Interview with the Artist

Setting: Little Falls, New Jersey, United States, 1969.

Jessica was sitting in her car, going through her notes one last time. She balanced the small yellow pad against her knee, revealing the neat handwriting and underlined words in several places where she feared she might lose her footing. The pen stabbed the page again and again as she mumbled the notes in haste: John Preston Jr. Born 1909 in Brooklyn. Grew up during the early rush of aviation. Attended Brooklyn Technical High School. First airplane ride at fourteen. Two years of college. Serviced aircraft at Roosevelt Field in exchange for flying lessons. Discovered love for painting. World War II service. Post-war career as aviation artist and historian. One-man Smithsonian show in ‘48. No family. Parents deceased. She paused, her eyes tracing the long lines that framed her notes, circling them like the path of an ant trail. A creeping discomfort rose in her when she realized the shape they formed resembled the outline of California. She tapped the page a few more times with the back end of the pen and closed the pad.

Drawing a deep breath, she checked her reflection in the rearview mirror. At twenty-three, her beauty was striking – a calm and symmetrical face, warm hazel eyes, and long voluminous hair that spilled in loose brown waves behind her. Her skin held a smooth, warm tone untouched by anything more than a bit of mascara and a hint of color on her lips. She wore a simple cream blouse tucked into a pair of well-fitted high-waisted jeans. Her eyes settled on the black Konica camera with a leather strap sitting in the passenger seat. Alan, her editor at the Herald News, had given it to her the morning before in what felt like a quiet passing of the torch. It was her first job and her first assignment, yet he had been the one who seemed nervous. Jessica knew the effect she had on men, and it was only her grace and the strict education she received from her Methodist parents that kept her from using it in ways she would have regretted. She fixed her hair, smoothing a loose strand behind her ear, checked the lens cap, and slipped the camera into her bag. Finally ready, she stepped out of the car and closed the door behind her.

Her car was a yellow 1967 Ford Falcon parked at a slight angle across from John Preston Jr.’s house. The neighborhood was quiet and settled, with two rows of trees forming a thin canopy above the road. The Preston place fit in much the same way the others did, a small house set back from the road with a narrow walkway leading to a plain front porch and a brick chimney rising straight along the side.

She crossed the street slowly, taking in the neat yard with its trimmed grass and tidy shrubs, everything kept in careful order by someone who liked things just so. The windows were small and square, and she wondered if he painted in one of the front rooms or somewhere farther back where the morning sun would catch the paper. For a moment she pictured him inside, this older man she had come to interview, surrounded by stacks of aviation books and yellowing clippings.

As she stepped onto the porch, she noticed a slight creak in the boards beneath her. The house had a presence to it, not imposing but steady, as if it had been holding its breath for a long time and she was about to disturb it. She knocked twice, the second time harder than the first. The door opened a moment later.

John Preston Jr. stood in the doorway. He was a solidly built man of sixty with a square, weathered face and short greying hair. His eyes were steady and reserved, and he wore a plain long-sleeved shirt pushed up at the forearms and old work trousers. There was a touch of aloofness in the slight crease near his mouth. She noticed immediately that his eyes did not linger on her the way other men’s often did when they first saw her smile.

"Mr. Preston," she said, offering her hand.

“Miss Grusch,” he replied. “I’ve been expecting you.”

He took her hand briefly in his own and stepped aside so she could enter.

Jessica crossed the threshold into a small, dim foyer. She paused, letting her eyes adjust. The walls were painted in muted tones that had probably gone unchanged for decades, and the air carried a faint, familiar scent that reminded her of her grandparents’ home, a smell that belonged to old rooms kept closed for a long time. He led her into the front room, moving with the quiet assurance of someone who knew where every object in the house belonged. The living room was modest and spare, furnished with older pieces that looked sturdy rather than stylish. A worn armchair stood near the fireplace, its cushions slightly indented in the shape of a man who had sat there for many evenings. On the mantel, instead of family photos, she saw neat rows of small model airplanes and a few framed sketches.

