“And I’m inviting you kids to join us out in Jackson Hole after Christmas. My treat.”
“Wow, thanks.” We hadn’t been on a family vacation since I was a teenager. But Charlie would be excluded from the trip, I knew, and I wasn’t sure I was ready for the family politics, particularly now. “Can I let you know as we get closer?”
“Of course.”
I felt surprisingly unburdened as I hung up the phone. With this frightful thing actually happening, there was at least one less catastrophe to fend off. I even felt happy for my father, remembering how Elisa had smiled at him at dinner, lit his pipe for him, laughed at his awful barroom jokes; she had a few of her own to share, too. Maybe it made a kind of sense, this odd May–December match.
The birds on the brick wall outside my conservatory chirped in the smog. A fake-sounding British siren bellowed down Wandsworth Bridge Road. Soon I’d go over to the Indian liquor store to buy my bottled water, and on my way home I’d stop to chat with the furniture makers who rented the storefront below me. What did it matter what went on in Michigan?
With just two weeks left to conceive and finish an installation, I still hadn’t decided what I’d present in the studio show. Usually I would spend months on a new piece. Knowing now that this effort would be rushed, I was reluctant to invite Trevor Atkins or any of the art dealers.
Trevor, who was moonlighting as a guest curator, had put some of my British friends into a show at the Hayward Gallery—but not me. When I’d run into him at a gallery private view in early November and asked him about his decision, he’d said, “It’s a survey of British artists, Frances. Nothing personal.” But it did feel personal, particularly after Trev or’s enthusiasm during my final MA exhibition at Chelsea back in September. The buzz from the visiting art dealers and critics had also been encouraging; Lisson Gallery and Interim Art had made special studio visits to preview my work. A mere two months later, Trevor was putting safe—and mostly male—British “art stars” into the Hayward Gallery show, and the art dealers, too, were radio silent.
I began to wonder if I was too much of an outlier as an American artist. When a well-known British artist offhandedly suggested I keep my contacts active in the States, “just in case,” my suspicions solidified, and I began to believe that coming to London had been a grave misstep in my career.
I should move to New York, I decided. Then again, the thought of establishing myself in yet another big city was exhausting. To say nothing of the expense. With my Fulbright income gone, I needed a teaching job in a college art department. The small income I received from our real estate trust in Detroit, while helpful, was not nearly enough to live on. I began to have fantasies of escaping the drudgery of life in London to some whitewashed village in Greece. There, I could build up reserves—both emotional and financial—before my next move.
With my momentum in London all but exhausted, I often forwent the hour-long Tube ride to the studio to work on a piece for the upcoming show. Instead, I became involved with projects around the house, like applying for studio programs in New York, or vacuuming. Or polishing camera lenses—the used ones I’d bought to replace the stolen lenses.
At last I arrived at an idea for the studio show: a life-size video projection of a poker game. It was part of a series of “happenings” that I filmed from the ceilings of rooms and then projected, often back into the very spaces where the events had been recorded.
Having spent the afternoon at the studio setting up for the shoot, I pulled a rectangular table into the center of the room, climbed on top, and attached my video camera to the ceiling. Then I spent an hour adjusting the angle of the camera, observing the image of the tabletop on a monitor, lining the edges up with the frame.
With the show only a few days away, an oppressive mood had settled over the studio. Dispirited, Mike and Ole tinkered for hours with a broken video projector. Tanja came over from across the hall to use our bathroom, but didn’t stop to talk. Gary sat at his desk, ignoring everyone.
My poker-playing friends were due at any moment, but then the phone rang and I went over to answer.
It was my brother Bobby. “So, dad eloped with that . . . thing.”
I didn’t know whether to laugh at this, or cry. I leaned into the wide windowsill, observing the desolation of the street outside, dead grass studding the empty lot beyond like patches of mold on old bread. Tiny flecks of rain blew sideways through the air.
“Where?” I said.
“At Gruhn’s—that redneck guitar store in Nashville.”