Ugly Behavior

Saguaro Night

My father used to say he loved the southwest because here it’s obviously the landscape that matters and not the people. People who try to compete with their buildings, their roads, and their works are all just too pitiable, as if they were desperate for God’s attention. “In the process they came damn near to ruining this country,” he’d say. “I mean, look at Phoenix.” Never mind that I liked Phoenix; both as child and daughter my opinion on the matter didn’t count. If my brother had lived past the age of six his opinion might have had more weight, but I honestly doubt it, even though I’ve held onto the notion now and then as a convenient source of resentment.

Once or twice a year my father would drive me up to the Grand Canyon just to put me in touch with something “beyond man’s power to alter.” To me the Canyon was just this great big hole in the ground, but I knew better than to say that to my dad. Dad said he was glad he was a painter and not an architect in the face of such awe-inspiring vistas. This landscape, he said, required an artist already in sympathy with that world where human concerns were irrelevant.

My father was the perfect artist for that landscape. He had a “problem” with human beings, was the way he put it. Not a fear, exactly, but an obvious unease. Not exactly a hatred, or at least not a hatred he would admit to, but a profound distrust. If you look closely at his most famous painting, “Saguaro Night,” you can see signs. Row after row of blackened saguaro lean forward as if marching toward a distant wrinkle of mountains. The sky behind and above all this is deep, inky, unfathomable. The painting seems simple enough at first glance, but then you start thinking why are the cacti so black? Has there been a fire? I always thought they looked as if they were suffering. Maybe they’re not cacti after all? My father didn’t paint them realistically, exactly, but in a style he called tormented expressionism. The lines are tortured, the shapes distressed, the colors despairing. No one really “likes” the painting, although it has fetched incredible prices over the last few years. I’ve heard that the last two owners couldn’t bear to hang it in their homes. I’m told that once an old woman, a concentration camp survivor, burst into tears upon seeing it in a traveling exhibition of my father’s work.

One cactus is not black—that small one in the background, on the edge of the right upper quadrant, a shimmering red-orange laid in with a few quick strokes, hardly formed, really. But so compelling. Some people say that’s where the other cacti are leaning toward, their cactus deity. I’m not so sure about that, but I do know that’s where the eye goes.

So my father’s primary artistic inspiration was a distrust of human beings. Like any good daughter, I became his opposite. My weakness as an artist, and as a human being, is that I’ve trusted and loved people too much. My paintings, and my relationships, have been overwrought, sentimentalized, unrealistic affairs. Critics have pointed out superficial resemblances in our work, always to my detriment. Certainly I learned my technique from him, but I’ve always taken it too far—I lack his iron discipline. And we’re both attracted, at least initially, to drunks and addicts. But after a year or so of passionate involvement, my father always leaves his unfortunate choices behind. He was with my mother a record two years, two months. I usually stay with my lovers until they ruin me.

And yet, strangely enough, for all this I always knew that my father both appreciated and loved me. I was always the only one.

My father had lived by himself on a small ranch outside Tucson for over twenty years when I came to stay with him the last few years of his life. I was running from yet another bad relationship. I suppose because this one had been so particularly bad, I ran to my father. Dad’s relationships, also, had always been spectacularly bad. But he survived them, even thrived on these dramatic break-ups. He always appeared more content afterwards, and his paintings only improved. I decided this was yet another area where I could learn from his technique.

“So this young man, do you suppose he’ll be following you here?”

“God, I hope not.”

“There is no god, sweetheart,” he corrected me quietly, matter-of-factly, as had always been his way. I had been watching him paint—he didn’t mind; he said he’d just pretend I was yet another saguaro cactus—and I wondered at what he was working on. All his paintings those last few years started the same—he painted the blacks first, the endless sky, the mirroring ground. Much later more specific objects would appear, as if he’d shone a flashlight on them, or rubbed the night away just enough to reveal them. The beginning he made that day would evolve into the painting which became known as “Saguaro Night.”

“Sometimes I forget, Daddy.” He didn’t say anything, but I could see his cheeks lifting slightly. I knew he was smiling, just a little. He was very lean, and the first signs of his illness were just beginning to show. His muscles moved with no secrecy beneath his skin.

