Jeremy

Jeremy George Lesworth III was anchored to the bar by an American-flag-edition can of PBR that was left over from Fourth of July weekend. His fat body was precariously situated upon a barstool and after another long drink, during which he nearly toppled over, the whites of his eyes were noticeably pinker and his face redder in the dim lighting of Kelly’s Pub. He had started drinking in Kelly’s at sixteen due to excess of time and money. Now, much later in his life, Jeremy severely lacked both, yet for him the contrasting circumstances called for the same action. The only difference in his drinking came in the late-night maudlin hours; whereas he used to tell friends about his great dreams for the future, with middle-age he began telling people about the greatness he could have had. Letting go of the stabilizing can, Jeremy rubbed his eyes, massaging out the folds of heavy-hanging bags like puddy. His vision was blurry for a moment and then cleared up and he smiled at a sign above the cash register that read “Free Beer Tomorrow!” Kelly’s, with its jukebox that hadn’t been updated in over a decade, lewd graffiti on the bathroom walls, and a scratched up pool table, was as familiar to him as his home, but he still got a kick out of that sign. Other than two equally redfaced men who were talking louder than they realized, and the clack of billiards in the back room, the bar was quiet. Jeremy was unaware of the stifling, beer-stale atmosphere like an aquarium fish long after it’s become used to tank water.
Jeremy felt excluded from the conversation going on beside him and he brought attention to himself with a joke.
“Hey, hey. What do women and condoms have in common? If they’re not on your dick they’re in your wallet!” Jeremy howled and then settled back into his weight like a muffintop upon his stool.
“Ha, that’s pretty good,” answered the man directly to Jeremy’s left while shifting his camouflage hat. “But I have a quesetion for Chuck,” turning to his own left, “Chuck, do you think the pilgrim’s would have sailed here, facing angry waters, terrible disease, and then savage fuckin’ natives if they knew that their line of descendentry would finally end with this sad bastard over here?” He clapped Jeremy hard on the back.
“No fuckin’ way, Bob!” Chuck knew how to answer that old joke about Jeremy’s long line of American ancestry, which did in fact begin with the Mayflower.
With his head tossed back to widen the esophagus, Jeremy imbibed the rest of his PBR for support. He tried to keep his bruised pride from showing, but too much drink had made that nearly impossible.
“Oh, we’re just joking, Jer.” Bob, with a big grin, mockingly consoled him. Jeremy made his round body smaller upon the stool and ordered another beer. He wanted to leave the bar, but the only way to salvage any of his pride was to stay. Otherwise, they would shout “Nancy” at him as he walked out the door.
When Jeremy did eventually leave an hour later, just a few minutes before midnight, he waddled out onto Main Street and had to blink at the outside air as if he were just birthed from the bar. He stuffed his hands deep into his pockets and stared west beyond the Genessee River Valley. The stars were dimmed by the orange street lamps and Jeremy thought it would be nice to walk down into the dark valley where the stars look much brighter. The following thought, that walking into the valley to see the stars, was something he could easily do never occurred to him, so he stuck to the sidewalk.
The town of Geneseo, nestled in the rolling farmland of western New York, was, for a short time, the wild American frontier, and Jeremy’s ancestors were the first to settle that frontier. The Lesworth’s remained in Geneseo, first building a fortune and then attaching their names to everything from streets to town hall. However, upon the eventual death of the childless Jeremy, the Lesworth name would finally fall through the gaps of time and into the negative space that is the past.
He approached his house—an inherited, three-story mansion whose white paint was cracked and chipping off ivy-carved pillars and whose two-door entrance looked naked without the gold cherubim knockers that Jeremy had sold for cash. Built in 1835 by New York Governor Randolph Lesworth, the mansion was at the end of a long driveway on the far side of town and protected by several acres of woods on all sides. In better days the welcome mat had seen the bottom side of many wealthy and powerful mens’ shoes, both in polite entrances and intense exits after having concluded the gain or loss of fortune and influence. Since Jeremy inherited the mansion it mostly saw the underside of his New Balance sneakers that he purchased at Walmart. He had a wife who lived with him in the mansion, but she left him nearly twenty years ago, not because he was bad to her, or interested in other women, nor was she necessarily interested in other men. Rather, boredom had leeched onto her and with boredom came the notion that she could do better. Jeremy was not particularly upset, he was bored too, but to his chagrin, she did much better by moving to San Francisco and marrying a wealthy Psychiatrist.
