The Story Teller
“How come there are no pictures on the walls, no photos?” asked my first date. “Did you just move in?”
I looked around with alarm, embarrassed. . . .
Did I tell him there was little disposable income in our household for art and frames? That my mother was often depressed and had no interest in home decor? That my father held maximal frugality in high esteem?
No. Those stark white walls, that blank slate, took hold of my imagination and I said YES, we had just moved in.
But the next morning I called my friend Rosie Greene, whose house was beautiful, full of paintings and photos, whose mother treated me to plays and concerts, plied me with books I had to read.
“Rosie, can you and your mom help me? I need to buy pictures to hang in my living room.”
My plea was Mrs. Greene’s command. Within an hour we were in a shop where canvasses were strewn upon tables, stacked in bins.
“Now look at this, girls.” Rosie and I stared, dumbfounded, at a rectangle covered with triangles, a floating eye. Was that an arm???
Noting our disdain, Mrs. Greene tossed that print aside and reached for a cacophony of squiggles. We groaned.
“GIRLS — you have to broaden your horizons. Modern art is all the rage!”
Not for this girl. I was drawn to a wall of gilded frames. Elegant women gazing serenely from posh velvet chairs. Dashing caballeros riding Arabian steeds.
New worlds opened before me. Each painting told a tale.
“Bathsheba at Her Bath,” Rembrandt, said a tiny plaque, below the heroine of my favorite Bible story. I had always felt sorry for her. Plucked from her husband, by mighty King David, like ripe fruit from a tree. How could a great poet, composer of the Psalms, have such wickedness in his heart?
“No, no, no. That won’t do, dear,” said Mrs. Greene, steering me away from voluptuous, lost Bathsheba.
“Let’s choose something less . . . imposing.”
She redirected my attention to tangled red roofs and chimney pots, rosy-cheeked babies, a field glowing in bright sun.
Yes. This time, Mrs. Greene was right. These indeed were more appropriate for my cramped rowhouse walls.
I bought the prints with my saved-up baby-sitting money, and in years to come would feel a thrill each time I saw these old friends in the world’s great museums. I would come to know their makers well: Renoir, Cassatt, Cezanne.
My sweet Mom watched as we transformed her living room, a rare smile on her lovely face. Within a few years, she would be gone. Brain cancer. But that is a story for another time.
She offered us a dusty shoe box filled with old photographs and we culled the best from the stack — my little sisters and I dressed in identical taffeta dresses, my grandparents, a shot of my Mom and Dad at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, where they met during the War.
Rosie and I hammered together frames. I cut a picture of Rock Hudson from a Photoplay magazine — he was my heart throb of the moment — and framed that, too. His teeth sparkled as if this were an ad for Ipana toothpaste.
“Who’s that?” asked my beau on our second date. “Your brother?”
“Yes,” I answered, fingers crossed. “He lives in California.”