“So, remember when you almost dropped out of art school to marry your boyfriend because you didn’t want to lose him?” Clara is helping me pack to move more of my stuff to Richard’s, but is trying to talk me out of my relationship with him at the same time.
“That was different.” I pick up the jeweled elephant from my dresser, and try to decide if I should take it with me. How do I choose? Clara’s given me all of my most favorite little things in this room. “Yes, it was. You were actually in love.” I think of Don, his dark hair and six-and-a-half feet dwarfing my small blondeness, and have to smile. We lived together one summer, with Mom’s blessing, which she normally wouldn’t give for a situation that naughty. I worked in a doughnut shop, rising before dawn to go to work, and he pieced together part time jobs to make the rent. We had completed our sophomore year in college, and that was enough elitist education for him. “It’s a workaday world,” he’d tell me, the opening salvo in his campaign to get me to drop out and marry him. I very nearly did. Clara folds the teal sweater she gave me for my last birthday into my grey suitcase. I pick it up with two fingers, as if it stinks, and shovel it back into my drawer. “Who says I’m not in love now?” I glare at my sister but she doesn’t wilt. Neither of us speaks for a long moment, a moment filled with our history of goodbyes. I drop my eyes first and resume packing. I pull what I need from the drawers of the white bureau she chose at seven, excited to have her own room before I made her share it. Little girls want their own rooms, but I only wanted to climb into a bed with my sister. It was the best way to make the ghosts leave me alone at night. “Remember, you’re the reason we all came together to be a family again, to support you and help you with your recovery.” She scratches an old label under the lamp that spells out LAMP. It was there because one drug made me forget the names of everything and Clara suggested putting labels on my objects. “Come on! You came home to help Eddie with Mom. You thought I’d be in the halfway house for two years! Steven was the one who came home because he thought I might need help. And now he’s just waiting for the cops to kick me out of the house so he can take over my room.” “He’s not doing that. You really think he has a thing for frilly canopy beds? I’ve told you a hundred times that I only alerted your doctor to the abuse in case there was a clinical reason for your lack of control. We didn’t want to involve Family Protective Services, we only wanted treatment for you. Your doctor is the only authority figure in your case so far. You’re still allowed to live in this house. You just have to make sure you don’t touch Mom.” “I’d be crazy if I did, right?” I laugh my most insane laugh just to scare her. And then I say, “Well, if none of you will even let me near her, what’s the point of me hanging around, now that I have another place to go?” She’s a runner. They never stop running. It had been a tough day at home. There were tons of new aides swarming the place, trying to figure out how to look after Mom. It’s hard for me to hang back when I know the answers to their questions: yes, she likes cheesecake but not grilled cheese, she’d rather have vanilla Ensure over chocolate, she won’t take her shirt off anymore during a sitz bath and she thinks the water hurts her, she sleeps in odd positions but there’s no need to wake her up and turn her around. Once when I went into the kitchen while the aide was feeding Mom, I heard her tell Mom how beautiful she is. Mom repeated the word ‘beautiful’ a few times so I went into her room and brought out a photo of her at age twenty-four, looking like Rita Hayworth. I showed it to the aide and said, “See? She really was beautiful.” The woman turned her shoulder away from me as if I was contagious or something, and mumbled, “Still is.” So I have to try to remember to steer clear of the aides. They’ve obviously been instructed to steer clear of me. It only winds up hurting Mom in other ways, all this separation from me. If she’s in the kitchen and I pass by in the hall, she’ll start to wave and all I’m allowed to do is wave and smile before I disappear into my studio, still hearing her voice going, “She’s my little…” She says it over and over, never finding the syllables for daughter. So why should I stay? I look at the family photos tucked in the corners of my mirror frame. If Richard doesn’t deliver on his plans for my career and the whole thing blows up, I’ll be glad I didn’t take more things like that with me. Something tells me that, if my objects are not right where they’ve always been, I might lose the trail back