June, 1955
In which some fine art is appreciated.
"Lizzy, Lizzy, he's back!"
Lizzy looked up from the pamphlets she was folding to where Carla was waiting, looking excited. "Who's back?" Lizzy asked. She had no idea what her friend was talking about.
"That guy I was telling you about."
Lizzy nodded for her to go on. Carla developed frequent crushes on museum visitors, and she told Lizzy about all of them when she should have been organizing display racks. She was going to have to be more specific.
"The dreamboat with the baby," Carla huffed, as if it should have been obvious. She grabbed Lizzy's hand. "Come on! I just saw him in the Baroque section."
"Carla, Rick said I needed to have all these folded before lunch…" Lizzy began, but Carla was having none of it, already dragging her away from her desk.
They made their way to the Baroque section, then Carla squeaked and tugged Lizzy around a corner. "There he is," she whispered, peeking around the corner.
Lizzy's eyes followed Carla's pointing finger to a tall guy with blond hair, muscles like the statues in the Classical Greek section, and a jawline to die for. He was standing in front of one of Rachel Ruysch's floral still lifes and studying it appreciatively. She did like a man who appreciated art.
"What do you think, Jellybean?" she heard him ask, and then she saw the baby he was holding against his hip. The little girl cooed and reached an arm out for the painting. "Yeah, that's a pretty realistic-looking leaf, isn't it?" the man agreed, stepping back just enough so the girl's fingers didn't reach the canvas. "I'm sure if Miss Ruysch knew how much you enjoyed trying to eat every plant in our yard, she would appreciate that you want to eat her painting." The baby flailed her little hand unhappily, trying to reach the painted leaf. "Here, look up here," he said, trying to direct her attention elsewhere. "Isn't that a pretty tulip? Daddy can never paint tulips that pretty. Actually," he said with a sigh. "Daddy's not very good at painting flowers in general. Maybe if I took some botany classes first like the painter did." The baby whined and reached for the leaf again and the man chuckled. "Alright, alright," he said. "Moving on."
"Is that not just the sweetest?" Carla sighed as the man moved away. "He was in here twice last week doing the same thing."
Lizzy had to admit, it was adorable, and against her better judgement, she found herself following Carla following the man.
"See, I told you you would like Post-Impressionism," he was telling the little girl as they got close enough to hear him again. "You like those colors, don't you? Nice and bright and cozy. See, Van Gogh was good at using colors to make you feel things." The baby made a series of curious-sounding burbles, and he nodded. "You're exactly right. You can tell how he felt about this place by the way he colored it." He smiled and kissed the little girl on the nose. "That's my smart girl."
They looked at a couple of other Van Gogh paintings as they made their way toward the Impressionist section. Lizzy had studied art in college, and though she did mostly guided tours right now, she was angling for one of the curator spots when Lucinda retired next year. She knew art and she liked it, and it sounded like this guy knew his stuff.
"I mean, he's got this sensitive artist side, he's good with kids, and he is gorgeous," Carla sighed. "I know I use the word dreamboat a lot, but I was dead on this time, wasn't I?"
Lizzy inclined her head in agreement.
"Now, I've got a soft spot for these," the man was telling the baby, pointing at their collection of Monet's cathedral paintings.
"Mmm ba, m-ba ba thpth?" the baby said.
"Well, sure," he agreed, inclining his head. "I mean, you're right, the way he makes it look like four different buildings just using light is pretty phenomenal. But that's not what I was going to say." He pointed to the second painting from the right, showing the cathedral in soft morning light. "Me and Mommy were in Rouen back in '44, during the War, you know."
"Aw, nuts; he's married," Carla huffed.
Lizzy rolled her eyes. "He's got a baby," she pointed out. "Most people are when they have one of those."
"Yeah, but a girl can dream, can't she?"
"Also, weren't you in, like, ninth grade in 1944? He's a little old for you."
"Hush," Carla snapped. "Next time he shows up, I'm not inviting you."
"Shh," Lizzy shushed her. "I want to hear the rest of the story."
"We'd been hiking all night through the French countryside," he was telling the baby. "Being chased by Nazis is no fun, you know. It had been raining, it was cold, and we'd been separated from the rest of our team, and they had the food. We were miserable, to be honest with you. Oh, and I'd gotten shot in the shoulder," he added, almost as an afterthought.
"We were not a couple of happy campers marching into Rouen that morning," he continued. "It was early in the morning and it was dark and nothing was open yet, but we found a little bus stop across from the cathedral, so we got under that to get out of the rain." He smiled fondly. "Your mom smelled like lavender. I don't know how she did that. We'd been out in the field for almost a week, and nobody had showered." He huffed a laugh. "Your Uncle Dugan got his own tent, because he smelled so bad nobody would go near him."
The baby made an inquiring noise.
"Yeah, sorry, got sidetracked," he said. "So, yeah, me and your mom are under the bus stop, and, like I said, we'd been hiking all night and we were exhausted. We sat down, and after all the hiking and missing dinner and bleeding from the shoulder I'd been doing, I fell asleep."
The baby made a snorting sound and he chuckled.
