Excerpt: An Insubstantial Woman

CHAPTER ONE
Whereby we meet Estela

Even I have forgotten my name… They tell me that it is Estela, but how can they know when I do not?
Every day is the same. I ease my arthritic body out of the bed and wander out into the hallway. Dim light illuminates a splash of warmth on the butter brown wall. The tiled floor is smooth and cold beneath my bare feet. I have forgotten my slippers again. The shearling ones that Rudy gave me for Christmas last year. Or was that in a previous life?
I am not sure where I am. This is not my home. There is no smell of paint in the air, of raw canvas waiting to be stretched so that I may cover it with my thoughts. I trudge along the hallway looking for signs that I might recognize, but there is nothing. Nothing familiar at least. My home is a haven, where I might shut myself away; to be alone with my memories. Memories of when I used to be someone. Now I do not always know my name…
The hallway is endless, or perhaps I am walking slower these days and do not always realize how long things take me. Methinks my toes do protest too much. Who said that? Was it Shakespeare? Perhaps he had arthritis in his extremities, too. It is bad enough becoming old and unneccessary, must we also become frail and lose our faculties?
This is definitely not my house. The hallway is too long and there are too many doorways off to either side from whence come unhappy sounds: the crackle of a rusty breath; stifled sobbing; a faint cry for help. There is no one around to hear or help, save myself. And what can I do? I do not even know my name.
“There you are!” scolds a sudden voice. A harsh voice. Abrasive. It reminds me of a palette knife scraping down canvas. “How many times have we told you not to go wandering around in the morning. Or anytime, for that matter. Come on.” Sharp fingers pinch my upper arm, digging into soft flesh where once I had muscles. “Back to bed with you. It’s the middle of the night, you know.”
Nurse… whatshername — rhymes with Paris. Harris? — ushers me back to my room and pushes me back into bed, tucking the covers securely around me so I can barely move. Is this supposed to make feel safe, like a baby swaddled in its first blanket to stop it flailing uncontrollable limbs? Or is it more like a straitjacket, to prevent me from being a nuisance to other people? When did I become a nuisance? Was it when I first fell and my daughter insisted I was incapable of looking after myself, or had my mind already started fracturing at that point, so that I could not always remember her name?
Life can be very unfair. What have I done to deserve this, Lord? I have tried to be a good person. I have tried to follow your Commandments. It is not always easy, but I have always tried. Doesn’t that count for something? Anyway, I remember Rudy telling me they were more like guidelines, than actual rules. We are only human after all. And I was sixteen and he was twice my age, but still I loved him.
Now look at me. Old and helpless; ‘a blot on society’ Nurse rhymeswithparis told me yesterday. Or was it the day before. Or last week. Does it matter. Am I a blot on society because my memory is failing? It isn’t really failing, I told her. It’s just that I have had such a full and active life, that my memory banks are full and cannot take in any more. I can remember the olden days without any trouble. It is the recent days that are the problem. Perhaps that is because there is nothing of note going on. Nothing worthy of remembrance.
I do not like Nurse rhymeswithparis. She is swift and abrupt with me, her sharp little fingers pinching at me whenever she thinks no one else is watching. Her face is as pinched as her nature; her mouth always nipped into a tight little smile as if she can’t afford to waste any of it. Her eyes, too, have a gimlet look. Green and flinty, like speckled granite. I don’t think she’s married, at least she wears no wedding band on her finger, but that doesn’t surprise me. Her angular body holds no curve to invite or pillow a lover, and her very nature wards off human companionship. I suppose this is how young women are today; hommes faux, afraid to show compassion or femininity less it be taken as a sign of vulnerability in this dog-eat-cat world of the millennium. Oh, yes. I see it. My daughter thinks that I have lost my mind, but that just shows she knows nothing about me. We have never been close. How could we be.
I, on the other hand, was considered bodacious in my day, with a vital spark that lit up many a room, and a warm nature that attracted many an admirer. To think I am reduced to this… a dry and wizened body, shriveled and dessicated where once I was as juicy and plump as a freshly picked peach with soft velvet skin and the smell of summer drifting around me.
I have always been a summer girl. In the summer I came alive. I was able to leave the studio and know that the weather would be gracious to paint out and about, on the coast, or along the wharves where the men gathered to paint the schooners and the old men — wharf rats who could no longer put to sea, but who needed the ocean breeze in their face and the tang of salt in their mouths.
It was down at the wharves where I first met Duveneck. He was a lion of a man even then. Not particularly tall, but stocky with sandy colored hair and a drooping mustache of the same shade that all but hid a cheerful expressive mouth. It wasn’t easy to strike up a conversation with him as he was always surrounded by various admirers, as well as his “boys.” The Duveneck Boys, that’s what everyone called them; a group of young art students, mainly from Cincinnati, who had studied with Duveneck both at home and abroad. They had followed him to Europe, Munich, I think it was, and then to Venice. Ah, how I envied them their freedom. They could dress as they pleased, carouse as much as they wanted, smoking, drinking, playing cards, but God forbid a woman could join in. They did not disdain my painting. They were very complimentary, in fact, but nevertheless, I was only allowed to come so close and then, no more!
Those were the days though. Young people today do not know what living is all about. Not their fault, of course. It is a sign of the times. Burn your bras, they screamed in the ‘sixties. For what reason, I said to my daughter. A woman wants to do something, she should go do it. She doesn’t need to violate her underpinnings to do so. We are all entitled to live the kind of life we wish to lead, provided, of course, we do not hurt other people we meet along the road. Not deliberately hurt people anyway. Looking back, I suppose I did hurt people, some whom I loved and others who loved those whom I loved, if you take my meaning. Although I never hurt anyone for pure spite. Except perhaps Nell, but she was deserving, and in any case, it is another story that does not belong here.
Perhaps it is the thought of meeting this girl. I think it is today she comes, but what do I know. Today, tomorrow, yesterday. Life goes on and every day the same. No wonder we lose our minds when we are condemned to these places. Her name is Cherish, I believe. See, I did not have to cast around for her name. It struck me when I first heard it how much it sounded like cherie, a familial word that Rudy always reserved for me.

“She wants an interview,” Nurse rhymeswithParis had said, when she brought my orange juice one day.

“And who exactly is she?” I had asked. At my age who wants to do interviews? Do I need my name emblazoned across the papers again? “What does she want?” Perhaps I sounded peevish. At any rate, Nurse rhymeswithParis seemed delighted at my discomfort.

“Don’t you go giving this girl a hard time,” she told me, tucking the rug around my knees as I shifted in my chair, and getting in a crafty nip at the same time. “This is community service. They have to do it. So just let her get on with it.”

“Community service? Isn’t that what they give criminals these days, instead of jail sentences?”

“Not that kind of community service,” she said disparagingly. So how did I know there were other kinds? The woman across the hall, ‘rhymes with Bent,’ called out feebly and my nurse spun on her heel and hurried across the hall with unusual alacrity. I suspect she was just trying to get out of answering me so I would stew and worry for the rest of the day. After all, attending to one old lady is probably much like helping any other old lady. I sometimes wonder why she went in to nursing, as she does not seem to be the compassionate type. It was obviously not a calling. Like becoming a nun or a painter. You become a painter because you must. The passion drives you and you have no option but to follow your muse; to give in to the obsession because otherwise it would drive you insane.

My daughter says that is why I am here to begin with.