Photos by Ed Hebert


At first Gerald had hardly ever thought about leaving home. Working out of the studio he shared with his wife, Helen, had made him unaware of his own feelings, deaf to the voice of his own flesh. The older he became the more he took it for granted, his unfailing ability to work, as though the spirit and pride of his father were in him, forever urging him on. In this long unveiling of his life, from delivering milk in frigid wind with his father in Maine to digesting and critiquing modern art, Gerald Diebenkorn finally had the kind of success he’d always known he could reach. And he’d never considered giving all that up.

Gerald had been dealt all high cards, and he knew it. Earlier in his career, he’d reveled in his good fortune, sprawling when he sat and grinning with a knowledge museum curators and gallery directors didn’t have. He’d fooled them all, pulling himself up the social ladder by his wits. He came to art criticism by chance. He went to Paris in the 1950s and walked the narrow medieval streets of the Marais district with the artists, the bohemians and the long-settled immigrants. He and his buddy cleaved their way into Florence Honigsblum’s bar night after night, bodies pressed close to move beyond the glossy red door, to marvel at the artistic rivalries of the day played out in shouts and gestures. And Gerald was hooked.

After they married, he and Helen took trips together to Naples, Cairo, and Tangiers, his favorite cities—hot, messy places. Once in New Orleans, they walked along the dusty ornate streets of the French Quarter. They went into an antique shop, well lit and smelling fresh of cedar and wood polish. Arranged in the shop were old chests of drawers, an eight-foot tall armoire, baby cradles, high-back chairs with faded Louis XIV patterned upholstery, and upstairs, a huge brass bed, glowing gold and orange. The store owner said, “That frame came to us from a turn-of-the-century whorehouse. Now it’s Claude’s place up over on Rampart Street. Nothing but gumbo and guitars now.” Helen was delighted, and they bought the bed and came together in the middle of it, day or night, whenever the urge swept over them.

There wasn’t a great deal Helen could do for Gerald, or rather not much he could make her feel he needed and appreciated, besides her presence at art openings and private parties. She gave herself completely to this role, having dreamt of it as a girl playing barefoot around the untamed lakes and rivers of Louisiana. Though not a great conversationalist—sometimes her choice of words raised eyebrows—she moved with the elegance of an aristocrat and could dance like other ladies of distinction, their bodies like ballerina dolls on the ends of sticks and their once pursed lips opening wide in laughter. It thrilled her husband to watch her. She molded his public image, and he obliged her, letting her choose the right clothes, shoes, food and wine and home—for entertaining—but also a loveable hound, Bianca, in whose face Helen saw her husband’s glum expression when they first met. With unabashed innocence, not surprising to Gerald, she shared that opinion with the new neighbors.

Their studio was on the top floor of a nineteenth-century building in a shaded square common to cities along the gulf coast. The rear of their home, however, was remarkable for its view of sky and sea. Pale blue met blue-green flashing motion to the South, and two thin strips of trees and one strip of road lay to the East. The ceilings were high and the windows glass giants in each room. They allowed light to flush the home with sunlight most of the day, to fold into rooms at dawn and to peel away at dusk.

The light began to affect his way of writing. Early in his career, when some new thought gripped his heart he went to a niche in the living room, his headquarters, to write it down on a loose sheet of paper or in the margins of a torn out magazine page. He could gather the scraps into a pile and, pulling out one at a time, write something that satisfied him, something cohesive and clear from fleeting ideas. But as his prestige grew, so did the demand for his work and he forced himself to sit in his chair and write for eight, ten hours a day. Food and drink appeared at his side as he worked, but he couldn’t recall how. He spoke on the phone to publishers, never still, doodling on a newspaper or tapping on his typewriter.

With each new publication his anxiety grew and shortly into his 60th year, as he was pushing through at his desk, confusion descended on him, tingling and fracturing thoughts in his head. He stared out the window for hours that seemed like minutes, and minutes that seemed like hours. Helen drifted in and out of his view throughout the day and when the gulf waters darkened he knew the end of another idle workday was near.

