I go to an art opening with Nina after work. I don’t stay long, because it is one of those days where it is hard for me to look at art. Sometimes it is hard for me to look at art because so much art is terrible and I can tell it is a lie, that the artist is lying, and I begin to hate that art/artist for wasting my time. And sometimes it is hard for me to look at art because the art I am witnessing is good enough to set what I do with my day in relief, which is mostly worthless except that it makes me money, and so I am a bad artist in my own way. Tonight, the art is terrible. I down two glasses of wine, and then I drink another one while I’m waiting in line for the bathroom, and then I leave and I don’t say goodbye to Nina, I just text her before I get on the subway, and by the time I get home she’s texted back, “I left first.”
When I get on the elevator in my apartment building, I hear a soft yet masculine voice ask me to please hold the door. It is the German man. I decide I am going to make him my friend even if the actress has no interest in me. It is a mostly innocent, slightly volatile gesture. In my head I think, I am just being friendly. He is wearing a denim shirt with the cuffs rolled up and black jeans and his hair is closer to gray than blond. I realize now that I am inspecting him and not her. His face: still handsome. I say hello and he says hello and asks me how my day was and I say, “Oh this city, you bob, you weave,” and I pretend like I’m a boxer and punch the air and it makes him laugh. I ask him about his apartment. I tell him I’ve lived in the building a long time and I know they did a lot of work on the top floor and I’m curious how he finds it. I do not explain how I know he lives on the top floor and he doesn’t question it. We are neighbors, I’ve seen him, he’s seen me, I’m the girl who bobs and weaves: we are already nearly friends. He asks me if I’d like to see the apartment and I say, “Anytime,” and he says, “Sure, why don’t you come up now, then?” I can’t think of a reason not to. There’s nothing waiting for me at home but my refrigerator, my laptop, and death.
I take the elevator with him to the top floor. I wonder if she’ll be there. I hold my breath while he opens the front door. Their apartment is spectacular. It is a rich person’s apartment. A rich person with taste who also likes things minimal. There is a bare amount of furniture but everything looks expensive, the European patent leather loafer version of furniture. I look at the floors and the windows; that’s supposed to be why I’m there. His floors are tiled, his windows are new, a sliding door opens onto the deck. In the bathroom there is a tub, whereas I have only an old, stained plastic stall. All the fixtures gleam. “It is very expensive to live here, but it is very expensive to live everywhere in this city. Not like Berlin,” he sighs. “But what is?” I sigh in agreement. (I have never been to Berlin.) “So,” he says. “You are here, I am here, what should we do?” “What do you mean?” I say. What does he mean? “Do you want a drink or something?” he says. “We are neighbors. We get to know each other now.” But I realize I don’t want to know anything about him. It is only her I am interested in. He is that thing on her arm. I have one drink with him anyway just to be polite and we stand on the deck and look out at the city and he puts his hand on my waist, like, lower waist, and I let him keep it there for a minute because that bitch wasn’t nice enough about my shoes in the elevator.
Or maybe it’s jealousy?
But what about this:
A few weeks later, it’s raining. Summer rain, unexpected, but no sane person minds weather like that. The rain glitters down, hair in soft, damp curls, moist, sexy skin. I’m laughing as I run through it. It was a late night at work, a deadline I didn’t care about, but I finished it, it’s done, and I feel dizzy and giddy. I’ll never have to think about that project again. Maybe it’s the last time I’ll ever have a project like that. I imagine myself quitting my job. I imagine myself with a new life. The surprise of the rain lets me picture a different future for myself.
Once I was pregnant, did I ever tell you that? It wasn’t really a baby, it was just a few weeks old, barely formed, a concept, and then it was lifeless. I hadn’t even known I was pregnant. I cannot tell you who the father was: it could have been one of three people. This was in my late twenties, still a slippery time in my life, more slippery than now. On occasion I cry when I remember this lost baby. It is not because I ever wanted a baby. Think of the complications, long term, short term, I didn’t even know who the father was. That is not the kind of math I want to ever try to do. But I cry anyway because it was a path I could have taken and didn’t. I cry for the lost idea, the lost concept. Sometimes I cry, too, for who I was as an artist and what my life could have been like if only I had kept going. I weep for my lost identities. I weep for my possibilities.
So that night I’m running in the rain and I’m giddy and happy and a little teary imagining another life for myself, one where I quit my job and I’m squeezing my brain so hard trying to figure out what’s next, do I shut down my life for a year and just travel until I figure it out, do I move to the small town in New Hampshire where my family is and stay with them until my sick niece passes away, do I volunteer my time to help change the planet, do I stop being such a narcissist, do I find God, does God find me, do I sit quietly and feel the earth rotate and breathe deeply every morning until I am calm and happy and centered and capable of being satisfied?
And when I arrive home there she is, the actress, sitting on the front steps of the apartment building, a damp cigarette in her hand, her hair a mess all around her on her shoulders, streaming black eye makeup, cinematic as fuck. She is barefoot. She is not smiling, she is not enjoying this rain. She is trembling instead, not because she is cold but because she is devastated.
I walk past her and up the steps because we are at war, and also because her shame is not for me to consume. Then I think: This war is imaginary, and you have felt the exact same shame. I turn and walk back down the steps and face her, ask her if she’s OK. “I don’t know, are any of us OK?” she says. She uses air quotes. I laugh. She’s terrible. She and her German boyfriend are awful. She is a terrible actress. But she’s still beautiful, and I tell her that. I say, “I have always wanted to tell you, you’re gorgeous.” And you would think it wouldn’t mean anything to her in the midst of whatever she’s going through, because beauty can take you only so far and then you’re crying in the rain like everyone else, but it still does, it’s still important, her looks define her, and her face lights up, pleased to be recognized, pleased to be admired. I have made her feel better, and I am delighted.
So what is that, is that basically obsessed or high level of interest or platonic love or jealousy, or is it just humanity, me reaching out and wanting to connect with this woman, this actress, this person, make her feel seen, make her feel known?
I leave her and get on the elevator in the building. I am dripping everywhere, all of me melting. I want to be recognized too, I realize. I want someone to see me. What if I start making art again? What if I just did that? That is the thing I love, that is the thing I miss the most. For so long I have believed I could never catch up, but now I realize there’s nothing to catch up to, there’s only what I choose to make. There’s still time, I think. I have so much time left.
All Grown Up