"Yeah, I know," he agreed. "Some Captain I was, huh? But I fell asleep, and I woke up around sunrise. The rain had stopped, but there was just enough mist in the air that it caught the sunlight, and everything was just glowing, just like in that painting. The morning was so quiet, except for this soft, beautiful sound. Your mom was humming, that same song she sings when she puts you to bed at night, and she was running her fingers through my hair, and all the sunlight glowing in the air caught her hair and made her look like an angel. For a minute, I thought maybe the shoulder wound was worse than I'd thought and I'd bled to death, and I was waking up in Heaven."
"Then she smiled at me and said, 'Good morning, darling.'" His smile softened, and Lizzy could tell he was back under that bus stop in France, wet and hungry and sore and head over heels in love. "That was the first time she ever called me that." He looked down at the baby and smiled. "I fell hard for your mom the minute I laid eyes on her, but that minute right there? That was when I knew it was gonna be me and her forever."
"Wow," Carla breathed, and Lizzy nodded, blinking moisture away from her eyes.
The man and the baby stood in front of the cathedral picture a little longer, then he kissed the little girl on the forehead and they started moving again. Carla and Lizzy followed them through the rest of the Impressionism section, listening to their conversation. In the more logical part of her mind, Lizzy figured the baby was just practicing sounds and enjoyed the rhythm of response she had going with her father, but the way she shifted her tone to match his, and the way his responses varied along with her different squeaks and burbles and nonsense words made it seem like they were having a real conversation, and it was just precious.
They were moving up closer to the contemporary section, and paused for a little while in front of Braque's The Portuguese. The man was studying it interestedly, but the little girl had started making impatient noises.
"You're just like your brother, you know that?" he said in a tone that suggested they'd had this conversation before. "He didn't care for Cubism either."
She huffed and made a little growling noise.
"Manners, young lady," he said, though he was smiling. "Just because you don't like something, it doesn't mean it's not art. You can admire someone's technique without liking the end result."
The baby sighed and started trying to chew on his watch.
"Well, I think it's a creative way of looking at things," he said nodding to the painting. "But as it's clearly lost your interest, let's move on." He pulled his watch away from her mouth and glanced down at it. "Actually, speaking of your brother, we're going to have to leave before too long to pick him up from preschool." He started walking a little faster. "But we can still check out the new Pollock painting on the way out. What do you say?"
"Aa-ah!" she agreed.
"The baby has a point," Carla said, clearly drawn in to the one-sided conversation just like Lizzy had been. "I don't like Cubism either."
"You don't like anything," Lizzy pointed out. "I don't know why you even work here."
"It's a short train ride away from my apartment and I get dental," Carla replied without missing a beat.
"Oh, hey, this one's new too," the man said as they arrived in the contemporary section, pausing in front of Rothko's No. 61 (Rust and Blue). It was on loan from a museum in L.A. and had arrived over the weekend. Lizzy had gotten to help put it up and had taken copious notes on the whole loan/exchange process, hoping that would show good enthusiasm as Rick was thinking about replacements for Lucinda. She really wanted that curator job, and, unlike Carla, she worked here because she appreciated the art. (Although, it was nice getting dental, too.)
"Ooo-oo-ooh," the baby cooed.
The man chuckled. "You like that one, huh?"
"Mmmmm."
"Yeah? I'm getting the feeling you're more of a colors over lines girl." He nodded. "I get that. This is a really nice blue." He leaned in a little closer. "I wonder how many layers he did to get that shade? That's his thing, you know. He layers really thin colors to build up his shades. Gives it a nice luminosity, and you can get a lot more variation in tone that way."
"Fwa-ah?" she asked.
"You think so?" the man replied, raising an eyebrow. "That's an interesting point. I wouldn't have thought of that."
She cooed again and leaned forward, reaching for the painting.
"No, no," he said, catching her hand and kissing it. "No touching."
"No," she repeated.
"That's right. No," he said, smiling and kissing her hand again. She giggled and squirmed in his arms. "You want to go look at the Pollock painting?"
"No!"
"You want to keep looking at this one?"
"No!"
"Oh, we're stuck now, huh?" he said with a smile.
"No!" she said again, grinning.
"Alright, Little Miss 'No'," he said, smiling wider. "Let's go."
"No!"
"You don't want to go get James?"
"Dame!" she repeated excitedly.
"Yeah, see, there you go. We'll go get James, and then we'll have lunch. You like lunch?"
"Ya!"
"Okay," he said. He grinned and kissed her cheek, and Lizzy just about melted when the little girl squeaked and wrapped her little arms around her father's neck and kissed his cheek in return.
"Oh, my heart," Carla whispered.
"Alright, Jellybean, let's go," he said. He hoisted the little girl up a little higher on his hip and started digging in his pocket for his keys while they walked. "We'll come back and look at Pollock later."
"Bye, bye!" the little girl called, waving in the direction of the lobby as they walked out.
"I don't think I've ever seen anything sweeter in my life," Lizzy sighed, watching them walk out.
"Right?" Carla agreed. She sighed. "How many strong, handsome, sensitive, smart guys like that do you think are out there?"
"There aren't many that hang around where I've been looking," Lizzy said.
Carla sighed again. "Alright, well, I'm gonna go eat my lunch and imagine I could find me a guy like that some day."
"No," Lizzy said, grabbing her wrist. "You can daydream about the Dreamboat and his little Jellybean all you want, but you're going to do it while you help me fold the rest of those pamphlets."
