The Italian Teacher(42)

Flushing, he stammers, “I just didn’t think you wanted to come to Europe to sit in a room.”

“Who knows? Maybe I can write someday about the time I posed for the great Bear Bavinsky.”

“Let’s get to it then.” Bear slaps his own thigh and stands.

Pinch, nauseated, sits in place, then stands in haste, following behind them. Each step up the boggy turf is a queasy softness under his shoes. In the studio, Barrows drops her sundress, kicks off her platform sandals, which land with two clunks. She straightens a strap of her ill-fitting bra, the cups caved over her small breasts. Pinch watches, frantic, mute. These are the two most important people in my life. And they don’t need me anymore.

Barrows corrects a twist in the elastic of her panties.

“Steady there, tiger,” Bear tells her, setting up his canvas. “Haven’t even picked my paints, and the lady’s already in her skivvies!”

“I don’t mind lounging in my undies on a hot day. So long as you don’t mind.”

“I’ve seen worse sights.”

Pinch tells her softly: “Maybe we should come back later when he’s ready.”

She ignores him, approaching Bear to watch him prepare the materials.

“Get comfy over on the drapery, sweetie,” Bear says.

“How should I be?”

“Dad doesn’t pose his models. You can sit as you like.”

“Thank you, son of mine. And with that . . .” Bear looks to the door. “I don’t work with an audience.”

Pinch starts for the cottage—only to swivel around halfway, chest thudding. He speed-walks back. But Pinch can’t just barge in. Saying what? He turns around again, quaking in place, looking toward the cottage. His heart is pumping overfast; he needs to be sick. Did I drink too much? Come on—sober up. Think. My girlfriend is in there, naked, my own father inspecting her. Do I shove him aside? I can’t. But I can’t wait here. When a woman sits for Bear, Pinch knows, it’s nearly a sexual act and often leads to one. He pictures Barrows where she is right at this instant. He bolts back to the studio, grabs the doorknob, and shoulders the door open.

His father kneels over Barrows, one hand on the ground by her neck, his face above hers, as if feeding on a carcass. They turn to Pinch without expression—they’re otherwise engaged, Bear marking her place in chalk, Barrows still in her underwear.

“I was just . . .” Pinch says, breathless. “Maybe this isn’t a . . .” His throat closes. Looking at neither, then approximately at her, he swallows hard. “Didn’t you say before that you don’t even like Bear’s art?”

Cheeks flushed, she raises herself, resting on an elbow. “What are you talking about?”

“You told me that.”

Enraged, she glowers at Pinch, who averts his gaze, looking to his father.

“Dad, if she writes about you, we don’t know what she’ll put in.”

“Say what you mean,” she demands.

“Just, on the drive, all that talk about Dad ‘objectifying’ women—would you publish that? It’s my father’s career on the line. You acted like he’s some terrible retrograde artist, then posing nude now? Why? To be hung on a gallery wall someday?”

She stands, hands on hips. “Are you fucking insane?”

He can’t meet her gaze. He looks at paint dots on the floor.

“If you can’t accept me sitting, if you’re that possessive of my body, be up-front about it.”

“I didn’t mean to have a big argument.”

“Really? No?” She unhooks her bra, throws it at her pile of clothing. She pushes down her panties, lets them fall to her ankles.

“What are you kids arguing over?” Bear asks, indifferent to her nudity. “What do you mean, ‘objectifying’? Not women’s-lib jazz, is it?”

“Well, you do only paint women,” she responds. “You’re supposed to be this ‘master of empathy,’ who captures women so deeply. But a woman’s hip is the sum of her? You’ve got to see how reductive that is.”

“Could you put something on?” Pinch pleads, unable to look at her.

“Honey, I’ve been married five times, okay? Does that sound like a man who doesn’t like the opposite sex? And I never painted a lady for the purpose of laying her. Hell, if I went to bed with sitters, it was to make for better paintings, not the other way around!”

“Some of your wives were artists. Including his mother. How did that go for her?”

Aghast, Pinch stares at Barrows. I never put it that way; she’s distorting this.

Barrows adds: “The women’s movement hasn’t exactly landed in the art world, am I wrong? What’s that line? ‘When a woman makes dinner, she’s a cook. When a man does, he’s a chef.’”

“What in hell are you talking about?” Bear says.

“You’re trying to hang some sort of slander on my father, on a lifetime of serious work.”

“Actually? We’re just talking,” she says, as if to a moron, gathering her clothing, which she holds in a bunch before her. “Right, Bear? Or are you above the critical consensus?”

“That’s exactly what I am. The only people who get tingles over what critics say is a breed of people known as critics.”