I still think of him as Red Shoes, but his name is Richard. We’ve been together four times now. I’m teaching him how to touch me without taking me over. When he pushes into me, I resist the idea that he’s also pushing into my mind, taking possession, unscrewing my brain and rearranging things. Usually, I like the merge and mingle. Usually by this time, I’m in love. Clara says that the fact that I’m not proves my meds are working.
Richard and I are in bed when he says he’s sure he’s met me before. “When I was young and beautiful?” “You’re still beautiful, and who could forget that stare?” “That stare? Don’t you mean the bottomless blue of my eyes, or the deep and solemn expression?” I get this a lot. One guy told me I seemed so deep, it scared him. “Nope. It’s the stare of some wild thing selecting a particular victim.” I don’t know whether to take this as a compliment or not, so I throw it back to him, “You do a variation on that, you know. You don’t blink, not hardly at all.” He wraps me in his arms. That circle of skin and sagging muscle is my new favorite place in the world, except that right now it feels too clammy and way too tight. “If I blink I might miss something,” Richard says. When he looks at art, he doesn’t miss much, I’ll grant him that. He can identify the influences in my work, knows the differences between abstract and German expressionism. It’s what he’s yammering on about right now. I wait until the lull in his stream of words tells me it’s my turn to speak. “Yes, they call me an expressionist, but I’m not just that. There’s subjectivity, realism and logic in my work, too.” He agrees, but then he launches into pseudo art-speak, starts in on the quality of controlled randomness in my work. He compares me with Degas. “I think of that Degas painting where the dancers are arranged in what seems to be a sort of randomness, but the composition is still very much controlled. That’s what I’m getting at,” he says as if I’m the one somehow missing the point. As if his opinion matters to me. Not yet, it doesn’t. My turn. “Talking about controlled randomness, I find that same quality in nature, too, like the trajectory of a star. There is some chance in my work when I put, say, white acrylic over grey chalk and charcoal, slashing the white with more charcoal to finish up with a texture and a degree of dark- light that works well with the whole thing. That moment of chance is stored as experience.” He cuddles up real nice, drinking in every word I say. When I’m done, I get the sensation that, in this moment, we’re all the other one has. I read once that we’re ghosts driving skeletons of stardust; so what the hell do we have to be afraid of? I begin to touch him the way I’d like to be touched. He gets the idea, and we stop talking entirely. Afterwards, I am still empty of words and I hope he doesn’t start speaking again. He has the ability to pick up where he left off, conversation-wise, no matter the nature of the interruption. I really don’t want to hear any more of his opinions on art, but when he casually mentions that he has pull with some people at the local art museum, I perk up. “Why haven’t you gotten me a show there, then?” I demand, arms crossed over my bare chest. My mind supplies the rolling pin and bandana. Ordinarily, I’d let him tease me with possibilities, but ordering people around comes more naturally to me now. Maybe it always did, but I vaguely remember a time when I was polite. Considerate. Demanding what I want is a more efficient means to a quicker end these days. No crossed wires or ambiguities. “I’m one step ahead of you, babe.” He snaps to attention and salutes as if he’s here to serve me. I like that, but I hate it when he calls me babe. He gets up and goes to his desk. He opens a heavy notebook and runs down a list of dates. “How’s the 22nd? Give you enough time to get enough work together? The 22nd is my birthday, by the way!” He grins, and years fall from his face. “Is it? Well, yeah. That would be fun to have the show on your birthday.” I can afford to be charitable here. We get dressed and I take Richard to the house for a studio visit so I can pick out pieces for the show. He’s impressed by the beauty of the house, the beams and cathedral ceiling, the original sixties fixtures that once looked futuristic and now look retro. We go into my studio. It used to be the room my sister and I shared when we were girls, before Clara wanted her teenage privacy. I still don’t know what for. I never took up much space in our white canopy bed. Anyways it’s my studio now, and I keep it locked up. I think Richard understands that I am making a rare exception to my own rule by ushering him in. It is overflowing with canvases. They aren’t the only ones; the room where Steven used to sleep is stacked high with pictures, too. And the studio he