The Grieving Mother:
A Novel Excerpt

“Plumbing is good. But you’re doing art, too, right?”

  
Nu found the address Andy had given him, a generic 60s ranch-style, painted turquoise with apricot trim, and parked at the curb. A big pile of mill ends filled most of the driveway. There was a two-car garage, with one of the overhead doors tipped open, Andy’s studio space, Nu supposed. He stepped quietly inside, hoping to get some idea of Andy Patterson’s art, and, hence, his personality before he announced himself. Meandering guitar riffs, the Grateful Dead maybe, poured from speakers hung in the corners. Nu saw Andy at an easel across the room, painting with rapid slashes.

Andy looked up and saw Nu and his face brightened as if Nu were a long-lost friend. Nu took a deep breath, bracing himself for Andy’s intensity. He waited by the door while Andy tossed his brush in a jar, wiped his hands haphazardly on a rag dangling from his belt, and charged across the room.

“Wow,” Andy said, sticking out his hand. “Nguyen Van Nuys. Mr. Nu. Oh, man, thanks for coming!” Nu shook Andy’s hand and felt a dab of wet paint sliding between their palms.

Andy’s eyes never settled, never stopped moving. Even face to face, he seemed to be looking at Nu sidelong, this way and that. Nu noticed that Andy’s lips shifted constantly through micro-expressions—smiles, frowns, grimaces—as if Andy’s mind were experiencing surprise, concern, sadness in rapid succession. It was exhausting just watching him. What must it be like for Andy, enduring that restless inner experience? The shadowed and slouching skin beneath his eyes suggested he didn’t sleep much, at the very least.

Andy put his arm around Nu’s shoulder and led him on a tour of the studio. There was a big layout table cluttered with paper, mat board, big shards of stained glass, a box full of frame molding. Then came a long workbench dominated by handmade wire mannequins. In the far corner, Nu saw a potting wheel beside a slop sink. There were paintings everywhere. Oils and acrylics, mostly, hanging from wires, leaning on easels, resting in stacks against all the benches. Andy was promiscuous in his choices of media, obviously, though painting seemed to be his main thing.

They completed the circuit around the studio and arrived back at the working easel. Nu leaned close to inspect the painting-in-progress, and Andy fell uncharacteristically quiet. The focal point of the painting was a riot of bright flowers spilling over a concrete wall. Beyond the flowers, a street stood eerily empty, canyoned by windowless, tall buildings, gray and indistinct, buildings that reminded Nu of Bliss Fits. They weren’t bombed-out; it wasn’t post-apocalyptic. They looked more like they’d been sucked dry. The flowers shouted, but the eye kept shifting uneasily back toward the buildings.

“I like it,” Nu said. “Impressive, how the buildings feel menacing but insubstantial.”

“‘Flowers in the Aftermath’,” Andy said. “For a show next month in Portland. Needs something, right here. Don’t you think? What? A tree? A persimmon tree!” Andy plucked the paint brush from the jar and waved it at the canvas, then tossed the brush back. “I don’t know. What about you? What are you doing out there on the farm?”

Nu shrugged. “I’m the resident plumber.”

“Good. Plumbing is good. But you’re doing art, too, right?”

“Some drawing. Fleece is teaching me to weave baskets.”

“Good. Good. But you should make art. Maybe land art. That’s one of your things, right? Can’t we do something with that farm? We should art it up, don’t you think? Come on, man. You gotta make that place sing.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not my place,” Nu said. “I’ll be heading back to Bend pretty soon.”

“Rats. I was hoping you’d be around a while.” Andy maneuvered them back out the garage door, and now he gestured to the pile of scrap wood in the driveway. “Mind helping me stack this? Got to get my wife’s parking space open before she gets home from work.”

There was a ramshackle woodshed made of pallets and old metal roofing right beside the driveway, and the mill ends were easy to stack. Each time Andy bent to pick up some wood, he grunted and sighed. Andy was older than Nu had realized. His manic energy was youthful, but the man was getting on.

“Have you got a studio over there in Bend?” Andy asked.

