Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me(39)

I sat down. She appraised me, narrowing her eyes. “Okay, we’re almost ready,” she said in her sweet, cheerful voice.

Ilona sat opposite me, our knees nearly touching. She had positioned a stool to the right and in front of her. I rested my left foot on the bottom rung. Ilona studied the crowded shelf to her left and, after some deliberation, chose three pencils and placed them atop the stool. From some other compartment, she selected a single, small sheet of thick paper, about four by six inches. She took up a small spiral-bound pad and placed the piece of paper on top.

“Okay, now get comfortable, just relax.” I sat back a little bit.

“No, really relax. Shoulders down.”

“Like this?”

“Yes, that will be fine. But you have to take off your glasses. Now, don’t look out the window. You must look at me. I am drawing your eye.”

“You’re drawing my eye?”

“Yes, dear!” She said nothing more. My eye? Just one? I somehow imagined this meant something other than it did.

Ilona picked up a pencil, then studied my face for a long while. I stared into her eyes. Because of her tremor, her body moved slightly, her silver hoop earrings gently swaying. And then she looked down at the paper and began making some marks. She looked back up, staring seriously.

“You don’t need to wear glasses to see well?” I asked.

“No, sometimes for reading at night I use some, but otherwise no. I had cataracts removed seven years ago, and since then, no.”

“How long have you been drawing?” I asked.

Ilona looked up, put down her pencil, and gave me a patient smile then said quite firmly, “I can’t talk while I work. We can talk later. You talk; I want to hear about you. At this moment, you are the most important person in the world.”

I was a little startled and very moved by her words. Truth is, I had been feeling vaguely badly, badly about myself, for several days—a common condition for me. So, to find myself in a small chamber with a very small, very old artist just inches away from me, who was devoting a half hour, maybe more, of her limited time entirely to me—well, I was touched. You are the most important person in the world, I thought.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

“You’re welcome,” she answered cheerfully. “Now, tell me about yourself.”

So I did. I told Ilona about where I’d grown up, in a small town in Washington state, about moving to New York after my partner died, about my books and writing, and how I started taking pictures a few years ago. Sometimes she asked brief, simple questions with genuine curiosity (“What are the books about?” “Where does your family live now?” “How did Steve die?”), but mostly she just listened and worked on her drawing as I talked. I’m almost never a talker, usually.

I tried hard to stay very still and to gaze directly into Ilona’s eyes, even as I spoke. She appreciated this. “You’re a very good model,” she told me at one point. “You don’t move.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“You’re welcome,” Ilona replied. She was very courteous, but her manner remained serious.

I didn’t have my glasses on, so I couldn’t see well what she was doing, plus, she sometimes held the pad in one hand as she drew.

“Sometimes I squint my eyes,” Ilona explained, “so I can get the general picture.”

She made more marks. “Nature is so extraordinary—no two eyes are exactly the same,” Ilona observed. She told me that she only does this—drawing someone’s eye—for special friends. I broke the rule and asked her how long had she been making these drawings? “At least fifty years,” she answered.

I nodded, but this was almost beyond my comprehension. She told me she’d drawn Tennessee Williams’s eye once.

“You have very beautiful eyes; I didn’t know, because of your glasses.”

I listened and gazed at her.

She continued to draw as she spoke. “I see intelligence, and behind the eyes, a great probing.”

I nodded slightly. This is a reading too, I began to understand.

Ilona worked in silence for a while. She squinted. “There is amusement in your eyes, but also … concentration, great concentration. Intensity, tremendous intensity—I’ve hardly ever seen anything like it.”

Did she say the same thing to everyone who sat for her? I didn’t care if she did.

I wondered if she’d say she saw sadness, loneliness, how I sometimes feel. But then again, at that moment, in that quiet chamber with the ninety-five-year-old artist, I didn’t feel lonely. I felt like the most important person in the world. I told Ilona that my mother had been an artist, and she used to do sketches of my five sisters and me.

She looked up and smiled. “That’s very nice.”

“She was wonderful,” I said dreamily, “I was lucky.” I told her that the whole basement of our house was like an art studio.

She asked if my mother was still alive. I said no, and she nodded.

I told her that my father had been very different—a military man, a war vet, a drinker, a gambler, an Irishman, tough—but also a provider, a word not often used anymore. He went bankrupt twice, but … he provided for us, put us all through school. I was lucky there, too, I thought to myself.