built for me in the garage is also chock-full. Plus, there’s the storage room I rent for a monthly fee, to keep my most daring work safe. So I think I have enough for a show at the little local museum! “These are wonderful!” he says, picking each canvas up in turn and peering closely at my marks. “The colors are so rich. How did you get this red? I want to eat it!” “Careful of those. They’re still wet.” “OK. Look at this one. Interesting. Still the luscious color, but the subject is so dark.” “Really? What do you think you see?” “The green figure in both of these seems to be tormenting the second figure.” “Maybe the second figure deserves it.” “Ha! I wouldn’t want to be on your bad side, baby girl.” “No, you wouldn’t.” It’s probably only in my imagination that the hair on the back of his neck seems to stiffen. “So, what about pricing the pictures?” “Oh, you won’t make money from this exhibit. Did you really think you would? No, the pictures are always donated or at least lent by the artist.” “I don’t want to just give them away!” “They would be seen in a prestigious place. Otherwise they’re warping in a locked room in your mother’s house, right? Like beautiful Rapunzels in a fairytale tower.” He picks up a painting and examines the stripping I had put on it. I don’t do things like that very well anymore; it’s all kind of lopsided. Which drug made me do that again? The same one that tugged me over the curb on right turns? I can’t remember. “We’ll be framing these again at our expense,” Richard says. “I’m surprised you didn’t know all the usual conventions. I thought you had shown in museums before.” “Only two. A long time ago.” “Which ones? Or can’t you remember that, either?” Why would he needle me now about my bad memory? I thought he hadn’t even noticed it was a problem. I wrack my brain for the museum names, and finally spit them out. “The Drawing Center? In New York? What year was that?” I do a quick calculation. He says, “I was working there around that time. I may have curated your show.” He sits back on his heels and looks up at me. “Perhaps that’s why you seem so familiar to me.” He looks back down at my canvases and makes a list of the pictures he wants to include in the show. I guess I don’t get to choose. “Do you have any memorabilia from the old museum show?” he asks. “Postcards, announcements, reviews?” I think of the desk in my bedroom stuffed with the flotsam and jetsam of many shows. “If I kept any of that for a while, I’m sure I don’t have it now. There was a good review in the Times but I never got to see it. One of my friends read it, but didn’t send me a copy. She said it was very positive.” “Where is this friend now?” “Oh, she moved to the coast. She slept on a bed propped up on stilts in her apartment in NYC for a few years. The place was so tiny, she couldn’t fit her boyfriend in it, and so they moved.” “Too bad you never saw the review. So many documents disappeared when information went digital.” He finishes his list, with dimensions and medium neatly written beside titles. He takes out his iPhone, quickly duplicates the information to his files, tears off the handwritten page and gives it to me. “I’m guessing you’re not very computer-savvy, so this copy is for your records. Try not to lose it.” After Richard leaves, I tell Clara that he possibly curated my first big show. “Too bad I didn’t keep the catalogue or anything.” “You have it, actually. It’s in Mom’s big desk. She kept a record of all your successes until she couldn’t anymore. And I put everything else into a big computer file. All your reviews, articles about you, shows, grants, resumes, artist statements, image list, and magazine publications are there. Everything is up to date.” “I’d like to see that file sometime.” “Sure. How about now?” We open the drawer, and there’s the catalogue. I lift it out and search the names of the organizers and everyone involved. Though it’s such a common name, there is not one ‘Richard’ in the book. So, it’s a few days later and already I’m exhausted. Once the preparations for the show got underway I thought I could just relax and let the museum’s team take care of the details. “They do have staff for that, don’t they?” I say to Richard as he lists all the tasks he thinks are my share of the work. “Staff is severely overtaxed right now. The artists are usually glad to help with their own shows.” “We’re the ones supplying the actual work. I think that would make up our share.” I watch the storm gather in his eyes. He says nothing but looks as if he’d like to say plenty. I wonder how hot his temper runs. Not as hot as mine, I’m guessing. And he has better control, I see that already. Anyways, it turns out that I have to pitch in to make the show happen. All the tasks that come with a big exhibit—getting the word out with posters and flyers, sending