Aftermath of Dreaming (18 page)

People all around suddenly hushed and stared. The man froze, leaving his hands on my breasts, as his eyes flashed first with puerile, anxious shame, then adult, vindictive rage.

“I was trying to help.” His hands flew off me, the reverse of a slap, but having the same effect. The spectator circle had widened, more were tuned in. “You are a mess,” he declared in a voice that carried well. Then people parted for him to walk away, leaving me standing in an ever-widening silent glare.

I spent the rest of the opening and that entire sleepless night regretting that I hadn't seen his face before I spoke, the face of a man I had met weeks before at Tory's dinner. He was an extremely influential art critic who was known for holding huge grudges and exacting revenge in his reviews, which were very well read.

 

His pen was mightier than a Glock, and the worst part was that I agreed with part of his review—the sculptures had looked displaced. God, what a depressing word. As if in their transfer to New York, their lease for one homeland was lost, while another never came through. Part of me wanted to call him up and tell him it was Tory's idea for them to be placed way up high on stands, but I knew I couldn't. I wondered if she would ever admit that she had messed up, but probably not.

 

The first cigarette I smoked gave me a head rush, or it might have been the strong coffee I had with it. I had walked to the Hungarian pastry
shop in my neighborhood after reading the suicide-inducing review, not wanting to be alone in the apartment with it. A Columbia student engrossed in books was sitting near me, serenely smoking his cigarettes. The third time he lit up, he turned and silently offered me the pack, as if knowing my craving before it reached me. The cigarette occupied my body; the rush occupied my mind. On the way home, I stopped at a bodega, bought a lighter and two packs of Marlboros, and threw the newspaper with the review into a trash can that was brimming with empty bottles of beer. I prayed that with Andrew being halfway around the world, he somehow wouldn't find out about the review. But I knew he probably would.

 

Peg called the day after the review came out to say that Tory was heading to London and would talk to me in January. There was something to look forward to. If she was going to drop me, why not do it now? Part of me wished I could talk to Andrew to make me feel better about this, and another part hoped that he'd never find out and that the whole experience would disappear.

I stayed in Manhattan for the holidays, not wanting to be in my mother's house under the attic where my sculptures had been before their New York ravaging. And Suzanne as usual was staying in L.A. with her new boyfriend, so it would have been just the two of us, which sounded beyond dreariness. Working and running and smoking tons with holiday parties thrown in were all semiuseful in keeping me occupied, but mostly, I worried about what Tory would say when she returned and what Andrew's reaction was going to be when he found out about the opening. A big fucking art star I definitely had not become. I had a feeling that thanks to all the people working for him, he easily kept up with anything and everything that he spent energy on. And recommending me personally to Tory qualified as that.

Oh, God, I just wanted to go back in time and redo that opening. Redo that hour, that minute, that one little twist that screwed everything
up, but as much as I prayed, time persisted in its forward path, carrying me with it in a dreadful agonizing march of days.

 

The bronchitis hit right after New Year's and put an end to all of my activities, except worrying. I wished it were the other way around, that the part of my brain that worried had the exhausting illness and was too tired to raise more concerns while the rest of me could go along merrily. Not that I knew it was bronchitis. I missed day after day after day of work, took aspirin to no avail, and wondered what never-ending nightmare of a flu I had gotten.

By the two-and-a-half-week mark, I figured I might have consumption. Suzanne had gone through a brief teenage period of wanting to die from that, so we had looked it up. And I was practically living in a slum—hadn't an epidemic started in apartment buildings like this in the early 1900s? Maybe I'd get sent to a sanitarium where I could quietly cough away my life. That'd be an escape from blowing my big opening. For a few delirium-filled afternoons, that sounded like the best idea I'd had in years. Carrie was still in Mississippi on extended holiday and Ruth was performing on a Caribbean cruise, her room rented out to a tall Danish woman who grimly set out each morning on open chorus calls. When I was able to, I worried how I'd make next month's rent, not to mention all the bills lying unpaid.