Helen noticed his growing nervousness and eccentricities, and it seemed no matter how carefully she expressed herself, her every word produced, to her great disappointment, an irritated or pained look from her husband. She’d become a caretaker, no longer a wife and a lover, the exuberance of their past wiped away a little more with each failed attempt to explain to him how she felt.

For all his self-absorption, he sensed her concern and blithely told her not to worry, he was just fine, they would maintain their social standing and quality of life, if he had anything to say about it.

He began taking walks at all hours. Long, meandering walks in obscure places—unkempt cemeteries and wild, overgrown parks. Helen worried about him when he went out alone. There were times when she could no longer bear the waiting and, panicking, ventured out after dark to find him. Sometimes she had to fetch him from a local café. At other times she was too tired to go looking for him and went to bed instead. But he always returned home to her. He’d slip soundlessly under the covers, look at his wife’s shape out of reach at the far end of the bed as though she were at the far edge of the earth, then turn away and fall into numb, safe sleep.

Not until during lunch one day did he grasp what her concerns had meant. Helen entered the room with a tray and Gerald was at his desk talking on the telephone. She opened the nearest window for fresh air and was pulling the curtain closed when Gerald snapped his fingers at her and shook his head. In her profile he saw something so briefly, he wondered whether he’d seen it at all. He no longer saw the joy of a wife apparently content and much younger than he, but the bitter, withering glance of a mature woman too old to care. If he wouldn’t admit he’d changed, then perhaps he’d never seek help from her or anyone. He would never get well, and their marriage, their private game, would be over. All her life invested in him, a big gamble made on faith and love, in the end, would have been worthless. Then she grinned at him—he imagined whatever upset her had disappeared—and she dragged the table closer to where he sat.

The living room was bright, and the walls, painted years earlier, had the appearance of cracked eggshells. Gerald tried never to be there during the brightest hours of the day because his confusion was strongest at that time, but today it’d been unavoidable. The light cut swaths through the living room in large triangles and formed interior shapes of intense greens, yellows, and purples, varied cut out pieces of slanted light on the table, on the floor and through the slats of ladderback chairs. When he had to be home, when he had to finish his work at the desk and couldn’t work at a table on the balcony because of a southerly wind, he situated himself in front of a giant window, nearly blinded in the sunlight so as not to see the angled light and how it changed his home into something unrecognizable. He’d tried working at night, but was unable to accomplish anything, going through the motions or falling asleep where he sat instead.

Gerald hung up the phone and slouched in his chair.

“I’ve brought your lunch,” she said. “You look exhausted.” She leaned over to kiss his cheek. “You slept in the chair, again, last night.”

“I wasn’t asleep,” he said. He rubbed his eyes and put on his glasses, which hung around his neck. “I was resting. If you get enough rest, you don’t need to sleep.”

“I see,” she said. She laughed quietly to herself, her back to him. She handed him a glass of iced tea. “Maybe I should try that.”

“It may not work for you,” he said. When he drank, the tea was so cold it pinched his forehead and made him more aware of his fatigue and his aching neck. “After my father got caught in an electrical storm, he stopped needing sleep. I think he passed it on to me.”

“I know.” She smiled and spread a napkin in his lap.

He looked at her and softened without meaning to. “Thanks,” he said. “What’s for lunch?”

She pulled a chair to the side table and sat opposite him. “Salmon with asparagus and toast. I made a chocolate pie for dessert, too.”

“This isn’t the kind of fish with mercury in it, is it? Knowing it’s contaminated would take all the joy out of it for me.”

“I was careful to ask for the uncontaminated kind,” she said.
They ate together, and a breeze blew through the window, cooling them in the hot room. He looked out the window and shaded his eyes with his hand. She looked at his face, searching for the right words, then turned away and surveyed the room instead.

