of Amy’s white enamel pans, on top of Amy’s white mini-stove. They squeezed onto the floor between bed and window, and balanced their plates on their knees. Paper towels were their napkins. He took a bite and said, “This is terrific.”
    â€œIs it? Do you mean that? I’m glad.”
    A cat crashed into his arm and he put down his fork and shoved it away.
    â€œDon’t let them bother you.”
    â€œIt’s not a problem. I like cats.” In fact, he was allergic. He peered around the room and saw, through watery eyes, a white cosmos. He said, “I feel like I should be drinking milk.”
    â€œI think there’s some in the refrigerator,” she said, and he protested, “No, please, I wasn’t serious,” leading her to wonder if he’d been making a reference to the cats—was that it?—while he thought back over their past conversations. Had she shown a pattern of literal-mindedness? He saw her puzzlement, and felt as he always did when he allowed himself even the weakest attempt at humor. And what was with these animals that kept coming and coming, nosing around their laps and swatting at their food, so that he or Jennifer seemed always to be hoisting one and tossing it aside?
    â€œNo. Siegfried. No,” Christopher scolded. His sinuses were flooding. Jennifer threw Brunhilda onto the bed and told him that she was aware that by training to paint in a manner she thought of as realistic—she was aware that, by trying to render from life, she was covertly attacking her mother and what she called her mother’s alcoholic world view, a world view quite accurately illustrated, she felt, in the sixties-style abstract paintings her mother never finished, or in the ones she finished but ruined by angrily painting past the point of completion. “She destroys her own work,” Jennifer said, and went on to add that she, Jennifer, had recently come to feel that she could, in her own, more representational paintings, not only repudiate her mother but escape her; her attempt to mirror in paint some piece of reality represented her determination to live a dignified life. That was what she believed. Or hoped. She said, “When I study the thing I’m painting, I feel free from not painting.”
    Instead of asking her, What do you mean? he said, “What do you paint?”
    â€œI’m one of those people standing behind an easel in Central Park.”
    â€œReally?”
    â€œIt seems quaint, but it’s not. It’s serious.”
    â€œNo. I didn’t mean … It’s not that I … I,” he said, and this time—she was embarrassed for having embarrassed him—she laughed. How could she not? Weren’t