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Excerpt: Summer Lightning by Roberta Silman

About the Book

In this sweeping, multi-generational novel Roberta Silman explores the meaning of Alexander Herzen’s observation: Art, and the summer lightning of individual happiness: these are the only real goods we have.  After a casual encounter at Lindbergh’s flight from Roosevelt Field in 1927, Belle and Isaac find each other again, and thus begins the story of this engaging family as it tries to try to find its place in tumultuous mid-Twentieth century America.

Set in Europe, then Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Long Island, as well as England and the Berkshires, Summer Lightning is as intricate as a Beethoven Sonata.  Although the bonds between parents and children and siblings are strong, there is also a yearning for something more.  So, we watch Belle and Isaac and their daughters, Sophy and Vivie, veer into unexpected paths as they negotiate the perils of the Depression, the Second World War, McCarthyism, and the burgeoning fight for Civil Rights.  Living “against the grain” these vivid characters take risks as they strengthen their ties to the turmoil in Europe, to the quirky Manhattan art scene of Larry Rivers and Frank O’Hara and their “gang,” and to the Black community.  As their story unfolds, they experience profound happiness and are also tested in ways they could never have imagined.  Their triumphs are a testament to the resilience of the human spirit; what makes them so memorable and compelling is that they never forget who they are and where they came from.  

The Excerpt

Chapter ONE 

SEPTEMBER 2015 

The woman in the portrait was, of course, their mother Belle, her beautiful radiant face as if lit from within. That’s why they love it so much and why it had never been regarded as a thing of value but, rather, as part of the family. Now, though, there has to be a reckoning. It is 2015 and these two sisters are in their seventies, and it’s time not only to figure out what to do with the painting but also to go through the pile of yearly diaries and the bursting portfolio that Belle left them when she died in 2003 at ninety-three. 

“It’s just a bunch of miscellany, drawings, no paintings, a few sketches by people like Nell Blaine and Grace Hartigan and Jane Freilicher, women artists I thought would have become more famous than they are because they are wonderful. But none of them really did. Still, I love their work and what’s there is what they were going to throw away until I said I would like them. But they’re hardly valuable, more keepsakes to jog my memory,” she had said with that dismissive gesture they knew so well. 

About two feet square, the painting is called “Woman with a Hat,” its title clearly printed at the top and beneath it in a minuscule flowing script: Beautiful woman in her early 40s, NYC 1953. The upper half is air and light, the paint very thin and the writing very precise. Below that it becomes more traditional, the paint thicker, not very different from the Matisse portrait that inspired it. Belle is wearing a tiny brown hat with a feather that just grazes her cheek. And next to the feather Belle’s marvelous blue eyes saying, So you want to paint me, well, here I am. Then her lovely open features down to her chin, tucked ever so slightly into the velvet collar of her beloved brown suit. At the bottom of the canvas is a signature: Larry Rivers. 

Since Belle died, Sophy and Vivie have rotated it each September when they get together for the Jewish holidays. Now they are sitting in Sophy’s apartment on the West Side, having a visit before their husbands arrive and they go out for dinner. This year it is Vivie’s turn to take it back to her apartment on the East Side, but the ownership of the portrait is getting complicated. 

“The kids think it should be appraised and then insured, the whole nine yards. And that if we want them to continue this rotation system it must be stated in our wills,” Vivie says. She is referring to one son who is a lawyer. 

Sophy, older than Vivie by almost six years, stares at the painting, but instead of feeling her brain explode into memories of her mother, she sees her father’s face when he first saw the portrait on the mantel of the house in Clowesville the night Belle brought it home. It was April, and she was a senior in high school and they were waiting for her college acceptances, and Belle waltzes in with this brown wrapped square under her arm. It was a present from a young man, an artist. 

“We are just friends,” Belle told Isaac. 

Clearly very good friends because this is a painting executed with a tenderness that borders on love. Seeing it for the first time, they stared, tingly with awe at the exquisite likeness. How had this young artist captured the essence of the woman he had first spied in 1927? Isaac wondered then and continued to wonder, sometimes saying it aloud to his daughters. It was uncanny. 

“You know,” Sophy says, “when we talked just before she died she said something about Larry I had never heard before. She said, ‘He had a run-on life. Like a run-on sentence. He didn’t know when to stop. That’s what drove me crazy, but it’s also what captivated me from the moment we first saw each other.’” 

Vivie nods and shrugs. In their hearts they know they would never know the whole story. But that’s what made life so interesting and amazing. So they sit there quietly, remembering when they had first explained to their grown children—after Belle died—how they came to have this remarkable painting of their grandmother. 

“This is how she always told it,” Sophy began. “Always in the third person, as if she were telling a story about someone who wasn’t her, couldn’t possibly be her.” 