To counteract the confusion, Gerald’s private demon, the studio’s interior had become a monastic—stark, as Helen put it, or classic and simple, as he put it. They had all they needed and what they had was good—six Frank Lloyd Wright chairs, a large oak table, a typewriter—he’d refused to ever get a computer, preferring instead to write each sentence spontaneously, authentically—and a work desk next to the matching chair where he sat. The bedroom contained the old brass bed, two dressers, enough clothes for a week of any season, two seasons, actually—hot and hotter—and silver and porcelain place settings for themselves and two guests, when they had guests. That was it. That was enough. He could only be in one house at a time and in one chair at a time or wear one set of clothes at a time until they were all dirty, but that was not his concern for Helen took care of the wash.

He saw there was something she wanted to say and, to forestall it, asked, “You made all this by yourself? You must’ve gone to a lot of trouble. But wasn’t there a girl helping us with the cooking and cleaning? I remember seeing a red-haired girl. What was her name?”

“Odette,” she said. “She was helping me while I was volunteering at the community center. I had to let her go before the fund drive was over because she was allergic to asparagus.”

He considered this. “Allergic.”

“I like to make fresh asparagus when it’s in season because it’s your favorite,” she said. “Mrs. Combray’s been giving us a batch from her garden every few days, and I had the girl steam it, only she puffed up like a balloon. I had to send her away.”

“I hope you gave her some sort of severance pay.”

“Certainly.”

“Good,” he said, nodding. “Still, I don’t want you doing everything by yourself. You cannot take care of the house and do your charity work, too. We’ll have to hire someone else.”

“I don’t need any help, darling.”

“But I want you to have some help,” he said. “If it’s money you’re worried about, you needn’t be concerned.” He placed his elbow on the armrest and leaned on his hand, tapping his cheek with his fingertips. “What about that Ducray girl? The big one, named something like ta-dum-dum.”

“A-li-cia.”

“That’s the one,” he said. “She’s still in school and could probably use the money. I saw her just the other day on one of my walks.”

“It’s not necessary,” Helen said.

Ignoring her words, he pressed on. “I know she’d do it because I did a little blurb on her Cousin Ella’s work. I think she’d feel she owes me a favor, though I don’t think that way.”

“Honey, Alicia Ducray moved to Royale three months ago,” she said softly. “Don’t you remember? She’s married and has a child, now.”

He sank back in the chair. His face flushed as if it had just been slapped. He swallowed hard, unfolded the day-old newspaper and pretended to read. “I’m sorry,” he said from behind the paper.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I understand.”

He looked at her over a folded leaf of paper. If possible, his blush deepened. “What exactly do you understand?”

“That you were trying to help,” she explained.

“So it’s come to this,” he said. “You’ve got me all figured out.”

He saw that she was looking at his face in shock, her mouth slightly open and her eyes widening.

“No,” she said. “But I can tell something is upsetting you.” She said these words carefully.

“Upset is the wrong word.”

She reached across the table to touch his hand, but couldn’t quite reach his fingers. He relented to her silent request and moved his hand forward to hers.

“I’d like for us to go visit my family for a few weeks. It would do us good to get away,” she said.

The heat from her hand and the urgency in her voice drowned the meaning of her words, and Gerald recoiled.

She was still leaning forward, looking at his face. “It may help you decide what you want to do.”

“I’ll think about it, Helen,” he said. He rose, found his keys, and went out the front door. She wondered how long he’d stay away this time.

The waiter led him to his usual table—outside on the patio under the blue canopies with a backdrop of the thick Louisiana sky and lush overgrowth of globular trees, Spanish moss threading down through the branches. A jazz rhapsody abruptly came out of small outdoor speakers. The volume was lowered.

Gerald was the only one sitting outside in the heaving heat. His linen shorts and buttoned shirt were sagging over his knobby shoulders and hips, and his favorite walking shoes—old, thick-soled oxfords—were damp and stretched out of shape. He cared little about his appearance anymore and to justify it decided that to others he appeared unremarkable, so unremarkable as to become part of the background wherever he was, like a moving stroke of color in a still-life painting or perhaps an Impressionist seascape.

