Pentimento

A painter’s subject comes to life...spooky?...a little. Peculiar?...definitely. Pentimento is a term used in art to describe when a painter changes his or her mind and paints over a part of their painting. The painter is said to have repented.  The rather moody painter in this short story changes her mind and repents...and when she does, her late beloved dog returns to her. (Photo by Cole Keister)

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Hello everyone, welcome. Let me say first that this story is not for children, not just because it's bittersweet, but because it tells of an utterly inexplicable event, a little walk into the Twilight Zone. I thought I would share it just as the life of Peculiar comes to an end, and before I begin reading Ryan's Dog Sirius, our next peculiar pet tale. Think of it as intermission or a timeout for grown-ups. In our story, a painter's subject comes to life. Spooky? A little. Peculiar? Definitely. Pentimento is a term used in art to describe when a painter changes his or her mind and paints over a part of their painting. The painter is said to have repented. The rather moody painter in this short story changes her mind and repents, and when she does, she gets her dog back. The photo is by Cole Keyster. Photo editing is by Bob DiRico. The hauntingly sad music is by Uginio Minini. I love Uginio's piece so much I'll play all four minutes of it at the end. In fact, I may play it in full at the beginning too. Did I mention that this story is not for children? Good. This is Pentimento. Dorothy Love 1963 to 2013. Provenance Family Collection. That was her and Judas and me. First, her image, and then later adding my beloved Judas, and then much later painting myself into the same canvas. Their canvas. We're all together now, there just as well as here. Not like the first time, though. Nothing was like that first time. The very first time her image, the idea of her, came to me, like a half formed thought drifting aimlessly by. Stolen maybe from somewhere. Captured by my peripheral vision until the image centered itself, took shape, and stayed there. A fixed object I couldn't turn away from. I could only see her face and profile, as if she were on her way somewhere, as if she knew something I didn't, unwilling to look me in the face, or even acknowledge that I was there. A trick of the eye or maybe the mind, I tilted my head slightly from side to side, as if forcing her to turn and face me. Silly. Silly what the mind gets up to when it's gripped by a sideways reality. And that's what she turned out to be in the end. A reality that was only a paintbrush away from where it came from. She never did and never has turned her face towards me. I painted her annoyed just that way, often pursing my lips, murmuring rude. I said it again, like a hundred times before as I looked up at her now. Rude this time I smiled. As I stood there a man and woman approached. The woman dressed all in black, looking sallow rather than trendy, had the man by the elbow, propelling him forward. He looked reluctant, almost embarrassed, but let himself be led. Like I had all those years ago. You must see a woman with dog, it's wonderful. Stand right there, no wait. The light's better here, and tell me what you see, said the woman, releasing his elbow, but keeping her hand poised in the air, ready to handle him again if she had to. The man only had time to ask what kind of dog that was, the big dog standing between her and me, painting on the canvas, before the woman went on. The dog? Oh, the dog is not central, not vital to the essence of the portrait. He's just background, she began. I wanted to smack her, stupid girl. Judas is who brought us together, the woman and me. There was nothing in my painting more vital than Judas. How could she not see that, not know that? And he wasn't between us, he was connecting us. I'd purposely turned Judas' head towards her, the woman in profile, with his stub of a tail pointed towards me to show that. I'd had to. I'd had to be honest about the fact that Judas wanted to be with her, even though he was my dog. He could see her, you see. She was alive to him, as alive as I was at the time. I hadn't even finished the preliminary sketches of her before Judas started doing something he'd never done before. He put his front paws on the lip of the easel, and would stare, just stare, at the still unshaped form of her, the fuzzy pencil lines that would eventually be her. Again and again I'd have to wait till he'd jump off and then walk round and round the easel, sometimes whining a little, till he'd drop and lie down beside it, the easel with her sketch on it, not beside me as he used to, and look up at me with this pleading look in his eye. He'd just sit there the whole time and wait. He longed to be with her, and soon I would long to be with her too. In the seven years of our being together, Judas had never done anything like that, and he had arthritis in his hind