He walked into the mansion and tossed a handful of change into a nearly-full mason jar on a table by the stairway. The sound of change falling to the pile was satisfying to Jeremy. Then, sinking into his couch, he lit a hand-rolled joint and the pungent smell of marijuana filled the spacious living room. He inhaled, enjoying the joint’s clear pull, and held the smoke in his lungs. For a moment, while listening to the airy silence of the dilapidated mansion, he felt as if his life were full of clarity and peace. A coughing fit interrupted the serenity.
The mansion had been falling into dusty redolence and empty echoes as its valuable furnishings, such as Rococo-era cabinets and desks that once seated former presidential advisors, were auctioned off by Jeremy. Even the walls, once clothed in 18th-century paper that was hand-painted in France, were now bare, revealing a particularly sallow underside. The only items of worth that Jeremy refused to sell were the portraits of each great ancestor because he felt that they somehow validated his own presence in the mansion. The portraits included noteworthies such as George William Lesworth, a shrewd businessman who successfully saved the family from bankruptcy; Senator James Francis Lesworth, who was known for running incredible campaigns and galvanizing voters who seemed to come from nowhere; and Jeremy George Lesworth II, an impressive political negotiator who helped the New York State Assembly (though not a member himself) pass a series of bills in favor of job-creating business. At the beginning of the line was William Lesworth, an imperturbed yet forceful looking man in a heavily decorated uniform. The great military general was the founder of Geneseo. Jeremy had been a member of the Board of Trustees on the Geneseo Town and Lesworth Historical Association for a summer when there was a special exhibit in dedication of William Lesworth’s bicenttenial birthday.
The portraits dominated the room helping Jeremy ruminate over the nature of greatness: what it looks like, who achieves it, and why he was the final melancholy chapter of Lesworthian greatness. Jeremy had pitied himself from a young age with the knowledge that his life would look inexplicably worthless in juxtaposition with all the great men whose genes culminated in him. If he had been born the son of a carpenter, or police officer, or high school teacher, he wouldn’t have had to live in the very large, however dwindling, shadow of an extravagant family history. To cope with his sorrow, Jeremy made an effort to belittle greatness. He decided that it cannot be anything more than a matter of empty space filled with pomp and circumstance coupled with the exagerations of later generations. If Jeremy had a portrait painted of himself and hung in a heavy-frame next to his father, next to his father’s father, and so on, who could tell the difference? It’s all just paint on a canvas anyway. Tomorrow he would look into getting his own portrait done.
Groaning and wheezing, Jeremy stood up and walked towards the stairs. He placed one foot upon the first step and held it there. The steps were steep and had a low-set railing that was less than waist high. Jeremy never slept in the master bedroom upstairs. He used to, until his weight and heart, weakened by his first heart-attack, made climbing the steps too much of an effort. Since then he slept on the couch, but on this night he felt driven towards the bedroom. An urge, maybe the same urge that drove his ancestors to perform great deeds, brought Jeremy to the foot of the stairs. However, after only a few steps his pounding heart shouted against that will and turned him back. While sitting again on the couch, Jeremy leaned forward to snatch the TV remote off the coffee table, turned on the big, flat screen in the corner of the room, and fell asleep in the electric glow and static hum of “Keeping Up with the Kardashians.”
When Jeremy awoke the next afternoon he searched for “portrait painters” on Craigslist. The cheapest he could find was no less than three-hundred dollars for a painter named Bahz. Jeremy wracked his brain thinking of how to find the money. No one he knew would lend it to him. He already owed the bank for several loans taken out to start destined-to-fail businesses, such as a local newspaper, a bed and breakfast, and, most recently, an organic farm. Just about everything he had inherited except the family portraits, and the mansion itself had been sold. He grew frustrated that his inchoate plan for greatness was losing steam so quickly.
Just as he was about to give up the whole idea Jeremy recalled his change jar. He was the frivolous type who immediately spends even the smallest sum he gains, but the little bit he did save after each night out provided an instance of pleasure that made him feel somehow closer, despite all rationale, to eliminating the financial distance between his ancestors and himself. Years had passed since he last emptied it, and at that time the change amounted to just over two-hundred dollars, which he spent on a few farm tools (that were ultimately left outside to rust). The farm operation had failed in its second year not only because Jeremy was careless with his equipment, but because the migrant workers refused to work for a man who cut their pay almost weekly. All of them quit working when Jeremy was overheard muttering racial slurs under his breath while trying to fix a hose that he had broken himself. That seemed like a long time ago, and now the change jar looked fuller than it did then.