 

I was dreaming of being at a sanitarium. A blue stream was in the distance with sunlight flitting on its surface; there was a soft wind and rolling hills. Tory was in a wheelchair being pushed by exquisite pale man. He kept ramming the hard footrests into people's shins while she shrieked, “Off with their heads!” Decapitated sculptures appeared, the heads floating in space like paintings midair. I was running toward the stream, which had become the muddy Mississippi, trying desperately to get there, when a bell began to ring, the alarm that I had
escaped! My pace quickened going up the hill, I was panting hard, unable to breathe, a stone appeared in my path tripping me, I fell and hit the ground, and that jarred me awake. I realized that the ringing bell was my phone.

“Hello?” I was still shrugging out of the dream, trying to get back to the real day despite my delirium.

“Hi.”

I had a horrible feeling it was exquisite pale man with rotten news. “Who is this?”

“Andrew.”

I immediately started to cry. Not audibly, thank God, because I sounded dreadful enough, but tears were streaming down. I wished they would cool my blazing face. “Are you here?”

“No, I'm still—are you okay?”

I wanted to throw myself on him and never let go. “I'm sick.”

“With what? For how long?”

He wasn't happy that I hadn't seen a doctor, even more displeased when I finally revealed I didn't have health insurance, never had, so couldn't afford to go to one, plus all the work I was missing, and—

“Just hang on, Yvette, I'll call you right back.”

“Promise, soon? Really right back?” I was terrified it'd be weeks or months before I heard his voice again.

“Yes, really, right back. Just hang on.”

The long-distance clicking stopped, and the line went dead. I had to rest a minute before reaching down to hang up.

Andrew called ten minutes later, and told me that his assistant in L.A., Patrick, was finding a doctor in New York for me, and when Patrick called, to give him my checking account information for him to wire-transfer into. I cried through Andrew telling me this, it was like feeling his strong, safe arms wrapped around me from so far away. My thanks was a small arrow making an arc to reach him.

“You just get better. I'll call you when I'm back.”

I kept myself from asking how long that would be. “How's it going?”

“It's…good. It's going well. I have to go now, sweet-y-vette. I'll talk to you soon, you just get better.”

His voice was a blanket lying gently on top of me, swaddling me, and nudging sleep to come. I hung up the phone. Maybe he hadn't heard about the gallery opening. Or maybe he had and didn't care. Didn't care that I hadn't been turned into a big fucking art star. Loved me anyway and that was all that mattered. God, I hoped so.

 

Patrick was the epitome of polite solicitousness when he called an hour later waking me up. He spoke with an authority tinged with a disposition to please. The doctor he found arrived at my apartment that night, gave me a shot and left large capsules of antibiotics. The next day, a thousand dollars appeared in my checking account. It had never known a balance that high. For weeks, the wire-transfer slip stayed in my purse, and I'd pull it out on late bus rides home from the restaurant like a picture of a loved one.

 

Tory's imperative was that I needed new work. She made it sound like an item I could run across at a store for a really good price. The question that had concerned me for months—where to create this?—was answered during her spiel. One of her painters needed an additional assistant—I could have a small stipend or partial use of the studio that his ex-boyfriend had vacated when he moved to Rome. Tory made it clear what my choice would be.

Thank God she wasn't dropping me. Maybe a bad review wasn't the end of the world. Here was a chance for me to sculpt, to let my life in New York cut into my work. And maybe Andrew did know about the opening, and it wasn't as horrible as I thought it was. Tory wasn't dropping me—that meant something. As I went for a run in the park, difficult as hell from the cigarettes I had returned to after the bronchitis, I framed questions in my mind that I wanted to address in my new sculptures, and mostly, I felt relieved.

 

Suzanne pretended to be happy for me about the apprenticeship, but made me promise I would apply to the School of Visual Arts to start next fall.

“You need to go to college; this is absolutely ridiculous. You're already a year behind—what are you going to do, start when you're thirty? And don't think you'll get that money for anything else. At least Mother isn't in control of that, thank God. This man is ruining your life.”