legs. He was eleven years old by then, so it surprised and worried me that he would strain his hind legs like that. We'd adopted each other when Judas was only four. He'd been the dog of a local drug lord, kept in the damp of a basement of a big house, always alone, guard dog of pungent smelling plants grown by the dozens or hundreds as demand grew. By the time the rescuers found him, he was on his way to going blind, at four years old. He was a rotty, the biggest Rottweiler I'd ever seen, and as sweet as you please. I took him home the same day I met him. He never left my side, up to the day he did leave my side. The woman in black was chattering breathlessly on. No, no, the dog is just furniture, but do you see the play of color here where the painter at her easel hides whatever she's painting at that moment? Now that's important, that's suggestive, and the fact that we only see the other woman's profile, she was facing left. Actually, said the man quietly, she's facing right, her right, where the left edge of the canvas is. Oh, well yes, from her point of view, but it's our point of view that matters, the observer. That's the whole point of art, isn't it? It's all about the perceptions of the onlooker, the interpretation of the artist's meaning. Okay, answered the man, slowly at first. So if the dog doesn't mean anything, and the woman standing won't look at us 'cause she's looking somewhere else more interesting, and we can't see the painter's face because she's facing her easel, all we can see is her back. Then these two women aren't interested in who's looking, are they? Even the dog isn't looking at us. So this is a portrait of pure self containment, isn't it? I mean, they don't give a damn about observers or onlookers, do they? Nobody's invited to the party. Pretty smart. That should shut her up. My art teacher always said first describe what you see, and then subtract from what's there to what's not there. That's what the man did. He wasn't the artsy type. They usually get it right. Crude, but right. He looked like a lawyer, or maybe a stockbroker. Tall, good looking, suited up for a business meeting, not a stroll through an art gallery. Slight accent, unfamiliar, maybe Aussie or South African. Investor, maybe. She never did tell me her name, and I don't remember asking, which sounds weird, but there didn't seem to be a need. And she stepped out before I'd completed that first sketch of her. I'd sketched her exactly the way she first came to mind, sideways. Standing, face turned, looking away, with her arms by her sides, with just her left wrist slightly flexed, one foot, her right, poised to take a step. At first, I thought I'd dreamt it. I don't sleep well at the best of times, but the night before she stepped off or out of the canvas. I don't know how to say that. How do you exit a canvas? Anyway, I'd had one of my worst nights. I'd been having stomach problems, and the pain was always worse at night. And how long have you been having these pains? The doctor had asked me. Oh, a while now. A while, he said. Oh yeah, quite a while. He raised an eyebrow as he looked at me. Well, you know, a long while. So there'd been tests and scopes and more appointments, but around that time I was more worried about Judas. He wasn't doing so hot. Sometimes he'd eat and other times not. He wasn't enjoying his walks much anymore. At first I figured it was the arthritis. I started giving him glucosamine with chondroitin and then MSM complex too. My doggy friends were full of advice. I loved them for that. I'd note down all their suggestions head down, tapping on my phone. That way I didn't have to see the pity in their eyes. Judas was old, their eyes would say. Maybe it's just his time. I loved them for not saying it, for not speaking what I so didn't want to hear. And this went on, me and Judas being sort of kind of sick together for a while, you know, a long while. Until the day her image came to me like a bird on a wire, and I began to paint, and Judas began to long. So the day she stepped out of the canvas, like I say, I thought I was dreaming. After all, I'd barely slept the night before. Walking the bed as if I were in boot camp. It could have been a daydream that got out of hand, outside of that fist of reality we all subscribe to. It could have been a side effect from one of those pills I was taking for my pain, you know, one of those drugs that stop the pain, but send the rest of you on a bad acid trip. It could have been, but it wasn't. She was there, outside the canvas, standing in the same pose, now with both feet flat on the floor. She'd taken the step she was poised to take, with her left hand resting on Judas's head. I'm a great believer in disbelief. This'll go away in a minute, I thought, frozen on my painter's stool. I closed my eyes tight. It'll go away, because it's not really here. Then Judas made a noise I'd never heard it make. Something between a yawn and a howl. His sheer brute bellow snapped