Though he still preferred viewing modern art, which he’d been critiquing for 30 years, he didn’t want to be like modern art. He attributed this to his humility. It had become for him an obtrusive form, all those flat shapes, linear designs, and, even more disturbing, arbitrary and luminous colors. An intense Matisse could be as harmonious as a soft and lyrical Avery, yet he failed to see this anymore. Whereas in his youth his mind had grasped similarities in the most divergent aesthetics, he now felt confused and unimpressed.

Lifting a handkerchief from his pocket, he wiped his face beneath his eyeglasses, along his tanned brow, and in the dip above his lip where sweat pooled. He no longer liked the heat, the kind of heat that gave him the chance to study his own frailty. The heavy dampness was tolerable enough for the sake of being outdoors, though. He leaned back in the cushioned chair and removed his straw hat.

The waiter brought a glass of ice water and another of Chardonnay and a large midday meal on a three-tiered tray—a green salad on top, mussels in wine sauce with lemon on the middle tier, and a small mound of plain rigatoni on the bottom.

While eating he distracted himself from his own thoughts by watching passersby and eavesdropping on their conversations, which rose and fell in a leisurely rhythm keeping time with their steps. After sitting in the same spot every day, he’d come to feel part of them and their lives, to know them so well he could fill in the unheard spaces to pass the time.

The waiter brought a slice of lemon meringue pie, and Gerald ate slowly and listened to the voices of people going by. The pinching, dry wine taste on his tongue, a slight gulf breeze, damp skin recording the sensuousness of it all, would carry him through until the next day.

Then he reluctantly rose to go home. In the end, he always had to go back home. Gerald searched his pockets for loose bills as a tip. He turned his head toward the creaking, wrought iron gate of the seating area. A man approached him.

“Gerry? Well, how are you?”

“Tommy. This is a surprise. When did you get into town?”

The man ducked his head under the canopy and pulled a chair away from the table to sit. He paused a moment to breathe and hung an arm over the back of another chair. He waved Gerald back into his chair.

“I’m in the area for a few days representing some buyers and thought I’d look in on you. Helen said I’d find you here. You still like the action of the streets, don’t you?” He said this more like a statement than a question.

“You’ve been talking to my wife.” Gerald waited. He could rest his eyes on someone until the person squirmed and said more than intended. He liked to use this technique in particular with people in authority, his own private game.

The man patted the sweat on his face with a napkin. “I wanted to talk to you about your trip to Washington next month.”

Gerald didn’t like the sound of that and turned his gaze to the sky.

“Are you going to eat the rest of your pie?”

Still looking away, Gerald shook his head. The man reached for the leftover slice of pie. When he finished he mashed the remaining butter crust crumbs with a fork and ate them, too. He said, “It’s a hassle flying these days, and the summer months in Washington are brutal. Do you really feel up to making the trip?”

Gerald gave no indication he’d heard the question, made no attempt to take the bait for he loathed pretense and could sense it a mile away.

“How long have we known each other? Six, maybe seven years?” The man laughed. “I can still remember the first review you wrote of the Hartley exhibit. It was great.”

Listening and motionless, Gerald looked at the man now.

“Look, Gerry, I was in town and thought I should talk to you face to face because we’re friends. Mr. Behmand, the gallery owner, you remember him?”

“I know many gallery owners,” Gerald said. He signaled the waiter and asked for more ice water.

“This guy owns the Centaur Collection in Georgetown, one of several you’re to see next month.”

The waiter brought the water, and Gerald took a drink.

The man continued, “Anyway, he doesn’t want any bad press of the new show because it’s still a young gallery and he wants to attract donations. He knows we’re old friends and asked me to smooth things over with you.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The man hesitated. “Right. Gerry, you’ve been disinvited.”