I didn't have to ask her who she meant.

The painter I would be apprenticed to
was well-known to me from articles in
ArtForum
that I had read in Mississippi, the magazine an emissary from the world I longed to join. He was so renowned that I had even seen a feature about him in Momma's
Vogue,
heralding a MOMA exhibition. Most of my interview for the position was with his chief assistant, or C.A. as he referred to himself in the third person while describing the duties required of me. The painter, Raul, appeared midway through and sat down close to C.A., who massaged his massive hands, while I recited again for him where I was from and how I had gotten there, all information I figured Tory had already given them.

“When's your birthday?” was the only thing Raul wanted to know, then he and C.A. looked at each other for a moment after I gave the date.

“Not a bad fit for this group,” C.A. finally said. “And her Chinese year is excellent.”

I had no idea what a Chinese year was, let alone that I had one.

“Figure out the details,” Raul said as he extracted his hand from the massage and exited his loft's antiseptic front room.

 

A few weeks into my apprenticeship, days at Raul's studio preparing canvases for art and nights at the restaurant preparing customers for dinner, Andrew called. His hello was like Led Zeppelin playing Bach, infinite and perpetual, familiar yet new. He was back in L.A., wouldn't be in New York after all, did I still love him?

“Yes.” Emotions tangled themselves inside me. Euphoria to hear from him, relief he was no longer halfway around the world, but crushed he wasn't at the hotel for me to run over to see.

“Are you learning a lot from Raul?” Andrew's voice slid the question in so easily that it took me a moment to remember I hadn't told him about my apprenticeship. Tory tattling probably. “Interesting artist, isn't he?” Andrew went on. “Not that I've ever bought his work, but I understand why others do. What do you think of him?”

“I'm a bit sequestered off. Another assistant and I stretch and treat the canvases, clean the brushes, that sort of thing, but I'm sure that will change the longer I stay and there'll be time for me to do some of my own work.”

“Have you been smoking?” Andrew suddenly said, as if none of my words had been heard by him, only the voice that said them.

“No, why?” I couldn't believe he could tell. And, okay, it was stupid of me to lie and I wasn't even sure why I did, it came out automatically.

“Your voice sounds different than it used to—are you sure you're not smoking? You're not doing drugs, are you?”

“No, I'm not…smoking or doing drugs. Maybe the bronchitis changed it.”

“It wouldn't do that. Get more sleep; you don't sound good.”

I hated and loved that he detected so much. We talked for two hours, and he asked about everything, remembering things we'd discussed that
I'd forgotten myself in all those months. Everything. Except the gallery opening—and that was a relief, but it also made me feel kind of worse. Like it was too horrible for him to mention.

So things at Raul's better go well, I thought when we hung up the phone, and my new work better be great. Though I still hadn't been able to do any because somehow that studio space I was promised never materialized, but I was sure it would, and I'd get new sculptures done, and Tory, please God, would love them, and Andrew would be thrilled.

 

In almost three months of working at Raul's, I rarely saw the famous artist himself. The assistant I worked with, Todd, who was from Nevada, though we were referred to as one and two by C.A., talked nonstop about his dance club exploits while we stretched and treated the canvases, which were then transferred to assistants three and four who filled in large swatches of color before assistant five painted in subtle multihued lines, finally culminating with them being speckled with a sheer gleaming coat by C.A., and voilà, a painting was done once Raul scrawled his signature on them, something I figured he did at night when we were all gone since none of us but C.A. ever saw him.

I was certain I was missing something. Raul must be aware that the paintings being created weren't really his, but they all bore his signature as if he had slaved over them for months. Though maybe they were reproductions, some kind of self-knockoffs for sale—that must be what it was. But how odd that the public wanted that.

Then one day, I overheard C.A. talking to number five about the deadline we were under for the show of Raul's new work, so in confidence I said to Todd, “But Raul didn't paint a stroke on any of these.”

