In Sight of Stars(29)

Next to the table on the floor is a tall ceramic vase that reaches the tabletop. It holds giant yellow silk sunflowers, the kind Dad often likes to paint. He loves to paint sunflowers because Van Gogh painted them, and Dad did his thesis on Van Gogh. At the School of Fine Arts Boston, where I want to go one day.

When Dad paints, he tells me stories about Van Gogh and his work, like how, when Van Gogh painted sunflowers, he didn’t just paint them yellow, but also used orange, and green, and even some blue, if you look closely enough. And, that the reason he used so much yellow in his paintings to begin with was because he drank a lot of absinthe. The liquor went to his brain and made his vision go yellow, so things looked yellow to him, even when they weren’t.

Eventually, the lead in the yellow paint went to his brain, and made him go crazy. After that, he had a nervous breakdown and shot himself in the head.

My mother gets mad when Dad tells me this stuff, but he explained that paints are different now. And besides, Dad doesn’t drink, so I don’t need to worry about him.

Dad is home this morning instead of work. He’s taking a personal day and he told Mom I should take one, too. “We both know he’ll get more from the museums than he’ll get from a day at that school, Marielle.” She doesn’t want to, but she lets me. “Maybe we’ll hit the galleries,” he tells me. “We’ll head down to SoHo first.” I prefer museums, but Dad loves his galleries, especially the ones where his friends work.

“The galleries are where the new work is, Klee,” he says all the time. “You already know all the masters. Who you don’t know are the masters in the making! Isn’t that exciting? To discover new art?”

It’s perfect outside, sunny and cool, so I don’t really care where we go. I’m just happy that we have the day together.

One of the galleries he takes me to has an entire exhibit drawn on Etch A Sketches. At the counter, they’re selling mini ones, so he buys one for me, and tells me if I get bored I should try to recreate the sketches I see. In all of the galleries, Dad talks too long, in a voice I’m not accustomed to. It’s more formal than his usual one, which makes me uncomfortable when he introduces me. “Georges, have you met my son?” “Pekka, this, here, is Klee. He’s sure to be a great artist one day, as well.”

A lot of the men he introduces me to have foreign accents and odd, girlish names, like Danielle, and Jacques, and whatever Pekka is. It makes me hate my name, all artsy and different like theirs. I wish Dad had named me Mark after him.

In the last gallery, Dad buys a painting from a man he introduces as Armond. I remember because at first I think he says Almond. I don’t really care for him. He’s one of the flowery ones, tall and thin with white-blond hair and blond eyebrows, and an accent that’s hard to understand. Dad talks to him in hushed tones, for a long time.

When we’re finally ready to leave, Dad says he’s buying a painting from Armond. Even Armond argues—it’s an ugly painting called Icarus’s Flight Plan, in which a naked man with wings falls from the sky over a heavily trafficked city. Dad tells me it’s an homage to a famous painting called Landscape with the Fall of Icarus that was done by an artist named Bruegel. “Well, attributed to Bruegel anyway, yes, Armond?” but I’m not listening anymore. Nothing he tells me would make me like the painting any better. It’s gray and grim and makes me feel sad and cold.

While Armond wraps the painting, Dad sits on a bench by the door and tells me the story of Icarus, which comes from Greek mythology.

“Icarus and his father, Daedalus,” he begins, “were imprisoned by King Minos of Crete, inside a labyrinth of the father’s own making.”

“What’s a labyrinth?”

“Ah, good question. Like a maze.”

I listen, rapt as he talks, back to being content. I love when my father tells me these stories. “Daedelus was a craftsman, you see, and so as not to be held captive, he built wings made of beeswax and feathers. Giving one pair to his son, he warned Icarus: ‘Be careful, my child, whatever you do, make sure you don’t fly too close to the sun.’ But Icarus became drunk with his power to fly, and so he got cocky, and rose higher and higher into the sky. So high that his wings melted, and the feathers slipped off, and Icarus plunged fatefully down into the sea.”

When Armond is ready to ring up the painting, Dad tells me to wait on the bench where I can’t make out most of what they’re saying. Except when Armond raises his voice. They’re arguing about money, I think. I hear the number four thousand. He tells my father it’s too much.

“You’re a saint, Mark,” he says, handing the painting to Dad when we’re finally ready to leave. But Dad hands it back, asks Armond to hold it at the gallery. Dad leans in, whispers something I can’t hear, then promises, “I’ll be back for it!” as we leave to head up West Broadway toward the subway.

“Why don’t you paint and sell your paintings there?” I ask my father. We’ve been walking for a while in silence. “Yours are way, way better than that Icarus one.”

Dad rumples my hair and puts his arm around me. “Because I couldn’t afford to buy more paintings if I did.”

“But four thousand dollars is a lot of money.”

He looks surprised, and stops and crouches down to talk to me, eye to eye. “Do me a favor, kid. Don’t tell your mother about that. It’s a gift for her. And it was a lot. But, just so you understand, that artist, if he is lucky, will sell ten, maybe fifteen, paintings all year. Let’s say twenty in a good year. And the gallery takes a cut, and you can’t survive in Manhattan very well on that.”