Sunlight filtered weakly through lace curtains, giving the room a gentle, filtered glow. Jessica noticed the bookshelves along the far wall, packed tightly with aviation histories, flight manuals, and binders stuffed with clippings. It did not look cluttered so much as curated by someone who lived inside his subject matter.

Mr. Preston gestured for her to follow him toward a narrower hallway. As they walked, she caught sight of a small framed photograph hung a little apart from the books. It showed John Preston Jr. when he was a boy of eight or nine, thin and serious, standing beside a tall, broad-shouldered man who kept his hand at his side rather than on the child. The man she assumed was John Sr. had a lined prairie face and steady dark eyes. His posture was calm, almost rigid, betraying a man who belonged to a world where emotion was rarely shown. The boy stared straight at the camera with a careful expression that was clearly copied from his father.

“You have a lovely house,” she said.

“My father built it with his own hands in 1935,” he replied.

They moved on. A dining room opened on the right, anchored by a heavy wooden table. The room felt like it belonged to another era, one of Sunday meals and family gatherings. Farther down the hall she glimpsed a closed door that she guessed had once belonged to his parents. Something about its untouched stillness made her clasp her hands before her without knowing why.

He brought her to a small studio, brighter than the rest of the house. The blinds were half open, letting in a patient, steady light that fell over a worktable scattered with brushes, jars of water, and sheets of watercolor paper. Several unfinished paintings were propped against the wall, and a small fan hummed softly on a stool nearby, set to dry a sheet that still glistened with paint. The room smelled faintly of paper and pigment, familiar and comforting in a way she had not expected.

“This is where I work,” Mr. Preston said softly.

Jessica nodded, taking in the quiet sanctity of the space. It felt like the heart of the house, the one room where time did not move unless he allowed it. She pulled out her camera, suddenly aware of how carefully she would need to observe everything if she wanted to do justice to the man who lived and worked here. Mr. Preston got out of the way as she snapped a couple of pictures.

As the shelves at the far end of the room found their way into her frame, she noticed a model airplane set apart from the others. It was a TWA jet, rendered with a care that made it look almost ready to lift from its stand. The white fuselage carried the red stripe clean across its side, and the long wings swept back with a grace she recognized from the publicity photographs she had seen. She could swear she had read that Mr. Preston was once commissioned by the airline to make a calendar featuring their airplanes.

“I have a lot of paintings, too. All TWA,” he said, noticing her interest.

“Wasn’t there something in the news recently about someone from TWA,” Jessica said, searching for the name. “Mr. Pierce. I think he was the board chair. There was a scandal and he had to resign. Left his wife of thirty years for someone else. Ran off to California, or something like that.”

Mr. Preston looked away. “Oh, I wouldn’t know about that,” he said. “I haven’t done anything for them in years.”

He gestured to the chair opposite his own. She set down her bag quietly and took her seat. It was not until then that she noticed the photograph of a woman placed on a small shelf behind his chair, positioned in a way that seemed to overlook his work area. The portrait revealed a plain, neatly kept lady in her fifties, with pale eyes and a calm, composed expression. Growing up in this part of New Jersey, Jessica recognized the polished Protestant restraint that shaped the woman’s entire appearance, the kind she associated with Methodist or Presbyterian households.

Mr. Preston remained standing for a moment, his hands resting lightly on the back of his chair. “Can I get you some water or coffee?” he asked. She shook her head and thanked him.

He nodded once, pulled out his chair, and sat across from her.

“Shall we begin,” he said.

“Like I said earlier, you have a beautiful house,” she said. “And the studio… it feels like a very special part of it.”

Mr. Preston nodded once. “Yes, it is. Everything you see here I brought in over the years. From the moment I moved here with my parents, this was my room. The place where I painted.”

“You mentioned your father built the house?” she probed.

“He did,” Mr. Preston said. “My father was a welder, and a darn good one. He was from North Dakota originally. Came east at the turn of the century looking for work. New York had plenty of it back then. That’s where he met my mother.”

“She was from New York originally?” she asked.

“She was from Massachusetts,” he said. “They settled in Brooklyn, and that’s where I was born.”

Jessica leaned forward slightly. “That’s funny. Most people who grow up around here dream about moving to the city. You went the other way.”

