The Gravity of Birds

There was something more he alone bore responsibility for, the thing he knew must have cut her to the quick. It was the way he’d inferred that Thomas’s talent was beyond her understanding, that to be in the presence of such a rare thing was reason enough to allow oneself to be subjugated, to play the lesser role. He’d struggled against using the very words you just don’t understand on more than one occasion. But she’d understood well enough. She knew this was as close as he was ever going to get to adulation and success on a grand scale and he’d done more than just succumb to the temptation. He dove in, headfirst, with a great splash, causing a swell that threatened to upend everything, and everyone, in his life.

Forty years ago, Finch was teaching art history and struggling to support his young family on what the college considered generous recompense for someone of his age and limited experience. A colleague suggested he pad his meager funds by writing reviews for exhibition catalogs, which in turn led to his writing newspaper articles on various gallery shows. He was fair and open-minded in his appreciations, a stance that engendered neither an ardent following nor vocal detractors, but kept the work coming his way. He was temperate with his praise, anxious to encourage interest in an artist he felt deserved it, but never overly enthusiastic, staying well back from the precipitous edge of fawning. Then, a simple request from a friend in the English Department. A young man, quite gifted she’d heard, had a small showing at a gallery uptown. Would he stop by? The father was wealthy and well-connected, had contributed generously to the college. Could he just take a look? Finch mumbled under his breath before reluctantly agreeing. Days later, halfway home before he remembered his promise, he turned around in a disagreeable state and made his way to the gallery.

At first he’d thought Thomas was the gallery owner. He was too well-dressed for a young artist, not nearly as nervous as Finch would have expected for someone giving his first solo show. He stood in a corner, towering a head above the tight circle of women surrounding him. Occasionally one would sacrifice her spot to fetch another glass of wine or a plate of cheese, returning only to find her place taken. Finch noted with humor the jostling for position. These women were all purposeful elbows and withering glances. When he parted the waters and forced a hand into the circle to introduce himself, Thomas barely smiled but grasped his hand firmly and pulled himself toward Finch as if he’d been thrown a life preserver.

‘How long do I have to stay, do you suppose?’ he asked. He pushed a dark curl away from his face, and Finch gauged that they were of a similar age, while acknowledging this was the only physical quality they shared. Thomas would certainly have been thought of as striking: his thin nose, unsettling gray eyes, and skin with the same pallor as a blank canvas. His shoes were tasseled and uncreased, as if purchased just for this occasion. His clothing looked flawlessly tailored and expensive, and made Finch immediately conscious of the haphazard nature of his own appearance—slightly rumpled verging on disheveled.

He shook his head, not understanding. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Here, I mean. Do I stay until the drink is gone or until the people are? I certainly know what my preference would be.’

Finch smiled, disarmed by the man’s honesty. ‘You’re not the gallery owner.’

‘Afraid not. I’m the one with all the stuff on the walls. Thomas Bayber.’

‘Dennis Finch. Happy to meet you. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I should probably excuse myself.’

‘Ah. Critic, heh?’

‘Afraid so.’

‘Oh, nothing to be afraid of, I’m sure. Everyone seems to think I’m quite brilliant.’ He motioned to a passing waiter for a drink and holding up two fingers, tilted his head toward Finch. ‘I’ll look forward to reading your review. The Times?’

Finch liked him a little less. ‘For a first show, that would be unlikely, Mr. Bayber.’

‘Please. Call me Thomas. No one ever calls me Mr. Bayber, thank God.’ He put an arm around Finch’s shoulder as if they were conspirators. ‘Perhaps at our next meeting we will both be in slightly more elevated positions.’ Thomas pointed in the direction of a group of canvases. ‘As I said, I look forward to your review.’

It was as close as Finch had come to deliberately disliking something before seeing it. Criticism with malice, he thought, as he made his way across the room. Hubris was a quality he found hard to stomach; respectful deference had been drilled into him by both his parents. But standing in front of the work, it was impossible not to see the talent behind it, and not to be shocked. The series of surrealistic portraits was unlike anything Finch had seen, managing to look new at a time when most said the movement was dying down. There was boldness in the way Bayber used color—it made Finch feel as if he were being shouted at—and an intimacy that made him almost ashamed to study the canvas closely. People pressed in all around him, stunned into collective silence. He felt the need for air. He tried taking notes, but quickly scratched out the few words he put to paper, unable to adequately describe what he was seeing. Something pricked at his skin, tightened in his throat. He turned. Bayber was staring at him with a smile.