home. Does that make sense, or is it what they call magical thinking? How would I even know? My sister interrupts my thoughts with some of her own. She bites down on her words, so she’s irritated. “You can go or you can stay. You can toggle between the two places. It’s entirely up to you. We’ll still try to look out for you, the same way we protect Mom.” “Bet you never thought you’d have to protect Mom from me, did you.” Clara hangs her head at my words, as if she’s the guilty one. My bullying is working so I keep it up. “You told the shrink on me, Eddie called the cops, and Steven wants me gone.” I repeat their crimes, counting on my fingers. “Didn’t he just volunteer to help you take your things over to Richard’s?” “Yeah. So? He just wants to get me out of here.” “You’re being unfair to him. He didn’t have to upend his life for the family. I’m surprised you’re so happy to be giving us the slip.” “Patients have rights, the docs all say, and I need to get my life back.” “You don’t have to rush into a relationship with a virtual stranger to do that. I haven’t even met Richard yet, for God’s sake.” “So? He’s way too old to be vetted by my sister.” She pats the side of the suitcase absently. “Well, we’re still all here for you, regardless.” What does that even mean? I zip my bag hard, almost tearing it, and drag it down the hall until Steven takes it from me. He puts it with my other belongings in his car. I don’t tell Clara this, but I’m not that committed to the move. Besides, Mom’s house is nicer than Richard’s, and I’m not sure that being so involved with him is the best way to get my life back either. He may look like the only game in town, but turn out to be no more than one piece of the puzzle. Not necessarily Mr. Right, but Mr. Right Now. “How do you want to do this?” Steven asks as he backs the car out of the driveway. “First stop is my storage unit. I have to get a few pictures that need work.” “Sure thing.” He turns on the radio but I can’t stand the sound when it’s mixed with the smell of gasoline and the movement of traffic. I shut it off. We drive in silence, but once in a while, he hums under his breath, catches himself, and smiles. Steven and I get out of the car and climb a steep hill to the unit, our breath visible in the chilly air. This barren, isolated, rundown place always makes me nervous. I hand the key to the unit to my brother. “My hands are too shaky to work this thing.” He takes the key, and stands in front of the lock. He swears. “What’s wrong?” “Someone’s broken in. Look here, look at the lock.” It dangles off the door like a broken finger. I step into the space to see which pictures have been stolen. “The oldest ones are gone, just the oil paintings, but no drawings.” “So, the thief steals in chronological order?” “Those were the simpler compositions. More realism.” “The thief must know who you are.” “Why do you say that?” “He was careful not to damage anything, and he seems to have reorganized the work he didn’t steal. It’s neater than it was the last time we were here.” We report the break-in, and get a new lock that Steven says is better than the broken one. I’m glad he’s with me today, I guess. When I tried to tell the facility’s manager what happened, my words got all garbled like they do when I’m stressed, and Steven had to explain the situation for me. After our detour, we finally arrive at Richard’s. “Oh no! We didn’t get all the pictures I needed. I wanted two others,” I say as we put down our boxes on the floor. “We’ll get them later. Don’t worry.” Steven assembles my drawing board while I try to take his advice. The tension between us has eased, and soon we’re prattling on about the family and our memories of Dad. “After he died, for months I’d drive to his grave and talk things over with him,” Steven says. “I remember Mom ran into you there more than once. She said you looked so much like Dad, crouching down in the snow, a cigarette dangling from your lips, that for a split second she believed he had come back from the dead.” “And now she doesn’t even recognize me at all.” “She likes you, though. Didn’t I hear you playing piano for her the other day?” “Yes. I was tuning the instrument with our old tuning fork and she came out and stood by the piano the way she used to when Dad played for her. I started playing some of the old torch songs she liked and she started to hum along, snapping her fingers and twitching a little. I think she likes those songs even better than when Clara and I play classical music for her.” Steven sighs, and stops talking. I wonder how often he does this, escaping into his own thoughts so completely. Not as much as me, I hope. At least I’ve got a medical excuse. “Do