Bridge of Sighs

grandmother virtually destitute, though she declined my mother’s invitation to come live with us. When she herself died a month later, my mother sold the whole houseful of furniture to an antiques dealer from the city, and saw in the man’s greedy satisfaction that she’d been taken advantage of, that she’d failed to see the worth to others of something she herself thought unattractive. Had she undervalued her parents as well? I don’t know that this possibility occurred to her, though I imagine it must have.
    The other thing that surely became clear to her as a result of her parents’ passing was that our safety net was now gone. We were on our own.

ALL WORM
     
    N OONAN TOOK the vaporetto over to the Zattere. There he went to an outdoor café, ordered a cappuccino and waited for it to arrive before opening the manila envelope from Columbia University that Hugh had thrust at him on his way out the door, identical to the one that had arrived that summer and he’d marked RECIPIENT DECEASED: RETURN TO SENDER . Not a very good joke, now that he thought about it. Since then he’d turned sixty. His father had died at sixty, and it was beginning to look like sixty might just be Noonan’s allotment of years as well, his troubles no longer coming singly but in…he tried to remember the quotation, what troubles came in when they left off coming one at a time.
    The envelope contained, as he’d known it would, material touting the university’s master of fine arts program. A cursory glance revealed that none of the painters, sculptors and visual artists pictured in the glossy brochure were people Noonan knew, but then they were mostly young and it had been a long time since he’d been in New York. As a younger man he’d tried to keep up with what was happening back home and elsewhere in Europe, but sometime during the last decade he’d realized that he didn’t much care anymore. Lately, he even lacked patience for the local art scene. If he accepted Columbia’s offer to teach next year, as Hugh was pressuring him to do, how would he ever summon the energy to learn who in the world his colleagues were, never mind the hypocrisy necessary to feign interest in them? It was dispiriting even to contemplate. His remaining time—the only true coin of any artist’s realm—would be frittered away in the name of collegiality.
    But wait. On the academic side of the MFA roster, he did recognize a scholar/critic named Irwin Popov—not a name one could forget—who’d written a long, labored and extremely unflattering review of his last New York show some thirty years earlier, accusing him of crude technique and, of all things, homophobia. Noonan was pleased to note that the supercilious little putz’s career had ground to a halt at associate professor, and his most recent book had been published by an undistinguished midwestern university press. Tenured, Professor Popov was now insulated against professional anxiety, but not, thankfully, humiliation, as evidenced by the handwritten note stapled to the page below his mug shot.
Dear Bob (if I may),
the note began. “You may
not,
” Noonan, half a world away, replied emphatically, causing a nearby table of Japanese tourists to regard him curiously.
Advancing years offer the academic art critic many opportunities for regret. My little review of your show—what? three decades ago?—is one such opportunity, and I sincerely hope that its memory, in the unlikely event you
do
remember it, will not prevent you from doing my colleagues and me the great honor of joining our graduate teaching faculty. Indeed, I look forward to many bracing conversations on the subject of our shared passion with almost as much anticipation as your upcoming show next month.
It was signed “Irwin, the Contrite.” How hard, Noonan couldn’t help wondering, had the department chair had to twist the now-brittle Popov arm to procure
that
smarmy screed?
Little
review? The bloody thing had taken up a full third of the issue! And what shared passion? Did the mean-spirited little twit assume that Noonan, too, was a pederast?
    Gathering up the brochure, catalog and cover letter, he shoved them all back into the manila envelope and consulted his watch. Half an hour had passed since he left Hugh alone in the studio to acquaint himself with the new canvases. He’d like them, Noonan knew. It was good work and for once there was a lot of it. In the past Hugh had chided him for laziness, but this time