The Complete Collection. William Wharton

psychedelic colors.

      On Friday and Saturday nights, people dance mostly barefoot. The floors are an inch thick with sawdust so it smells like a circus: sweat, peanuts and sawdust. The light is pinkish and constantly changing. It’s the kind of place I like, a good non-pressure feeling; run-down Victorian; an English pub gone pop. There’s something of an old Western bar, too.

      So we drive down; it’s near the beach about ten minutes from my folks’ house. Dad stops in the doorway and looks around.

      ‘My goodness, Johnny, these people are crazy. Look at that.’

      He points. There’s a doll hanging from the ceiling upside down without any hair and somebody painted her blue.

      ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

      ‘Nothing, Dad, it’s only decoration.’

      I pick up a pitcher of dark beer and two cold frosted mugs at the bar. I steer Dad to my favorite booth in back, perfectly located for the sound system. In this spot you feel the sound’s coming right out of your head. I get handfuls of popcorn and peanuts, spread them on the table. The tabletop has a laminated picture of a girl in a very tempting pose. I hadn’t noticed that before. I’m seeing things differently, like going to a zoo with a child.

      We look out at the mob. There’s a fair amount of pushing and flirting going on; strictly a jeans-and-sweatshirt crowd. You’re supposed to be twenty-one to get into this place and they’re strict, but the girls look young. Then again, almost any woman under forty looks like a child to me these days.

      Dad’s watching all this. He hardly remembers to drink his beer.

      ‘Gosh, Johnny; this is better than Fayes Theatre in Philadelphia, back in the old days.’

      He swings his head around and laughs. He has a way of putting his hand over his mouth when he laughs, covering his teeth. Both Dad and I have separated front teeth; I mean a significant separation, about half a tooth wide. Dad’s incredibly sensitive about this. His father had it too, and I’m obstinate, or vain enough, to be proud of mine. I feel it’s a mark of the male line in our family. Still, neither Billy nor Jacky has it; Marty did, cost a small fortune in orthodontics bills. I even like separated teeth in women, but you can’t ask a girl to keep something like that if she doesn’t want to.

      Dad’s so embarrassed by his parted teeth he’ll never smile or laugh without putting his hand over his mouth; so he’s sitting there snickering behind his hand.

      We drink our beer slowly, listen to the music and watch the action for about an hour. We get home by ten. We’re both tired and manage somehow to climb into bed without turning on the TV.

      The next day things start fine. I hear Dad back there fumbling around dressing, making his bed. I do my yoga and sweep. By nine o’clock he’s out. He even finds his own medicine, then sits down for a big breakfast with me. All his movements are stepped up by about half. He’s sitting straighter, eating faster. I remember how when Dad was young he used to wolf his food; I wonder if he’ll go back to that.

      We even have a reasonable breakfast conversation. We talk about painting. Years ago, I gave Dad a box of paints. There was everything he’d need, including two middle-sized canvases.

      So Dad took up painting and did some of the most god-awful paintings I’ve ever seen. He framed them for Mom and they’re hung in the bedrooms.

      One trouble is Dad didn’t use the canvases I’d left. He said he was saving them; saving them for his great masterpiece, I guess. He went out and bought canvas board, crappy cotton canvas stretched over and glued to cardboard. These were all of about six inches by nine inches each. Dad sees paintings as hand made, hand-colored photographs. So he paints paintings the size of photographs. He paints from photographs, too. Nothing I say can get him to paint from nature or from his imagination. He wants something there he can measure.

      He did one painting of an Indian weaving on a vertical loom in the middle of a desert; all this on a canvas not bigger than a five-by-seven photograph. Dad is probably the twentieth-century master of the three-haired brush. This Indian picture is an outstanding example of eye-hand coordination; but it’s a perfectly lousy painting.

      He’s also done two paintings by the numbers. This is right up his line. The paintings are a reasonable size, maybe twelve by eighteen inches. One is The Sacred Heart, the other The Blessed Mother. He framed these, too; they’re hung in the side bedroom beside the bed where I’m sleeping. Again, he’s done an absolutely perfect job, perfect color matching, and he’s stayed completely inside the lines. These two could be used as models for a paint-by-the-number set.

      But this morning at breakfast he tells me his painting career is finished. It turns out he’s tried painting one of the San Fernando missions. For him it’s a grand affair, practically a mural, fifteen by twenty-four inches. I hope for a minute he’s really gone out to San Fernando but its another photograph. He shows me this photo; has it squared off in coordinates. It’s a terrible picture to try painting. I’m not sure I could make a composition from this mess myself. There’s a clump of foreground bush, then about half the photo is empty California sky. Between the bush and sky is squeezed a yellowish adobe building, cornered at an angle to the plane of the photo. Worse yet, there are arches running across the near side of the building. It’s practically uncomposable, an arrowlike thrust from left foreground to right rear.

      Dad tells me how he’s had one devilish time with those arches. The composition doesn’t worry him but those arches drove him crazy. Perspective is a mystery to him.

      After dishes, we go out back and he shows me his painting. It’s hidden so Mother won’t see it. It’s a muddy mess with great green globs in the foreground.

      I do a little drawing on it, showing him how to correct the arches and rough in a perspective idea, but it’s impossible to make any kind of painting from such a piss-poor photograph. Painting from photographs is never a good idea anyway; cameras have cycloptic vision, the dynamics of bioptic human vision is lost.

      I’m dying to write Vron and tell her about the baby but I’m sure Marty wants to do this herself; it’s her baby; I’m having a hard time restraining myself.

      Dad goes into his greenhouse. He sure spends a lot of time out there.

       Soil’s just right now, soft enough so the spade sinks to the shaft but not muddy. New dirt opening up, shining where the metal’s pressed tight against it.

      We visit Mother and tell her Marty’s news. Mom takes it easily, as if she’d been expecting it. Maybe when you’re almost dying, being born isn’t such a big deal. She might even be feeling pushed.

      When we come back, I’m still restless so I go back and work some more on my motorcycle. When I’m finished, I get an impulse to take Dad for a ride. It’d be fun rolling slowly down to Venice beach. I think the sensation of riding might help brush away some cobwebs.

      We happen to have two old helmets here. I search them out of the garage. Dad’s watching me.

      ‘How about it, Dad? How about a slow ride on my motorcycle down to the ocean; it’s a fine afternoon; let’s go watch the sunset.’

      He stares at the bike.

      ‘I don’t know about that; it looks scary to me.’

      ‘If you get scared, we won’t go. Let’s try it around the block here one time to see how you like it.’

      I help strap the extra helmet on him. I don’t know why he looks so out of it, not like a motorcycle rider, more like Charles Lindbergh in one of those old leather aviation hats. Also, the helmet makes his head lean forward as if it’s too heavy for his neck.

      I straddle the bike and kick down the foot pegs. I show him how to get on. I tell him to put his arms around me and hold tight.

      ‘Is that the only way I can hold on?’

      ‘It’s the best way, Dad. I want you to lean when I lean, as if we’re one person.’