At the seventh floor Finch paused and wiped his face and the back of his neck with a handkerchief. Four o’clock in the afternoon and he was exhausted. He stood outside Thomas’s apartment and wondered why he hadn’t bothered to inquire as to the purpose of this visit. When he knocked on the door, it opened. The curtains were drawn and what little afternoon light filtered into the room was filled with swirling motes of dust. The ceiling was the same pale ivory as always, but in the year and a half since his last visit the walls had been painted a deep shade of pomegranate. Finch looked more closely and realized the paint had been applied directly onto the wallpaper, already flaked and bubbling in spots. Chairs were everywhere, turning the space into an obstacle course. As his eyes adjusted to the dim, he noticed Thomas sitting in an overstuffed wing chair against the east wall, spiraling remnants of wallpaper cascading down on either side of him. Thomas’s eyes opened and closed slowly, those of a lizard king in a drugstore comic. He was dressed entirely in black except for the scarf around his neck, a plaid of dirty colors, and though Finch was used to his appearance, today it stuck in his craw. Damned annoying affectation. It certainly wasn’t cold in the room; the heat and smells of liquor and sweat washed over him in waves, and he looked for someplace to sit down.

‘Denny! Come in. Make yourself comfortable, why don’t you? Don’t hover in the doorway like some sort of salesman.’ Thomas’s eyes narrowed and he leaned forward in his chair as if trying to satisfy himself of something. ‘You don’t look well.’

‘I’m fine. Couldn’t be better. But I can’t stay long, I’m afraid. I’m having dinner with Lydia. Some new bistro she and my son-in-law have discovered.’ Finch despised lying in others as much as in himself, but he offered this up without a pang of remorse. Much easier to lay the groundwork for taking his leave sooner rather than later. He chose one of the small chairs and instantly regretted it, first hearing the squeak of springs and then feeling an uncomfortable pressure against his backside.

‘How is your daughter?’

‘Lydia is fine, thank you, although she fusses over me to no end. It’s almost like having a babysitter.’ He paused, realizing how disloyal he sounded. ‘I’m lucky to have her.’

‘Indeed you are. I question whether anyone really knows their own good fortune before it’s too late.’ Thomas gave Finch a rueful smile. ‘Too late to enjoy it or exploit it, one of the two.’

Thomas appeared at odds with himself. His hands worried the fabric at the ends of the chair arms, and Finch found himself growing nervous. He couldn’t remember the artist ever seeming so distracted, so undone. Thomas muttered something under his breath and looked up at Finch, as though surprised to see him still standing there.

‘Tell me the truth, Denny. You’ve envied me my solitude at times, no doubt. No more than I have envied you the companionship of a daughter. And the bosom of family to rest your weary head upon, eh?’ He gave a barely perceptible wave of his hand, before frowning. ‘Well, what’s to be done about it at this point?’

Had he ever wished for Thomas’s solitary life? Finch tried to imagine his home of so many years void of its past activity, absent its sounds and smells of family, the briefly lingering childhood traumas, their daily interactions that had turned, almost unnoted, into habits. His wife brushing his daughter’s hair in the afternoon at the kitchen table, her hand following flat behind the brush, smoothing any errant hair into place. The three of them, a family of readers, curled into small pieces of furniture on Sunday mornings, faces half-hidden behind a newspaper or a book. Claire tucked up next to him in bed, her body a sweet comma pressed against his. Lydia in his study in the evenings, her cinnamon breath warming his neck as she leaned over his shoulder and asked about the work he was studying. This and so much more had been his life. He could not bring to mind a moment when he had wished any of it away.

‘You know, Denny, the older we get, the better I like you and the less fond I become of myself.’

‘You’re sounding positively maudlin. You must be out of gin.’

‘I’m serious.’

