17
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.”
The cigarette was at my lips, kissing my mouth, and the smoke was hugging my throat, holding me inside. His silence was excruciating. I felt as if I were on the edge of a terrifying cliff, the backs of my knees were so weak.
Andrew cleared his throat. “I don’t want to be anyone’s sponsor.”
Oh. Oh, God. Okay. Sponsor. What did that mean? It sounded so involved, active, a thousand times more than one sale. He didn’t want to be anyone’s—my—sponsor.
“Maybe you should go home,” Andrew said. I nearly fell off the bed. Go home? To the muteness of Momma’s house; the decrepitude of that life? Maybe I should just kill myself instead. “It doesn’t seem to be working there. What do you think?” His dreadful speech was done, but I couldn’t believe he expected an answer from me, like an executioner asking if the rope should be in natural or white. The lifeline he had thrown me months before was being retracted.
“I think…I think I have to go.” I wanted to throw up and my head had begun to spin.
“Yvette.”
“Bye, I’m gonna go.” And before he could say another word, I hung up.
I found the fifth of Jack Daniel’s I had brought with me from Mississippi, grabbed the closest thing we had to a highball glass—a Donald Duck juice cup—and had many Disney-themed drinks full, then curled up on my bed and sobbed myself to sleep. I woke up a little later and sobbed some more. The alternating episodes of sleeping and sobbing became interchangeable—physically engrossing states with wildly precise mental scenes accompanying them.
Carrie must have pushed the curtain back at some point during the night because when I awoke the next morning, the half-empty Jack Daniel’s bottle and Disney glass were out of my room and a blanket from the couch was covering me.
Splashing water on my face in the bathroom, I caught a glimpse of myself in the cheap medicine-cabinet mirror. The glow I’d had when Andrew was so on fire about me was gone.
I was preparing for Andrew to get rid of me. The silence from the West Coast was booming; I could barely hear through its din. I made a tentative call to him a few weeks after the internal massacre that was our last conversation. He asked where I was and I answered before realizing he must have thought I’d gone back to the South. It was an exercise in verbal insignificance. I wondered why we were doing it, though he didn’t sound ready to be off the phone quickly like he had on our last few calls, but there was little to say. This gangplank of a goodbye was long.
After a few more weeks of silence between us, and nonstop dread about when Andrew was going to call to say never call him again, I finally could bear it no longer and decided to take things into my own hands. I called him on a Thursday afternoon in July, almost a year since we had met. My plan was to end it and lock him out of my life so I could get on with it and my art on my own. Somehow.
“I don’t even know why you still talk to me,” I told Andrew on our predetermined-by-me expiratory call.
“What?” I could tell he was outraged and shocked.
“Why do you still talk to me?” I derived a strength from saying it twice. “You’re just going to drop me. Raul did, Tory did, and you only have people in your life who are famous or are going to be any minute.”
“What are you talking about?” His voice had stepped aside as if his body were getting out of the way of a blow.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about, do I have to spell it out to you? I’m not a…” I almost said “big fucking art star,” but knew I’d lose it if I did, and I had a feeling he knew what I hadn’t said. “I fucked up, and all that matters to you is huge, phenomenal success, so let’s just end this—whatever the fuck it is—and you can go on with your life and we can forget we ever met because I can’t take this anymore.” I was free-falling in a descent that had started months ago, and even if it was going to be a crash landing, I wanted it to happen already—I’d been previewing it for too long.
“Yvette, calm down.”
“No.” I jumped up off my bed. I didn’t want any suggestions from him.
“All right, don’t calm down. But what you’re saying is ridiculous. I’m not going anywhere—I’ve told you that before and it’s true—and neither are you, so just settle down and let’s talk about what you need to do.”
“About what? You?”
“No, I told you, I don’t know what all this stuff about us is that you’re going on about. I’m not leaving your life, so you can forget about that. About your art, what you need to do about your art. You’re extremely talented.”
I was annoyed and comforted by his calm pragmatism, but I suddenly couldn’t hear him anymore. I was still in such high gear, all prepared with my big grand “This is over” stand that I wasn’t able to suddenly shift and have a “Where I’m going now” father/daughter talk. I said I had to go. He made me promise three times before I got off the phone that I would call him back that night. But I didn’t. And when my phone kept ringing, I didn’t answer it.