invitations—most of that work falls to me. Steven and Clara volunteer to help me, but not Eddie or Mom. Mom used to do this kind of thing for her arts groups, but apparently she can’t anymore. The rest of us make postcards and mailers, and then run around town putting announcements up. After a few hours, we take a break at the coffee shop. I go to order at the counter, leaving the other two alone at the table. Over all the noise, I can still hear the rumble of Steven’s voice. It sounds a lot like Dad’s, and it carries. “I have a question,” he is saying to Clara. “Why did you have to go and put Mandy’s picture up on Facebook when she ran away last year? It was really embarrassing to see her giant face in my feed.” “Her detective suggested it.” Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t. It’s the first I’m hearing about it. “Anyhow, Facebook is a lousy place to put her art. There are always the same few people commenting. She needs a real website. Her art career is all smoke and mirrors anyway. I just hope you keep doing whatever you’re doing for her. If you stop, she might take it out on Mom.” I hold my breath, waiting to see if Clara follows Steven’s clue. She doesn’t. She rushes past it with this: “First of all, she does have an actual professional website and a blog. I know you don’t know anything about art, but she’s done well, especially in view of the fact that she’s been disabled by this awful disease for so long.” “I thought she stabilized after her first breakdown and was able to live a normal life.” Steven was good at taking a few facts and weaving them into a theory that’s plausible, but still a good distance from the whole truth. “Hardly. Mandy’s first breakdown sidelined her permanently with anxiety attacks and other fallout. But with a lot of help and the money Dad left her, she’s been able to manage. She got this museum show all on her own for instance.” “But she’s not doing it all on her own, is she? Otherwise, we wouldn’t be doing what we’re doing for her right now.” “This is like giving a friend a lift to the airport!” “It still takes time out of my real life, and yours. How long are you going to keep looking after her? Are you just going to run between her needs and Mom’s? What about your career? It looks like you’re giving up a lot for a couple of lost causes.” I don’t want to know Clara’s answer to that so I don’t listen to that part. I know my mind has lost its stickiness. My thoughts are stalled. There are traces of dead cells left in my brain from the psychosis and I can’t remember things like what Mom ate at what time, or how much. Eddie and Clara ask me and I have no answer for them. I get mad at them for bothering me, but they say they’re trying to help me rewire my brain. They think it will help my concentration back if I answer their questions. They say my psychosis scarred my brain and made me lose empathy and patience. Like when a friend was diagnosed with cancer—all I could think of to say to her was, “What are you going to do now, lie around and wait to die?” I can’t remember hardly anything, like the names of things. My logic is shot, too, and sometimes I can’t even tell. One of my friends went blind, but I sent her some of my pictures anyway. She said, “Don’t you remember I can’t see?” and I said, “Well, can your husband look at them for you?” “He can look at them,” she said, “but his ability to see doesn’t make me any less blind.” I didn’t understand the concept for a long, frustrating minute. When I finally got it, I gasped and clicked off the phone. I haven’t called her back since. Maybe I should. I’m better now, and she might like to know about my show. She might like to come. Anyways, after a day of doing these little jobs for the opening, I collapse on Richard’s bed. I glance at the threadbare, dingy surroundings. This guy is going to make me a star? “You’ve got that look on your face again,” he says, settling some pillows at his back. “What’s bugging ya? Wouldn’t want to bug ya.” He likes to incorporate song lyrics into conversations. It’s cute, he thinks, and maybe it is. I smile just in case. “Just wondering why your decorators don’t want your money.” “There have been no further renovations because I’ve had no time to oversee the project. I’m besieged with myriad tasks for a certain show.” He puts his arm around me and squeezes. I think girdle. I think python. “One wonders why you care about such flourishes. One wonders if you are experiencing the nesting impulse that so often follows mating.” He thinks I’m sizing up the place so I can move in with him? I laugh. “Don’t flatter yourself. I already have a nest, and it is way nicer than yours.” Richard removes his arm from around me, props himself up like a block of ice against the pillow. After a beat or two of sullen silence, he asks in a hard-edged