you remember the time my first wife beat you up?” His question, after the lull, makes the skin on my arms prickle. “How could I ever forget? She set back my recovery by two years.” Mom and I had been tidying up the little house across the street from the one Janice and he had lived in for most of their marriage. They had just separated, and Steven had not wanted to move too far from his young sons, so he bought the house directly across from his old one. The floor plans were identical. The only difference was that the old one was white and the new one was red. Janice decided that Mom and I were trespassing on her marital property and rushed at me when I opened the door to her furious knocking. We traded blows and I got the worst of it, all up and down the street. I knocked her glasses off her face and Mom came out, picked them up, and handed them to her. Why would she do that? It was like siding with the enemy. Treason, or something. Janice went home to make up her face to simulate bruises, a technique she had used before to get Steven in trouble. I don’t know who coached her either time. Probably it was her one and only girlfriend. Her sisters couldn’t be depended on, since they were always busy disowning each other. Anyways, Janice called the cops and I wound up shackled and handcuffed, interrogated by an official who said, “I have my own opinion about what happened here, but go on and tell me your side of the story.” I did, and Janice sensed her plan was about to backfire. She dropped the charges. She didn’t want to traumatize the kids, she said, but she never cared about those boys. “So, tell me the truth,” Steven says, looking straight into me. “Who hit who first?” This was the big question the cops were fixated on, too. I didn’t see why it mattered. “I hit her first,” I say. “That’s what I thought,” my brother says. He knows that while other people say I’m fragile like a flower, I’m actually fragile like a bomb. “Remember, right after my wedding, you got mad about something and insisted that Clara drive back with you to Maryland the next morning? What was all that about?” I try to recall. “Let’s see. It was before my first breakdown but I was already in a bad mood all the time. Clara was trying to get something going with some guy and live with me at the same time. She was exhausting herself going between the two apartments. I wasn’t doing well romantically, myself, but I showed up at the Tavern or else Club Charles every night in case the boy I had a crush on showed up. I wasn’t painting much at that time. I don’t remember why. After being out all night, I’d sleep all day, so the only chance I got to see Clara was before I went out to the bar. Clara’s boyfriend thought she was too involved with my life, waiting around for me all the time, and I thought she was too involved with his. Anyways, I was looking forward to the wedding, but Mom ruined it for me the morning after the ceremony when she told me to leave Clara alone, and let her try to close the deal with the boyfriend. She needed to get some security in her life, Mom said. As if marriage is more secure than sisterhood! I woke Clara up right there and then and pulled her physically out of bed. ‘We’re going, let’s go!’ She went along with it even though she didn’t want to, probably because I was acting all manic and she didn’t want to make me worse.” “So that’s how you turned her into your sidekick?” “I guess. She’s always been scared of my moods.” “So what happened when you finally got back to your apartment?” “I’d given my key to a girl from the bar who I thought was my friend. She trashed the place. She’d had a big party, pizza boxes stinking everywhere, and she’d stolen some clothes. She left a leather jacket that was too small for me as payment. The nice jacket made us even, she said when I confronted her.” Steven nods, but doesn’t have any more to say on the topic, apparently. I want my brother to plug back into the present again so I go, “See these?” and point to the reproductions on the wall above the couch. “They aren’t my actual paintings. Richard copied them and he thinks I haven’t noticed. They’re both a copy of a copy.” Steven gets up close. “Yes. But what has he done with your originals? And why didn’t he put those up? Didn’t you say they were supposed to be gifts from you?” “Yeah. He’s always trying to get me to paint these kinds of pictures, you know, copy the masters. It’s like an exercise you’d give students. Maybe he thinks I need the practice. Or he’s trying to get me to change my style. I’d rather do my real work. I don’t mind if he sells that, like he did with the pictures from the show.” “How is he paying you?” “He made a trust at the lawyer’s and