“I’ve got a garage, like yours. Bigger, though. Log-truck garage.”

“Damn,” Andy said. “I could sure use more space. What are you working on?”

“Well, I had started putting together an installation, a follow up on those paintings in my show. Trying to do something out in the forest. I was going to string some nearly-invisible weavings, like spider webs, across the off-road trails, then video the motorcycles tearing through them.”

“I can see it,” Andy said, then picked up some lumber and grunted. “And this would be out there where you got your ribs kicked in?”

“Same general area.”

“I admire your chutzpah, Van Nuys. But are you sure you want to tangle further with those biker guys?”

Nu chucked some lumber onto the pile and changed the subject. “So, how long have you lived here?” 

Andy had a couple of pieces of lumber in one hand, and bent to pick up another but he fumbled it, and all the pieces went clunking to the pavement. “Crud,” he said. “Almost 40 years. We own the house and plan to stay till the bitter end, even though we’re surrounded by dumpy student housing, as you noticed.”

“What brought you to Camas Valley?”

“Did a stint in the Army, then came here for school on the GI bill.”

“You served in Vietnam?”

“I did,” he said. “Pencil pusher. No shots fired.”

It sounded to Nu as if that was all Andy wanted to say about his military career. “What’s your wife do?” Nu asked.

“Suzie’s a nurse at the clinic. A phlebotomist, to be precise.”

“She draws blood all day?”

Andy nodded. “She likes her job. Perfect complement for a shiftless artist.”

“But you work, too, right? At the gallery.”

Andy clacked a block of lumber onto the pile, pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and mopped his sweaty face. “I figured out a long time ago that the kinds of art I make aren’t going to bring in much money. Luckily, I fell into working with the DD people.”

Selling art is just dirty. I’m not even sure how I feel about shows and galleries. Or grants. All that art bureaucracy shit.

“I hope I don’t have to work as a plumber much longer. I just got a commission to do a painting for a couple in Bend…”

“Congratulations!” Andy interjected.

“Thanks,” Nu said. “They’re uber-rich techies building a huge, bomb-proof vacation home where they can wait out the apocalypse. And they want one of my paintings on the wall of their bunker.”

“I hope they’re paying you a shit ton of money.”

“Five grand,” Nu said, and immediately felt embarrassed to be bragging.

Andy whistled, impressed. “Sounds like you are on the very precipice of success, Van Nuys. Now your troubles really begin. Will you totally sell out, or stay true to your art?” Andy returned to stacking, and the two of them worked quietly for a few minutes.

“You know,” Nu said, “selling art is just dirty. I’m not even sure how I feel about shows and galleries. Or grants. All that art bureaucracy shit.” Nu clunked a length of lumber onto the stack. “Have any advice on how to cope with capitalism?”

“Yeah. Marry a nurse.”

“I’ll keep an eye out.”

“Any interest in teaching?”

“Not really,” Nu said. “I always figured teaching would pull from the same pool of energy as the art. And I don’t think my pool is that deep.”

“Oh, everybody’s little pool is tapped into the Big Aquifer, don’t you think? There’s always more creativity you can pump up, Van Nuys. But I hear you about teaching. It can be a drain. And the pay sucks. I wouldn’t go that route if I were you.”

As they finished stacking the wood, Nu asked, “But you teach, don’t you?”

“Sometimes, at the community college,” Andy said. “Adjunct. Shit pay.” He got a push broom from the garage and swept the sawdust and splinters under the shrubs. “Better to do something else for money, keep the art free,” he said. “Your uncle tried teaching, then went the second-job route.”

“Joe? Joe taught? What did he teach, welding?”

“Art, man! He taught sculpture in the art department. I had him for a class my first term here.”

“No way,” Nu said.

“Oh, come on, man. You know this.”

Nu did not know this. He wasn’t even sure he believed it. Andy Patterson was throwing too much stuff at him all at once.

“You know about Joe’s art, right? And how he got fired by the university?”

Nu had some vague memories of Joe having worked for a time at the university. But that was before he was even born.

