Dan and Sylvia

She’s conscious of holding her breath and lets it out slowly. Her eyes swivel to his easel and a canvas, well over two feet tall and eighteen inches wide. His current work is a topless model in vivid blue jeans and red high heels and almost looks complete.

Farther away, there’s a stand with a centerfold clipped to it. The models in the painting and the centerfold don’t look exactly alike. On the floor next to the stand, a Playboy magazine lies brazenly atop a small stack of magazines. Her brow furrows and her eyes narrow.

She hears a cough and twists around. Her dad’s standing at the studio door, holding the tea tray, looking like he caught the naughty little girl who found the hidden Christmas presents.

“What the hell, Dad? These paintings. There must be a hundred of them. Nude women. And Playboy magazines.” Rose points and waves, but is thinking the paintings are darn good. And why not, he’s been at it long enough. She tries to subdue the surprise, or is it disgust, on her face.

“Two dozen nudes, more like semi-nudes.” He looks uncowed. “She’s covered up in most of them. Anyway, it’s none of your beeswax. I should’ve locked this stupid door. But I was in a rush, you were coming so quick after your call.” Sure enough, there’s a lock on the door.

Rose feels anger rising and checks herself. “We need to talk,” she says.

“I’m not apologizing,” Dan says. “The magazines are old. I don’t use them any more. I have a live model now.”

“What?” Calm down, calm down. “I just see a centerfold.” No wonder he’s not lonely.

“Let’s have our tea.”

They return to the living room and sit. Dan pours the tea. Neither of the two protagonists smile. They sit and sip. Rose checks her watch and then again in what seems like an hour. Five minutes have crawled by.

“I didn’t want to bring it up just yet,” Dan says. “I was waiting for the right time.” He stares at the far wall, then the floor.

Rose sighs. “So, I’m not going to be your first live model?”

“Sorry.”

“My heart’s broken.”

“Really?”

“Just a joke, Dad.”

This is not strait-laced, churchgoing Dad. This is bizarre, sex-crazed Dad. This must be a really bad prank, or she tripped into the snow on the way to the front door and is dreaming while she freezes to death. She swallows her anger and forces some empathy from her soul. She smiles. “She’s very attractive. What’s her name?”

“Sylvia. There’s a big age difference you know.”

“No kidding. How’d you meet?”

“Do you know the Barista Plus coffee house?”

“It’s a few blocks from here.”

Rose sips some tea, takes an arrowroot biscuit, and nibbles it. Her eyes swivel from her Dad to the studio back and forth.

“I usually just have a coffee and read the Globe. One day, over a year ago, in the autumn, she was just there. So beautiful and so sad. I stared, but I was lucky, and she didn’t notice, or maybe she didn’t care. I should ask her some time.”

“You were pretty depressed after Mom died.”

“More than I realized. There was the church, and I had dinner with you every week, but truth is, I was lonely for a long time before Marie died, and then it got worse. I needed someone to touch. Maybe you don’t want to hear this, but I needed to share a bed with a warm caring woman I could look after.”

“I understand, Dad. So what happened?”

Dan relaxes his body and grins. “After I saw her a few times, she smiled at me one day. Then after a while, she introduced herself, and we got to know each other. I said I was a painter, and then she volunteered to model.”

“So, who is she?”

“You won’t believe it. She’s a professor of Medieval History at Saint Mike’s.”

“Wow!... That sounds like...”

Rose vaguely recalls a People Magazine story some years back about a celebrity ex-model who had finished her PhD in something esoteric like that. It’s best to drop the guesswork for now.

“No husband or boyfriend?”

“She had a nasty breakup a year before and was still getting over it when we met. She’s over it now. Because of me, she said, and she’s finally smiling.”

It sounds like the celebrity ex-model again. Rose slumps and holds her hand under her chin, thinking hard. They sip their tea, nibble on cookies, cough and sigh.

“How old is she?”

“Thirty-three.”

That would make Sylvia ten years younger than her.

“Does she have friends? Another life?”

“We never talk about that. I should ask.”

“You should. When can I meet her?”

Dan pauses. Rose gets that he’s weighing the options.

“She’s in my bedroom.”

Rose straightens and peers down the hallway to her dad’s bedroom.

“You can’t be serious?”

“Uh-huh.” He calls across the room, “Sylvia!” then calmly, “You’ll like her.”

He tries again.

“She’s not shy at all, but she wants to take it slowly. Because of our age difference.” They wait a minute. “Let’s take the bull by the horns.”

He stands and shuffles towards the bedroom, beckoning for Rose to follow. He raps softly on the door. No answer. Then he carefully opens it and calls her name. Nothing.

“Dad, let me look around. Maybe she went into another room.”

“I think she left... By the back door... I think she’s afraid of you... I mean, of meeting you. The first time.”

So, it’s my fault she ran away, Rose thinks.

I hope she’s warm enough. These young girls today, they don’t dress properly for the winter, do they?”

“They often don’t. I’ll take a look out back.”

Rose goes to the back door, opens it and stands there for a minute letting her eyes adjust to the dark. Wind whips through the doorway, and she savors the fresh air. There’s enough city light to see that the snow is smooth and unmarked.

