The Italian Teacher(47)
Now and then, he drives to suburban Philadelphia to visit the closest major museum, the Barnes collection. He recalls what Barrows once claimed of its founder, that the man made his fortune from gonorrhea treatment and spat on paintings to wipe off bits he disliked. Pinch wonders if it’s true and asks a guard, earning a blank stare. In Center City, he visits a giant new public sculpture, Clothespin by Claes Oldenburg, wondering if it’s good, unsure what that means to him anymore. He watches people, creating thought-paintings: Man Bores Wife Who Wants to Read or Girl Shouting as Bus Pulls Away. With a pocket-size Kodak Instamatic, Pinch lingers behind lampposts, snapping street shots, speed-walking from captured subjects. Once, he sneaks a picture of a hoodlum, only for the guy’s crew to surround him, demanding what in fuck he’s doin’, until they realize he’s just a coward and relent. The best photos—of bodies turning, eyes half closed, motives midway—Pinch enlarges. He pursues the instant before, or a fraction too late, the thinnest slivers of experience. Using a loupe, he studies strangers’ faces, speaking aloud to them, copying their features in pencil-and-ink compositions so large that they become abstracted in his sketch pad. But these drawings irritate him: They lack everything, are balanced, complete; all human drives canceled. He scrunches each picture, jams it among the food scraps in his kitchen garbage.
After five years have passed at Evenlode, the seasons are too familiar to Pinch, as is his daily walk to the department. Freshmen still perturb him—they’re incapable of walking properly, forcing him to slalom. In the mirror, Pinch detects a frown, believing he wasn’t making one, only to recognize that this expression is now fixed on his brow.
Evenlode was to be a way station, yet he has remained longer than most of his peers. The grad students he met early, Martina included, have accepted academic postings elsewhere or took civilian jobs. Many have started families. More than once, Pinch has brought flowers to a maternity ward, which always recalls the day when Barrows’ roommate went into early labor. How old will that child be now? Once, he and Barrows had a conversation under the bedsheets, he consenting to her plan for one daughter, an only child, which suited their ambitions. Whenever he passes a stroller, he peers in, wondering about these tiny humans. He’ll sweep aside his comb-over and consider the limpid-eyed, bobbleheaded occupant of the stroller. Pinch wiggles his eyebrows, suddenly conscious of how his rubbery adult face must appear. “Hello, little one,” he says, then a kindly nod to the parent and quickly onward.
To satisfy his doctoral adviser, Pinch loads his thesis with extraneous material about Venetians inventing flat crystal glass in the late fifteenth century, which increased the popularity of self-portraits; Lacan’s theory of the mirror stage; Alberti’s remarks in Della Pittura about the reflected face of Narcissus in water as a foundational myth of painting; Caravaggio’s Narcissus as an allusion to mirror use in the High Renaissance. He will submit to any change sought, and composes letters of obsequious thanks—anything to escape here. He orders three copies of his bound thesis from a local printing press, mailing one to Barrows, an adjunct professor at Princeton, according to the bio on the back of her first book, Losing Lily Briscoe: Women and Myth from Gentileschi to Nochlin, just published by Yale University Press. The second copy he mails to Marsden’s last known address in Toronto. The third he mails to his father, now living in Maine with his present girlfriend.
Pinch awaits the call, needing to hear his father’s opinion on work that, years back, was initiated for Bear. This, Pinch knows, is why he persisted with his dissertation: for this solitary review. He will ask Dad if he should seek a publisher, a small press perhaps. Or he could set up as an independent scholar, outside the college ecosystem, so he’d stand apart, able to express unpopular ideas, like those he and Bear always talked about.
He hears nothing, so places the call himself. Bear’s girlfriend assures Pinch that the package did arrive. “Still sitting here on the console table.”
“Could you tell him I’d love to know his thoughts? As soon as he can—as soon as is feasible, given work.” A week passes. Another. A third. Pinch orders himself to be patient. His mind keeps flipping back to this same subject. In bed, he rages over the wait. Finally, he calls Maine again, gets Dad on the line this time, talks about unrelated subjects—then shoots out his question.
“Kiddo, you should be proud as hell of what you’ve done.”
Beaming, Pinch leans forward, then rocks back, reaching for the pipe. He grasps it, thrusts it in air, shaking his fist. “I’m so glad to hear this, Dad. I feel lightened, completely. I wanted to tell you: I’ve been thinking about your biography again. You have so many amazing stories. I could be your stenographer. It’d be a way forward for me. I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to get into an Ivy League—I’m sorry about that. But you saw this piece of writing. And it was okay, right? What do you think? I’d come out there, if that works. Or we could meet elsewhere. Whatever suits you.”
“Hold the line—Jenny’s waving at me. What is it, sweetheart? Yeah, just finishing up. It’s Charlie, the Italian one. Yep, that one. Ten seconds, babe. Charlie—you were saying? My undivided attention.”
“So it was decent, the thesis?” He needs replenishing.
“Helluva lot of work you did. And solid work.”
“There are loads of your ideas in there. Did you notice?”