“When you were little you asked me to paint a picture of God for you,” he said. “I suppose if I stopped this painting right about now…” He added another brush of darkness to the canvas. “I guess I’d just about have him.”

On impulse I hugged him from behind. I shocked myself—usually I didn’t dare touch him while he was working—but he didn’t pull away, and I didn’t feel him stiffen at all. He just kept adding more of that endless night sky to the painting.

The summer was passing uneventfully. The days were beyond hot, and although he kept several ancient fans around, he refused to have anything to do with air conditioning. I didn’t paint anything, even though he had set aside studio space for me in an annex to his own work room. I could feel his intense disapproval, but he never said anything. I couldn’t imagine working in such heat, worse than anything I’ve ever experienced, but he was at it eight hours a day, seven days a week. After dusk he would fix us both some dinner—he never permitted me to cook—and afterwards he would sit in a rotting old chair on the edge of the desert twenty or so yards from the house, just watching the night sky that existed, I think, both outside and inside his head. He wasn’t exactly unfriendly about it—he often invited me to join him, but I always declined. This was his, and besides, there was only one chair out there.

We never saw anyone except for a couple of old cowboys who came by now and then to do repairs to the house or the fences, and the boy from the local grocery in his battered green pickup. Each time I’d open the door to let the boy in with the supplies I’d be amazed at how wet he was, and how he seemed just a bit smaller than the last time, as if his brown skin were shrinking around him like the sheath over a fried sausage link. I stayed inside on days like that—the newspapers the grocery boy brought each time (just for me, of course), talked about windshields on parked cars exploding from the heat. I wrote lots of letters during that summer to old friends and boyfriends, but I didn’t mail any of them. The letters were all alike, and like my father’s paintings: all about the heat and the sky, and the dark that came without street lamps to lighten it.

But sometimes I’d start writing about the dark and the sky, and something from the newspaper would slip into the letter, almost without my noticing it. I suppose that shouldn’t have been too surprising, since all there was to write about was the dark, the heat, and the sky, and whatever I read in the newspaper.

A lot of terrible things happened that summer, according to the papers (I had no reason to doubt them, but I’d never felt so isolated from other people’s news as I did then so it was a little like reading about these events in a novel). Four girls, ten to eighteen, had been raped, strangled, and left out in the desert where the animals found them before their families did. A father had locked himself in the house with his three kids and then set fire to the place, while the mother sat wailing and screaming helplessly outside. A shoplifter had been chased from a downtown store where three cowboys caught him, beat him, then threw him out in front of a moving truck. The usual run of traffic accidents, bad enough in and of themselves, but then there was that especially hot Wednesday afternoon that a long distance truck driver “went strange” and plowed down the highway hitting everything and everyone he could. The final death toll on that one was twenty-eight, with a dozen more permanently disabled.

My father came up behind me while I was reading the story. I looked up at him and he said, “You want to know why.”

I nodded.

He gazed out our back window at miles of desert with saguaro that seemed somehow too upright, and closer to the house than I remembered them. “It’s just the sky,” he said. “And the dark nights, those distant mountains, the heat. That’s always been, I think, at the heart of it.”

Tommy showed up at the ranch around the second week of August. “Hey, Babe. It’s your sugar daddy!”

Sadly enough, the heart does go pitter patter at times like these. I remember seeing him there in a white dress shirt and tight jeans, leaning on the door jamb with one arm, his legs crossed to show off some rich leather cowboy boots. If I were younger I’d think that pitter patter meant true love. But I’ve come to realize that, at least for me, it was just the anxiety spawned by the attraction to someone bad for you. Of course my first thought was where did this New Jersey boy get those boots? Either he conned a woman at some bar to buy them for him, payment for services rendered, or he’d just stolen them outright. My second thought was how much he looked like James Dean standing there, and of course there was nothing accidental about that. He loved the movies as much as I did, and he knew how to duplicate a pose. I’d seen him do it in front of a hundred different mirrors.

“How’d you find me?”

“What? No ‘Hi, how are you, it’s great to see you, I’m glad you took the time to come all this way?’ That’s hurtful.”