The change spilled out onto the old shag rug that Jeremy had bought at a yardsale after having sold the mansion’s hand-made Indian rug—a gift given to his great-great-grandfather Robert Brian Lesworth from a member of the British royal family. Jeremy sat on the rug, plump and head bowed over his counting. When he lost count about half way through, Jeremy punched the ground and snarled, “I shouldn’t have to do this.” However, he worked his way through the arduous task and finished with a grand total of $213.47. All he needed to find was another $87.53, which he more or less already had; he figured it would just be a matter of saving by abstaining from his drinking and smoking habits for at least a couple of weeks. This prospect was daunting, but Jeremy remembered a phrase that his old high school football coach used to tell the team during half-time: “Pain is temporary. Pride is forever!” Jeremy mouthed these words to himself, and then ignored how trite the statement now sounded.
That evening Jeremy was watching TMZ on television, and when the commercial came on he flipped through the channels. He was sedated by the surge of images and sound so that the only sign of life in him was his thumb pressing the remote. The screen glowed in his pupils, and it took his brain a few moments to register that he had heard the word “greatness.” He awoke a little and jumped back a few channels to a televangelist at the head of a massive congregation joined in a stadium.
“Greatness,” the man boomed with the hint of a southern accent that was just thick enough to titillate the ears of its listeners, “is not reserved for the few.” The coincidence dragged Jeremy’s attention out from his soggy boredom.
“Greatness,” the televangelist continued while walking the length of the stage in order to engage his whole audience, “is not something viewed in the impressive artwork found in our museums; nor is it in humanity’s continual advances in science and technology. Greatness is not found in wealth or fame. Nor is it something that can be quantified, or even easily recognized for that matter. But, these are all things that greatness is not. So, what is greatness?” He paused and the camera cut to a close –up of his inquisitive face. Jeremy felt the intimacy of a deep conversation. “Greatness, as I said before, is not reserved for the few, but is rather there for all of us to achieve if we decide to reach for it. ‘I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.’ Philippians 4:13. Greatness is there for the taking—young, old, poor, rich, it doesn’t matter. Greatness is something quietly sung between the Lord and ourselves in the form of prayer, love, and grace. It is not something pontificated to the masses!” Jeremy leaned forward on the couch. He had been raised Protestant, but had not attended mass since college when he rejected religion because that seemed the intellectual thing to do. Nonetheless, Jeremy was wrapped up in the televangelist’s charming smile and attractive confidence.
“Greatness is achieved by giving your whole self up to God, ‘for you will be great before the Lord.’ Luke 1:15. It is in faith. And if you give yourself up to God, you must be ready to give yourself up to your neighbor because God is in all of us. Greatness is in those small, yet incredibly significant acts of kindness, such as giving what you have—whether very much or very little—to those less fortunate, yet equally human, members of our community, and to our church, and to advocates of the church—I have bills to pay too,” he joked, using his simple sense of irony to ease his justification of making money off scripture. Jeremy shifted his weight and itched his unshaven stubble. Greatness was a bit more complex than he had realized.
“If you do these things, you will find greatness, and it may not be recognized or commended by others, but you and God will both know that you are someone eternally great.” He paused and then raised his arms shoulder height, with palms open and fingers spread towards the congregation, “Let us pray.”
For a few days after that mass Jeremy believed what the televangelist had said about greatness and for those few days figured that he should empty his change jar on groceries for the soup kitchen. However, Jeremy spent more time under the portraits’ critical gaze than he did in the good graces of televised religion, and renewed his determination, with an email to Bahz, and two painstaking weeks of saving, to get his portrait painted.
Bahz was a physically fit woman of about thirty-five. Her limbs were thin, yet toned, and she wore her greying hair in a bun with what Jeremy thought were chopsticks.
“You must be Miss Bahz.” Jeremy felt confident wearing the suit that he put on and stuck out his hand to introduce himself.
“Its just Bahz,” she replied.
As she unloaded her canvas, pencils, paints, brushes and easel from an old, maroon Buick decorated with a bumper sticker that read “Be Your Own Goddess,” she demanded that Jeremy move aside and let her make the proper aesthetic decisions. Walking so quickly that her blue and purple paisley skirt flapped behind her, Bahz searched the mansion for the room with the best lighting and background. She searched with the impatience of a person trying too hard to seem a serious artist.
“We’ll do it in the kitchen, Jeremy,” Bahz said decisively.
He was taken aback, none of his ancestors had posed in the kitchen. Their backgrounds ranged from a plain dark shade, to a bookshelf, or fireplace, but never the kitchen.
