The Italian Teacher(14)

Natalie settles at her potter’s wheel and kicks it to life, wetting her hands in muddy water from the bucket. Shoulders taut, arms rigid, elbows planted in her thighs, she forces the clay to comply, asserting herself over this gray lump, transforming it into a smooth puck, perfectly round, glistening—until she touches a finger to the spinning form and opens it up, raising the walls into a cylinder. His mother is so good at that. It astonishes Pinch, who hasn’t properly watched her working in years. Yet he does not praise Natalie, instead launching into a silly dance to draw her attention, an intrusion he’d never have contemplated when Bear was painting. Her clay cylinder pirouettes on the wheel. She slices a metal wire under its base. “Your turn.” Standing, she points to her wooden seat.

Instead, he walks away, meandering toward the once-prohibited easels in the far corner. He gazes the length of his arm, then at the fruit bowl—everything evokes paintings now, as if the world existed to represent art, not the reverse.

“You listening?” she repeats.

“Not really.”

“At least look, Pinch. I need an opinion. The show is soon.” Recently, she marched into a tiny gallery off Via del Babuino and asked if they’d consider exhibiting her work. When she gave the last name “Bavinsky,” the gallerist looked up. After years of inactivity, Natalie labors constantly, amazed to see that all her output is outstanding. Impulsively, she decides to show a series of intentionally broken jars, with radical glazes that she’ll wipe by hand onto once-baked clay.

“I don’t care about stupid pottery!” he snaps, imitating the defiance of Birdie. But Pinch cannot pull it off—penitent, he looks to his mother. “Sorry.” In the alley, he sits on cobbles, pondering the foreign address on a letter he’s been composing for weeks, pages and pages in his head with little written down. He wants to ask about New York, about whether it’s better than here, about whether he’d like it (and could I come see you soon, Dad?).

A month later, he still hasn’t sent the letter. But life at the studio has changed. Natalie is never at the potter’s wheel, hardly goes out, hardly talks to him.

“When is your show happening?” he asks.

“It’s over; it happened.”

“What?” he snaps, to mask his guilt. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“You were interested? Since when?”

“I said I wanted to see it,” he lies. “Did people like them?”

She clears her throat. “I don’t know.”

“How many sold?”

“They didn’t.”

“What? None? It’s that stupid gallery’s fault—they must’ve put the prices too high.”

“Nobody asked for prices, I’m told. Now I have to go in there and disgrace myself, carrying it all out again.” She covers her face. “They were all so very helpful on the way in; nobody will see me when I go back there. I’ll be an embarrassment.”

“No, you won’t. They should apologize to you.”

“Maybe I never pick them up.”

“You have to, Mom. Or people will hear.”

“What possible fucking difference would that make?”

He flushes.

She says, “I’m not going back. It’s a humiliation.”

“Could I go and get them?”

“That’d be even worse: sending my kid.”

“Could I come help at least?”

“I’ll seem so pathetic.” Brow furrowed, she lights the umpteenth cigarette, looks to him for a twelve-year-old’s assurance. Fast, she walks away.

That weekend, Pinch lugs boxes of unsold pottery to a waiting taxi, taking utmost care, wishing to treat her work with kindness. His pussyfooting causes Natalie, who waits outside the gallery, to slam the boxes into the back of the cab. “I don’t mind being reminded that I’m second-rate,” she says shakily. “It’s useful. It’s good.” As they pull away, she stares out the taxi window, kneading her stomach, hurting herself. The city passes, Romans streaming by. “Having people looking, staring at my things. It’s ridiculous.”

“Don’t you do art for people to look at, Mom?”

“Apparently not. The wife’s show—that’s why the gallery gave it to me. How disappointed they were. Didn’t I have more friends to come by? And where was Bear Bavinsky? They figured your dad would come, and how grand that’d be.”

“Who cares about those stupid idiots? Anyone that didn’t buy your stuff is dumb!” Pinch blusters. He studies the taut side of her face, believing he’s gaining momentum, that he is helping. His eyes burn—a surge of emotion, remembering how he sniped at Natalie these past months because she was determined to raise his spirits. “Who even walks into that dumb gallery, Mom?”

She touches his hand once, to silence him.

“You can’t care what idiots think!” he persists. “Aren’t I right?”

She turns sharply to him. “I’m right and the world is wrong? No. I am not good. And I should feel sick. Very, very fucking small.”

“You’re just sad.”

“I see clearly when I’m sad. The only time anything is clear.” She picks at dry skin on her lower lip, a dot of blood rising, and fumbles in her purse for a cigarette.