Djelloul Marbrook

The actress Natalie Portman takes a memorable walk at the end of the 2004 Mike Nichols’ movie Closer. She’s mowing them down on the streets of New York. Men are twisting themselves into pretzels to take a gander, and she’s giving them zilch, except that breathtaking walk.It reminded me that there’s a moment when a boy walking with his mother suddenly understands why she’s able to cut a swath like a John Deere. That moment came for me when I was eleven on Union Square in Manhattan. My mother was wearing a white dress and a jaunty broad-rimmed straw hat with a blue ribbon. I was determined to fathom how she plowed through waves of frothing humanity like a J-Boat when humanity wouldn’t budge for me.

I noticed that some men’s faces screwed up as if hit by a taser when they studied her. I noticed men eyeballing her furtively, as if they were swiping apples from a vendor. They pretended they didn’t notice her, only to turn after she’d passed to appreciate her more. I saw bold men smile, old men bow, troubled men flinch and blanch, happy men doff their boaters, and crude men pant like Border Collies.

It’s not the dress, Djelloul, I reasoned with myself. Or the high heels or the hat. What did I know about high heels, except they looked precarious? Hah, it’s how she wears this stuff! Mmm… close, but no cigar. There they were, these big guys, parting like weeds, making strange. Oh, I know what it is, it’s that cryogenic stare!

But nothing felt quite right until Arshile Gorky came along. He and my mother had had studios in the same building. She was crazy about his paintings. He was, as I eventually learned, crazy about her. We were crossing an intersection—well, I was crossing it, my mother was sailing—when Gorky appeared looking both gallant and melancholy. He was ill and only three years away from his suicide. The critics were still unwilling to crown him with the laurels artists knew he deserved. My dear Nita, he cried, and bowed with a long sweeping gesture, like a Spanish courtier.

I got it. That’s the moment I got it. Beauty is a great sculptor: you never know what it’s going to do with the clay of men. My mother was beautiful. She made men stutter, wince, shiver, fall every which way and generally corrupt their habitual demeanors. Talk about power.

I was standing in the middle of traffic contemplating this eternal and menacing truth. Horns were blowing and lights were changing, but people looked less distracted than they do now with their cellphones and text messengers. My mother looked at one of the very few men she truly admired and laughed. Then she noticed me in harm’s way and snatched me by the collar. Men are such jerks, she told me gaily, don’t be a jerk, dear, okay? But, I said, won’t I have to be one if I grow up?

Not at all, said Gorky. Don’t grow up to be a man, he said, be an artist, it’s more fun. My mother looked doubtful, but Gorky was God, even if the smug critics hadn’t figured it out yet.

Poor Gorky. He didn’t have fun. His life was hard and embittering, and I’ve always been glad my mother spared him her Medusa stare. He was a great artist, and she knew it and forgave him for being a man. (I’m not sure she forgave me).

(Note: The painting in the inset is Gorky’s The Artist and His Mother, oil on canvas, 60 x 50″ National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, donated by the Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund.)