-
Prissy
- University of Michigan Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Prissy ~ "Daddy," Eliza said, on my declining to accompany her to the movie Moulin Rouge, "you are prissy." "Very prissy," Vicki added, going out the door. I am not prissy. I prune life so days don't grow spindly. Never have I sampled wares peddled by street corner pharmacists. I've not seen an adult movie or purchased a blue magazine. I haven't broken bread in a tabernacle that treats women as things. "What do you believe, Daddy?" Eliza asked last month. "A lot," I said-not so much as I once did, however. Institutions I used to respect now seem rotten. The Pharisees on the Supreme Court are not people whom I would greet at the front door. "Don't you have patriotic feelings?" Eliza asked three nights ago when I snapped off the television, exasperated by buffoonery in Washington. "Certainly not!" I exclaimed. "Has global warming cooked your brain?" Absence makes youth enthusiastic. Australia has narrowed Eliza, provoking her to celebrate everything American, a condition that returning to Connecticut will purge from her system. Of course I might be the narrow member of the family. Not since childhood have I wanted anything for Christmas. I have bought no new clothes for fifteen years. "Your jackets and suits are so worn," Vicki said last night, "that when you dress up, you look like a hairball." Yesterday Vicki, Eliza, and I went to downtown Perth. While they shopped, I went to the Art Gallery of Western Australia. In galleries strangers talk to me. As I stood before 211 Lucien Freud's Naked Man with a Rat, an old woman asked, "How could you elect that man president?" "I didn't," I said, after which we discussed the glow throbbing under the skin of Freud's nudes. In museums I usually spend much time in front of one or two objects. Studying objects stamps them into memory and creates the illusion ofownership. At the gallery I coveted an epergne manufactured in 1875. A rug of silver dirt covered a rocky outcrop. Between stones two eucalyptus trees twined together like scissors, tips oftheir blades breaking into leaves. Between the handles a tree fern waved loosely. An Aboriginal man climbed one of the gums, pursuing a possum. To climb, the man jabbed spikes into the trunk ofthe tree and created a ladder. Below, his wife warmed herself at the embers of a fire. A kangaroo pelt covered her from the waist down. Above the navel her breasts sagged like rotten mangos . To the woman's right a hound raced around the trees. Behind the dog a bearded man galloped on horseback. The man wore a stovepipe hat. In his right hand he held a throwing stick; in his left he held the reins to his horse. For its part the horse was springing over a fallen limb, the tip ofthe limb a rail. Ahead ofthe man a second hound pursued a kangaroo, an emu bounding ahead. "Ifthis epergne were on a dining room table," I mused, "no one would ever think about politics." The paintings I study are landscapes, windows through which I escape the suburban present. Arthur Streeton's Hillside hung in a hall in the Centenary Gallery. Only ten inches square, the painting provided a moment's wandering. A grassy hill slumped like a shoulder across the canvas, high on the left, low on the right. Amid the grass grew thimbles of buttercups. Above the hill the sky split loose and pale blue then tightened to purple. In the distance the ocean slumbered in a low mist. Cattle drifted along the hill, three brown and one white. Atop the hill other cattle trudged down to a river looking like buttons. Along the slope trees clumped in brown brushes. A sandy path switched through the grass. Beside the path stood a woman. A bonnet perched on the woman's head, and in her right hand she grasped a walking stick. She wore a long pink dress, a red belt cinching the waist. 212 SAM PICKERING [18.206.13.112] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 15:44 GMT) For eight minutes I ambled the hill, chewing blades of grass, and tipping my hat to the woman. She knew me, and we smiled. The time I spent on the hill invigorated me. Afterward I explored Carillon Arcade and felt energetic enough to shop. City Menswear was going out of business, and I rummaged racks looking for a teaching jacket. Unfortunately the store was...