In the outdoor light, Gerald felt changed, for the first time like a tired old man, his entire body collapsing in on itself and into the chair. He looked around without seeing. He thought, the fierceness of this business. We take beauty and turn it into a savage circus. I’ve done this. My whole life has produced this.

“How long has it been since you’ve gone to an opening or seen some new work? Jesus, you haven’t written anything in at least four months.”

“Don’t curse at me, Thomas,” Gerald said, rubbing his temples, the pleasure of the day seeping away from him now.

“Your last pieces needed work.”

“They were fine, I thought. And they were accepted.”

“Too critical,” the man said. Gerald raised his eyebrows. The man continued, “Saying an artist’s work is no better than horse pucks is over the top, Gerry.”

Gerald laughed. “You took that part out, though, didn’t you?” he said. “I remember that one. I could tell what kind of a painter he was just by looking at the edges of his paintings. No continuity. His work made no sense.”
“It’s your job to interpret it for people.”

“If I can’t do it, how are they going to do it? I owe it to them to be honest and spare them the frustration,” Gerald said. He saw himself as a man of the people. “Listen to me, Tommy. Art is about birth and death and lust and beauty. Contrary to popular belief, too little art measures up to this standard.”

The man shook his head. “Your criticism,” he began then stopped himself. He leaned across the table and said soft and low, “You don’t make any sense. And it’s affecting people. You’ve got to learn to go with the flow. You can’t just say whatever you think, anymore.”

He sat back and paused long enough to drink the ice water in Gerald’s glass. Then he rose to leave.

“You’ve been at this gig a long time. Maybe you and Helen should take a vacation together, take a break. You might even like it so much you decide to stop permanently.”

Gerald thought of Helen. She’d suggested the same thing earlier, but in a more kindly way.

Thunder growled, a rainstorm began. The café filled with people rushing under the canopy to wait out the squall. Gerald could barely hear the man speaking over the noise of falling rain and voices of others who’d taken cover nearby. It dawned on the man, an uneasy recognition, that Gerald wouldn’t be giving any answers. The conversation ended in polite neutrality; no promises from either side. The man left as the rain began to let up.

The signal changed to green, and Helen fell in with the collective stroll across the street, stepping lightly over puddles. She stopped in front of the café entrance and stood staring through the window. Not seeing her husband, she resumed her walk to the edge of the building and turned left. Her skirt fluttered at her heels with each step. Wisps of her hair, white and brown, had fallen out of her barrette and floated around her face. She saw Gerald leaning back in his chair, eyes shut, an empty glass in his hand. She opened the gate and eased herself into the chair across from him.

“I want you to come home with me now,” Helen said.

Gerald opened his eyes and looked at her. The dinner hour had arrived, and the waiter came and asked if they wanted to eat or drink. Helen said no, they’d soon be leaving. The waiter said they could stay as long as they wanted. Helen smiled at him and nodded, and the waiter left. Gerald had taken no notice. He was turning his hands over and examining them, thinking of what to say.

“Tommy was here,” he said.

“I know.”

Gerald lifted a hand out to his side and shifted in his chair, suddenly animated and pleased. “There’s a breeze. Can you feel it?”

“It’s cooler at home.”

“We can have a drink and sit awhile.” Gerald paused. His eyes wandered around the café and rested on a couple being seated for dinner, a man speaking and his companion laughing. “It’s been some time since we’ve been out together,” he said still gazing at them.

Helen nodded, but then leaned across the table and said, “Come with me.”

“Please,” he said. “Really I can’t. Not yet.”
“Come with me,” she repeated.

They stood and she picked up his hat and placed it on his head. On her tiptoes, she laid her hands on his shoulders and kissed his mouth, and he kissed her back. She led him by the hand through the gate. Twilight sifted softly on the horizon as they headed home beneath threads of Spanish moss, around a bend of sweet hyacinth blooms.

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