“No, you should not have held it back,” Mercy told her firmly. “You know what Mr. LaSalle always said: ‘The worst thing you can do to a painting is overwork it.’？”
“Oh, yes, he did say that,” Magda said. “You’re right.”
Candle, though, wasn’t so sure. The painting was a glossy white rectangle, some two feet by three feet, with a single black curve like a Nike swoosh in the lower-left-hand corner. Had Mr. LaSalle ever felt that a painting could be underworked?
The next painting had more going on—five green V shapes, floating here and there on a matte beige background. You could almost imagine the Vs were a flock of birds. Although maybe, Candle thought, it was wrong to try and turn such a painting into something recognizable. Probably you were supposed to appreciate the Vs for themselves. She narrowed her eyes and concentrated on appreciating.
It wasn’t as if she had never seen abstract paintings before. At her grandparents’ house there was an oversize art book with scribbled drips by Jackson Pollock and linoleum squares by Mondrian. But these were the first she’d actively struggled to understand, frowning intently at each as she followed the two women around the perimeter of the room. “Oh, Magda, so many red dots!” her grandmother said, and Candle thought, Many? because at the moment she was studying a large white square with only one red dot set slightly off-center. But Magda said, “Yes, sales have not been bad, I have to say,” and Candle realized what Mercy had been referring to. She stopped following them and took a little detour to the front of the gallery, where a sheet of paper was tacked to the wall just inside the front door. Red dot, red dot, red dot, next to the list of titles and prices, all of the prices in the thousands. Four thousand, five thousand. Seven thousand, in one case. She turned away and went to catch up with Mercy, who was continuing the circuit on her own now because Magda had gone over to speak again with Virginia. “What do you think?” Mercy asked Candle, and Candle said, “They’re really…interesting.”
Then she winced, because she was reminded of what her pop-pop always said when he was served some dish he wasn’t used to. “Very…inner-esting,” he would pronounce, and the family members around the table would exchange knowing smiles.
Mercy, though, just patted Candle’s arm reassuringly and said, “What I find interesting is, I like to look at paintings like these and imagine how it must feel to finish one. I mean, you’d lay down your brush, you’d take a step back, you’d say, ‘Yes, that’s what I had in mind, all right.’ And when I think about it that way, I can see that it really must be a great satisfaction. Not to overstate things, I mean; not to feel the need to spell everything out. To be capable of such…restraint. I’m not capable of it, but I have to say I admire it. Oh, isn’t it amazing, all the different ways that different artists’ minds can work?”
“Okay,” Candle said, “but how about the prices?”
“How about them?”
“These things cost thousands of dollars! It’s not fair!”
“Fair?” Mercy asked.
“You put way more work into your paintings, I bet.”
Her grandmother laughed. “Oh, hon,” she said, “it’s never wise to look over your shoulder.”
“Huh?”
“Just run the race on your own, I say. Don’t fret about the others.”
This didn’t make sense, for a moment, but then it did. Candle felt as if she’d had some burden lifted from her, and she gave Mercy a grateful smile and Mercy smiled back.
* * *
—
All the same, her grandmom did seem unusually quiet after that—distracted in some way, focusing on some private concern—because Magda had to ask twice if she’d like to get a drink down the street once they’d finished touring the gallery. “Drink?” she said vaguely, and Magda asked, “How much longer before your train?”
“Train? What? Oh!” Mercy said, and she checked her watch and said, “We should get to the station!”
So Magda hailed a cab for them, raising her right arm in a queenlike gesture, and they parted in a flurry of hugs and thanks and must-do-this-again-soons. “Goodness,” Mercy told Candle once they were settled in the cab. “I should have—I wish I’d reserved a later—I just didn’t know everything would take so long!”
“Can we still get a Nathan’s?” Candle asked her.
“A what, hon?”