“Exactly,” I said. “Why don’t we go check out the Neoclassicists and see some more examples?”
Our conversation was livelier in the Neoclassical room, where I managed to engage the kids in a conversation about the Romans, possibly because I mentioned vomitoriums. Proof that no one ever progresses past the age of thirteen, and when nudity fails, gross-out humor is always a good idea.
When the kids had exhausted their (fairly impressive) repertoire of throw-up jokes, I gave them a few minutes to linger in the room. Some of them were sketching wildly, and I felt my fingers itch as I watched them. The self-conscious tightness that had surrounded them fell away, and their inner eager elementary schoolers sprang out. Long ago, that would have been me, so desperate to create I could hardly keep my hands still.
I leaned against the wall, and Miss Pine came to stand beside me. “Anyway,” she said, continuing our earlier conversation as though it had never been interrupted, “teaching is really the best way to stay in touch with my own art. If I’m encouraging them to create, I’d feel like a fraud if I didn’t do it myself. What about you? Are you an artist?”
“Oh, no. I mean, I took art in school, but that’s not, I mean, it wasn’t real,” I said hurriedly, lest she get the wrong idea.
“Really?” She raised a pale eyebrow. “But you talk about it so passionately. I just assumed . . .”
Tamping down the longing that always emerged when I was talking about art, I shook my head. “I wanted to be a painter, but I just . . . I guess I just grew out of it.”
The truth was far too difficult to explain, especially to Miss Pine, with her heart big and warm enough for these kids and their self-conscious eyes, and the earnest chitter of her jewelry. This was the bargain I had made. I knew Phillip had married me partially because he had zero taste and I knew something about art, but I was only allowed to be in contact with it in the most clinical of ways, preferably ones that made him look good. I could visit dealers and haggle over paintings for his office, or for the condo, purchases based more on square footage and their power to impress and/or intimidate the person looking at them than on artistic merit. I could lead tours here, volunteer, but I couldn’t make art myself.
“Art isn’t something you grow out of just because you’re not a teenager anymore. It’s not like falling out of love with a teen idol.”
I clutched at my heart in fake horror. “Don’t even joke about that. Isn’t it your job to protect teenage dreams?”
“Not officially, but I suppose I do it anyway. See, if I’d been your teacher, you wouldn’t have given up painting.”
“Ah, but then who would do the glamorous job of introducing apathetic teenagers to the glories of Rembrandt?” I asked.
“I’m sure someone would step into the breach. Not that I’m mocking what you do. You’re a volunteer, right?”
“Right,” I said, though I wasn’t sure whether volunteering truly made what I did more impressive. The deal was, I worked for free and got to pretend I was altruistic and not just bored to tears with the Chicago Women’s Club and the achingly dull business events Phillip insisted I attend with him.
And leading tours brought its own kind of discomfort, the way it boxed me in as surely as any of those other duties. When I talked to tour groups, I spoke about technique, about chiaroscuro and proportion, about brushwork and craquelure with the confidence of a scholar, but I never spoke about the way art made me feel. I never spoke about how seeing a painting for the first time—really seeing it—is a wondrous thing. When I open my eyes to a painting, it is as though everything has changed and will never be the same again. Colors look more vivid, the lines and edges of objects sharper, and I fall in love with the world and all its beauty—the tragedies and love stories on the faces of people walking by, the shine of a wet sidewalk or the way the leaves offer their pale bellies to the wind before a storm. I want to weep for a broken eggshell below a bird’s nest, for its jagged edges and the bird inside freed to take flight.
When we finished the tour, Miss Pine let her students spin off where they wanted—to sketch, she told them sternly, not to the gift shop or the café. A few of them wandered back to the Renaissance rooms (I suppose Venus’ bare breasts had been rather too much to turn down after all); a few others lingered with the vibrant beauty of the Impressionists.
“Listen,” Miss Pine said, coming over and thrusting a postcard at me, the edges slightly soft and bent from her bag, “if you change your mind and want to get in touch with your inner teenager, I’m teaching a painting class this weekend at a new studio in Bucktown. It starts tonight. You should come.”