A Touch of Ochre

A Touch of Ochre
By
Joseph Timothy

         I once had an art teacher who was obsessed with the color ochre.  Yes.  Not blue.  Not green.  Not indigo or mauve, - but ochre.
         “Ah yah.”  He would say in an undefined old world accent.  “This is a real nice fruit bowl, mmm-hmm.  Nice symmetry.  Yup.  Nice.  Real nice color variety.  Nice.  Good shading.  Could uuuse - a little ochre, though.”
         Ugh!  Ochre?!  It reminded me of that little, yellow-brown mess one finds in a soiled diaper.  Why would anyone want to put that in a fruit bowl?  But then again, why would anyone want to paint a fruit bowl in the first place?  Its not like it's some universal metaphor, an expression of some inner truth.  Oh, yes.  I could see it now at the New York Museum of Art.
         “Ah, yes.  Exhibit number 23.  “The Fruit Bowl.”  Hmm.  Yes.  It speaks to me.  It moves me.  Could use a little ochre, though."
         I shouldn't be so negative.  Perhaps there is some intrinsic truth in a fruit bowl, which is just beyond my comprehension.  I should ask my mother.  She has adorned the dining room wall with my high school artwork over the years.  I've tried to dissuade her.  I’ve tried to point out its obvious flaws.  Its flatness.  Its stillness (even for a Still Life).  Its ill proportions.  Its...lack of ochre.
“Well, yes, Tim.  But it is a fruit bowl.  And really, okra is a vegetable.”

         My mother had turned the house into a regular Louvre with the artistic productions of her poor hapless brood.  It wasn’t like any of us were artists, except maybe the second oldest, Mike.  Yeah, Mike.  He was good, except he did pastels of demons and naked women riding unicorns.  My Mom always stored these “special compositions” in the cabinet, a long low solid wood cabinet with sliding panel doors where we kept old vinyl albums, spare ashtrays, Christmas lights, and the missing file from the Warren investigation.  Mom had us convinced that this was the place to keep things that you didn’t want ruined with daylight and camera flashes.  My brother didn’t seem to mind.  As a matter of fact, it rather pleased him.  There was a certain genius to him that I didn’t quite appreciate until later.
         My oldest brother Butch evolved rather late in life.  He discovered paint-by-numbers in his late teens, to nurture his less manly side, I guess, when he wasn’t hauling furniture and pumping iron.  His “Last Supper” hung predominantly in the dining room with a half a dozen Mass cards and palm fronds shoved in various spots between and behind the frame.  Commanding a haunting look over the dinner table, it was placed appropriately over our father’s chair.  Guests felt that it imported some “inner sense of truth,” for upon close inspection, one could see a different number within each of the Apostles’ eyes.
"How touching.  How profound.  Does it reflect the artist’s conservative view of preordination or radical view of gnosticism?"
"It reflects the artist’s conservative use of cheap paint," I would answer.  “We call it, ‘Early Man Discovers Oils’.”
         In a moment of profound reflection, Butch would pause from his gnawing at a turkey bone, sit near erect, strain his protruding brow on the object of conversation, and grunt an approval.

         One day when I came home, I observed Butch gingerly stalking up the stairs with a canary-eaten-grin from ear to ear, and a large rectangular object concealed underneath his winter coat, much like a cartoon art thief from a Pink Panther episode.  I thought nothing of it at the time.  I just figured he was smuggling the latest Sears catalogue up to his room, self-delighting in his own prowess and stealth past Mom and Dad (Actually, Dad always made sure to slip off the brown wrapper so Mom would harp about Butch ripping the cover, again).
         “Mom!”
         “What, dear?”  She answered me.
         “What are you doing?”
         “I thought it was time to have a changing of the guard.”
         “Yeah.  Well in between shifts, fat-head Butch came down and switched our paintings.”
         “Joseph!” she lightly scolded me, “That’s not nice to accuse your fat-hea... your brother like that.”  Her tone softened and she smiled,  “I mean we had your brother’s masterpieces up for so long, and now that you’re going to be bringing home your art from school, it’s your time to shine.”
         “Well, couldn’t I shine in the cabinet with Michael’s naked women?” 
         She shot back a Holy-Mother-of-God look at me.
         “I meant figuratively.”
         I briefly entertained the notion of etching nudes and grotesque demons.  No doubt it might draw some response from some of the priests at the seminary and a trip to Father Marty’s couch.  Nope.  Couldn’t do that.  A new thought entered my mind.  A new light glimmered in my eye.
         “But Mom. Butch’s painting is not just a picture.  It’s an icon, a statement, - with all the palms and Mass cards, the Apostles.  It would be like, like booting Jesus away from the dinner table.”  Mom was wavering, I could tell, but she was not yet swayed.  She stood there, hands folded at her sternum, gravely contemplating my “Still Life,” set within the larger frame of lighter color paint where “The Last Supper” had formerly resided.  Her eyes narrowed.  I could almost see within her pupils a swirl of digits...nines, tens, sevens.  I turned, shoulder to shoulder with her and looked up at the picture.  I laid my hand on her arm and softly said,
         “Did I ever tell you that Father Connors used Butch’s painting in his sermon on Pentecost Sunday?”

