Victoria swipes at her forehead. Her hair is down and messy, and her dress is one I’ve never seen, purple with little birds all over it. Birds in nests, and birds suspended in fabric flight.
There’s a possibility, small but visible, that I may never see this dress again. That she may leave for New York straight from Miami, and that she’ll change her phone number and make her parents swear not to give me her address.
“But you’re afraid, too, dearie,” she says. “You’re scared of what you want. Sometimes you take a step forward, but then you retreat again. Always.”
Martha Graham has no use for me. I stare at the floor.
“If you need to tell me anything important, then just do it,” Victoria whispers. “Because I think you’re holding on to something.”
She doesn’t know how right she is. But she has been wrong about me so many times that I can’t give in to her right now. Vic is not that good at commitments. Vic is good at moments—sometimes moments that last a few days, or a few years, but still, every time and place and person in her life so far is something or someone she’s going to leave behind. I wanted to be more than a moment to her. I wanted the world to spin tightly around us, holding us close, keeping us together.
I don’t think she’s going to let me be that person.
“I mean, okay, maybe I’m wrong,” Vic continues, grabbing the stack of books from the desk and layering them on top of the clothes. On one cover, a guy and a girl stare longingly at each other over a fence. On another, a silhouette walks through the rain in Paris. I want to sit next to her and read them (I’ll take the Paris one). “But it bugs me to watch you get so close to what you want and then . . . you know, run away again.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I say quickly, hopping up from the bed and returning to the desk chair. “I’m, like, working on the biggest damn art project right now. I’m putting myself out there.” But the center of me seems to collapse, my guts and heart trying to swap places. I steady myself with two hands on the side of Vic’s desk.
Maybe Vic was right in calling the magic mine.
It is. I shouldn’t ignore that anymore. I’m connected to the Estate just as much as Lilia is, and I need to get back there, to my studio, to figure out how I should do my self-portrait.
Vic goes back to packing, and I grab a handful of the clothes on the chair and bring them to her. She takes them without managing to brush my hand. She’s coordinated that way.
Are you going to miss me?
Are we going to talk about this when you return?
Was this, indeed, inevitable?
These are the things I want to ask her.
But we’re quiet until Angela pops in from the other room, finished with dessert and coffee with the Caballinis, hinting that she’d like to get home, hinting that it’s getting awkward to be sitting there.
Vincent van Gogh wasn’t a slouch about the self-portrait. Neither was Frida Kahlo. Rothko loathed them. Warhol consented to them. Marc Chagall parodied them. And the esteemed Lilia Solis claims she doesn’t care for them, but that having one is “part of the project.” And so, here we are.
“Nice view.” I lean against the window and stare out into the Gulf of Mexico, which on a calm night like this seems black and tired and almost defeated. We’re on the other side of the building now, and six floors higher than before, and from here the gulf announces itself.
“It really is.” Lilia’s voice is clipped and kind of sad. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Yes.” I turn away from the window and continue not sitting on the dusty concrete floor. “But I need to know, are there some rules about what it should look like? Colors? Shapes? Size? Are you going to say something all mysterious-like, maybe along the lines of, ‘Whatever you create, it must be true to yourself’?”
Lilia pushes her hair out of her face and actually sits on the floor. I think I wear her out sometimes. “It needs to fill the room.”
As soon as she’s said it, I realize I know that. Fill the room.
“If it helps, I know you can do it,” Lilia says.
“Thanks.”
The white walls here are uneven and smudged, brushed with nail holes and dust and the impact of hands and furniture. The door is even worse, with a jagged hole going all the way through. “It looks like someone got angry,” was all Lilia said when we came in, and I was glad that my mind hadn’t made that connection immediately.
“So I can use any of the materials in the kitchen?” I ask, though now Lilia is the one who seems to be daydreaming, staring at the maze of concrete bumps and swirls across the floor.
“And is there any hope of getting a rug or something, or can I bring one?”
Lilia says, “I’ll find something for you.” She picks herself up off the floor, gathers her dress around her, and takes stock of the walls the same way I’ve been doing. This is hardly an ideal canvas for someone who often sucks at painting on canvas.
I ask her, “Where are you working now?” Because I know she’s not working here, and it’s starting to sink in that I practically have my own house. Someone else’s rules, but my walls to draw on.
“Down the hall. Eight oh five.”
“Can I come see what you’re working on?”
“Not yet.”
“I saw the sketchbook. I mean, I know you intended for me to see it. But you got that picture out. You changed the rules somehow.”
She gives me a slow nod, but says nothing.
“Did you know my mother is coming home?” I haven’t told her this and neither has Angela, but it seems like Rex might have told her, or that it might be the sort of thing she picks up on without explanation. Like I’m standing in a certain my-mom’s-making-travel-plans-right-now way.
“I hadn’t heard,” she says, and I think we both look surprised.
“So, ah, I might not have as much time to come here as I do now.” I mean, there are methods for escaping the house when Mom’s there, but I haven’t tested them in a while. She could have figured them out. “I just wanted to warn you.”
“When is she coming back?” Lilia asks.
“She thinks maybe Monday.”
“Why don’t you stay here for the weekend?”
“Here?” I thump the heel of my shoe against the concrete floor.
“In the other place,” Lilia says. “Your white room. I can make some arrangements for you. Artists shouldn’t have to sleep uncomfortably.”
“What about my sister?”
“Are you saying you want to bring her?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Do you think that’s going to work?”
I look her straight in the face. Well, at her nose. “You know what? I think it will.”
It’s echoey in here. My voice, not hers. I suppose I should get used to it. This is where I’m going to be spending lots of time alone. I hope I’m able to hear the music from here, at least.
“Hey, is Firing Squad still here?”
Lilia brightens. “They’re on about the same schedule as you are right now.”