Artistic Inspiration
Agnès Madrigal
A painting serves as inspiration for a story idea about three childhood friends. When the friends reunite years later, two discover that their attraction has been muted by the force of the third—an overpowering and privileged woman whose life did not turn out as the initial composition might have suggested. This first draft offers possibilities of themes and plot lines for a potential lengthier story.
Louise-Catherine Breslau, The Friends (Les Amies), 1881
Ella is the one who hatched the plans, who found the books, who got the dog. She grew the flowers in her parents’ backyard garden and, when you asked for a canvas upon which to paint, she managed to obtain that, too. She lived in the Victorian house with the wraparound veranda, with the manicured hedges, with the three turrets, one a playroom for her when she was a young child, and now it was where she was writing her novel. That was what that day was about. We were going to create together: Ella, her book; you, your painting, and me—there wasn’t a plan for me, yet.
I wasn’t overly creative, not like Ella. Ideas did not grasp me as they did her, clenching her in their jaws, shaking her up and down until inspiration triumphed. She had piles of writings in that turret. Her parents bought her more of everything she wanted: the notebooks, the loose parchment papers, the roll-top wood desk, and the inks in various colors. Her stories were written in sky blue, strawberry red, and grass green. As you established the palette for your painting, you were intrigued. “What was Ella, exactly?” I think you asked me once. I had the question, too, or something similar: “What was Ella’s need for devouring?”
“As you established the palette for your painting, you were intrigued. ‘What was Ella, exactly?’ I think you asked me once. I had the question, too, or something similar: ‘What was Ella’s need for devouring?’”
—Agnès Madrigal, from a first draft of “Artistic Inspiration”
You sat quietly at your canvas. It was on an easel in Ella’s house. You couldn’t take it home, it belonged to her, as did the mahogany box of paints and the several brushes and glass jars of various solutions. Her parents probably thought they were for Ella. If they knew they were for you, they would not have felt responsible. They bought her the stacks of books, the piano and the piano lessons, the dog she begged for, and your paints. What did you want to paint? You hadn’t said, not to me at least. Had you told Ella, or had she decided for you? She did that sometimes. She had not decided for me yet. I don’t remember what you painted—was it the pale pink alstroemeria flowers in the green glass vase? Surely they, too, had come from the back garden. They trembled next to Ella.
This is the tableau I always remember of the three of us: Ella’s ordered table, the steaming cups of tea her mother’s servant brought us, Ella’s ideas spoken at us, into the air, like forceful punches we could never resist. It was exhilarating at times. What else were we going to do? Our other friends kicked balls around, watched television, played card games. Ella’s parents forbid at least two of these activities, her mother called them “brain rot.” Ella was desperate to please her. Perhaps it’s why she wanted you to make the painting, why she dragged me in as well—that I might contribute in some way, might at least offer interesting conversation. She wanted stories to report back to her family at the verbose dinner table—I had had more than a few meals with them.
“What did you want to paint? You hadn’t said, not to me at least. Had you told Ella, or had she decided for you? She did that sometimes. She had not decided for me yet. I don’t remember what you painted—was it the pale pink alstroemeria flowers in the green glass vase? Surely they, too, had come from the back garden. They trembled next to Ella.”
—Agnès Madrigal, from a first draft of “Artistic Inspiration”
When we meet again these many years later, around another table in a fashionable café in the big city near the small town where we grew up, Ella is impressive, broad faced and broadly smiling, her freckles still sparkling off her cheeks as stars. She wears a grand velvet coat with a fox-fur collar and her hair, now laced with pretty silver strands, tucked under a felt hat with a feather. You are slight, as you were, wearing dark clothes as before. You’re shy now, shyer than you were, and you smile at me gently, and I note, for the first time, that you might like me, like me in a way beyond our friendship, into something sweeter. I never would have allowed for it before, perhaps you wouldn’t entertain it either. Ella was so strong, so forthright, neither one of us could imagine any sort of alignment that occurred without her, but affection such as this typically required only two.
When Ella speaks to us, she roars, like she did before. She commands the table immediately as she sheds the coat and her big leather handbag that bears a label I sense that some might find impressive. Do her parents continue to buy things for her as they did? Do they support her still? We know that Ella—in spite of her many years of schooling, well beyond what we were able to accomplish—has not worked for at least a decade, quit her earlier jobs as a research assistant and a secretary. We know she could not handle being in a role lower than she thought her intellectual capacity. That was always an issue, even in school, when she refused certain assignments or worked on the “simple homework” only half-heartedly. In the end, it did not serve her well. We were told there were two husbands and two divorces, the second only after a few weeks, and that she lived in a one-room apartment downtown, beside the opera, the walls lined with shelves of her books.
So it was, as she began the conversation robustly, talking of her latest idea—a story about a painting she had seen on a trip to Vienna—that I responded to you as I did. She spoke so loudly that she did not notice me, gazing upon your cheek, your cheek turned as it had been then, to the painting before you. When you felt my stare, you turned to me, as Ella dug in her handbag for something, cigarettes possibly, she smoked several at the table that night. We looked at each other, removing our eyes slowly only after Ella assembled herself again, and then, as she continued on about whatever it was, I reached my hand under the table and placed it gently over your knee, clad in your brown tweed trousers, cold and bony as though previously untouched.