‘In that case you’ve proven what I’ve always surmised. The most successful artists are filled with self-loathing. This revelation on your part must indicate you’re entering a new period of productivity, my friend.’

A thin smile broke across Thomas’s lips and he closed his eyes briefly before responding. ‘We both know I’ll never paint anything again.’ He rose from the chair and walked over to the credenza to pick up a decanter. ‘Join me in a drink?’

Finch patted his coat pocket. ‘I’ll stick with my pipe, if you don’t mind.’

‘Each to his own agent of destruction.’

Finch could feel his mood deteriorating from its already low state. The atmosphere in the room was oppressively dismal. ‘So, Thomas. Something is on your mind.’

Thomas laughed, a dry rattle that turned to a cough and reverberated across the room. ‘Always one to dispense with the niceties, Denny. I appreciate that. Yes, there is something on my mind.’ He hesitated, and Finch drummed his fingers against the worn fabric on the arm of the chair. ‘What would you say if I told you I had a painting I wanted you to see?’

‘An artist you’re interested in?’

‘The artist I’ve always been most interested in, of course. It’s one of mine.’

Finch was certain he’d misheard. ‘I’ve seen everything you’ve done, Thomas. You know I’m one of your most ardent admirers, but you haven’t picked up a brush in twenty years. You told me so yourself.’

‘Twenty years. Time passes so slowly and then suddenly it doesn’t. At which point one becomes aware of how much of it’s been squandered. Twenty years. Yes, that’s true.’ He walked back to the chair and stood behind it, as if for protection. ‘What if this wasn’t something new?’

Finch felt his tongue thicken as his mouth went dry. ‘But all of your work is cataloged in my books. And in the catalogue raisonné. Every one of your paintings, Thomas, examined in minute detail.’

‘Perhaps not every one.’ Thomas emptied his glass and drew an unsteady hand across his chin. ‘I know what a perfectionist you are. How thorough in your work and research. I had my reasons for holding back. And now, well, I wanted you to see it first. I owe you that, don’t I?’

His voice took on a hypnotic note, and Finch’s head began to swim. Another Bayber. It simply wasn’t possible. Anger flashed warm in his veins and he dug his nails into the flesh of his palms, recalling the years he’d spent working on the catalogue raisonné. The hours away from Claire and Lydia, locked up in his cramped study, his neck angled stiffly over one photograph or another, deciphering the meaning in a brushstroke, assigning reason to a choice of color. The envy he barely tamped down at the recognition that this prodigious amount of talent had all been dumped into the hands, into the mind, into the soul of just one person. One insulated, selfish person. And now, another Bayber? This withholding seemed untenable, especially in light of the years they had known each other; the presumed friendship; the insinuation of trust, of favored status. The rent Finch paid out of his own pocket, the small monthly allowances sent to Thomas to keep him fed, although it was far more likely the money was keeping him well-lubricated. An omission such as this made his position all too clear.

Thomas cleared his throat. ‘There’s something else, Denny. The reason I’ve called you here, obviously.’

‘Obviously?’

‘I want you to arrange to sell it for me.’

‘Me? Forgive me, Thomas, if I find this insulting.’ Finch stood up and paced the circumference of the room, marking a path free from furniture. ‘Why me? You could just as easily call Stark, or any one of a hundred dealers for that matter.’

‘I have my reasons. I don’t want this sold through a dealer or through a gallery. Besides, my arrangements with Stark ended a long time ago.’ Thomas walked over to Finch, putting a hand on his shoulder. ‘I want this to go straight to auction. You still have connections, Denny. You can arrange that for me, can’t you? It needs to be done quickly.’

Finch’s head was on fire. The pain that had started in his back spread across his body. He could torch the entire room simply by laying a finger to it.

‘You could have asked me to do this years ago.’ Finch could feel steam rising off his skin. ‘Look at you. Look at the way you live. This isn’t just a quirk or some strange artistic temperament. You live in squalor. And I’ve paid for a good deal of it. Why now?’

‘You’re angry. Of course you are. I should have expected that. I know things haven’t been easy for you lately.’ Thomas drew himself up and took his hand away from Finch’s shoulder. He walked across the room to one of the large floor-to-ceiling windows hidden behind heavy drapes and pushed the curtain aside with his finger. ‘Would it be so strange I would want back what I once had, just as you do?’