gives me money from it when I ask.” “What? Like an allowance?” “I guess. He’s trying to make sure I don’t lose my benefits.” “You have a contract, then? I mean, if he’s your dealer or agent or something, you need tax records and stuff, don’t you? What papers did you sign? And by the way, weren’t your pictures insured for the show? Where’s your protection?” “My protection is the trust between us,” I say in a prim voice I barely recognize. I’d like to believe it. All the time he’s talking to me, Steven’s fiddling with Richard’s computer. It’s like how a doctor distracts you from the pain of the giant needle he’s putting through your skin. Steven logs on after only two tries at Richard’s password, Redshoes. “People should choose their passwords more carefully,” he murmurs. But it’s so easy to remember, I argue silently. A minute later, he says, “Bingo. Well Mandy, it looks like you’re pretty successful on these gallery websites.” He scrolls through the sites on the recent history tab. “They’re auctioning off that one we photographed last month right now. Let me look at the bids.” “That painting is practically still wet!” I know I’m missing the point but I can’t tell where it is. “You’re not rich enough to pay all your own medical bills, but you’re making headway.” “That’s wonderful! So I could ask Richard for the money to buy a bigger easel?” “Think bigger. Way bigger.” “Maybe I could get a car that would hold more canvases at one time.” “Bigger.” I scratch my head, literally and figuratively. Steven chuckles. “You need to see a lawyer and draw up a business contract. Agents get a commission. The rest is yours.” I try to take all that in. He clicks and taps for a few minutes, and turns to show me the screen. Photos of my paintings come up, including the missing ones from the storage unit. My brother is proud of himself. “Right now, Richard Redshoes is officially stealing big profits from you. Your work is probably paying for all these renovations.” He taps the buttons that will redirect the payment of my work directly to me. “He wouldn’t use me like that!” I explode. “Why do none of you want me to get famous, or think a guy might like me for myself?” “Hold on a second. I’m trying to help you right now! You’re talking like a teenager. Of course, we know a guy might like you for yourself. We like you.” In spite of the fact I’m not a good person? In spite of the fact you caught me hitting Mom? In spite of the fact you practically threw me out of the house? He goes on, “And that’s not the point. You work hard, and we don’t want you to get fleeced. We’re just looking out for you.” “Well, quit it! Leave me alone!” “Before or after I haul the rest of your stuff up out of my car, and provide any other services Your Majesty requires?” They all want to be thanked for every little favor, all the time. I never got the hang of that kind of politeness. Now, when he exits the apartment, leaving me stranded, neither one of us says goodbye. After pacing and fuming for a while, I log off the computer and then take a cab back home to get my car. I see Steven there, lying on the yellow leather couch, trying to stretch out his back after all the heavy lifting he did for me. I snub him. He hates that. I drive to the coffee shop first thing. I can’t believe Steven thinks Richard is a con-man. Why would he say he set up a trust like the one Daddy set up for me if he hadn’t? And why should Richard break into my storage space? He knows I’ll give him whatever he wants. No, someone else must have broken into it. I look around the cafe reeking of coffee. It’s brightly lit, glaring even, and I imagine everyone with a bullseye on his forehead. In the corner I see the boy from the hospital parking lot. He looks flustered. He can’t ignore me this time, but when I beckon to him, he pretends he’s blind or stupid. I get up from my chair and stomp a threatening step toward him. It’s meant to be comical, and he catches my drift; takes a deep breath and slowly comes to me like some fish I’m reeling in. “Did you steal my paintings?” I pose my question and his face drains of color. His hands start to shake. I’m congratulating myself on finding the real thief so fast, while he snakes his trembling hand into his jacket. The word gun flashes across my mind, but he’s pulling out my exhibition catalogue, dog-eared now. I bark a derisive laugh and he jumps. “Oh, keep it,” I say. “I’m trying to find someone who stole my actual paintings.” “Someone robbed you?” He’s horrified and it’s no act. “Yeah. Took my pictures out of storage and sold them online.” “That’s crappy! Will the police help you? I have a cousin on the force.” I let him write down this cousin’s contact information. When