voice, “Did you tack the announcements up where I told you to?” “Yes. It took longer than I thought it would. I had to make each little drawing, the ones you asked for, different from one another. That was the biggest time-sink. To think all Picasso had to do was scribble on a napkin and people would hand over all their money.” “The drawings were just a suggestion! The important thing was to put the show info on the paper. You didn’t forget that, did you, in your creative fervor?” “Of course not. My point is, it took time. My brother and sister helped me with some of the grunt work earlier, but I had to do everything else by myself.” I got up from the bed and started for the door. “Leaving, are we?” “Clara’s been calling for me to bring back her car. She says I made her re-schedule Mom’s medical appointment.” “Why didn’t she take a cab?” “Maybe she didn’t think of it.” “Strange, when that’s exactly what she expects you to do most of the time. Has she always kept you on such a short leash?” “No leash. She just trusts me to do what I promise.” It went both ways. I trust you with my life. “I’ll see you later.” I fumble for my keys. Richard comes up behind me and lays his hand on my arm. “Spend the night,” he says. It’s more like a command than an invitation or seduction, although he does remember to smile. As if it’s settled, he pats my arm with a touch meant to remind me that although I may be talented, I’m not as bright as I think I am, or even as bright as I once was. It’s a theory he’s come up with lately. Intelligence and creativity are two different things, he says. He says it when I have trouble reaching for a particular word, or when I mix up the order I’m supposed to do things in. But right now, I am fully functional, and I have no difficulty in finding the word for goodbye. An hour later Clara and I are tucking Mom in, and I pause to stretch my back. I know I’m going to regret this, but I say, “I’m not sure about Richard. He’s making me work too hard on my own show.” I don’t want to complain about him but I can’t resist it, even if Clara thinks I’ve gotten involved with yet another guy she’ll have to rescue me from. It’s happened before. I think back to the one guy my old roommate from art school set me up with. I didn’t know he was bi-polar at the time, but my roommate Brenda sure did. I thought she got us together to punish me for being a better artist than she was. She was the jealous type and it was a dirty trick. Anyways, he just moved right into my little efficiency and wouldn’t get out. Clara had to come get me. The guy argued with us the whole time we were packing up the apartment. He wouldn’t give back the key and I worried he’d trash the place after I left, but my first priority was to escape. It was winter and the roads were covered in black ice. Clara and me, we made a slow getaway, picking our way over the glassy road to the car, the guy in hot but slo-mo pursuit. So, I moved back into Clara’s and my old apartment, which I should never have left anyways, but it was a while before either of us girls felt safe again. “Your Richard probably doesn’t wield any power over the actual museum staff,” Clara says to me while we fold over Mom’s covers. “He probably has to cajole the director in letting him have one of the volunteers help him. It’s a very small museum, and they all operate on shoestring budgets.” “It may be a small museum but it’s a very big deal to have a show at any museum!” “Of course it is!” She stops her tucking-in and hugs me, as if she could gather all my broken bits together. She didn’t mean to belittle me, she never does, but suddenly her hug feels shallow and condescending. Sometimes I wonder if she’s really on my side. Richard’s voice whispers in my ear. Trust me. I want to tell him that I do, but I know he can’t hear me. “I’m getting anxious,” I announce to my mother and sister. I leave them to lie down on my bed. My excuse isn’t true for once, but I want Clara to feel guilty for ruining my excitement about the show and for not trusting Richard. For all I know, she’s the one who can’t be trusted. From my bed, I watch the red numbers on my clock pass the time. I try to let the sweep of seconds regulate my breath. When I finally fall asleep it’s to slip in and out of the skin of a dream in which Richard is a security cop in a museum. He stares at the paintings on the walls until he has absorbed all he can about art, and then he turns his back to them. All of the pictures are by me. Fakes, he mouths, and I jolt upright. Richard has a surprise. We’re in the parking lot of his complex, and he’s trying to make me guess what it is. I’m not in the mood for his games, but just before I tell him to just spit it out already, he points to the new car parked alongside us. I noticed it when we first pulled up. It’s a nice hatchback in my favorite