“We broke up, remember?”

“I know. It wasn’t my idea, exactly, but I was there. Doesn’t mean we can’t still be friends. You know I’ll always be there for you, babe. You’re just that important.” He stepped forward, his arms out.

“Tommy, no.”

“Just a hug, girl. I swear, that’s all.” So I let him hug me. I didn’t hug him back; not knowing what else to do, I patted his shoulder. “That’s nice,” he crooned. Cheesy, but I can’t swear it didn’t work.

I know I shouldn’t have allowed the familiarity, the pretense that we’d ever been or would ever be anything approaching friends. I have no legitimate defense, but he was always one of those guys it was hard to give a final “no” to. It didn’t matter what he did, I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. It’s crazy, when I think about it now, and hard to explain. It’s just that when I was with him, especially after a long absence, it was hard to believe he wasn’t exactly who he pretended to be, who I wanted him to be.

He let go of me and walked inside before I could bring myself to say anything. I was surprised to see him, after all, but I know I shouldn’t have been. I made myself ask again, “How did you find me, Tommy?”

“You know, this place is great,” he said, looking around, picking up things and putting them back down, touching the pictures on the walls. “Is this one of your old man’s?” he asked, running his finger down the naked image of a woman in one of my dad’s favorite oils, a present from an old friend who died when I was just a girl. It was a beautiful piece of art, and seeing Tommy’s finger on the exposed paint sent me into a panic. But before I could say anything he removed his finger, examined it as if for rubbed-off color, and said, “No, of course not. It’s too normal, right? But I can see why he likes it out here. It’s small, but it’s neat, and nobody to bother you, right? Nobody dropping by? You should have explained this place better, Babe. I always thought it was pretty lame, him living all alone out here like he was. But now I can see, I can appreciate why he’d like it so much. Hell, I’d like it here, too.”

“Tommy, how did you find me?”

He looked at me, wiped the smile off with the back of his hand like it was something dirty. “Now don’t be that way, Mary. I wanted to see you. I wanted to visit you. I care about you, Mary. Why don’t you understand that?”

My alarm bells were going off, for all the good it did me now. Before when my Tommy alarms went off all I knew to do was run. But out here I didn’t have any place to run to. All that was left was to try to mollify him. “It’s just that we’re pretty hard to find out here,” I said. “Even when you know where you’re going. Daddy wanted it that way.”

“Daddy.” He laughed. “I don’t hear a lot of grown women using that word, Mary. That’s a little girl’s word. I know the old guy is a very smart man and all, a genius, right?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Well, I just got me some real good directions. That’s all it takes, Mary, good directions. It’s not like this place is top secret or anything. You know, it’s not even that special, whatever your dad may say.”

“You talked to my mother.” No question, there. It was the only way I could think of that would have gotten him here.

“I told her I was trying to make things right with you again. She wanted to help out.”

“You got her drunk, didn’t you?”

“She’s a very friendly lady, not stuck up like the rest of the family, who seem to think they’re better than everybody else on the planet.”

“Jesus, Tommy, you didn’t sleep with her, did you? Tell me you didn’t sleep with her!”

Tommy kept walking around the room, looking at things, touching things, as if he was doing inventory. He wasn’t looking at me, and he was doing that thing with his mouth he always did, that thing that looked like a smile, but he always said it wasn’t a smile, it was just an expression. “You know, I don’t know what you want from me. You’ve never taken the time to really understand me.”

“Mary, you didn’t tell me we had company.” I felt myself go rigid, holding back a wave of anxiety that threatened to overwhelm me. My father had never met any of my bad choices before. It was as if the two halves of my life were suddenly, dangerously colliding, and I was powerless to stop it.

I thought that if I were just a healthy person, a strong and mature woman, I could say, Dad, this is Tommy. He isn’t supposed to be here. He’s followed me out here from New Jersey and if he stays in character he’s going to cause us a lot of trouble, because that’s what he does. He’s dangerous—I think you should call the local police immediately.

That’s what I wanted to say, but knew I would not. In fact, just the thought of saying those things made me tremble. I thought my trembling might be noticeable, given the odd way my father was looking at me.

