The Great Man by Kate Christensen Page B

interest,” said Maxine. “In children, you could say.”
    â€œAnd in Teddy’s children especially.”
    â€œIt’s no secret,” said Maxine, “what I’ve always thought of her.”
    â€œYou’ve only said you don’t like her. You haven’t said why.”
    Maxine declined to respond to this.
    â€œOscar was a complicated man,” said Henry. “A very different kind of man from me. I don’t judge him; in fact, I wish I were more like him. It’s an honor, writing his life, talking to his family.”
    â€œI’m happy for you,” she said, standing up.
    â€œBefore I go,” said Henry without making a move to leave, “let me just say that I love your work. It makes me think of Franz Kline crossed with sumei painting—something about the powerful tension between control and wildness, your fluid and subtle but rigorous and tough-minded brushwork. Nothing sentimental, nothing extraneous, but what’s there feels both unerringly and passionately executed.” He took a hasty sip of tea. “I hope it’s all right that I said that.”
    â€œOf course the Franz Kline comparison is music to my ears,” said Maxine. She was suddenly feeling a little more alert. “He was a great painter, an amazing painter. He influenced me in definite ways. And sumei painting, well, yes, of course sumei painting…I use Japanese brushes and techniques. But you wouldn’t tell a man his work was tough-minded. That’s something men say to women as a compliment, and it really means ‘masculine.’”
    â€œYou seem to have it in for men,” said Henry with a smile. “I’m used to it by now. My wife does, too.”
    â€œI have nothing against men,” she replied. “I like men. Actually, I can’t stand most women, except the ones I’m attracted to. But I’ll be ninety in six years. I’ve had plenty of time to observe a few things.”
    â€œI meant that your work is tough-minded,” said Henry, “like Kline’s. There is a similar achievement of absolute beauty without wishful thinking.”
    Maxine cleared her throat. “Thank you,” she said against the upswell of words in her throat: I was always a much better painter than my brother; it was just that I was quiet. I didn’t make waves. I was never comfortable with interviews, publicity, all that. I just painted. Oscar was a showman, a charmer, an attentionmongerer, a flirt, even as a little boy, and I was a good girl, and look where it got me…. I never learned to play the game; I just waited on the sidelines for someone to notice me and see me for what I was, like the peasant girl in the fairy tale.
    â€œThank you so much for your time today,” said Henry. He bounced Chester a little in his arms, preparing to wrap him up and carry him back down to the car.
    â€œThe truth is, I’ve always felt like the peasant girl in the fairy tale,” said Maxine. It came out sounding strangled.
    Henry closed his notebook and put it into his shoulder bag. “What do you mean?”
    â€œOh,” she said. “Just kvetching.”
    â€œWhy would you feel like a peasant girl?”
    Maxine warmed to the surprise in his voice and felt her opposition to his questions soften a little, like slightly warmed wax. “There’s only so much fame that comes to those who don’t make themselves notorious in some way,” she said. “My greatest mistake was not allowing an aura of scandal around my name. I’m queer, as they say now—you’d think I could have turned that to my own advantage, but I’ve always been so naïve about those things, making the personal public, and vice versa. It’s not that I don’t have secrets. I have some great secrets. I just always preferred not to tell them.”
    She walked off to the studio area of the loft, lifted something from a bowl on a