he passes the paper to me, I see the mark on his forehead disintegrate. I wave him away and he slinks out the door. I sit back down to my coffee and hope I don’t see anyone else I know. No such luck. Everyone in the neighborhood comes to this place for happy hour, although there is no liquor. So what’s so happy about it? There are little fried snacks they give to customers, for free, for one literal hour. They don’t have to be actual paying customers, either, as the line of homeless people now forming at the buffet table knows. The museum director catches my eye. As usual, she’s well-dressed enough in her artsy-craftsy style so that the less pretentious customers give her a wide berth. I flick my wrist at her and she takes it as an invitation to sit down with her plate of free food. The buffet tables are already being put away to discourage any gorging. “Poof! It’s like a mirage,” she jokes. I don’t respond. Seeing as I have no food, she plucks a morsel from her plate, puts it on a napkin, and pushes it toward me. “Did you hear about our colleague Nancy, the woman who does intaglio?” “What about her?” “She got caught in an e-mail art scam last week and lost several pieces, as well as some money.” My mouth is full so I gesture for her to go on. “Someone from Milan sent her an email to say they had looked at her online portfolio and wanted to buy some specific pieces. The con-man offered to send her a check, banker’s draft, or credit card number to pay for the art. The payment he would give her was for the cost of the art work and the cost of shipping overseas, he said. He then asked her to send the overpayment to his shipping agent. So he essentially got her to send him money before she discovered the payment was fraudulent.” I can’t really follow all this, but I swallow the rest of my snack and make the appropriate sympathetic noises. “We must protect you from this kind of trickery!” You and what army? I silently ask. We are interrupted by the director’s sister. They are dressed like twins, but they are not identical. In fact, they are opposites in coloring and height and girth. Nobody would guess they were related. The sister says to me, “We’re sure our friend Richard looks out for you in these matters. We hear he has taken you under his capacious wing.” “I suppose you might say I’m protected. Richard and I are now an item, as they say.” The sister raises her eyebrows while the director furrows hers, intent on her snack. The twin goes on, “Oh! We thought it was purely a professional relationship.” She also bites into a crunchy appetizer, rather viciously. “Well, isn’t it nice, and fitting, that the pair of you got together. He’s been following your work avidly for years.” “Hmmm.” I toy with the rest of my finger food. I already know it’s too greasy to eat, and anyways I’ve lost my appetite. “He’s got quite an eye. He noticed your work at the Drawing Center. He says he met you there, when he was a waiter working his way up in the gallery system. Perhaps he was beneath your notice in those days. You were very up-and-coming.” Why is she being so familiar with me? She doesn’t know me. I wonder which twin Richard had to sleep with to get me a show. At the first flare of my jealousy, the light in the room dims. A girl comes to the table to ignite the candle on the red checkered tablecloth. The shadows distort the director and her twin’s faces, but the flame gives the waitress an angelic glow. “Did Richard ever tell you the story about his signature red shoes?” the sister asks. I shrug. I try to ignore his shoes, mostly because they scream for attention. They actually do amuse me, but I would never admit it to Richard. I think of my old professor, who looked me up and down whenever I wore Mom’s fake fur tiger print coat. It was too flashy for him, but he was attracted to it all the same. My long blonde hair and good legs bothered him enough that he would mutter “Sensory overload!” when confronted with all the erotic symbols at once. The twin goes on. “When we were all young and hungry in New York, he sought high and low for an accessory to make him stand out and get noticed. We tried out hats, cravats, wild socks, and then we told him a fairytale about a girl who finagled a pair of red shoes, went out dancing in them, and could not stop. The shoes could not stop dancing, I mean. And she could not take them off. The shoes, I mean. So, she danced to the town executioner’s house, and talked him into slicing off her feet. Which he did, being blood-thirsty by both nature and vocation. The red shoes, with the girl’s feet still in them, danced away. So the shoes became a talisman for our Richard.” There’s too much information crushing my