my eyes open. She was still there, looking away from me. If something's not there, I thought, it can't go away, can it? Where would it go away to? I took a deep breath. What is she waiting for? Why doesn't she speak? Is she waiting for me to speak? Do you converse with visions? Splashes and spurts of paint mixed and brushed onto a canvas? The thought hurtled around in my mind. Is it rude not to address a vision a what? Ghost, spirit, spectre, entity? She wasn't glowing exactly, not the way ghosts do in old movies, but she shimmered, as if not quite fitting into her new space. An endless, airy, roomy space, not like the tightly woven canvas with its boxy wrapped edges. Judas looked like he'd died and gone to heaven. Light shone right through the filmy cataracts in his eyes. He never moved a muscle, only closing his eyes and then opening them to make sure she was still there, her left hand still on his head. Dog Nirvana. I was jealous. I still am. I still couldn't speak, so I slowly, very slowly put down my paintbrush and raised my shaking body up off the stool. It took everything I had. I thought, if I moved, she'd turn and look my way. Or maybe take her blasted hand off my dog's head. Or better yet, go back to where she came from. I'll reach for him first, I thought. My Judas. I'll save my dog. No. Came to me in an echo. It ricocheted in my head, so I couldn't mistake it. Was that me? You can't. Okay, that was definitely not me. So it she can speak. Well that makes it all worse then, doesn't it? I'm hallucinating in stereo. Full A V. I never do things by halves. No no no. When I go crazy I go all the way. I picked up my paintbrush. Shimmer away, I thought. Yeah. Shake, shimmy and shake. Shake, shimmy and shake. I painted you and I can unpaint you. I'll paint a tree over you, you hear me? I brandished my brush like a sword. I'll put a tree in your place, a nice tree for Judas to Yes, Judas reverbed in my head. She knows his name. She must be from somewhere, maybe from my past, some undigested, unresolved encounter with some anonymous fan that I'm not remembering. A young art aficionado, like the young woman in black filled with interps. This means that, that means this. Did you mix that color yourself? Was this your intention or that? I don't know. I don't know, I never know. It just comes to me out of the blue. It comes, I see it, I paint it. Like her. She came from out of the blue. Wait, of course she knows his name. She's been with me in this room the whole time. Well, not with me, but you know, with me. Maybe she didn't like how I rendered her. Maybe that's why she's here. She had a fine dress on, a deep rose shift, sleeveless, scooped neck. Very twenties, flapper like, with silk clothes toes sandals, and a long beaded necklace, blood red, with a gold headband to show off the Marcel waves in her hair. I drew what I saw. I always do. But where had all the color gone? She was all off white now. Or was that Cremello or maybe eggshell? Just a swirling hemline at the knees to show she wasn't naked. She died just after she painted this one, you know, said the young woman in black. I turned to look at them. At least I could be civil, not relentlessly indifferent, self-contained, like her. That face, frozen in profile, giving up nothing, yielding nothing. Just stealing my dog. My Judas. I think, therefore I am. Right. An empire of one me. It says I am because I think. But it says nothing about the other people thinking inside me, with me. Whole committees of people in there, telling me what to think, what to feel, how to act, what to paint. Big roomy place the human brain, spirit, soul, whatever. Images inhabited me all the time. Occupational hazard for an artist. Some were brief, ephemeral. Others were fixed, intense. Squatters refusing to leave until I'd spilled their image, their essence, their guts onto a canvas. Like they gave me a choice. She was in my head too. But I could hear her. Hear her see her. As I studied her and Judas, I began to relax. Nothing really was going on here, except that she, the subject of a very new painting, was visible outside a canvas. She hadn't really moved that far when you think about it. She just stepped out, taken a step away. Really. All it took was that one step. And obviously not much of a talker. Neither am I. Everything I have to say goes on to canvas into paint, color, shades of color, shades of shades. Do you lose language when you come from where she comes from? Just yes, no, you can't. Just sentences without objects? Only subjects? I can't what? What can't I do? Maybe you don't need language anymore. Why would you? You just show up and scare the bejesus out of people, make a door creak, or move some small furniture around, or hide a few things, and leave. Not with my dog, you don't. Judas was due for his walk. I didn't think she'd take him. It didn't look like she was going anywhere, or anywhere else, I should say. So I got up and fetched his leash from the door