Instead, I told him, “Dad, this is… my old friend Tommy. Tommy, my dad.” I kept thinking about something my dad once said. Something like, politeness doesn’t get us what we need, sweetheart. In fact, worst come to worst, it might even get you killed.

“Pleased to meet you, sir!” Tommy was half-way across the room, offering my father a handshake. I saw my father hesitate, glancing at Tommy’s narrow, long-fingered hand as if it were a scorpion. Then he took it, his wide palm practically covering it, as if he were shielding me from it.

Tommy looked at my father’s hand over his own, a glimmer of surprise showing in his face. Obviously my old man wasn’t quite what he’d expected. He pulled his fingers out of Dad’s grip. Then he grinned, forcing a recovery. “Anyway, it’s a real honor. Mary’s told me so much about you, I practically feel like I know you already.”

Dad nodded. “I understand. It’s odd, though, that she’s never told me anything about you.”

“Why, Mary, I’m surprised,” Tommy said, exaggerating his expression. “You’re not keeping us a secret are you?”

I couldn’t believe this. Did he get away with this crap? Well, of course he did. He used to get away with it all the time with me.

My father gazed directly at me with that appraising look of his that had always made me so uncomfortable. And so angry. He could end this charade now, if he wanted to. He could get rid of Tommy just like that—I’d seen him do it with uninvited fans and unwelcome salesmen—and that’s all Tommy was: my uninvited fan, my unwelcome salesman. My father had no patience with things interrupting his day, unless they were carefully planned interruptions. It had never been that easy for me, getting rid of what got in the way.

“Then you’ll have to stay for dinner,” my father said.

Of course it was a test, like hundreds of other tests he’d concocted for me since I was a little girl. But I wasn’t a little girl anymore, and he had no business. The three of us shared an awkward meal of stew and biscuits during which my father asked simple, straightforward questions, and Tommy provided elaborate, self-aggrandizing answers, much more than was needed for the conversation at hand.

“So you think you might like to settle down around here?” he asked Tommy, but looking at me, measuring my reaction. I made myself lock eyes with him, attempting to show no emotional involvement whatsoever, and naturally, failing.

“Well, I’m seriously considering it, sir,” Tommy said, his mouth full of biscuit. Then he looked up at my father with these big, brown, puppy-dog eyes, his “sincere” look, and I cringed. You can’t seduce my father, you idiot, I thought. “I’ve always believed that change was good, you know? Without change, things would just stay the same all the time, and that can’t be good, can it? Unless what you had before was so good you’d be a fool to change. You know what I’m getting at?”

My father stared at Tommy silently for a moment, then said, “Yes, Tommy. Yes, I believe I know exactly what you’re ‘getting at.’”

“I know you’re a smart man, successful and all. I just want you to know how much I respect you, and of course, respect your daughter. I know she and I have had our differences of late, and I want you to know I realize that was completely my fault. I take full responsibility, and I intend to make up for every disrespectful thing I did in regards to her. Of course, she’s a little stubborn.” Tommy glanced at me, making a stupid little, insincere smile. It was an incredibly awkward moment. When no one reacted, Tommy went on. “And that’s a good thing, a sign of character, is the way my saintly grandmother would have put it. I certainly wouldn’t want to change that. I just wanted to ask you sir, as a man of the world, a great artist, a successful man, if you think there might be a place for one such as myself, out here in all this beautiful country? It’s such a rare opportunity, my getting to meet such a great man as yourself, I hope you don’t mind, I just couldn’t pass up a chance to get your valuable advice.”

My father turned and looked at me, smiled. He waited, obviously wanting me to say something, but I wasn’t about to open my mouth. He turned back to Tommy. “I believe, Tommy,” he said, “that there is a place, and a function, for everyone. There’s an old bunkhouse behind the house. It’s not much, but it is shelter, and I’ve always found it, peaceful. Feel free to stay there until you find your own place, your own function.” He looked at me again, not smiling. “My daughter will show you the way.” I thought I was going to scream, but I didn’t even open my mouth.

I remember walking fast through the weeds and cacti, angry, out of breath, hoping to discourage Tommy from saying anything. He stumbled at my heels, and that gave me great satisfaction. “Hey…” I ignored him.