‘You’re the one who stopped painting. You let your reputation slide away, you didn’t lose it. Kindly don’t patronize me. And don’t make assumptions about my life.’

‘I don’t expect you to understand.’

The words stung his ears with their familiarity, and a wretched knife turned in his gut. I don’t expect you to understand. So this was what Claire had felt. This was how he’d hurt her.

Thomas studied his fingers, then turned from the window. ‘In truth, Denny, I was thinking of you. It will be worth so much more now than it would have been when I painted it. I’ll be able to pay you back tenfold, don’t you see?’ He emptied his glass and walked to the credenza again, pouring himself another. He raised the glass in Finch’s direction. ‘Just imagine the publicity.’

Unfortunately, Finch could imagine it quite easily. That shameful desire he was unable to submerge, the longing that persisted on the fringe of his consciousness, the unspoken wish for a speck of what Thomas had frittered away: the money, the swagger, and the talent; his ability to transport those who saw his work to a place they hadn’t known existed. Finch had almost convinced himself the books were purely for scholarship. Other than insubstantial royalties, there was no personal gain. He was not the artist after all. He was an art history professor and a critic. He could pretend to understand what he saw, to divine the artist’s meaning, but his was the paltry contribution. A frayed dream rose up and swirled in his head. The first to see another Bayber, to discover it, after twenty years. His disappointment in finding himself tempted was as palpable as his wife’s voice in his head, their conversations continuing, unabated, since her death. Enough is enough, Denny. He pushed Claire away, shutting out those same melodic tones he struggled to summon each day, letting her be silenced by his racing thoughts. His pulse quickened. He rubbed his hands together, feeling a chill.

‘Let’s see it.’

The sly smile. As if he was so easily read, so quickly persuaded.

‘Not just yet, Denny.’

‘What do you mean? I can’t very well talk about something I haven’t seen.’

‘Oh, I imagine if you put the word out, there will be the appropriate level of required interest, sight unseen. And I don’t have the painting here, of course.’

Thomas’s body may have been in some state of disrepair, but his ego was as healthy as ever. ‘Until I see it,’ Finch said, ‘I’m not making any calls.’

Thomas appeared not to have heard him. ‘I was thinking you might ask Jameson’s son to take a look at it. Pass judgment on its authenticity. He’s at Murchison, isn’t he? And struggling a bit since Dylan died, from what I hear.’

‘Stephen? Stephen Jameson? Surely you’re joking.’

‘Why?’

Was it Finch’s imagination or did Thomas seem insulted his suggestion was met with so little enthusiasm? ‘The young man has a brilliant mind—frighteningly so, really. He’s certainly gifted, providing one manages to overlook his … quirks, shall we say? But they’d never send him. Cranston wouldn’t let him out alone. Not to see you.’

Thomas interpreted his emotions with little more than a passing glance. ‘You feel sorry for him.’ He smiled. ‘You’re right about Cranston, of course, wretched piece of puffery that he is. But if you called Jameson, Denny. If you gave him the opportunity …’

How could Thomas have known? Dylan Jameson had been a longtime acquaintance, someone Finch liked and respected, the sort of friend artists long for: a champion of the unknown and overlooked, a man whose gallery was warm with the sound of laughter and kind praise, and whose opinion was delivered thoughtfully and with great seriousness. When he was alive, he’d run interference for his son, softening Stephen’s spells of verbosity, tempering the impatience and the arrogance others perceived in him. As people were genuinely fond of the father, a degree of latitude was afforded the son. Stephen was in his early thirties now, drifting since his father’s death, an odd duck, socially inhibited and overly sensitive. He possessed a near-photographic memory as far as Finch could tell, and an encyclopedic bank of knowledge. If rumors were to be believed, he had squandered his opportunities with an unfortunate affair.

Finch had taken Stephen out a few times after his father died, repaying old debts, he told himself, but the truth was he enjoyed having something penciled in his agenda. The man’s company could be invigorating in spite of the fact that he often vacillated between morose and brooding, or became obsessive when arguing a point. After a glass or two of Bushmills, Stephen would wax rhapsodic over something he’d seen in Europe, or goad Finch into a debate on the merits of restoration versus conservation.

