The Italian Teacher(48)

“And I’m still waiting for my commission!”

In haste, Pinch lights his pipe, coughs. “And you saw the dedication?”

“Folks dedicate doctorates nowadays?”

“It was on the first page—you didn’t see that?” He pauses. “Dad, I know you’ve been busy at the studio lately. But did you get a chance to read the whole thing yet?”

“Ah, what do I know about essays? What counts is that you celebrate tonight. It’s a helluva accomplishment, what you did. You know, most fathers worry that their kids are doing too much celebrating at college. I worry you’re not doing enough! You need to raise a glass to yourself, kiddo.”

“I’m on my second mint tea already,” Pinch says, attempting to play along, lifting his mug as if for Bear’s perusal. “Drinking from one of Mom’s ceramics, actually. It took me ages to use this. I’ve got tons of her pottery in storage with Cecil. Could I get him to send you a few pieces, Dad?”

“Poor Natty.”

“You always liked her work.”

“Whenever I saw your mother’s art, I thought one thing: She wants to please, and it felt that way. No, her pieces were never really first class. That’s why I always—”

Pinch hangs up, then raises the receiver, hand shaking, needing to smash the phone against the wall. But he’s afraid. Of harm. Of damage. Of missing Dad’s return call. In fact, Bear doesn’t call back. Pinch was planning to propose moving to Maine and finding a place nearby, so they could start on the biography.

He pulls open the fridge door, hard enough that it slams against the cupboard, shuddering jars. Off cold shelves, he grabs at anything, gorging himself nearly to suffocation. Eyes watering, he dry heaves into the sink, grasps the metal faucet with both hands, rows it violently back and forth, unable to snap it. He punches the wall at full force, and howls from the pain. A dent in the whitewash. He hits it again, a red smear, his knuckles throbbing, dripping blood on the linoleum. He is unable to catch air. “Not done yet,” he says, body quaking, eyes blinking. “I’m not done yet.”





Adulthood


   OIL ON CANVAS


   96 X 182 INCHES


   Courtesy of the Bavinsky Estate





London, 1981




40


Under thunderous rain, Pinch hurries down a muddy path, squelching after the elderly man who marches briskly ahead. “I’m getting a little soaked, Cecil! Could we take cover? If that’s okay?”

Over the years, Pinch has often reflected on the noble hermit of his childhood, a man who plowed ahead with his pottery, irrespective of the world’s taste. After Natalie died, they spoke by phone but didn’t meet until today. Cecil arrived in his Morris Minor outside Pinch’s rented flat near Belsize Park, returned the stored boxes of Natalie’s pottery and said, “Shall we walk?” So they find themselves here, on an ill-judged hike across Hampstead Heath, during which Pinch has seen little but the back of the man’s waxed Barbour coat.

Cecil veers off track, tramping toward the closest road, where he directs Pinch into a drab café, shakes off the raindrops, and points to a table. Tea arrives in chipped cups, the saucers slopping with milky brew. Cecil betrays no unease, but Pinch feels it, so tosses forth questions, each dropping like a dead fly between them.

“Is it even wetter than this in Brighton?”

Cecil sweeps aside gray-blond bangs, a plop of rain landing in his tea. “It rather varies. On the time of year.”

Pinch copies Cecil, sweeping across his own hair as if readying for the school photo: a thirty-one-year-old teenager with bad skin and thinning locks, damp tweed jacket, pipe in breast pocket. He smiles, willing Cecil to mirror his warmth. Pinch is fond of this man who, in his small way, kept an eye on Natalie, no matter how difficult she could be. Pinch won’t confess it yet, but this recent decision to move back to England was partly to assume his mother’s bond with Cecil. For weeks, Pinch has awaited this meeting, needing counsel from the wise old potter, to hear how to salvage a bungled young life. Sitting opposite Cecil, however, Pinch speaks only of Natalie.

“What did you make of her work?” Pinch asks.

“She was quite skilled.”

“Why do you think other people weren’t interested?”

“Oh, there’s very limited acclaim in ceramics.”

“But she was good, right? People should have paid more attention to her work, no?”

For a spell, Cecil remains silent. His sight line sweeps above Pinch’s head, as if a plane with a banner were dragging his response across the sky, though it’s just a bug scuttling over the café window. “What is has never been what ought,” Cecil answers finally. “You pose an is/ought question. When I was younger, I dabbled in ‘oughts.’ I have retired to ‘is.’” He sips his tea soundlessly.

Pinch rests his jittery hands on the table, steepling his fingers, which he never does—only to notice that Cecil is himself making this gesture. Pinch reaches for the napkin dispenser, but finds Cecil’s long tapering fingers doing the same. “Sorry—you first,” Pinch says, embarrassed by this compulsive mimicry, so useful in acquiring foreign words, so obstructive in expressing his own.