I didn’t know who I was angrier at: this creep Tommy, for coming here, playing his old numbers in a place where no one was going to be fooled by his playing, or my dad, punishing me for not taking a stand, treating me like a school girl in need of basic training. And, as much as I couldn’t stand Tommy, I hated the way my father had played him—it felt like a direct insult to me. And it was so typical of my dad. When I was a kid I thought that kind of behavior meant he thought he was better than everybody else, and I hated him for it. It took years, but I finally saw that he had the utmost respect for honesty, integrity, hard work. He just had an unusual intolerance for everything else.

“Hey, wait!” Tommy grabbed me and twirled me around. “I came all this way, your dad likes me, for fuck’s sake, he invited me to stay here, so why aren’t you talkin’ to me?”

I turned my face up, thinking to spit at him, and found myself swallowing the bitter taste because of the look in his eyes. Because somewhere along the way, between the time I had escaped him back east and now, he had changed, he had taken a turn for the worse.

He pressed his lips so hard against my mouth I could feel his teeth under the skin, hard and sharp and barely contained. “I love you, Mary,” he growled from way down in his throat, “I really do.”

I struggled, but I was too scared to struggle much. He held me tighter, firmer, and I couldn’t breathe. He growled some more, from somewhere deeper than his throat, and inside the anger I could hear him crying. And I still don’t quite understand why, but I kissed him back, even as I tried to push him away.

Before I left him that night, after showing him how to turn on the lantern, how to pump the water with the rusted old handle, where the extra blankets were, where my father stored the reading materials he’d have no use for, he called me from the ratty old bunk where we’d been lying together and said, “Your bedroom’s out on the end, other end of the house from ‘Daddy’s.’” It wasn’t a question.

Something about the languid, self-satisfied way he said it chilled me. “How did you know?”

“Oh, I wasn’t gonna just waltz right in. That wouldn’t be too smart, now would it? I’ve been here, three, almost four days.”

“How?”

“He ain’t that smart. Out here by yourself, you forget how to take care. I got a sleeproll, tucked over behind that little hill. Some food, some dusty old binoculars, that’s all I needed. Didn’t I tell you I used to be a Boy Scout? Merit badges and everything? I know how to handle myself in places like this.”

“Oh. Right. I forgot.”

“Point is, I don’t have to stay out here all night. You leave your window open, I’ll be there. That old man’ll never know.”

“That wouldn’t be a good idea, Tommy.”

“Let me worry about that, babe.”

I walked a few more steps in silence, my eyes on the saguaro raising their arms in pain or surrender. In the dark they always gave me the creeps. “My window will be closed. And I’ve got a double lock.”

“But I love yoooou,” he crooned behind me, and laughed.

We didn’t eat breakfast together out here on my father’s ranch, we never had. He was usually in the studio before he was even all the way awake. He said he wanted “a brush in my hand before the last dream wears off.” I’d learned to respect that, even though it sometimes annoyed me. Why were artists exempt from everyday human interaction? I remember thinking that if I ever became a successful artist I’d expect no special considerations. It’s only been recently that I’ve been able to see the arrogance in my holier-than-thou attitude.

I heard a “thocking” sound coming from somewhere behind the house, followed by laughter, a soft, sick squeal. I didn’t know what it was at first, but it made me scared and anxious almost immediately. I ran out the back screen door into the morning glare, shading my eyes until they adjusted, hearing the “thock” again, the squeal.

The first thing I saw when my eyes calmed down was Tommy in a stained T-shirt, ball cap, and torn cutoff jeans whacking at stones with an old croquet mallet, the remains of a set I’d seen lying out there in the sand (Like many artists I knew, my father had accumulated a massive amount of junk which he permitted to rust and rot wherever he left it. It seemed to be another one of those habits permitted artists, but which made you a slob if you were in any other occupation.) The mallet cracked and flew apart, Tommy cackled, grabbed another old mallet off the ground, and continued swinging at stones. I didn’t realize what his target was until it squealed again.

