Or maybe I hadn’t done anything.
Sometimes when I’m watching a movie and there’s a simple Big Misunderstanding between two people—he thinks she’s a space alien or something—I want to shout, “Just talk to each other!”
But of course nothing in real life is ever simple like that.
Every real human interaction is made up of a million tiny moving pieces. Not a simple one-note situation: a symphony of cues to read and decipher and evaluate and pay attention to.
It’s a wonder we ever get anything straight at all.
And of course for me, for most of my life, the number one go-to for deciphering any human interaction was facial expressions.
Which I couldn’t even see.
So this conversation was destined to fail from the start.
But I still had to try.
I took a step closer, wanting to get really clear. “I guess the date’s not happening now?”
Joe gazed off at some far point on the horizon.
“That’s right, right? You’re not coming with me to this thing? Even though you said you would?”
Nothing from Joe.
“I guess I’m just really nervous to go by myself,” I went on, feeling my voice waver a little. “I don’t want to go at all. But I have to go, you know? My painting. My life goals. And even though the portrait is not what they want, for sure—so I’m one hundred percent guaranteed to come in dead last—I suspect it might actually really be good. In an ugly duckling kind of way. Plus, there’s a good chance my horrible family will show up and make things a hundred times worse. And I’m going to have to do it all genuinely, totally alone.”
I held my breath for a second, trying to steady myself.
I never, ever asked for help. And if Joe’s behavior the past four days had made anything clear, he was in no mood to give it.
But I wasn’t asking for him, I realized.
This wasn’t about his answer. This was about my question.
And mustering the courage to ask it.
“The thing is,” I said then, my voice feeling like a balloon I might lose hold of. “The thing is … I’m scared to go alone. And I don’t know why, but it feels like you’re the only person I can say that to. You’re the only person I want to say that to. I just want so badly to have somebody with me. Anybody. And so I just have to ask if you might stay tonight. Despite everything.” I took a step closer, like that might seal the deal. “Can you postpone your plans,” I asked, “and come with me?”
If there was any hope for us at all, he’d sense my desperation—how badly I really, truly needed him—and rescue me this one last time.
But he didn’t.
He kept his face turned toward the horizon. “Are you asking me to be your anybody?”
“I guess that’s one way to put it.”
Now, at last, he turned toward me. “I’m not going to be anybody for you, Sadie. And I don’t want to see the portrait. And I don’t know why you think I’d care about any of this.”
But I shook my head. “I don’t understand what happened.”
I could feel a flash of anger in his expression like fire. “Really?” he said. “I don’t understand it, either, to be honest. But here we are.”
I took a deep breath. “Whatever I’ve done, I’m sorry.”
But Joe shook his head like sorry was the most useless word in the world.
Worse than useless, even. Insulting.
He turned to leave. Then he stopped and turned halfway back.
“I’m moving out, by the way,” he said then. “So stop coming by my place. And stop calling me. And for god’s sake … stop texting.”
Twenty-Five
THE FIRST INSULT of the art show—before all the injuries—was placement.
I arrived at the gallery to find my portrait hung in the worst conceivable spot—half under a staircase, fully at the back, right near the bathrooms, under an exposed air-conditioning vent that was literally dripping into a bucket. There was a moldy smell to the area—not to mention a tinge of Lysol.
You’d think that a bright, airy, recently renovated art gallery wouldn’t have a dank corner—but you’d be wrong.
And that’s where they stuck me.
At the art gallery equivalent of a restaurant’s sucker table.
Worst of all, the spot was hard to get to, but because of the U-shaped layout of the gallery, it was easy to see. Everybody entering the building could get a full view of my indefensibly tragic situation.
So any and all humiliations to come would be on full display.
And there were plenty of humiliations to come.
Starting with the fact that no one was there.
Oh, people were there—at the show. The show itself was packed. Just—no one came to my shadowy, mildewy, forgotten corner.
I stood courageously next to my portrait, under the cold, damp, blowing air of that drippy vent, feeling as exposed as a hermit crab out of its shell—as I watched the entire gallery milling with eager art patrons.
Everywhere—except where I was.
No one came up to me and said hello. No one talked to me at all. Only a few freakish outliers even glanced at my portrait, which was clearly, easily, the big loser of the night from minute one. I scanned people’s outfits and hair and gaits for identifying clues, but I did not recognize one person.
The artist closest to me, layout-wise, was a guy named Bradley Winterbottom, who’d done a portrait of a child on the beach. He had at least twenty people gathered in his area—chatting companionably about the composition, delighting over the way he’d captured that late-afternoon sunlight, swooning over the sweetness of the child’s face.
I mean, nothing against Bradley Winterbottom, but I really hated that guy right then.
He had more admirers than he deserved.
I, in contrast, had zero.
I didn’t even need admirers. I would’ve been happy for someone to talk to. A person who needed directions, say. A lost hiker.
But no luck. It was just me. Alone.
Nothing to do but panic over life-altering decisions about where to rest my hands. They were too posed and awkward at my sides, but they felt hostile if I crossed them over my chest, and they had too much judgy-mom energy if I rested them on my hips. I just kept shifting them around. Was behind the back too goofy? Was clasped at the pelvis too meek? Was clenched into fists of misery too … honest?
Nothing worked. Every few seconds I tried a new pose. Like an animatronic scarecrow.
To no avail.
I had no idea where to look, either. Looking at the floor would make me seem ashamed. Looking at other people would make me seem needy. Looking at my own portrait on the wall would make me seem like I was fully, heartily giving up on my dreams in real time.
Which I was, by the way.
There is nothing—nothing—more socially awkward than standing alone in a crowd waiting for someone, anyone, to come and join you.
I cursed Sue for getting kidnapped. And for eloping. And for every Angry Canadian she’d tossed back.
Then I felt guilty and took it back.
I cursed Joe instead. For everything.
Then I felt guilty about that, too.
Then I toyed with cursing myself … before deciding I was cursed enough, already.
* * *