‘Just a bunch of peacocks’ she thought to herself. ‘They look like they’re looking at my pears but they’re really just comparing shoes and cleavage.’ The art gallery was packed for her opening – people stood three-deep gazing at paintings of D’anjou, Bartlett and Comice. They sipped chardonnay and sparkling water while they tried to make poignant, clever remarks about the pears, the artist or a pear torte they once had. But mostly they talked about how So & So’s gained weight, the real estate market or their most recent trip to Tuscany. She really hated going to these things but the gallery owner insisted saying it was good for business.

Each of her canvases held one curvaceous fruit suspended in time and space. One was a blushing orange Seckel – squat and shapely and there was a lime-green Forelle, speckled — hovering over a sea of magenta. The long, elegant neck of a Bosc pear looked like crushed ocher and you wanted to touch it and then bite into it. Each piece of fruit was on the verge of this unbearable ripeness that you could almost smell but not one exposed its sweet, grainy flesh.

The ladies in the crowd looked at her pears with that same guarded expression that middle-aged women like her get, when they first see a pretty young thing. The back straightens, the shoulders tighten, the eyes narrow and then they shift their glance to look past that compelling, potent sensuality. It’s ironic how with age, a ripe, tempting beauty can make people squirm uncomfortably — resentful even — while at the same time they covet and yearn for it.

Someone at the opening inevitably asked her ‘Why paint pears?’ There was no good answer. It was a mystery even to her why she did it. Sometimes she’d tell them a story that she’d been scarred as a child — forced to eat canned pears in heavy syrup and that her paintings were a catharsis having to do with mother issues. Honestly though, she thought pears were a nice fruit but their timing was everything. A succulent juicy one was an evasive thing and not easy to come by.

The new owner of the painting entitled Red Anjou #3 ran up to her all excited because it was going to match perfectly with the colors in his summerhouse kitchen. He begged her for a signed ‘favorite pear recipe’ to go with the painting. She tried to explain as politely as possible that recipes were not included. She wanted to go home.

It took awhile before she was ready to go back into her studio and start painting again — she was burnt out from the opening. A lot of snow had fallen between then and now, and she had to shovel out the door. Inside, she was blown away by the sick, sugary smell of rotting pears. They were left on a plate, bruised-brown – soft and fermented — almost warm from decay and rank under a swarm of fruit flies.

Cleaning up that mess she started thinking ‘Why pears. That is a good question.’ And then she figured it out. It was time to move on. Donuts maybe — glazed, jelly-filled, Boston cream…


Originally broadcast March 3, 2004.