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Painting While Unconscious

At three o’clock in the morning, three hours before Ernie Hernishen’s mother called to report that her son was in a coma and not expected to live, Spencer Truedove had been completing a six-foot-high ten-foot-wide canvas, though of course he wasn’t aware of what he was doing. All his paintings were large, anywhere from six feet square to eight feet tall and twelve feet wide, full of drama and color and strangeness. He worked exclusively in a fugue state, though not by choice.

[For those readers who have never heard of a fugue state in the dull kind of fiction they usually read, please allow me to explain. During such a condition, individuals appear to be like you or me, engaged in ordinary tasks, when in fact they are not consciously aware of what they are doing. Upon recovery from this phase, they have no memory of where they have been or what they have done. This might seem to be a convenient excuse for all kinds of outrageous behavior, but in fact it is a condition extensively documented by psychologists and other experts of their ilk. This is not the ideal place to explain how Spencer fell into such a curious career; that moment will come in Chapter Six, after he is on the road to Maple Grove and the momentum of the story is sweeping us right along. However, I felt that I could not just slap you with the term fugue state and then merely breeze onward without an explanation.]

So, having completed the painting and come out of his fugue state, Spencer was in his studio, standing before that enormous canvas, perplexed by the fantastic drama and color and strangeness of it. He wondered what he’d intended to convey while he had been slinging all that paint around.

When his smartphone rang, he felt a shiver of dread even before he saw the caller’s name. He was a sensitive artist who sometimes experienced presentiments of impending trouble. Sadly, he lacked the ability to foresee the exact nature of what trouble might be coming; consequently, he was unable to avoid such personal setbacks as when a carjacker stole his EV and drove it through the front wall of a pizzeria, where the battery exploded and melted the pizza ovens. Or as when he’d nearly lost his nose at a Japanese steak house where the tableside chef was poorly skilled with the razor-sharp knives that were used in the flamboyant preparation of a Kobe beef entrée.

Accepting the call, he said, “Mrs. Hernishen, tell me this isn’t bad news.”

“I would never lie to you, Spencer. I would never tell you I have good news when I don’t. Why would you make such an allegation?”

“I wasn’t alleging anything, ma’am. I just had a presentiment of dire news. A foreboding. And I hoped I was wrong.”

“I don’t mean to be fussy, Spencer, but I am older than you and therefore wiser than you. My superior wisdom allows me to say with authority that it is never a good idea to wish away bad news. Best to confront it, deal with it, and move on.”

“I imagine you’re right, ma’am.”

“There is no need to engage your imagination in this matter. You can be certain I’m right. How old are you these days, Spencer?”

“Thirty-five, ma’am.”

“By the time I was thirty-five, I didn’t have to imagine the answer to anything. I knew all the answers by then. A serious person should know the truth of everything by thirty-five. Do you consider yourself to be a serious person, young man?”

“Well, I guess I’m as serious as others of my generation.”

“That’s a terrible thing to say about yourself. Your generation is largely worthless. You must rise above the ruck and mire of their kind. If you can. If you want to. Of course, it is always a matter of ambition and ability. Perhaps the problem is that you possess neither.”

Besides being opinionated and judgmental, Britta Hernishen was also loquacious. [That word might be as unfamiliar to some readers as the term fugue state , but there’s nothing to be done about it now that it has fallen with a thud at the end of the previous sentence and is an immovable impediment to clear meaning.] At dinner, Britta could employ in excess of two hundred words to request that someone pass the pepper, in the process delivering a withering political opinion and a scathing review of a recent novel. At seventy, as a university professor who had been tenured for decades, she had no memory of a time when a student had dared to express an idea or sentiment in opposition to hers.

When required to attend a faculty meeting that promised to be a noisy airing of petty complaints, Britta sat in the back of the room and reread a Virginia Woolf novel while wearing wax ear stopples and humming old Woody Guthrie songs. By those precautions, she rendered herself deaf to the barked and hissed idiocies of other attendees, which was the rare occasion when she didn’t speak.

None of her faults or foibles mattered, for she was Ernie’s mom. Ernie had a big heart. Ernie was kindness personified. To love Ernie was to like his mom or at least tolerate her and treat her with respect. No matter what.

Spencer’s left hand was dry, but his right, with which he held the phone, was already damp with perspiration. He called it the “Britta effect.”

“Now, Spencer,” she said, “if we were to define what we mean by ‘serious,’ you and I would seem to be speaking different languages. However, since you consider yourself to be a serious person, perhaps you will consider a question I have that only you can answer. Please strive to be coherent.”

“I’ll do my best, ma’am.”

“In the living room of my son’s house, there hangs an immense painting that you ... executed. Do you know to what I refer?”

“Yes, Mrs. Hernishen.”

“Although it is a colorful fabrication, I am at a loss to understand why Ernest, the product of my own loins, would have purchased such a thing.”

“Oh, he didn’t,” Spencer said. “It was a gift from me to him.”

“Ah. I am much relieved to hear that. However, my primary question is not in regard to my son’s inexplicable taste.”

“What is it in regard to, ma’am?”

“Those objects or entities that are the subject of that ... that creation of yours. What are they?”

“Well, they are what they are.”

“And what is that exactly?”

“I prefer if each person who studies the painting makes that determination for himself or herself.”

“That’s what you prefer, is it?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Those objects or entities, whatever they are—I find them to be deeply disturbing.”

“Okay,” said Spencer.

“Disturbing and even at times disgusting, repulsive.”

“Thanks for letting me know.”

“You said ‘each person who studies the painting.’ Are there really people who study your works?”

