Chapter Seven
Kyle Wyman was standing with his back to us in the portrait room, staring at a painting of William King, Maine’s first governor. I remembered him from history class.
I could see that Kyle was at least six foot two or three and had surprisingly broad, athletic shoulders.
He wasn’t what I would imagine an artist to be.
He more closely resembled a cosmetically perfect construction worker, with his black silk collared shirt and crisp-looking jeans.
He even wore shoe boots. The shirt was tight enough to show his muscular arms. How heavy are a canvas and a brush?
I wondered. He didn’t turn when Mr. Doyle announced my arrival.
Instead, he began talking as if I had walked in on his lecture.
“In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, paint was made from three basic ingredients: linseed oil as the vehicle, pigments as the colorants, and turpentine as a dryer. These elements combined created what we call oil paint.”
“I knew that,” I said, and he turned. “My high school art teacher explained that a while ago. He favors the baroque period and romanticism.”
“Man of eclectic tastes,” Kyle said. “There is always the danger of spreading yourself too thin. I would say that’s true for most of life. True art captures what’s real, no matter what style or period it’s created in.”
“And your imagination?” I asked.
“It’s real to you; now you have to make it real to someone else.”
“Maybe it isn’t that important. Maybe pleasing yourself is enough,” I said.
I felt like we were challenging each other. Perhaps he was surprised that I wasn’t intimidated. He seemed frozen for a moment, and I took a better look at him.
His dark brown hair, cut neatly at his ears and the nape of his neck, had thin streaks of gray in it that seemed to enhance the silvery blue in his eyes.
I had a suspicion that the gray wasn’t natural.
He didn’t look much more than thirty. He had high cheekbones and a lightly tanned face, with strong, full, manly lips.
He resembled a male model or a movie star more than a successful working artist who spent most of his day inside, carefully moving a brush over a canvas.
I thought he had a two- or three-day beard, but so neatly trimmed that I suspected he treated his face as if it was, in and of itself, a work of art.
I tried desperately not to gape and look like I was overwhelmed, like a teenager meeting a rock star. Maybe my effort was obvious. My quickened heartbeat betrayed my feelings. I even felt a small flush in my cheeks. But I couldn’t look away.
He relaxed his lips toward a smile but held it frozen as he looked at me.
I thought it was more like he was studying me, making me more insecure about my own face as every imperfection I imagined streamed through my mind.
Maybe he had imagined me through my painting that he had chosen.
Was I a disappointment? It was impossible to really know from his look.
“Impressive young lady,” he told Mr. Doyle.
“You knew it. You chose her work,” Eddie Doyle said. He turned to me. “And it wasn’t because of who you are and what your family is to the economy of this area. All you did was sign ‘Lisa B.’ on your picture.”
“Of course, I know who you are now,” Kyle said.
“I’m just me,” I said succinctly.
He widened his eyes. “You’re as convincing in real life as you are in your work.”
“I don’t make that distinction,” I said. “To me, art is real life.”
“Wow. I might need a bodyguard working here, Eddie.”
He laughed, and I relaxed.
“To be honest, I knew about your family, and when we started for Bar Harbor, we paused so I could look at your grandfather’s mansion. I’m sure you can get quite inspired looking out from there. You painted your picture from there?”
“Yes.”
“Pardon my skepticism. I can’t tell you how many daughters of rich people I’ve met who in the end wanted to know the best makeup for them just because I worked with colors. Maybe they thought they’d be in one of my paintings.”
“That would be just wasting your time,” I said.
“You’re kind of young to worry about wasting time,” he replied.
“If I have any talent, wasting it is a sin,” I said.
He smiled and looked at Mr. Doyle.
“You have talent. That’s why your painting is here,” Kyle said firmly.
I shrugged. “Mr. Angelo, my art teacher, told me that Picasso said, ‘Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist when he grows up.’ ”
“Very clever. Must be a good teacher.” He looked at his watch. “I’d better get going. I’ll leave you with this.”
He turned slightly so as to address the portrait again.
“What fascinates me about these old portraits is how detailed they were, to bring out the best qualities of the visage. You know, the first thing you think about when you do someone’s portrait is, how can I do it and still flatter them?”
Eddie Doyle laughed. Kyle’s smile widened.