         At dinnertime, Butch and I were both smoldering under contempt and shame.  At one end of the room, looming over Dad’s head was “The Last Supper,” with the Apostles gazing apocalyptically at the family.  At the other end, above Mom, occupying another former niche of my brother was my “Still Life.”  Every now and then, Dad, while entertaining a mouthful of pot roast, would take a long hard squint at the new addition on the opposite wall, and shake his head before resuming his vigorous assault at the gristle on his plate.  I could tell Butch was pissed at me by the way he kept flicking his potatoes and vegetables at me from across the table. 
         “Mo-omm!  Butch is throwing his food at me!”(I always called for Mom.  Dad would more than likely, especially at meal time, turn on the supplicant.)  Everyone dismissed my current charge as fiction.  The last time any food got by Butch’s jaws unmolested was when Dad sneezed a mouthful of sour cream and frosted Mom’s new perm.  But I always held that that was due to dull motor skills rather than a matter of discretion on my brother’s part.  My sister, “The Giggler,” now began her dinnertime litany.  My father reflexively, without even looking up, or for that part, moving any part of his body other than his left arm, slapped the chair to his left knocking it over.  Shaking his throbbing hand he no doubt briefly considered it time to rotate Mike’s seat back to his right side for a while. With a shocked look, Dad looked over to the floor, under the table, then leaned back in his chair and cast a concerned look into the kitchen.
         “Michael is staying late at the garage, tonight.”  Mom said while helping herself to some more vegetables.  “He said he was helping a friend drop a six-pack into his Chevy.”
         Dad looked back over the table, straining to glare into the souls and consciences of his children. We all assumed our innocent poses. Beginning at his right I met Dad’s gaze with folded hands and that 14 year-old angelic look I perfected from serving Novena’s and funerals.  Anne took long thirsty gulps of milk, her “sweet sixteen,” doe-like eyes returning Dad’s from over the rim.  Little brother Bill, who at five still sat nestled close to Mom at the opposite end, looked up with that wide-eyed, rabbit-caught-in-a-headlight stare; and Butch, to the right of Mom, buried his face into his plate, his rusty, long hair forming a discreet curtain over his trough.
         Dad’s eyes abruptly jerked back to the fallen chair, his eyes keenly deliberating between the empty seat and our mother, evidently weighing the words of his son’s alibi with a woman who at the Tower of Babel would have glibly conversed with that portion confounded with malapropism and errant punch-lines.  But her eyes were busy perusing the wall to the right, with the scene of the gulls hovering over the sandy beach at sunset, a brilliant array of orange, red, sevens and tens, - smiling and rocking her head, probably fantasizing about some enchanting party conversation.  Dad simply shook his head with a “hmph,” and returned eating.
         When I caught Mom giving her eldest son a long, compassionate look, I spoke up.
“I have an idea.  Why don’t we put Butch’s ratty sailboat back up where it used to be.”
         Butch raised his single potato-encrusted brow and glared at me.  Anne giggled.  I felt something warm and sticky smack my cheek with a vengeful force.  Milk squirted out of my sister’s nose and Dad raised his left hand to the empty chair, paused, and eyed me.  He surely must have seen the creamed spinach dripping from my chin.  He shot a quick glance over to Butch, who even now had his head lowered, nuzzling some scraps from his plate.  Dad smiled and shook his head as if briefly entertaining the absurd.  He broke off a piece of a roll and tossed it to the orange mass.
         “Aw Da-ad!”  I whined.  “You’re giving him ammunition.”
         The bread gradually assimilated amid the farm-like sounds and tangle of hair and vanished.  The repulsive thought of Butch’s ingestion process was scarier than any potential missile threat.  Satisfied, Dad resumed his own dinner, speaking to me between bites.
          “Boy, in between Latin and Bingo, can’t the fathers teach you how to eat without having food run down your face like that?”

         Later, I tried persuading Mom that Billy’s crayon etchings were ready to graduate from refrigerator to wall, - but to no avail. I finally figured, that if I couldn’t hide my little atrocity, perhaps I could at least obscure the signature enough so that someone more deserving could earn the blame.  So I tried moving the flanking wall photo of JFK over to the left in an attempt to conceal that bottom right edge containing the incriminating signature.  But Mom only straightened it out.  Another time, I tried placing a little wallet size photo of the Blessed Heart, the kind that the Virgin Mother must have carried and showed to her friends at the market...
“... And here's a picture of my son with his bare heart on fire and a sword driven through it.  Did I ever tell you about the time he brought the lepers home for dinner.  What a mess!  I was picking up after them all night!"
         But Mom moved the card to another corner.  Once, even, I got some of Dad’s bowling trophies out of the cabinet and lined them on top of the hutch, producing an obstructing skyline in front of “Still Life.”  But this only resulted in a rather large, weighted down box for the St. Vincent DePaul truck that Thursday, and a month-long silent feud between Mom and Dad.
         Finally I went through my brother Mike's oils in desperation.  It had been a long time since he picked up the brush.  Perhaps if his more artistic though less unorthodox side had been cultured, he would have chosen to soil his nails with the oils of the pallet rather than that of forty weight, and I wouldn't be having this dilemma.  But no.  There was only one hope now.  There was only one tube remaining.

         “Um, Tim.”  Mom asked.  “Did you do something to your painting?”
         “Uh, yes.  I touched it up.”  I answered.  “I added a little more color to it.  Don't you like it?”  I added with hint of rejection.
         “Oh, no, no.  I mean yes, yes.  I like it.  I love it!”
         “I felt it could use just a little more color.  Now, my art is finished,” I said with an artist’s flare of the hand.  “You don't think I ruined it?  Do you?”
         She reached for the canvas, lightly touching the dab of newly dried paint in the lower right corner.
         “Oh no, honey.  It's perfect!  Do you have a name for it, yet?”
         “Yes.”  I responded.  “I call it: ‘A Touch of Ochre’.”