I gazed out toward the collapsing bunkhouse, and there by the corner of the porch I saw the poor thing: an old Javelina, its eyes wide, with something wrong with its legs. It struggled to get off its side, but kept falling back down. Then another rock hit it, and it squealed again. I felt sick. “Tommy! Stop it!”

“Hey, Babe. Just trying to put it out of its misery. I didn’t cripple it—I swear! Nasty old thing—I stepped off the porch this morning and it damned near took my foot off. What the hell is it, anyway?”

“Javelina. A feral pig, you asshole! Stop that—you don’t put animals out of their misery by making them suffer!”

Tommy lifted the mallet menacingly with his thin, spindly arm. He’d always been embarrassed by how thin his arms were, no matter how much he worked out. I’m ashamed to say I laughed, seeing him waving the mallet like that. He was furious. “Don’t talk to me like that, you bitch! I didn’t know—you’re the one lives in the fuckin’ desert!”

Then I heard a series of overlapping, coughing barks from somewhere beyond the bunkhouse. The rest of the herd. I turned to run back into the house. I didn’t much care what happened to Tommy after that.

The first rifle crack made me turn around. The old Javelina lay still, its head in ruins. The second shot went over the heads of the two Javelina coming around the bunkhouse, sending them scrambling back, barking furiously. Belatedly, Tommy hit the ground, the mallet waving over his head as if to protect himself.

My father strode over, rifle in one hand, reached down and grabbed Tommy by the long hair down his neck, pulled him straight up to his feet. He shook him furiously. Tommy’s eyes were wide with shock. Then he scowled, opened his mouth, looked at the gun, snarled, “Off of me!”

“I’m giving you five minutes,” my dad said, waving the rifle. “No discussion.” Then he looked over his shoulder at me, the gun still pointed in Tommy’s direction. For a second I thought he was going to kill Tommy, and I was somewhat surprised to find it was the idea of my father getting into trouble that frightened me—Tommy could, well, whatever happened to Tommy was very much his own doing. “Do you want to go with him?” Dad asked me.

“Daddy! Of course not!” I wailed, shocked, furious with his misjudgment, heart-broken that he had no idea who I really was.

Later that day my father lightly tapped on my bedroom door, and in a voice that might have been sad, although I wasn’t really sure because I didn’t know sad when it came contained in my father, he invited me to come out and help him bury the Javelina. I recognized it for what it was. My father almost never apologized, but when he did this was the form it took, an invitation to participate as in his own way he made his small attempt to right the world. We stood together quietly, lifting the heavy, foul-smelling creature onto one of the extra blankets from the bunkhouse, wrapped it, then transferred it into the grave he’d spent a couple of hours digging, because he wanted the dimensions just so, according to some inner school of spiritual geometry. Then we alternated scraping the dirt in, and on, and although no words had been spoken, he finished this funeral with a small bit of twisted wire welded to unidentifiable, cast-off bits, which he pushed into the ground where the hole had been.

Nothing more was said about the event, and nothing more was said of Tommy, as my father went back to his art and his regular routine, and I struggled during my time alone to find my own art and work out my own rhythm within the world.

Weeks passed as they did so often in the desert, as if they didn’t pass at all, but lay around under that heavy burden of heat, unable to move. Food was eaten, the usual minimum number of maintenance chores were done, artwork accumulated, both in my father’s studio and in the confines of my own room, where my father never came.

Once a season Dad took that long journey into the city for supplies, artistic and otherwise. He didn’t like the trips—not that he said much in actual complaint, but his attitude was obvious. For weeks preceding the trip he was like a wounded old bear, cranky and snappish, forgetful, unable to find things, casting things about looking for what he’d lost and ignoring the damage he caused. To make it tolerable he’d usually stay with a local gallery owner/art critic and his wife, who appeared to be his only actual friends in the world. They would always throw some small dinner for him, inviting a few smart people who admired him and were unlikely to offend him. He was one of those artists who thrived on a certain minimum amount of attention, but who hated the magnifying glass of praise.

If that couple was not available for some reason Dad would just sleep somewhere in his truck. “I like my truck,” was all he would say in response to my very real safety concerns.