It was a day in early fall of 1953. Sophy was in her senior year and when the phone rang it was Jules; no hello, but a frantic voice saying, “I need your help, Belle. I went to collect the rent for September in the property I just bought in the Village and when I was let in, there was this kid Larry Rivers and a woman he introduced as his mother-in-law Berdie, and she was in a state of undress sitting on the bed and he was standing behind his easel painting her. As if it were the most natural thing in the world. 

“I wasn’t sure what to do because it seemed to me he should be going to his checkbook to get me his rent, but instead he said to this woman, ‘I think this will be best if we do you nude.’ As if I wasn’t even there. I was so embarrassed, humiliated really, that I said, ‘I will come back at a better time,’ and turned and practically ran out of there, while that snot-nosed kid called, ‘You don’t have to be such a prude, if you wait a minute, I’ll get you the cash.’ But there was no way I was going to stay in that devil’s den, and the truth is, Belle, there are a couple of studios occupied by women artists, friends of Rivers, in some of my properties nearby, and God knows what they are doing. I think the best thing is that you take over the collections for all of them. I don’t have the kishkes for these Bohemians, and Rosalie wouldn’t like it, any- way. But this is a business arrangement, and I will pay you for your time. You and Isaac have to agree to that part of the bargain.” 

A few days later Belle told Isaac about Jules’s request and they agreed she could help Jules out. So that’s how Belle began to work for Jules collecting the rent from Larry and his artist friends. 

When she went for the first time, Belle realized she had been to the neighborhood with Jules before. Actually twice. Then Jules had been more kindly inclined towards “these Bohemians.” Each time she had promised herself she would learn more about modern art, but she had never made the time. Maybe now was the time, Belle thought as she went to Larry Rivers’ place. 

It was huge and divided into a living space and a studio. The living section with the south and east exposures was a bit of a mess, dirty dishes, unmade beds, toys and books scattered around. Towards the walls there were beds and night tables but near the stove and refrigerator and kitchen sink were a couple of sofas and a coffee table and a music stand and an upright piano and an enormous saxophone hanging from an oversized hook. This is where he lived with Berdie and his two sons. His wife had a new guy and wasn’t very interested in the kids, but Berdie was helping Larry bring them up here in the Village. What he told her matched what Jules had said. 

The kids weren’t there, and Berdie was out shopping for dinner. After he had pointed out the clogged bathtub drain that Jules was required to fix, he turned to Belle and said in the same tone as you might offer someone a cup of tea. “You are lovely, would it be possible to make love to you right now?” Belle was prepared. She had been prepared as soon as she stepped into the place and felt his gaze taking her in. Without missing a beat, she said, “Not a chance, not now, not ever.” 

He nodded briskly, then murmured, “You can’t hate a guy for trying,” and they both laughed. But the rules were in place, they made a little more small talk and then he stared at her for a long time and said, “If you won’t let me have sex with you, maybe you will let me paint you?” Then he handed Belle the thirty dollars that was that month’s rent in five-dollar bills. 

He wanted Belle to start sitting for her portrait that very day, but she said it was impossible, she had too much to do and besides, she wasn’t dressed for it. If he was serious, she wanted to wear her good suit and a hat. 

At that his eyes lit up and he put his hand on her elbow and started propelling her towards the north side of the loft. There he had carved out a place for a small studio with two bookcases that were piled with those art books so big that they have to be laid on their sides. The studio space included an easel and shelves holding tubes of paint and a palette and a chair. “A hat is a great idea,” he said, then turned Belle— he still had his hand on her elbow—towards the wall in the corner, which was in the shadows. He flicked on a light. There she saw several reproductions. 

Belle hoped he wouldn’t quiz her about them. She knew people who went to museums, and by then she had taken Sophy a few times to the Metropolitan Museum where they always went to the Rembrandts and the Impressionists and that “Balcony” painting Sophy loved, but Belle didn’t know much about art. Years before she and Isaac were married, she had gone with Jules to the studio of the artist Isabel Bishop, who everyone thought would become famous. But she hadn’t and Belle didn’t want to seem more of a bumpkin than she was, so she decided not to mention Bishop’s name. 

And she was getting nervous about his hand on her arm, so she wiggled away from him as care- fully as she could to look closer. He didn’t seem to notice. He told her that three of the paintings were by Bonnard, his favorite painter: one with figures near a window and one with a woman holding a cat and one of a kitchen table. Then he pointed to a group painting, “That’s by Velasquez, maybe the greatest painting of all.” Then he walked further into the corner and pulled a sheet off a portrait of a woman whose face was a strange mixture of blue and green and yellow paint and whose dark eyes stared out at you with a sullen look. 

