The Woman in Oil Fields by Tracy Daugherty Page A

belly?”
    â€œNo.” A lie. Accompanied now by nosebleeds.
    â€œI’ll call again next week.”
    Robert never forgave him for the divorce, but his concern, so many hard years later, is touching. First wife, second wife. One’s in Europe now, one’s in the grave, poor Ruth. He really did try to love them both, each in her turn. He really did fail. The palace has been empty for more than a decade.
    In the food line, a young East Indian woman in a red halter dress, waiting for a slice of quiche, gives him a smile then moves on. Silently, with a moderately priced chardonnay, he toasts life’s simple ecstacies.
    ______
    Back on the street – chillier now, snow expected tonight – he’s approached by a man he doesn’t want to see, a fellow painter named Phillip, who shares his gallery. Phillip once challenged his remark that conceptual art is too easy. They’d been debating Robert Morris’s Box With the Sound of Its Own Making , a nine-inch walnut cube containing a tape recorder which played, over and over, the hammering and sawing of its construction. The effect was of an artist trapped by his own artifact, sealed from the world – too neat, and he’d said so. “Besides, it’s a one-joke piece.”
    Phillip disagreed. “I know, I know, you’re active in all these international organizations, and you think art should be morally engaged.”
    â€œI didn’t say it wasn’t morally engaged. I said it was too neat.”
    Phillip, in a bright yellow muffler, is pumping his hand now in front of the musuem. “What are you doing tonight?” he says.
    He mentions the follow-up letter to Poland.
    Phillip doesn’t hear. “I know. Nothing -how could you? The city’s dead this time of year. Come on over to my place. Kenneth and Jane’ll be there. We could play a little poker.”
    He sighs. Phillip seems to have a better time than he does.
    The man looks genuinely crushed when he says he’ll take a rain check. He should socialize. He knows he’s losing touch with his friends, and he’s surprised he doesn’t worry about it more than he does.
    â€œHow’s your work?”
    He shrugs.
    â€œListen, I’ve been meaning to tell you, I think old Jansen” – their dealer – “is screwing us. I mean, I know the market’s depressed, but come on! Kenneth and Jane and I want a show–down. Maybe next week. Are you with us? We’re going to talk about it tonight.”
    â€œSome other time, Phillip, thanks.”
    Phillip’s dark little mouth twists with disappointment. He tightens his muffler, nods then walks away.
    Shuffling home, he remembers the streets at the height of the war: “Angry Arts Week” in ’67. Poets moved in caravans shouting their outraged lyrics; postering brigades plastered windows with Guernica-like lithographs. Town Hall, he recalls, sponsored a conductorless performance of The Eroica , to symbolize the individual’s responsibility for the brutality in Vietnam.
    The Collage of Indignation , his own project with over a hundred other artists, was a “wailing wall,” according to one critic, “alienated and homeless in style, embattled in content.” Its contents – ugly, sordid and beautiful, as befits a cry of conscience – included a coil of barbed wire, a draft card and a rusty metal slab engraved with the words “Johnson is a Murderer.” His spine tingles with the memory of its textures, its dangerous hues.
    He thinks fondly of the heroes of the day. Meredith Monk. Her “dance protest” for draft-age boys. Alan Alda, Ruby Dee, John Henry Faulk and their “Broadway Dissents.” Grace Paley, Donald Barthelme, Philip Roth.
    Such imagination! And such false, fragile hopes, believing the pictures they made, the songs they sang could heal the planet’s cancer. He doesn’t see his buddies from that