She inhales and fills her lungs with the cold night air, holds it for a few seconds, and exhales. She returns to her dad. “I saw her trail,” Rose says. “I can understand how she’d be shy to meet me after doing those nude poses.”

“They’re tasteful.”

“Let’s go sit.”

Seated back on the sofa, Rose says, “Dad, we don’t need to talk about your paintings. But I’d like to ask you about Sylvia. How do you see it going from here?”

“I don’t know. It’s changing between us.”

“You helped her get over her breakup. That was kind. Maybe, you should help her to move on with her life.”

“I think we both know that, Rosie. I’ll talk to her about it some more.”

“Okay, okay. There’s something else.”

“Sandy Haven?”

“I got a call today.”

“Why didn’t they call me?”

“You know. It’s sensitive... There’s going to be an opening in a month or two. Three at the most.”

“Oh.”

“That’s how it goes. You said you liked it when we visited, and it would be a nice two-bedroom apartment. I’ll help you make the second bedroom into a studio. And this place is getting harder to look after. I’m sure Sylvia would visit.”

“Could I still drive?”

“Of course. You should get a nice car. I’ll help you find one on the Internet. They have heated indoor parking.”

“I’d like a Mustang. A convertible. Red. Sylvia likes red.”

Rose leaves and makes her way back to the car. She tries to follow her old foot tracks, and barely notices as the snow fills her boots again. Back in the car, she stares at the bleak outside scene for a minute, then calls Jack and tells him the good news.

Rose says they should be able to get the house on the market in a few weeks. Then she tells him about her dad’s imaginary friend.

“You mean like a kid’s?”

“I had one when I was around six. I was an only child, a lonely only child. But there’s lots more. You can order that pizza, any toppings you want. And crack open a red.”

Rose informally discusses her dad’s delusions with a neurologist who does rounds at the hospital. He guesses that Dan has paraphrenia, a fairly rare psychotic disorder, usually found in older people, also called late-life schizophrenia. Paraphrenia delusions are sometimes erotic in nature, but there’s no significant deterioration in intellect or personality, and the subjects are mostly self-sufficient. He won’t diagnose the illness and treatment without seeing Dan, but he says that loneliness is often a contributing factor.

Rose lines up a real art dealer before the move to Sandy Haven, and the studio owner takes all her dad’s nudes for over $5,000. The dealer tells them that her dad’s paintings are exceptional. Rose chuckles when her dad straightens his back and smiles proudly. He’s come around to accepting the change.

“It was worth it,” her dad tells her. “It’s been twenty years, and all the courses and supplies. At least I’m getting some of my money back.”

After he’s settled in at Sandy Haven in the spring, Dan produces more paintings of a modestly attired Sylvia. He shows them at local venues like restaurants and pubs, and reassures Rose that he drives the Mustang slowly to deliver the pictures. Only during the day, mind you, he doesn’t like driving at night. He sells a few, most times for $50 to $200. If there’s a charity involved, he gives them the money.

Rose brings Dan and even the kids to see his showings on weekends. On one of Rose’s visits, Dan tells her that Sylvia accompanied him to the community center art gallery that morning. He drove with the top down, and “her hair flowed in the wind.” But such occasions are occurring less often.

Rose suggests that maybe Sylvia has a boyfriend now. Her dad says it’s none of their business, and even if she’s just visiting him out of duty, he’ll take what he can get.

Rose judges that his latest painting is one of his best yet. In it, Sylvia is tall, sinuous, silvery-blond, blue-eyed, and seems to float in a long gown, bare shouldered, and barely tanned. In another one, she’s dark eyed, auburn, athletic and deeply tanned. Sylvia is clearly a very versatile woman.

Her dad explains that Sylvia has an infinite number of ways of transforming herself into completely different vixens with contacts, wigs and all kinds of makeup. She can be, at times, a bespectacled professor, an ethereal angel, an iron lady, or a sultry seductress. He loves them all.

After more than a full year, Rose sheds her remaining guilt in forcing Dan’s transition. In late August, she notices an unusual portrait. “I see you have a new model, Dad.”

“Kate Summervil. She lives here, too.”

“And?”

“She’s a widow, only sixty-six. She wants to travel without worrying about a house.”

“She is attractive.”

The portrait shows a middle-aged, blue-eyed, regal lady with a bob-cut auburn hair. Slight skin sag and age lines indicate age, but the face is more fortyish than sixtyish. Her dad is seeing what he wants to see.

“Umm, yes. I think so. We get along pretty well, I think.” Her dad winks at her.

“You, um, um... ah?”

Dan nods. “I got a prescription.”

“Good for you.”

“You can’t say anything. Women don’t like that kind of talk you know.”

Like most men, her dad remains clueless about women.

“So, you’re not so lonely anymore?”

“Not at all. I’m having fun with Kate.”

“Do you miss Sylvia?”

“I did at first. But I think she finally realized our age difference wasn’t going to work out, so she’s moved on, and so have I. I hope you won’t mention anything about her to Kate.”

“Don’t worry.”

“Kate and I are talking about taking a trip. Maybe a long cruise.”

“You should.”

“Sylvia wouldn’t have cared to do something like that with me.”

Rose’s smile sags, and she sighs. “It’s over, Dad.”

Dan puts his arms around Rose and hangs on. She does the same and feels him choking back a sob.

Copyright © 2021 by Norm Rosolen

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