“I’ve got photographs. Hell if I know where, but…” Andy chucked the broom into the woodshed and disappeared into the garage. Nu followed him into a partitioned-off room in the corner. Andy’s office, it looked like. There was a desk with an old computer on it, bookshelves lining two walls, and teetering stacks of big art books rising from the floor, pillars of books taller than Nu, leaning precariously together. Andy was digging through a file cabinet. “Shit. It’s an album I put together. Shit, shit, shit. Ah, wait, here it is.”

Andy placed the album on the desk and flipped through the pages. “So, we had this rally, you know. Vets Against the War. I started the local chapter myself.”

Nu looked down at the wide-angle photos—professional-looking, black-and-white eight-by-tens. A steely, overcast sky, shiny-wet sidewalks, people milling around with unopened umbrellas. One photo showed a knot of men in sports jackets, white shirts and skinny black ties, faculty members, Nu guessed. Another focused on a trio of co-eds in mini-skirts, their knees, even in black-and-white, looking cold. Then a couple of photos of guys in military uniforms, eyes up, shoulders back. Most of the people in the photos were smiling, with here and there a smattering of angry-looking faces, a few fists raised.

Nu turned the page and there he was: a very young Joe Tunder, with a full, neatly trimmed beard, wearing a corduroy sport coat over crisp-looking overalls, standing next to a tall sculpture, looking bemused and aloof.

Andy tapped the sculpture. “Your uncle Joe made her, The Sorrowful Mother. Here’s a close-up.” Andy flipped to the page he had in mind and inspected the hand-lettered text under the photograph. “Grieving Mother. That’s it.”

Nu leaned down close to study the photo of the sculpture. The woman’s tall body was entirely concealed in a shapeless gray cloak, as unrevealing as a nun’s habit. But her bent neck and the slope of her back spoke heartbreak. Her face was a ceramic mask, Nu guessed. Her broad cheeks and full mouth seemed bloated with grief.

“Joe was thinking Liv Ullman,” Andy said. “He had a blown-up photo of her, a still from Cries and Whispers, hanging on the studio wall. And look at her hands.”

Nu bent closer. The woman’s hands appeared to be carved from a single block of dark, glossy wood. Her right fist tugged at the three middle fingers of her left hand as if she wanted to rip her fingers right off.

“Oh my god,” Nu said, shaking his head. “What agony.”

The two men stared down at The Grieving Mother for a moment. Then Nu broke the spell and looked up at Andy. “Where did you get these photos?”

“I took them. I shot for the local paper sometimes.” Andy paged further into the album. “Here’s the story,” he said, pointing to some tear sheets from the Camas Valley Gazette.

“May 3, 1970,” Nu said.

“Day before Kent State.”

“Five years before I was born. And you say Joe got fired?”

Andy bobbed his head up and down, side to side, up and down again. “To tell the truth, Joe wasn’t a great teacher. His style was like, ‘Okay, here’s the studio. Here’s the supply cabinets. Y’all make some art, okay?’ It worked for me and a few others, but some of the kids needed more structure. But everyone liked Joe, and we were all pissed when his contract was terminated. Everybody knew it was retaliation. Political activism was bad enough from the students. But the administration was sure as hell not going to let its faculty get away with that shit.”

“Huh,” Nu said. “I did not know about this. Joe as an art teacher. Wow.” He bent down to study one of the photos more closely. “Do you have any idea what happened to this sculpture, the Mother thing?”

“Nope.”

“Joe’s never mentioned it to me. I know he did a lot of sculpture in the past, but there isn’t much evidence of it around the farm.”

“Well, you need to ask him, don’t you?”

After a long and fruitful career as a professional gardener, Charles Goodrich worked for more than a decade with the Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature, and the Written Word at Oregon State University. He is the author of four volumes of poetry and a collection of essays. His first novel, Weave Me a Crooked Basket, is just out from University of Nevada Press. He writes and gardens near the confluence of the Marys and Willamette Rivers in Corvallis, Oregon. Learn more at charlesgoodrich.com

Header photo by matabumy, courtesy Shutterstock.