mind. I start to say something but forget what it was. My hands begin to sweat and shake. I excuse myself. The director barely notices my leaving, and ignores her sister as she leaves too. I wobble to a standing position and begin to move toward the exit. I drive slowly back to the apartment, accompanied by honking cars lined up behind me that cannot pass me on the narrow road. When I unlock the door to the apartment, I think I’m in the wrong place, but then I remember the apartment is part gallery now. I throw my body across Richard’s bed, wishing he’d come home. He’s the only one who can soothe me. He’ll tell me about the director and her sister. At last, his key turns in the lock. I’m half asleep by then, but I startle fully awake. “Did I scare you?’ he laughs as if that was his intention. “Of course not. I knew it was you.” “Do you want to go back to sleep, or shall I make tea?” He’ll make it anyway, whether I want it or not, so I stretch and yawn and sit up against the pillows. We settle in with our cups. “How was your day?” “Well, I found out that my storage facility was broken into, for one thing.” His voice drops to the pitch he uses when he’s paying attention. “Did you report it?” “Yes. Steven was with me and helped me out. I wanted to bring a canvas or two here to work on.” He raises an eyebrow and glances over at my easel. My half-finished copy of a de Kooning is propped up there. Finger exercises, scales, and arpeggios is what I think of all that. Once, I suggested he let me do my own painting in the style of the famous artists, not copy the actual famous painting. He said that’s been done to death, even more so than the ordinary kind of copying. I don’t care. It would’ve made it more interesting for me, but that’s not the point, it seems. “So you think someone broke into your bin. Did they take your work?” “Yeah!” “And you think they might have sold it?” He asks the questions like he’s trying to get me to piece together a puzzle, or like my shrink does when she wants me to answer my own question. “Why else would they break in? To tidy up?” “That’s my job, isn’t it, to sell your pictures?” “And nobody else’s.” I snuggle up against him, but his body is as unyielding as cement. “Do you mean to say I must clear the sale of each piece with you first?” “Well, uh…no, I guess.” I’m beginning to understand. “Because, you know that would really slow things down. If I am to continue doing what I’m doing for you, I need complete access, no second-guessing of my motives on your part. And for God’s sake, ease up on the paranoia!” “Oh. Ok.” “I am sorry about the lock. I intended to have it fixed this week. Make me a copy of the new key, will you? And, as for the disorganized finances, you’ll get what’s coming to you, of course. I can’t believe you would think otherwise.” I could have done with a little more reassurance, but Richard has set down his teacup by the side of the bed, turning away from me. In seconds he’s asleep. It makes me jealous, how easy sleeping is for him. I listen to him murmur in his dreams as he sinks in deeper, and I picture the workings of his brain. I wish I could comb his synapses for clues about how he feels about me. Whatever it is, we’re too entangled to separate now. He’s my last chance. Why am I so afraid of breathing on my own? Why does he want to devour my life, how did he catch my disease, is he my creation or am I his, is evil real, why do I feel like I’m melting? I’ll never be able to sleep now. I get up and quietly open the bedroom closet. The line of red shoes looks different to me tonight, smaller somehow, not as amusing. It must be the influence of the museum director and her sister’s dancing shoes story. I crouch down to look at the shoes more closely. I want to catch one moving. I reach out to jiggle a patent leather heel. What makes me reach deeper into the closet, and wave my fingers through the dark air beyond the row of shoes? I’ve never done that before. A scent travels toward me, a faint whiff of oil paint rising from a shape, solid and cylindrical. I reach my hand in deeper and feel dozens of mailing tubes leaning against the closet wall. I pull one out from the thicket. I unroll it, synchronizing the noise with Richard’s snores. I’m careful not to make a sound. It’s an abstract by Helen Frankenthaler. Even before I take it out of the closet and into the light, I know it’s a fake.
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AuthorCheryl Snell is an award-winning poet and novelist, author of the new family saga Bombay Trilogy, a retelling of her previous novels Shiva's Arms, Rescuing Ranu, and Kalpavriksha. Archives
October 2020
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