“I love New York,” he said. “Even now I keep a studio in Manhattan.” He folded his hands on the table. “My life has been split between the two places since the thirties. But you have to understand, it was cheaper here. During the Depression a lot of people built houses just like this one, and they did it with their own hands. Couldn’t afford to do that in the city.”

“And this is where you discovered painting?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “I was in my twenties when we came here. But I did start making a living selling artwork.”

It was in that moment she understood that the man before her had likely never lived away from his parents while they were alive. Her mind moved quickly, searching for a follow-up question to keep the silence from turning awkward.

“So, when did you start to paint?”

“About the same time I discovered flying.” His expression shifted, softening as if a window had opened somewhere behind his eyes. “When I was fourteen, the school took us to D.C. There was a field just outside the city where a pilot was giving short rides in a Jenny. We all scraped some money together. It was enough to pay for one ride. We put our names in a hat and…”

“Wow, that’s some coincidence,” she exclaimed.

“No such thing,” he concluded.

“You don’t believe in luck?”

“Things happen the way they’re meant to happen. At least the big things always do.”

“What was it like?”

“I went up in that Jenny, and the sky was… the most beautiful shade of blue I’ve ever seen to this day,” he said with his eyes fixed somewhere beyond that time and place. “Nothing could come close to it.”

Jessica let the silence rest a moment before asking, “So you always knew you’d come back to flying?”

“As soon as I came back to New York I started spending time at Roosevelt Field. That place had its own kind of magic. Lindbergh had taken off from there not too many years before, and he was the man back then. I swept out hangars, wiped down wings, cleaned spark plugs, anything they needed. In return they gave me time in the air. Free instruction was worth more than any wage they could have paid me. I kept at it until I earned my license. That was in the early thirties. A few years later I became an instructor myself.”

“And painting?” her voice trailed off.

“Was it always planes and flying,” he tried to clarify with a smile. “I’m afraid so. I just couldn’t let go.”

“Why do you like the watercolors so much?”

“Back in Brooklyn, my father kept things he didn’t know what to do with in the attic. Tools, scraps, things from our first apartment. One day I found a small box of watercolors up there. It was the cheapest thing you could use to paint in those days, so I started with that.”

“It’s not easy, painting with such precision,” she said quietly.

He gave a small nod. “The sky is the hardest thing to get right. There’s no blueprint, it’s always different. Once I have that, airplanes are simple by comparison. Lines and structure. But the sky… the sky is the heart of it.”

Jessica was busy writing in her pad. He had not raised his voice once, yet the room felt full of something steady and old and completely his. She soaked in it for a moment; then raised her head and their eyes met again. “You mentioned Lindbergh. Did you ever get to know anybody famous?”

“Lindbergh was gone by the time I got there… There is only one man who I always think of when I go down memory lane… Alfred “Red” Donnelly. You might have heard the name. Barnstormer type.” He searched her face for a sign of recognition, but when he found none, he simply went on. “He carried himself with such ease. Always looked as though the whole world revolved around him. And he loved it.”

He drew a slow breath. “He was tall. Broad shoulders. A strong jawline. Always a big smile. I suppose I watched him more than I watched the others. When he walked across the field, the talk changed. People straightened up. Even the way he put on his flight jacket had a sort of… certainty to it. Like he knew something the rest of us didn’t.”

His fingers tapped twice on the table, then stilled. “I got to ride with him once when I was sixteen. Couldn’t have taken more than ten, maybe fifteen minutes. But I remember every second. The way he held the stick. The steadiness in his hands. The way the sun hit his face.” Mr. Preston’s voice quieted. “Men like him were made of something different. Stronger metal.”

“But you’re a pilot, too,” she interrupted.

He looked back at her, gentler now. “People like Red had the audacity to embrace life completely. He lived in the air. I visited from time to time and tried to capture those moments with my brush… As well as I could anyway.”

Something stirred in Jessica, and she felt sorry for Mr. Preston. She opened her mouth to speak, but the phone started ringing somewhere in the house. Their eyes met for a long moment while the sound carried on in the background.