The stillness and silence of Todd's response made it clear I was fucked. I could immediately imagine him whispering my remark to C.A., see C.A.'s birdlike hands rubbing Raul's massive ones as he told him what I'd said, while the Russian model Raul had recently acquired for a girlfriend sat nearby with triumphant boredom on her face.

I was fired that afternoon, so Peg's phone call the next morning was
not a surprise when she informed me that my association with the Sexton Space gallery was formally dissolved and my sculptures would be shipped back to my mother's home.

“I appreciate everything you did for me, Peg.” I had liked Peg, had given her a compact for Christmas, half sheer powder, half rosy lip gloss—natural and clean like her prettiness. She seemed embarrassed when opening it—because she had nothing for me I'd thought, but now I wondered if she was already seeing what lay ahead.

“Yeah, well, good luck.” And she quickly hung up.

I lay on the floor of my room after I hung up the phone, my feet smushed under the three-legged table, as my August-to-April art world whirl crashed down around me and pinned me to the ground. Andrew would definitely find out about this, if he hadn't already. I suspected that Tory had called him first to let him know. I could hear her British vowels enunciating each horrendous word of my demise and dismissal. The dreadfulness of it filled my soul while desperation and despondence ran through my veins. Why had I screwed this up so badly? If only this were a small thing, but it was my dream—my art and Andrew. How could I ever be in his world now? What on earth was there in my life to interest him—my restaurant job? Ha. Without the ascent in the art world he had decided I would have?

I hated that my sculptures were still at the gallery, possibly shoved in the back near the freight door and cleaning supplies. Those people had seen a part of me, sniffed at it, thinly smiled, and turned away. I wanted to slap them and erase all memory of me from Tory and the gallery, the critics and collectors, Raul, C.A., and those stupid numerical assistants. And erase Andrew's knowledge of this. Erase it and have him not need big fucking art star success from me. Then he would love me and I could do my art and it would go well or not, but he'd be in my life and I wouldn't have to see those superior and mean art people again.

I remembered with growing horror that Andrew had never experienced this—being excluded, dismissed, all right, goddamn it, having failed—they were alien concepts to him. One afternoon in February when I was missing him terribly, I went to the Coliseum Bookstore on
Fifty-seventh Street and headed straight to the biography section in search of his name. There were volumes on him; two were rather silly, fluff like fanzines between hard covers, but the other four were thorough.

Andrew had been successful and famous his entire life. In school, every award and honor had been bestowed on him by teachers and classmates alike, then in the outside world, he immediately ascended to heavenly heights. Since the age of twenty, when he was discovered by a talent scout at a hotel pool, his name and visage had been internationally, consistently, swooningly adored.

Since Andrew had achieved that kind of success and fame at the age I would be next year, surely he had expected the same from me. Fuck. Fear knocked the breath out of my chest, and a pit opened up inside me that devoured my abilities to reach him and the him-with-me. I had thought that with Andrew in my life, that pit had been pushed far away. When Daddy left, I had fallen into it for the first time, but before that, I hadn't known it existed—that it was deep inside all of us, only kept at bay by the flimsy fences of parents, home, and school. Not only hadn't I been aware of it, I had thought my fencing was secure, but one phone call from my mother about Daddy's departure had changed all of that for me, as it never did for the rest of the girls in my class. Their eyes reflected light and good times, while a frozen and dark solidity came over mine. Hanging up the phone from Peg's banishment from the gallery and the world that Andrew had expected me to shine in, that frozen and dark solidity took over every part of me.

 

A couple of days later, after putting it off for as long as I thought I could, I picked up the phone to call Andrew. Not that I didn't think he knew, but it would be weird for me not to tell him myself. Even though we had still never discussed the opening or the review, this one was too big and obvious to ignore. The late afternoon sun was departing from my room, as I lit a cigarette while wishing the smoke had transformative powers to change what I had to say.

Andrew immediately got on the line. “Hi.”

“Hi,” I said, hoping a comforting chat would somehow miraculously ensue, but only a dismal blankness was on the line.