shade of blue. He pulls the keys out of the ignition of the car we’re in, and hands them to me. “Now you won’t have to depend on your sister’s largesse.” I’m confused; didn’t he buy the new car for me? “The new blue one is mine.” He reads my face and comes to his own wrong conclusion. “We can do the paperwork whenever you feel like it. I could sell this car to you for $100 or something. If you don’t want to be bothered with any of that, you can consider it a loan.” “Thanks, Richard. I’ll think of it as a loan, then.” He had been very pleased with himself a few moments before, but deflates pretty fast from my lack of enthusiasm. I don’t really need a borrowed car. Clara lets me use hers pretty much whenever I want. Besides, her car is nicer than Richard’s. Nicer even than his new one. He’s lucky I’ve always kind of liked junkers anyways. They’ve got eccentricities I can relate to. “Oh, I made you a key to the apartment, too.” He loosens it from his chain, and hands it to me. “You can give me yours later.” “What? You want the key to my mother’s house?” “You always refer to it as your house.” “It isn’t, not legally. I’m not authorized to give out keys. My sibs make those kinds of decisions for Mom.” “Why? Do they think you’re some kind of second-stringer kind of child?” “As a matter of fact, they do.” For a moment I’m tempted to explain my medical situation, but I lose my nerve. He waits for more words, then harrumphs, “I see,” seeing nothing. Now I’ve made him mad. He can’t have really expected I’d just hand over the house keys, could he? That’s pretty presumptuous. We aren’t even officially exclusive yet. I mean, neither of us has said anything about it. Besides, the whole family lives in that house. He’s not family. We enter the apartment and he occupies himself in the kitchen for longer than necessary. While I wait for him to come back into the living room, I pick up the topmost volume from his pile of books and ledgers. All of a sudden he leaps out and across the room like a dancer, and snatches the book from me. Is he trying to make me laugh? No, that’s not it. Why would he hide the fact that he’s reading a book on the art of cracquelure? I’m just glad he’s a reader. A wise man once said that if you go home with someone and he doesn’t have books, don’t fuck him. Richard picks up another art book, this one full of color plates. He turns on the lamp and motions for me to sit beside him on the sofa. We thumb through the pages together until the rhythm of turning them begins to relax us both. We look over a painting of a woman surrounded by her children. “Did you come from a big family?” Suddenly I want to know things. “Nope. Just me and Mother.” “That must have been lonely.” “Wrong again. Mother had lots of company. My main issue was getting enough privacy.” That’s odd. “I thought I heard you telling a story about your two brothers and a sister when we were at that opening last week.” It struck me as funny, because I’m the one with two brothers and a sister. “Are you calling me a liar?” he snarls. A chill fingers my spine. I don’t want this guy to bare his teeth at me, so I casually say, “You say that like it’s a bad thing.” He laughs an unexpectedly full laugh and squeezes my shoulder. We are on the same side again. Relieved, but eager to change the subject, I point to some elements in the painting spread across my knees, deconstructing it and reconstructing it until the parts jell again and it becomes a painting once more. I make soft comments about technicalities. Technical talk seems to soothe him. “Think you could paint something like this?” He turns the page to a Francis Bacon painting. “Sure. We did lots of copying in art school. That’s all it was, basically, copying and nude modeling.” “So you were one of those girls?” “Lots of us did it. One woman who had just given birth posed for the class a lot one semester. Milk coming out all the time.” “You weren’t shy about getting naked?” “I’d get mad when the non-art students gawked as they passed the room, but you get used to the nudity.” We look at a few more pictures. “You could copy this one. It’s my favorite, and I do have a birthday coming up.” He’s mentioned his birthday a few times now. A man his age! It’s sneer-worthy, but I look at the picture closely enough to make him think I just might do what he wants. I can’t imagine why he would want a copy of someone else’s painting when he could have an original by me, though. I thought he liked my work. He’s making a point with his request. I just don’t know what it is. Later, I watch him sleep, trying to figure what goes on behind his bulging lids. In the morning, I drive back home in his loaner car.
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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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