“I don’t know,” Jeremy protested, “The kitchen doesn’t seem like the best spot, maybe we could do the fireplace or—”
“No. We’ll do the kitchen. It has the best light; the best mise en scene. The kitchen is welcoming. People enjoy the culinary space for the comfort of food and friends. We’ll do it in the kitchen.”
Her insistence unsettled Jeremy, especially considering that he was the one paying her. Did she not understand how a simple business transaction worked?
“Listen, um, Bahz, I’d prefer if we do it either in the library or in front of the fireplace. I’m paying you and I should have some say in the matter of where I get my own portrait done.”
“Those settings are so drab, Jeremy. The point of portraits today are not to feign power and wealth like we’re still hung up on the old aristocracy.” She put her hand on Jeremy’s shoulder as if to transfer her ideas to him through physical contact. He looked very uncomfortable. “The point of portraits in the twenty-first century are to subvert such silly Old World sentiments and to apply something fresh, something more down to earth, more human to our practices. And I believe the kitchen captures that, Jeremy. Not to mention that the lighting is simply better in there. Those portraits of yours, yes, I looked at them while you were in the bathroom, are too dark and dingy as if something about their character needed hiding. You’re different from them, Jeremy, and for you we need light!”
“Well,” he prepared to play his only card, “then I won’t pay you.”
“Then I will not do your portrait.”
Bahz went to the kitchen to repack her supplies and Jeremy considered his limited options. He asked her to hold on a minute and acquiesced.
Jeremy sat on a stool in the kitchen inundated with light and Bahz’s impatient commands for how to sit and smile—not too wide or toothy like in posed-photos, but contendedly. The portrait took around three hours and for those three hours all Jeremy could think about was the drink he would have afterwards. He would go to the bar and see Bob and Chuck there, and tell them about Bahz. They would ask what Bahz looked like, and Jeremy would answer that she was decent, and might have been better if she weren’t such a bitch.
Suddenly Bahz proclaimed,“Alright! That’s it,” startling Jeremy out of a half-sleep.
Jeremy looked over the painting and was about to offer a polite compliment until he remembered that he was paying for it. The portrait did indeed resemble him sitting on a stool in the kitchen, but the interplay of shadows and light made no sense to Jeremy’s eye. Some portions of the painting were flooded with so much light that a separation between his body and the background could barely be discerned. In other areas the lighting was just right, and in still more spaces the shadows hung very heavily over him, again fading the line between subject and background to near non-existence. Anyone viewing the portrait might have expected that Jeremy had been posing under a strobe light. But what angered Jeremy the most was Bahz’s wildly conspicuous signature, which was perched upon the subject’s shoulder in large, red print.
“What the hell is this?”
“What do you mean?” returned Bahz almost expectantly.
“What do I mean? I mean this mess. The ridiculous shadows. Your signature’s right in the middle of it!”
“This is art, Jeremy. You asked for a portrait, and I gave you a portrait. I don’t understand what you dislike.”
“What’s going on with the light. I’m no artist, but I can tell when a painting doesn’t look right. This looks nothing like me.”
“It looks very much like you.”
“I mean, it kind of does, but not how I wanted it to look. Not how actual people look.”
Jeremy stared at her, speechless and awaiting a better explanation.
“When I paint, I paint things as I see them. The sunlight changes over three hours. And at whatever portion of the painting I’m at, I take the sunlight into account as I presently see it. Those portraits in the other room aren’t real. This is what I saw, this is not some sort of absurd replication meant to sidestep what actually is!”
“There’s no consistency!”
“Yes!”
“And how about that big, red signature on my shoulder? Did you see that there too?” Jeremy demanded.
“I put myself in my work spiritually and therefore must reveal my connection to it physically. I cannot be removed from it.”
“If you think I’m paying you for this you’re insane.”
“Well, I sure hope you’re not expecting me to let you keep it then.” Jeremy hated the idea of keeping that thing anyway, but what he hated even more was the recognition that he had spent two sober weeks, three hours on a kitchen stool, and three-hundred dollars for absolutely nothing.
“I’ll tell you what,” Jeremy said more calmly, “If you can figure out a way to erase that signature and maybe touch up the shadows just to make them more consistent, more like the portraits in the other room, I’ll pay what I owe you.”