* * *

As far back as she could remember, Jessica had never needed an alarm clock. The sharp bell of the phone downstairs spilled through the house, and six o’clock announced itself the way it always had. It was dispatch calling with her father’s route for the day. He drove a local run, delivering milk in the early morning and bread and pastries to diners and restaurants through the afternoon. Today was no different.

She lay still for a few seconds, listening to her father’s low, familiar voice as he took notes, before it gave way to the steady sounds of the kitchen. Plates touched the table. A chair shifted. The walls were thin, and the rhythm of it all carried easily upstairs.

She reached for the lamp on the nightstand and turned it on. Beside it lay an unopened envelope with her name written across the front. The return address read Los Angeles, California. She glanced at it once, then looked away, painfully aware that she was only playing at indifference.

The space was small and modest, kept in careful order. A narrow bed, a dresser, a chair with clothes folded neatly over its back. On one wall hung a single movie poster, Bonnie and Clyde, with Faye Dunaway caught in a poised, defiant glance. It was the only indulgence in the room, a quiet reminder that Little Falls, New Jersey had not escaped the grinder of 1960s America.

Jessica crossed to the large oval mirror in the corner of the room, pushing her hair back off her face. Her reflection looked the same as it always had in the mornings, but she felt something different under her skin. Today she had an interview. An old pilot who painted airplanes. She tried to imagine him, but nothing came except a vague outline, a man waiting in a small house somewhere.

Reaching for a pair of blue jeans, her thoughts drifted back to her parents. Her mother had never worked outside the house, and her father’s paycheck had always carried the household. When she came home from Rutgers, she spent a few uneasy months looking for work, aware of the strain even if no one spoke of it outright. This job brought a sense of relief. Still, beneath it, there was the quieter feeling that she had settled into place too quickly, that some part of her had fallen asleep when it should have been awake.

* * *

The sound of the phone ringing sat between Jessica and Mr. Preston for a long moment as they held each other’s gaze. It seemed to make him nervous, drawing attention to something he was reluctant to share.

“Aren’t you going to take that?” she finally asked. “We can stop for a minute.”

The ringing went on a few seconds longer, then cut off.

“Let’s just keep going,” he said.

“All right,” she said. She glanced down at her pad and then back up. “So how did you end up being part of the war effort?”

He drew a slow breath. “Ah, the war effort.” He looked past her as a smile crept up on him. “I was commissioned in ’42. Second lieutenant, Army Air Forces. By then I had a commercial license, and I could make myself useful. Wasn’t that many pilots who could paint.”

“So how would you describe your role,” she asked.

“Combat artist is what they called it,” he replied. “It was new at the time. There were photographers, of course, but they wanted something with a bit more style. Something they could use for posters and magazines.”

His eyes lit up for a moment. “You should look at the publications from that era. Some of that work was very good. Not like today.”

He shifted slightly in his chair. “Anyway, I was assigned to the Historical Office. We were meant to document operations as they happened.”

“You flew missions in Europe, correct?” Jessica asked, leaning forward.

“I did,” he said. “I was there to observe. To record.” He shook his head slightly. “The combat pilots were the heroes, of course. It was an honor to fly with some of those men.”

“Did you see any dogfights?” she asked.

“Not up close,” he said. “I saw a couple from the ground. You’d hear the engines long before you saw anything. Then the sky would fill up all at once.” He paused. “It was truly horrendous to watch. I can’t even imagine what it was like for the boys who were flying those planes.”

He paused again and she let the silence hold for a long moment.

“I painted aerial battles for a long time after the war. Just couldn’t help it,” he went on. “But I portrayed the old machines instead. World War One planes.”

“Why is that?” she asked.

“What’s the difference,” he said. “The same countries. The same rivalries. And I didn’t know any of the men who died in that war. A compromise I could live with.”

“It must’ve been hard. I imagine you spent a lot of time with those pilots,” she said.

“I sure did.” He hesitated for a long moment. “They were very young, most of them in their early twenties. There was this one fellow… Warren Hale. He was a captain. Twenty-five when I first met him. Can you imagine the kind of responsibility he had at that age? When he first showed up, he hardly spoke at all. I thought he might be taken aback by everything. But then whenever a mission came up, he was always the first one to volunteer. That’s when I realized the kind of strength he carried.”

