What I Loved

her nerves, did not stop.
    Whenever an artist dies, the work slowly begins to replace his body, becoming a corporeal substitute for him in the world. It can't be helped, I suppose. Useful objects, like chairs and dishes, passed down from one generation to another, may briefly feel haunted by their former owners, but that quality vanishes rather quickly into their pragmatic functions. Art, useless as it is, resists incorporation into dailiness, and if it has any power at all, it seems to breathe with the life of the person who made it. Art historians don't like to speak of this, because it suggests the magical thinking attached to icons and fetishes, but I have experienced it time and time again, and I felt it in Bill's studio. When the art movers came and carried out the meticulously packed and carefully labeled crates and boxes as Violet, Bernie, and I watched, I was reminded of the two men from the funeral home who had put Bill's body into a vinyl bag and hauled it out of the same room two months earlier.
    Although I knew better than most people that Bill himself and Bill's art were not identical, I understood the need to grant an aura to the work he had left behind him—a kind of spiritual halo that resists the harsh truths of burial and decay. When Bill's coffin was lowered into the ground, Dan rocked back and forth beside the grave. He folded his arms across his chest, bent forward from his waist, and then threw himself backward, over and over again. Like an Orthodox Jew at his prayers, he seemed to find comfort in the physical repetition, and I rather envied him his freedom. But when I walked over to him and looked into his face, it was ravaged and his eyes were wild and staring. Later that day on Greene Street, Violet gave Dan a tiny canvas that Bill had done of the letter W with a real key set into it. Dan put it under his shirt and hugged the little painting throughout the afternoon. It was warm, and I worried that he was sweating all over it, but I knew why he was holding the object next to his skin. He wanted no separation between himself and the little painting, because somewhere in the wood and canvas and metal he imagined that he was touching his older brother.
    I brought Bill back to life in my dreams. He would come walking through my door or appear beside my desk, and I would always say to him, "But I thought you were dead," and he would say, "I am. I just came back for a talk," or "I'm here to check on you—to make sure you're all right." In one dream, however, when I asked him the same question, he said, "Yes, I'm dead. I'm with my son now." I began to argue with him. "No, I said, Matthew is my son. Mark is your son," but Bill wouldn't admit to it, and in the dream I was furious and woke up tormented by the misunderstanding.
    Even after most of Bill's work had been taken from the studio, Violet continued to go to the Bowery every day. She told me she was taking care of odds and ends, sorting through Bill's personal things, mostly letters and books. I often saw her leaving the building in the morning with a heavy leather bag over her shoulder. She didn't return until six, sometimes seven o'clock at night, and when she did, she often had dinner with me. I cooked for her, and even though my culinary skills were inferior to hers, she always thanked me vociferously. I began to notice that for about half an hour after she arrived at my apartment, Violet looked strange. Her eyes had a glassy look, an oblique, shiny expression that alarmed me, especially in the first few minutes after she had stepped through the door. I didn't comment on it, because I could barely put what I was seeing into words. Instead I made small talk about the food or a book I was reading, and very slowly her face began to look more familiar and more present, as if she were returning to the here and now. Although I had heard Violet crying a couple of times since Bill died, had listened to her anguished sobs coming through the ceiling of my bedroom at night, she didn't grieve in front of me. Her strength was admirable, but it had a brittle, determined air about it that every once in a while made me uncomfortable. I guessed that her toughness was Blomian—a Scandinavian trait inherited from a long line of people who had believed in suffering alone.
    It may have been that same pride that caused Violet to ask Mark to come and live with her. She told Lucille that starting in July he could stay with her and find work in the city. Mark