Bahz cringed at the thought of altering her artistic vision, but reluctantly complied with the offer knowing that her old Buick needed work done and her rent was due in a couple of weeks. She did what she could while Jeremy sat in the other room watching television and trying to ignore his ancestors’ scrutiny. When she finished, Bahz signed her name in the bottom right corner, though still in red. Jeremy tried to make her erase that too, and she refused. So he accepted the signature as a scar and shorted Bahz fifteen dollars.
Jeremy hung the portrait beside his father’s and tried to convince himself that there wasn’t much of a stylistic difference, that the honorable opulence suggested in the other portraits could be found in his own. In fact, Bahz had done a very okay job of fixing the portrait to Jeremy’s liking, but he did not want to like it because he disliked Bahz. However, he needed to like it in order to assert his identity as a Lesworth. His mind was rumbling with dissension. He looked from his own painted countenance to his father’s and frowned like a child at his parent’s disapproval. Every disparity between his own portrait and the others made him feel like an aberration on the family tree, or, more accurately, he had always felt that way, and his portrait, now hung beside the others, was just a tangible reminder of his feelings.
Becoming claustrophobic despite the mansion’s space, Jeremy exchanged his discomfort for the complacent dinge of the bar. He even had an extra fifteen dollars to spend on cheap bourbon at Kelly’s. Neither Bob nor Chuck were there so Jeremy drank alone and told the bartender, “She did my portrait. She was good looking enough, but would have been better looking if she weren’t such a bitch.” Jeremy howled and the bar tender chuckled politely. Being drunk felt good, very good, and Jeremy drank each beer and shot of whiskey as if that would be the one to finally releive him of his remorse.
Late that night, after struggling to fit his key in the keyhole, he stumbled in through the front door. He belligerently made his way to the couch and tried to roll a joint, but deciding which of the three blurry sets of hands to focus on made him nauseous. The portraits, including his own, stared down at him. He closed his eyes with incoherent frustration. Abruptly, he stood up from the couch, spilling his marijuana on the floor, and marched toward the stairs. Each step presented itself as an obstacle over which he dubiously proceeded. Upon conquering the first flight of stairs he stopped and struggled to catch his breath. He could feel his heart pounding at the inside of his chest as if trapped and furiously knocking for release. The second flight proved more difficult, but he continued, barely able to breathe. Very near the top he dramatically clutched at his chest as if trying to open it and free his frantic heart. He reached out his other hand to lean against the low-set railing, but his hand tumbled into empty space, clumsily missing its target, and pulling his whole weight along with it. He toppled over the railing onto the lower flight of stairs. His head whipped back and a stair’s edge caught him at the neck. He was not conscious enough to realize it, but for the remaining minutes of his life he was paralyzed from the neck down.
The mortician would later comment to himself on Jeremy’s particularly sallow hue just before powdering on makeup for the wake.

* * *

“Look at the fuckin’ mugs on all these old white dudes!” Warner, one of the two movers, said while preparing to load the portraits.
“Ha,” the other, Dave, laughed in agreement despite being white himself. “Bunch of rich bastards, huh?”
“I read about these guys,” Warner had picked up an iron poker from the fire place and pointed it critically at Jeremy’s great-uncle George William Lesworth: “This one was a bootlegger. The whole family was nearly bankrupt until this guy got all their money back running whisky into the state during Prohibition.”
“Ha, makes sense. Look at him, all redfaced. Definitely enjoyed his bourbon. Do you know about this one?”
“This guy?” he pointed the iron poker at Jeremy’s great-grandfather Senator James Francis Lesworth, a plump man with little annoying eyes that peered through a pair of rimless glasses. “He won office with only about a third of the votes actually needed.”
“How’d he do that?” Dave asked.
“A whole lot of dead people happened to crawl out of their graves on voting day.”
“That’s ridiculous. How about this one?”
The poker was now on Jeremy George Lesworth II: “A lobbyist for corporate business. He was real big on political extortion. Actually, he got the Walmart built here even though mostly everybody protested it.”
“Bunch of dishonest sons of bitches, right up to the last of them.” He nodded towards Jeremy George Wadsworth III’s portrait without any recognition of the edited signature and shadows.
“Nah, they weren’t all bad. Big Will at the head there actually has a pretty impressive story. And as for the end of the line, he wasn’t a bad guy. I met him a few times out at the bar, bought me a beer once.” Warner responded. “Just kind of a loser, but not a bad guy.”
“So do you know what’s happening to the rest of this stuff anyway?”
“Some distant cousin of his—no one with much connection to these guys—is inheriting everything. I heard he’s just gonna try to auction it.”
They began to lift the portraits off the wall and place them all together in a single crate.