“Yes. A few. A number. I don’t keep a list of names.”

“What kind of people are they, Spencer?”

“What kind? All kinds. All ages, races, creeds.”

“Is that so? You’re sure that those who study—actually study —your paintings are not reliably peculiar in the same way?”

“No, ma’am. I mean, yes. Yes, I’m sure. No, they’re not all of the same peculiar type.”

“Astonishing. May I ask you one more question, Spencer?”

“Why not?”

“What do you do for a living?”

“For a living? I paint.”

“Houses? Industrial buildings? Highway bridges?”

“Art. I paint art.”

“Is that the word you append to such works as the one in my son’s living room?”

“Yes, ma’am. I don’t know what else to call it.”

“Is that so?”

“I’m open to other words if there’s one more appropriate.”

“I asked for ‘one more question,’ but here I am with others.”

“That’s all right. I just hope I have answers.”

“I’m sure you will, Spencer, and they’ll be fascinating. You’re quite an intriguing specimen.”

“That’s kind of you, ma’am.”

“So there are people who actually purchase your paintings?”

“Yes.”

“Not imaginary people, but real flesh-and-blood people?”

“That’s right.”

“And they pay you with money rather than with bartered items like stolen TVs or illegal drugs?”

“Money. They buy them with money.”

“How much money?”

“In my early days, it wasn’t much.”

“I’m quite sure. Everyone endures salad years at the start.”

“Back then—thirty thousand, forty thousand per canvas.”

“Ah. Are we talking about the currency of the United States, Venezuela, Sri Lanka?”

“US dollars. Recent works bring four hundred to seven hundred thousand, depending on the size and complexity of each piece.”

“Well now. Well, well, well. My oh my. Isn’t that marvelous?”

“I’m amazed, ma’am.”

“I’m sure you are. I am likewise amazed.”

“I never had any formal training.”

“I’m sure you didn’t.”

“You know—Aldous Blomhoff has bought two of my works.”

“The Aldous Blomhoff who is director of the Keppelwhite Institute, who was also mayor of Maple Grove for four years?”

“Yes, ma’am. Hard to believe there would be another Aldous Blomhoff.”

“Oh, there are hordes of Aldous Blomhoffs. The world is crawling with his ilk. They just have other names.”

“He came to the gallery in Chicago. I thought he was nice.”

“Whatever talents you might possess, Spencer, you must never pretend to others or yourself that you are to any extent whatsoever a good judge of character. You are of little importance to me, but because you are a friend of my son, I would prefer that you didn’t embarrass yourself with such a manifestly false claim.”

Spencer transferred his phone from his sweaty right hand to his dry left hand, which immediately began to sweat. The Britta effect. Thinking back to an earlier point in the century when this call had begun, he said, “I forgot whether you phoned with good news or bad news.”

“I have not yet made my revelation. Now I will. My son, Ernest, has fallen into a coma, and his doctor says he will most likely die within twenty-four hours.”

Spencer’s voice broke. “Ernie and I, we’ve been through so much together. We’re brothers. I love Ernie.”

“I’m aware you and Ernest, as well as those two other social outcasts, were very close, the amoebas and all that business—”

“Amigos,” Spencer corrected.

“—but you are not brothers, Spencer. Ernest emerged from my loins, but you did not.”

“I was speaking figuratively.”

“If you do so again, please specify that explicitly.”

“Yes, ma’am. Listen, I’ll be there later today. We shouldn’t lose hope. We can’t. Never ever lose hope.”

“I am a realist, Spencer. I find life becomes intolerable when we embrace false hope, and there is no other kind.”

“We are not going to lose Ernie,” he insisted. “In spite of what the doctor said, most people come out of comas and go on with their lives as if nothing had happened.”

“Most?”

“Maybe ninety percent. Ninety-five percent.”

“Where did you get that statistic, Spencer? I know you didn’t get it in art school, let alone in a medical school.”

“Well, I guess, you know, I’m just speaking from, like, personal experience.”

“You’ve known a lot of people who’ve been in comas?”

He almost responded in the positive, but he bit down on the yes before he could speak it, because he realized that he wasn’t able to name anyone he’d known who had suffered through a coma.

Into his silence, Mrs. Hernishen said, “Have you been in a coma yourself, Spencer?”

Into his subsequent silence, she inquired, “May I ask you yet another question?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“When you are in your studio, creating your works of ... art, is there a particular substance that gives you the inspiration and energy to paint the kind of things you paint?”

“Substance?”

“Yes. Substance.”

“Coffee,” he said. “I drink a lot of coffee.”

“This substance that you call ‘coffee,’ might I call it by another name if I were to see it and smell it?”

“Well, I guess someone of your generation might call it java, but I think you’d still call it coffee.”

“That’s what you think, is it?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Twenty minutes later, when Spencer set out from Chicago on the long drive to Maple Grove, he wore a snap-brim porkpie hat of black felt, a black denim shirt with mother-of-pearl buttons, black jeans, and black boots. He owned multiples of that outfit and seldom wore anything else. He expected to be dressed the same when he arrived at his destination, but if he were instead wearing a three-piece summer suit or costumed like a pirate of the Caribbean, he wouldn’t be surprised. If by then his white Genesis had been transformed into a pumpkin drawn by white mice, he wouldn’t raise an eyebrow. Nothing surprised Spencer. The how and why of a great many things mystified him, but he was incapable of astonishment. Life had taken him places he could never have imagined, by a route he could never retrace; years earlier, he’d decided that planning the future was futile and that the wisest course was just to go with the flow.