Despite his dislike for the journey, however, once begun he was committed to it, and always stayed away at least a week, much longer than necessary for gathering supplies. “Might as well make it a research trip,” he always replied to my questions about this seeming contradiction. What kind of research was involved I had no real idea—he’d take a camera along but I never saw the finished pictures.

On the day of his departure the weather seemed to be turning cooler, with occasional streaks of rain like mist sprayed on a hot iron. Unexpected clouds would roll in over the desert, and although most of the time nothing came out of them, they did serve to cool things down a bit. During the dry afternoons I still heard the rattlers, the occasional complaint of some Javelina, scattered insect sound, and now something new, that buzz and whistle of toads over in the mesquite grass which gradually became something harsher, louder, a call that sounded a little like bleating sheep.

My father had been gone several days when I found myself wide awake one night, hearing a sound like a screech, like something electrical, like something coming apart at the seams. I sat up. Moonlight brought the shadows of distant saguaro close, walking my way, nowhere else to go. What did they want from me? What did they expect? I just do the best I can, I remember thinking, half asleep. I slipped out of bed, padded across the floor and gazed out the window. Wind whipped through the tall grass, brushing through the scrub, charging the night. About ten yards away, where the long ranch house bent to form my father’s studio, jagged shadows danced in the window. Something gleamed, fell, rose again. I don’t remember now if I suspected anything specific. I do remember the overwhelming panic I felt, the sense of impending doom. I ran out of my room, down the hall, full of charge, electrified, for some reason suddenly thinking that birds must have gotten into my father’s studio and were now flying around in there, doing damage.

But, bursting through the door, looking around the ceiling, I found no sign of the unwelcome birds, just the arm flailing, making that rip, with exhausted, crying, out of breath sounds, like running, like rape. Then Tommy’s face appeared around the edge of the canvas, that latest painting, still on my father’s easel, unfinished. He grabbed it, brought the edge of the frame down on the floor, raised the knife again, and I just ran, arms waving, charged right into him, screaming, “No!” and “Don’t!” and felt the knife go into my face like something hot and impossible, following the jaw line, peeling me away from myself.

When I went down on the floor I got a better look at the painting, the saguaro, shadowed, dark and lost, against the night, half-done, blood on the unpainted portions of the canvas, and yet, still, beautiful. So beautiful, such was my father’s talent.

During those several weeks in the hospital my father never left my side. Investigators from the Arizona State Police came by several times, asked me a few questions, but for the most part consulted with Dad quietly in the hall. They might not know his art, but they knew he was famous, which to them, I suppose, meant he merited special attention. Or maybe it was because I was a girl disfigured by a crazy ex-boyfriend. I don’t know, but everyone was solicitous, which I didn’t mind.

I wouldn’t have minded if Dad had gone home for awhile, though. Having him around twenty-four-seven, worrying about what he was thinking, was a bit much to bear. And the way he talked about the “incident,” I could hardly stand it.

“They say he waited in the hills until he saw the truck leave. I don’t understand it—I searched the area thoroughly after I kicked him off the property.”

“You did? You never told me.”

“I didn’t want to worry you. But given his character, I thought he might stick around, plot revenge. Cowards, they always seek revenge.”

“I wish you had told me.”

“Maybe, maybe I should have. But I searched those hills, and beyond, thoroughly. I can’t figure out how I missed him.”

It was his way of taking responsibility, of expressing his sorrow, I knew. But it aggravated me how he’d turned this terrible thing that had happened to me into a puzzle that not only he hadn’t solved, but that he might have prevented. My dad had god forbid made a mistake. “It’s over,” I said. “It’s past. Do they know where he his now? Did you call Mom?”

He blanched. “The police called her, warned her. She should have come to visit you. I don’t want to see her, of course, but she’s your mother.”

“I don’t want to see her, either, Dad. I just thought she should be warned, in case he shows up at her house.”

“They alerted the local police out there, and the state police in between. They’re pretty sure, they think, he’s left the state.”

“That’s good.” We sat there in silence, neither one of us comfortable talking about it, but wanting to behave normally, and not knowing what normal behavior really meant. “Your paintings,” I began, because I’d been thinking about them. To be honest, it was the first thing I thought of when I regained consciousness. “You said you could fix them?”