‘Look at India. Those laws hamstringing resources in the private sector. It’s obvious public projects require talent unavailable to them. The work can only be done in-house, yet most institutions don’t have the necessary resources, so their art languishes in museum basements,’ Stephen had said, slamming his glass on the bar and pulling his hands through his hair. ‘The humidity, the poor storage facilities, all the pieces I’ve seen with tears and pigment damage. It’s criminal. As good as treason. I can’t understand why they won’t move forward.’

‘I’m sure they’ll be happy to take your opinions under advisement, Stephen, especially considering the benign manner in which they’re offered.’

Their confrontations rarely ended in consensus, as that would have required compromise and the younger Jameson seemed overly fond of his own opinions. But Finch relished their exchanges nonetheless. His meetings with Stephen kept him on his toes; they also gave him a reason to get out of the apartment, shoring up the remains of his dignity by allowing him to turn down a few mothering visits from Lydia without having to invent assignations.

How Thomas would have gotten wind of any of this was beyond Finch. He assumed little in the way of a social life for the artist, imagining him confined twenty-four hours a day to the dark, brooding apartment from which Finch now longed to escape.

‘Jameson doesn’t have the authority to take the piece. You know that.’

‘Yes.’

‘Then why involve him?’

‘I’ve heard he’s good at what he does.’ Thomas turned his back to Finch and asked, ‘Or should I be using the past tense?’

‘You already know the answer, or you wouldn’t have suggested him. Why don’t you just deal with Cranston directly if you’re committed to selling the piece? And why Murchison & Dunne? What aren’t you telling me, Thomas? I’m not in the mood for games.’

‘I want a party who will devote the appropriate amount of attention to the work. And who can be completely impartial.’

It was Thomas’s questioning of his impartiality that drove Finch to the door. What a relief it would be to be done with all this, to finally put this chapter of his life behind him, where it belonged, and move on to something else. But Thomas trailed after him.

‘You aren’t looking at this objectively, Denny. Wouldn’t it seem strange if after all this time, what with my living conditions being as they are, you were the one to ‘find’ another painting? If you were the one to authenticate it, after resolutely documenting my life’s work?’

‘All your work I knew of.’

‘Precisely my point. This way no one can question your motives, cast aspersions on your reputation. I’ll be the guilty party for a change, Denny. We both know I’ve had too much practice and taken too little credit in that department.’ Thomas’s hand rested on his upper arm, the weight of it light, tentative. ‘I’ve long ago depleted my bank of favors. Whether you believe me now or not, I wouldn’t trust this to anyone else. I need your help.’

Claire would have cautioned him. It’s not that you’re gullible, Denny; you just prefer to trust the best part of a person, no matter how small. even when there may not be any best part left to merit your trust.

Finch was exhausted, every one of his sixty-eight years weighing on him. He had never heard Thomas sound so nakedly in need of something. He looked at the man, the sucked-in hollows of his cheeks, the rattle with each inhale of breath, and capitulated. ‘Fine.’

‘Your word?’

Finch nodded. ‘I’ll call Jameson. But if this isn’t legitimate, Thomas, you won’t be doing him any favors. There’d be plenty of people happy to see him fall and not get back up.’

‘Burned some bridges, has he?’

‘Socially, he’s a bloody bull in a china shop. Cranston hasn’t made it easy for him, not that he’s obliged to. He did give him a job, after all.’

Thomas sniffed, as if he’d gotten wind of a noxious aroma. ‘I imagine that fool’s getting more than his money’s worth. But I wouldn’t want to cause the young man further difficulties. Tell him to bring Cranston along. And thank you, Denny, for your promise to help. I’m indebted to you, more so than I ever intended.’

Finch squirmed under the word promise, a string of unease threading itself into his skin.

Thomas seemed to sense his discomfort, and smiled. ‘The best way to slow the march of time, Denny, perhaps the only way, is to throw something unexpected in its path. I believe it will be a most interesting meeting. For all of us.’ And with that, Thomas Bayber shuffled back into his bedroom, laughing.