“Hello?” He sounded annoyed.

“I'm here.”

“I'm in the middle of a meeting, Yvette, is there something you wanted to tell me?”

“Oh, sorry. I, uh, well…I guess you've heard.”

“Heard?”

“About Tory?” Knives pushed in and pulled out of me would have been easier than this.

“Yeah.”

Silence again on the line. He clearly hated that, so I said the only thing I genuinely could, “Well.”

“I've got people here.”

“Right.”

“I'll talk to you soon.”

“Okay.” I tried to sound normal, confident. His “I'll talk to you soon” was a sign to hold on to. I just hoped it were true.

“Bye.”

And before I could answer, a click cut the line.

Six weeks passed of few phone calls between us, and those were just exchanges of emptiness. Andrew offered no information about his work or life—I desperately wished he would—and I had nothing to discuss. My restaurant job was of no interest, particularly to him, and my career—I felt embarrassed even using that word—lay splattered on the ground like a body gruesomely ruined.

I lay in my bed each night unable to sleep, as if my mind needed more hours to feel dread in. Hour after hour of each and every day, all I thought about was Andrew and art, art and Andrew. Getting both back in my life the way they used to be, so I could breathe again.

 

“He's waiting for you to ask,” Carrie said one evening over our third glass of wine, after I got home from work. “He'd never offer himself.”

I had a feeling she was wrong, but she kept trying to convince me. “It could make all the difference in the world,” she said, her tone implying I'd be a fool to pass the chance to ask Andrew to buy one of my sculptures. “He loved your work; he wouldn't have done what he did if he didn't. Just ask him. If he owned one or two of your sculptures, honey, you could get in any gallery in town. It's a public stamp of approval for your art. Hell, you could send out a press release.”

That I'd never do, but maybe she was right. He had loved my work and it still looked the same. And he was constantly buying art, okay, only from extremely well established artists and never from newcomers, but maybe he'd break with that pattern just this once.

All week, I rehearsed the question. During runs in the park that were increasingly hard from the cigarettes I was still smoking, and while walking home from work past his hotel—I still thought of the Ritz-Carlton that way. I rehearsed the question constantly, and repeated in my head the things he had said back in the fall about my art like a mentally recorded mantra to shore up my resolve. I picked a Sunday to call him, a little after two, the same day and time of our first great phone call, then spent all of the day before going back and forth about whether it should be ten after two East Coast time or West Coast, but finally decided that later in the day was best.

Dialing his number was like invoking his presence into my room. His overly large persona was there, high above and watching me. As I waited for the operator to put my call through, I remembered that Andrew was always warmer and softer earlier in the day, as if the progressing hours hardened him. I quickly prayed that he'd had a late night and only recently woken up, while I instinctively lit a cigarette.

“Hi.” He was there so quickly on the line. My legs started shaking, so I picked up the cigarette I had lit, thinking I would just hold it to provide me with strength.

“How are you?” I immediately wondered why I had asked since he had never answered that question before.

Andrew was actively quiet, then said, “What's new?”

Oh, God, not that. Is there a more horrendous question in all the world? Nothing, actually—how's that for honesty?

“Umm, good.” Fuck. I had answered my own question and not his. I took a long drag off my cigarette. “Uh, Andrew? I was wondering…”

“Are you smoking?” He made it sound like I was taking an ax to a small child.

“No.” I started to put the cigarette out, but changed my mind.

“Right now, you're not smoking?”

“No, I just finished a run; I'm still cooling off.”

“Huh.” He said nothing for a moment then, “Don't smoke.”

“I'm not.”

Huge emptiness appeared on the line. I thought of all the states our call was crossing where happy conversations must be taking place. Please, God, make this one of those.

“Andrew, I was wondering if…you…uh…” I had to catch my breath. A strange stoppage had occurred on my last intake, an invisible hand strangling my throat, making my next breath unpleasantly audible. “If you would want to buy one of my sculptures. For not very much, of course, or nothing, really. I'd give you one if you want.”