“If you saw what half of these people in these portraits really looked like, Eddie, you’d empty the room.”
“Ah, what is an art gallery, Kyle, if not a world of illusion?”
“You agree?” he asked me.
“Maybe all life is,” I said. “I remember my mother sitting with me at our big oak tree and reciting a famous Japanese haiku poem about that.”
“Haiku?”
“Three lines, seventeen syllables in Japanese. English translation isn’t exact, but her favorite was ‘A man sat under a tree dreaming he was a butterfly, or was it a butterfly… ’ ”
“ ‘Dreaming he was a man.’ I know it.” He looked at Mr. Doyle. “I’m looking forward to working. Perhaps we’ll see each other when I return.”
“Looking forward to it, too.”
His smile widened. “Better get going. Have to pick some people up. See you in a few months.”
As I watched him walk out, I thought this was another yin-yang moment.
I had just left Jamie in the darkness of his injury, holding my tears as far back as I could.
Now I was feeling this surge of excitement, not only because of who Kyle was but also because of how he had looked at me and talked to me.
I tried to smother the feeling, but Mr. Doyle didn’t help when he said, “He was very impressed with you, Lisa. To tell you the truth, so am I.”
“Thank you, Mr. Doyle.”
“I’ll see you soon. I’ll set up a celebration event in the near future or maybe wait for Kyle’s return.”
“Whatever works best for the gallery,” I said, when I really wanted to say, Yes, wait for Kyle Wyman.
I returned to the dock for my ride back to Birdlane. As we were pulling out, I saw the yacht Kyle was on and all the young men and women with him. I felt like sticking pins in myself for wishing I was on that yacht instead of thinking about poor Jamie and the next time I could visit him.
“That’s a Palmer Johnson classic,” Grandfather’s driver, Arthur, told me as he looked at the yacht. “Friends of yours?”
“No. I just met someone who is on it.”
“Well-to-do, for sure,” he said.
I watched the yacht leaving the area for a few more moments and then looked to Birdlane as I always did to get that sense of coming home.
I was able to visit Jamie twice more that month.
He was transferred to the Coastal Breeze Therapeutic Center just outside Bar Harbor.
Grandfather paid for it and paid for him to have a room as well, because he had to have physical therapy sessions four times a week, and traveling between there and Birdlane was an ordeal.
After a couple of months, Grandfather told me what they were concluding about Jamie’s injury and operation.
They weren’t happy with how much he was able to bend his knee, and the injured nerves were taking longer to heal.
They talked about another operation. Fortunately, part of the treatment at the center involved psychotherapy, so there was some attempt to counter Jamie’s deep depression.
He didn’t know what I knew about his evaluation.
The doctors included Grandfather in everything they told Jamie’s parents.
When Daddy found out how much Grandfather was doing for Jamie and his family, they had another argument.
“Who do you think you are, Father?” Daddy began one evening after dinner. “Santa Claus? There are many fishermen’s families who would like some of your charity. Who they goin’ to come to when you’re gone?”
“Not you,” Grandfather said.
“You got somethin’ right.” He glared at me as if this was all my fault and, as usual, marched angrily away.
“Let’s hope the dead can’t hear the living,” Grandfather said. “His mother would be turning in her grave.”
“Mommy would have arguments about things like that with him, but usually she’d be the one to walk away.”
“Yeah, well, your father likes to lick his wounds.”
“Thank you, Grandfather, for helping Jamie.”
“Half the time, I think I’m doing it to annoy your father.” He laughed.
I wished I could get to see Jamie more at the therapy center, but between schoolwork and my effort to do a new painting, I was limited. I wasn’t sure I was helping him that much anyway. I seemed to remind him of all the hopes he’d had for our future.
“I can’t be in the boat with one good leg,” he kept saying after every hopeful thing I thought to tell him.
“There will be other things for you to do.”
“What? This is what I’ve done all my life,” he said.
“You’re young enough to start something new, Jamie.”
He didn’t say anything, but I could see he didn’t believe it.
I wanted to scream at the ocean on the way home that day.
All that we had came from it, but all our sadness and tragedy came from it as well.
I stopped thinking about it the moment the Crest came into view.
I thought about my new painting and the way the house loomed above the cliff, embraced by soft, puffy clouds.
Was I doing it because I was really inspired or because Kyle Wyman had suggested it?