“They’re going to be fine. They’re going to be…” He looked at me, obviously excited, apologetic about being excited, “better, actually. Better than before. I’ve worked it out in my head. Applying additional canvas to the back for the repair, but beyond that—I was having a compositional problem with ‘Saguaro Night.’ The damage actually suggested a solution. It’s going to be better, much more interesting.”

Perhaps it was unkind of me, but for a moment I thought he was trying to suggest I was going to be much more interesting as well.

I don’t know what more I can say with any certainty about those days. It was such a long time ago. Tommy was never seen again. Dad and I returned to the ranch. Dad continued to paint, in fact creating much of the work he is most famous for, beginning with the re-worked and completed “Saguaro Night.” I discovered my own vision, if you can call it that. With all the saguaro, the low-lying mesas, damaged landscapes, the dark skies, the feral pigs and other creatures, people have pointed out quite correctly that my vision owes much to my dad’s. And after years of living here in the desert, so do my attitudes.

I was no beauty, before. When I look back I think the major thing attracting men to me had been my lack of standards. The scar along my jaw isn’t so terrible—in fact from most angles it’s barely noticeable. But what my father had so awkwardly implied, that it might make my face more interesting, turned out to be mostly true, I think. So I keep my chin raised higher than normal just to show it off. I’ve even been known to use makeup to highlight its shape, the aesthetic beauty of its line.

Dad died in 1984, his heart disease catching up to him one afternoon in front of his easel. I didn’t find him until the next day—when he didn’t show up for dinner I just assumed he was too involved in a painting to stop. I wasn’t supposed to disturb him, even if he went missing. That was the rule, the artist’s special rule. Unlike a normal person, he didn’t have to show up for dinner. It’s possible I could have helped him if I’d found him in time. I don’t know; who’s to say?

The first major retrospective was held in 1989. I was there, introducing many of the paintings. They gave me a show on the side as compensation. It worked out for me; I’m not sure I’d have a career today if not for that show.

It was the first time more than a handful of people had seen the completed “Saguaro Night.” It created quite a stir. I showed them where the damage had been, and how the repair and subsequent paint-over had created a fracture line that led the eye through the marching saguaro and to the lone red figure on the other side. Although clearly embarrassed, a couple of people timidly offered the observation that that fracture line was reminiscent of my jaw line scar. Bullshit, of course—people see what they want to see.

“The magic, Mary, comes in how sometimes only a few tentative brush strokes of the right color, in the right position within the composition, make the painting what it is.”

I hear that advice of my father’s, and other bits of aesthetic lore, every time I stand in front of a canvas. And in my father’s work, no painting bears the truth of that advice better than “Saguaro Night,” and the few brushstrokes making that running, burning figure.

Those first few months out of the hospital I painted constantly, rarely taking time to eat or sleep, it seemed, rarely seeing my father, who was busy with his own creative firestorm, working on “Saguaro Night,” and other, similarly dark paintings. Occasionally he invited me into his studio to see the progress he’d made on the painting. This was unheard of for him, and showed, I think, how sorry he was for what had happened. Additional evidence of this sorrow came in the form of late night rants to no one, drinking and stumbling around outside, wandering off into the hills. Screaming and cursing. Sometimes in the morning I’d find him stinking and out of it, lying in front of the door, and I’d drag him in. We never spoke of that. It became just another part of his artistic process, a stage in his “research,” and therefore off-limits to conversation.

There was no red figure in the painting for the longest time. Then there came that night when the Javelina herd barked and squealed and just generally went crazy. And in the distance I heard my father screaming back at them. And in the distance I heard more screaming. And I looked out there into the dark Sonoran desert night and saw that he had built a fire out there. He had set fire to a saguaro, which raised its spindly arms in agony and tried to run away.

I’m not sure when he returned, but I heard him working in his studio all day, and he slept most of the next day, and the day after. That’s when I slipped into his studio and saw that the red, running figure had been added, and that now the painting was complete.

On that second day of his sleep I saw the birds circling a distant spot of desert. Remembering what we did for the Javelina, that poor dumb pig, I grabbed a shovel and headed in that direction. But I did not want my father’s help, preferring to leave him to his dreams.