Free The Saving Graces by Patricia Gaffney

smoke cleared, everything fell into place-I knew what I was supposed to do. For the first time, I really understood myself." "Wow." I felt a definite spark of envy. "Like figuring out you're gay and coming out of the closet or something." "Exactly. Not that it happened overnight. Don't misunderstand-it took about a year for the smoke to clear." "Well, that was the lawyer part, I guess. You know, being cautious." "Partly." He didn't elaborate on that, and I started thinking how I might phrase a question about his wife, how all this had sat with her. But then-I didn't. In the same situation, I'd have asked it of somebody else. But my motives were impure. I couldn't quite bring myself to ask it of Mick.
Instead I asked him about the early days, and if it had been scary resigning from his job. He said it was terrifying; his paycheck went from-he caught himself. "It dropped about ninety-eight percent," he said, watching me write that down. "I've been a full-time painter for three years now, and I've sold two paintings, both to friends. I may never make any money." But I don't think he believed that, because he said it without any anxiety, and he didn't strike me as the kind of man who could indulge himself without guilt indefinitely.
- A kindred spirit.
He'd opened the door, though, and I had a responsibility to walk through it. "Your wife-urn-" "Sally." - - "Sally." I wrote it down. "So she's okay with all this, she's-"
"She's been great. She's been great." He nodded and nodded, and I scribbled, S. been great. I looked at him expectantly. It's amazing how much you can get out of someone by saying nothing, just waiting. Mick rubbed his cheek in a raspy circle-he needed a shave-and finally said, "Jay's in day care-well, you know that, you know Lee Patterson -because Sally's had to go back to work. She's an administrative assistant at the Labor Department."
"Uh-huh." "She had to do it. Otherwise we'd've starved. And we've moved to Columbia Heights."
"From?" "Q Street, Dupont Circle. Near the Park."
"Uh-huh." "We're fixing up an old row house." "Been there." "Really?"
"Well, no, I mean, I just bought one. An old town house. Somebody else fixed it up." "Uh-huh." He smiled, but I think he was mimicking me. "Well, that's a little different:' "I guess." The change of address suggested he'd come down in the world, and his manner said he minded. What wasn't clear was if he minded for himself or for Sally, and I couldn't think of a way to ask. Not that it was any of my business. - - - I glanced over my notes. "So tell me, what would you call the kind of art you're doing now?"
He put his chin on his knee, frowning. "What would you call it?" I gave a nervous laugh, but he wasn't being hostile or aggressive. He sounded curious.
"Listen, Mick, I have to tell you, I don't know the first thing about art. Honestly, I'm a complete dunce, so if you want this article to sound good and be true, you should talk to me straight. In fact, you should talk down to me. Pretend I'm your kid." He laughed. God, I liked making him laugh. I liked it too much. "Failing that, just talk very, very slowly." So he did. At length. The gist of it was that he hadn't found his own style yet, or even his true subject, but he was working in a formalist, figural mode because he needed the practice and because abstraction was a dead end for him. He thought postmodernism wasn't a real epoch, just the last gasp of modernism before the next phase started. He wouldn't presume to say what that would be like, but when I pressed, he said he thought it might involve a revival of formal excellence, which contemporary art was incapable of and had therefore cynically dismissed.
I asked him who he admired, and he said Rembrandt, Fantin-Latour, Arshile Gorky, Alice Neel, Eric Fischl. Who did he hate? He said he would tell me, but only off the record, and then he rattled off about five names, all men, none I'd ever heard of. He saw himself moving more and more toward portraiture, he said;