“This is by Matisse, my favorite this month, a famous game-changing portrait called ‘Woman in a Hat’ of his wife, Amelie. It was painted in 1905 and another guy named Vlaminck also did a painting called ‘A Woman in a Hat,’ also in 1905. But I like the Matisse better. The woman looks bolder, more interesting. They both used a lot of different colors for the women’s skin and that’s why they were considered so revolutionary. Not even trying to imitate the color of real skin, which is what earlier painters did. 

“Portraits are hard. Gertrude Stein had to sit for her portrait by Picasso ninety times, and then he painted over what he had done and redid it from memory.” He stopped and looked at her. “Finally he was satisfied, and apparently she thought it was fine, too. But most people didn’t like it. They said, ‘She doesn’t look like that,’ and Picasso replied, ‘She will.’ He was right, whenever people think of Gertrude Stein it’s that portrait that comes to their minds.” Belle thought she knew what he was talking about, Sophy had once shown her a postcard of that portrait but all she could recall was a lot of brown. 

And then, as they stood there looking at each other, this kid who knew so much and she who had come to collect the rent, Belle remembered an important “Besides.” “Besides, I have a life, I live on Long Island and I work with my husband in his business and I have two children, girls, and a household to run. I am doing this as a favor for your landlord, Jules Ellenbein, who is our old friend. You scared him when he came around last week. But I have no time to sit for a portrait.” 

He just smiled and said, “Wear your good suit when you come back next and I’ll take some photos. I can work from those.” And then he ushered her out. 

It was only when she was making her way back to the office that Belle realized she had seen this Larry Rivers before. A few years back, Jules had asked her to go with him to an art show at the Jane Street Gallery in a building he owned. “I have to put in an appearance, they made such a big deal about inviting me to their opening that I can’t say no.” So she had gone—a gorgeous spring day, and there were a lot of people there and all she could really remember was that a lot of the paintings with bright colors were by women and she liked them. There was also a small group of men playing jazz in a corner, background music as people drifted from one painting to the next. The youngest one was Larry, playing the saxophone. 

Her story never wavered and always had a postscript. “So at least I knew why there was that big saxophone hanging there. But what was so interesting was that the studio part was as neat as a pin. Such a contrast to the disgusting mess that was the living part. That was obviously his space and he respected it.” 

So Belle. That, at least, the kids could relate to, and, to no one’s surprise, they had all laughed. 

Sophy smiles as she remembers it. By now the men have arrived and they are having a drink and nibbling on some sushi and talking about Trump, the absurdity of anyone thinking that this nut who had that stupid reality TV show could ever be president of the United States. As she watches the two men so happy to see each other, Sophy nestles into the pillows of the sofa, enjoying the back and forth, glad that these brothers- in-law really like and respect each other. Then, when she and Vivie are clearing away the cocktail things, she says, out of the blue, but which often happens when she and her sister are together, “You know, meeting Larry when she was in her early forties changed her life.” 

“But it doesn’t hold a candle to the way she met Dad,” Vivie reminds her. “Or their stories before they got married. Larry was a flamboyant man who gave Belle a new angle of vision and a better sense of herself. And he may have been a good artist, maybe even a great artist, but in the realm of courage, resilience or determination, he was a piker compared to either of them.” 

Sophy smiles. Hearing the defiance in Vivie’s voice makes her feel young again. And later, as they sit in their favorite Italian restaurant in New York and bask in the lovely light and the delicious food, Sophy can see in her mind’s eye a string of dinners, now melting into each other, when they were here with Belle and Isaac for special occasions. As if it would go on forever. No inkling of disaster. Blissfully unaware of threat. 

Copyright 2022, Roberta Silman

About the Author

Roberta Silman is the author of the story collection, Blood Relations, and four novels, Boundaries, The Dream Dredger, Beginning the World Again, and Secrets and Shadows, as well as two books for children, Somebody Else’s Child and Astronomers.  She has been honored with fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.  Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, McCalls, Redbook, The American Scholar, The Virginia Quarterly Review and many other magazines here and abroad.  Two have won National Magazine Awards for Fiction, Somebody Else’s Child won The Child Study Association Award for the Best Children’s Book, Blood Relations won Honorable Mention for both the PEN Hemingway Prize and the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, and Boundaries also won Honorable Mention for the Kafka Prize.  Most recently Secrets and Shadows was named one of the Best Indie Books by Kirkus for 2018 and a section of Summer Lightning was a finalist in a 2015 Narrative Magazine contest.  Her criticism has appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and, currently, in the online magazine ArtsFuse, where she is a Senior Contributor.  She lives in Western Massachusetts.

You can find Ms. Silman online at https://www.robertasilman.com.

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