knob. When I turned back, she was gone. And Judas was lying down flat, like all the air had been sucked out of him, like a deflated toy dog. I put the leash back on the doorknob. We could go for a walk another time. That was the first time. Did she? replied the lawyer, stockbroker, investor with a slight accent. Yes, and you know she'd started off as a landscape artist, but some of that early work was too flawed, you know, deeply flawed. So she was she dying while she painted this? Or did she die sometime after? asked the man. I couldn't wait for her answer. Like I couldn't wait for the vet's answer. Actually, you don't really wait for something you don't want to hear, do you? Judas died three days after that first visit uh visitation Three days like between the crucifixion and the resurrection. I was so heartbroken, so crazy mad. I thought she'd killed him. Maybe her unearthly touch was poison. It's possible. Maybe airy fairy ectoplasm is toxic. I should never have let her touch him, my Judas, my darling, my sweet boy. Lunatic. She took him. She saw him, she wanted him, so she stepped out and stole him. Stole him. I had him stored. Stored at the morgue at the vets. I didn't want him cremated until until well, I had to do something. I had to I had to paint him. I ransacked my studio. Sure, I had cell photos, but there was one one photo of him in particular. I took it the day I got him with a real camera. Where had I put that flippin' picture? Fine. She'd wanted him, he'd wanted her. Fine, fine, fine. He was going in the painting. Good question. Gee, I don't know if she was actually, you know, literally dying as she painted this one, but you mentioned the dog earlier. That was her dog, said the young woman in black. Sure. Suck up to him now. Bring up the dog. The non vital, non central piece of furniture. Anyway, he wasn't my dog. He was hers. Judas Goat. Who did she think she was? Best work I ever did, I Judas. I drew him looking at her. The way he'd looked at her that first time. Like she was she was salvation. She hadn't stolen him. She'd heard what I wouldn't hear. She'd heard him cry he'd had enough. Enough already. It was time to go. It was his time. The very thing I couldn't hear, didn't want to know. Maybe she was company. Maybe he didn't want to go alone, so she came to give him company. Like when after the chemo started. I was so lonesome for Judas. I longed for him to be at my side like he'd always been. Just one more time. I wasn't greedy. Once I'd painted her and Judas together, I'd put the painting aside. It was far from finished. But I wasn't feeling so hot. There was only one course of treatment, and it was worse than the disease. That's what they say. But it's the disease that kills you. After one particularly bad afternoon, I dragged the canvas along the floor and heaved it onto my easel. I'd just been told it was a good time to put my affairs in order. Sucker punch. Euphemism for you're about to kick the bucket. What affairs? All my affairs were on canvas. Splotchy inner vision swabbed onto canvas and made permanent thereby. Permanent. So Eternal or um semi-eternal then, right? Deathless anyway. I was scared. No. No, no, not of that. I was scared I wouldn't finish it. I had to complete it, I had to. Or it would be the death of me. So there she was, again, my rude lady and my Judas. I wanted in. I longed to be in their company. I breathed deep as I took it all in, took them both in. They were mine. And not so distant anymore, really. It only takes a step. That's all she'd taken, just one little step, and she was somewhere else. I knew how to do this. She'd shown me how to do this. I began to paint myself into their canvas. At first, I painted the back of an easel facing outwards, with only my face visible behind it. It took hours longer than usual, and the colours were all wrong. But I was tired, so tired. Enough for today, I thought. Enough already. I had to eat, but I couldn't. It made me sick anyway. So after a while, a long while, I went back to the painting. There was something wrong. What's the word? A miss, a wry, askew, whatever. It wasn't right. Finally, it was an act of will. I was so weak by then it was a final act of will. It took three days. It was something I'd never done before. I repented. It was a do-over, that thing you never get to do in life, only in art. I knew the colors I needed now and mixed them as fast as I could. Time was short. I turned myself and the easel around, so all you saw was a figure standing in front of an easel. The man was right. It was a private party, very private, being held in an undisclosed location. Like they say in the news. I stood back and beamed at Judas as if he had given me the answer. I staggered a little and sat and suddenly he was there. Here with me. Like she had been that first time with him. Beside me, so close. His head on my lap shimmering. My beautiful boy. Back back with me. I knew then that I'd be all right. I would have company.