“You were friends,” she asked.

“You could say that. I was ten years his senior. I have a picture of the two of us. I can show you.” He opened one of the shallow drawers of his worktable and took out an old black-and-white photograph.

Jessica leaned forward.

The two men stood side by side on an airfield, with a bomber rising behind them like a dark wall of metal. Hale was unmistakable. He stood a full head taller than the man beside him. His shoulders were broad, his posture straight, and the flight jacket sat easily on his frame. The dark hair was combed neatly back from his forehead, and his face had the kind of striking balance that made Jessica think of movie posters. There was an ease to him that did not read as effort. He looked calm. Self-contained. Entirely at home in his own skin.

Mr. Preston stood beside him, thinner and slighter by comparison. A smile had found its way onto his face, open and almost boyish. He leaned a fraction closer to the other man, the way someone might when standing next to a favorite ballplayer.

“You keep that photo close,” she noted.

“Warren was shot down over Germany in ’45. One of the last runs of the war. This is the last thing I have left of him.” Mr. Preston looked away, and Jessica took it as a sign to change the subject.

“You came back here after you left the Army,” she asked.

“Yeah, I retired as a lieutenant colonel in ‘45. The pension helped. It gave me stability. A painter can do a lot more work when he isn’t worrying about the ground under his feet.”

“It’s not easy making a living as an artist,” she said, and something in her voice made him look up.

“It takes a leap of faith,” he said. “Is that something you ever thought about? Forgive me for my ignorance. I imagine every reporter secretly wants to write a great American novel.”

His kind smile gave her the courage to be honest.

“Actually, I trained to be an actress in college.”

“Really?” He seemed surprised.

“You know how it is. Not a lot of job security doing that. Especially for someone from this area,” she said.

“Oh, I know it too well,” he agreed. “Does some of what you learned in drama school translate to what you’re doing now?”

“Well, I guess I’ve always liked watching people, studying them. Trying to figure out what made them tick.” The small confession brought a smile to her face, which she quickly hid by lowering her gaze. “So, what did you do with all that freedom after the war,” she asked, glad to return to safer ground.

“The only thing I ever did, I suppose. I kept painting airplanes,” he said. “I had met Major General Alfred Jessup in Europe. He wanted to thank me for my wartime service, and he made sure the Air Force sponsored my Smithsonian show in ’48. They had only separated from the Army the year before, and I think they saw it as a good opportunity.”

“That must have been exciting,” she said.

“I was over the moon. A lot of important people showed up. That’s how I met Leonard Pierce from TWA,” he said. “He gave me my first contract. I painted the company’s historic first flights. Those watercolors ended up on menus, posters, prints. Some went to exhibitions, and a few made their way into museum collections.”

Mr. Preston had gathered momentum now, and Jessica let him continue, though the name Leonard Pierce lingered with her, the same man she had read about only days earlier in the gossip pages of her favorite magazine.

“It built from there,” he said. “They asked me to illustrate The Official Pictorial History of the Army Air Forces. That was a serious undertaking. A lot of responsibility in getting things right.”

He shifted in his chair, warming to the memory. “A few years later Life came calling. They were putting together an aviation history spread. Eight pages. The first time anyone had really tried to tell the whole story in pictures. I spent nine months on research alone. Digging through records, photographs, drawings. Making sure each aircraft was placed where it belonged.”

A small smile crossed his face. “Rand McNally published a book of my paintings after that. Full-sized reproductions. Proper paper. It was like a capstone of sorts.”

He paused, then added, almost as an afterthought, “In ‘61, my watercolors were voted one of the ten best exhibitions of the year by American Watercolor Magazine.” He shrugged lightly. “I suppose it meant I was doing something right.”

The phone rang again from deep within the house. The ease drained from his face, and his hands tightened together on the table.

* * *

The phone rang again as Jessica started down the stairs. A second alarm; quite unnecessary, she thought. The bell cut through the narrow house with the same authority, following her step by step as she descended.

She heard her mother’s voice, low and brisk, as she answered the phone. By the time she reached the bottom step, her father had pushed back his chair and was standing at the table with the receiver in his hand, already halfway into his workday. It struck her, not for the first time, how every call seemed to be meant for him, and how it was always her mother who answered.