I called Andrew a few days later and told him I was starting School of Visual Arts in the fall, thank you, bossy Suzanne, for making me apply. He was thrilled to hear it and acted like it had been the plan all along, and neither of us brought up that other phone call ever again.
I quit smoking, quit my hostess job at the restaurant, and got a waitressing job at a place in the Village that was closer to SVA and only open at night so it worked with my class schedule. And I made lots of money in tips that the owners didn’t think they should be getting. So much that I was finally able to rent part of a loft space down on Elizabeth Street in the Bowery to do my work.
School of Visual Arts was an all-consuming feast. It was heaven being completely saturated—other than on my waiting shifts—with color and shape and technique and history, and I dove into my studies. So much that most of the time I was able to forget about the Tory/Raul episodes. But occasionally, they would come up. I was shocked at how many people had read the review, though maybe I shouldn’t have been since I was in art school—but it was weird that so many remembered it. Not everyone obviously, I wasn’t paranoid thinking my name was household news, but out of the blue I’d hear, “Weren’t you in Tory Sexton’s show…” And the pit would open up inside me and I’d feel myself falling down, out of sight, my head barely reaching the other person’s knees.
I started dating. Guys from class, men from the restaurant or the bars I went to with Lydia, and then I met Tim one day when he came to SVA at the beginning of my sophomore year to speak to a film class about set design, though he was mostly renowned for his work on Broadway. He couldn’t find the building that the class he was lecturing was in, so I showed him, then we met for coffee afterward and talked for four hours. That turned into a relationship of three years. And I loved Tim, though still held my heart for Andrew.
Andrew and I talked regularly on the phone the whole time I was in school and seeing Tim. Once I moved in with Tim, I had to call Andrew from pay phones away from the apartment, but since he always came to the phone whenever I called, we talked pretty regularly. He asked about everything, except my art, and was very interested in things about Tim, then always before we hung up, “Do you love me more than him?”
“Yes,” I’d tell him. “I do.” I loved Tim, but I never had the sense that he’d be around for years to come like Andrew, who was still in my life even though I’d crashed and burned in front of him.
Although what happened with Tory and Raul was never mentioned between Andrew and me, as if it had vanished. I had an odd persistent sense that he had completely forgotten it, as if he were amnesiac about a large part of me, the part that had been the springboard for our relationship. I believed he would have been confounded if I asked him how Tory was, or mentioned those sculptures. Beguilingly confused. No memory of them. Everything else he remembered accurately and questioned extensively, but this large piece was missing, as if it had been a dream we once shared.
Things ended with Tim a few months after I graduated from SVA. He wanted to stay in New York, and I needed to get out. Living there had started to feel as if all the big tall buildings had moved straight into my head and there wasn’t any room for my thoughts anymore, as if they were being routed down crowded one-way streets that barely moved, my thinking stuck, unable to get anywhere. And Suzanne, besides being thrilled and probably secretly shocked that I graduated, was dying for me to move to L.A. “We’re sisters. We should at least live in the same city,” she said, though I had a feeling she wanted to keep a closer eye on me. I guess she had forgotten that big, bad Andrew lived there. But she thought it was over between us since I never mentioned him. And there’d be space in L.A., I thought, and there was the art. David Hockney and Ed Ruscha; Richard Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park. I could make a fresh start without having to deal with the New York galleries again. Suzanne lived with her music agent boyfriend in a big house in Beverly Hills with a guest room I could stay in until I got on my feet. So, Tim and I broke up, and I moved to L.A.
Without telling Andrew. I don’t know why, really. I kept thinking I’d tell him in each conversation we had in the weeks I was preparing to move, but somehow I never brought it up. Not that I didn’t want to be in the same city with him again. But I guess I had gotten so used to, and comfortable with, our parental phone relationship that the idea of being in a town where I could see him was unsettling—because what if I didn’t. I landed in L.A. with Suzanne waiting for me outside baggage claim, behind the wheel of her silver convertible Saab, and Andrew still thought I was living in New York.