“Good morning, my dear,” her mother said as Jessica entered the dining room.

“Morning, Mom. Morning, Dad.”

Her father lifted a hand in acknowledgment without turning and kept the receiver pressed to his ear. He was a gaunt man in his late fifties, his hair thinned to a pale wreath around a broad bald crown. True to his habit and profession, he wore a driver’s work shirt that was clean and neatly pressed. His black shoes were spotless but not polished.

Her mother moved back toward the kitchen, already occupied with something on the stove. She was a small, sinewy woman who kept her graying hair pinned back in a practical fashion. Unbothered by appearance, she wore a black dress with white polka dots, one of her dependable favorites. There was an energy to her movements that never quite stilled, as if the house itself depended on her momentum.

Jessica sat at the dining table. It was a heavy rectangular piece of furniture with four chairs placed at each side, though only three were ever used. A built-in china cabinet stood against the wall across from her. Its shelves held everyday dishes, all arranged with quiet precision. On the other side of the dining room, tiered café curtains covered the windows and shut out the street while still letting in the glow of the streetlamps. Above the paneling, floral wallpaper in muted harvest tones made the rigidity of the room easier to bear.

Her mother set a plate of wheat toast in front of her and poured a glass of milk. Jessica buttered the toast slowly, listening to the familiar sounds around her. The house had been built in the late thirties, her father liked to remind her, with his own hands and help from his father-in-law. Thirty years on, it still held together just fine.

“Did Gina write to you?” her mother asked, not looking up.

Jessica paused. “What?”

“The letter. Did you see it? I left it on your nightstand.”

“Yes,” Jessica said. “I got it.”

“It’s Gina, isn’t it,” the older woman insisted. “From college.”

“How did you know?”

Her mother smiled faintly. “She was always talking about California. About Hollywood. I saw the return address.”

Jessica nodded. “She’s doing all right.”

“Well, that’s good,” her mother said. “I always wondered if she’d really go through with it.”

Jessica said nothing. She never told her parents how Gina tried to convince her to come with her, and how she said that she would write to her as soon as she found a place in Los Angeles. Deep down, she knew the truth. The only thing keeping her here was the fear that she would let down her strict Methodist parents. They thought acting was an indulgence of people with too much money and too little common sense or Christian backbone.

As she did every morning, she bit into the toast and kept her thoughts to herself.

* * *

Mr. Preston decided he would ignore the phone this time. “Do you have any other questions?” he asked.

Jessica hesitated, then closed her notebook. “I was hoping we might look at some of your paintings,” she said. “And perhaps I could take a few photographs of you with your work.”

He considered this, then nodded. “That sounds like a good idea.”

He moved around the studio, lifting paintings from where they leaned against the walls and setting them out one by one. She raised the camera and took a photo. Another followed, this one of him standing among the paintings with the planes rising behind his shoulders in careful formation.

“You mentioned you keep a studio in Manhattan,” she said as he returned a watercolor to its place.

“Yes, I do,” he replied.

“Do you paint there as well?”

“No.” He shook his head. “I keep some of my work there, but I don’t paint much when I’m in the city. I meet friends. You know, people from the art world. I work here, but my social life is mostly over there.”

Jessica nodded and adjusted the focus on the camera. She wondered if Leonard Pierce of TWA had been one of those friends at some point.

When she finished, he led her back through the house. The rooms looked smaller and the walk seemed shorter on the way out. At the door, he stopped and offered his hand.

“Thank you for coming,” he said. “This was a very pleasant conversation.”

“Thank you for taking the time,” she replied. She looked at Mr. Preston one last time. He was a kind old soul who had more to offer than he suspected, she thought. She was glad she got a chance to meet him.

He stepped back inside and closed the door. As it shut, the phone began to ring again.

Jessica stood on the porch for a moment and smiled to herself. Somehow, she knew that call was coming from California, that it was a wave trying to break a wall of fear. A third alarm of the morning, she thought. Mr. Preston chose to ignore it. She knew she could not afford to do the same. Time to wake up.