“Which I, for one, really appreciated. That signed Stephen Sondheim Playbill is still one of my most treasured possessions.” I held my hand to my face to block even a peripheral view of Timby.
“Then I got fired. The shame of it. There I was, living in the East Village in an apartment I couldn’t afford. I couldn’t face my parents. For the first time in my life I wasn’t sharing a bedroom with five brothers and sisters, and I could finally act on the fact that… I…” He looked at Timby, unsure. “Didn’t like girls.”
“He knows all about it.” I flipped my head toward Timby. “I let him watch the Tonys.”
“Oh. Well, the first guy I fell in love with was a drug addict, the hard stuff. Quicker than you might imagine, I ended up broke and with nowhere to live. But no matter how low I sank, I knew I was an artist. Despite what you said, I knew I was more than a careerist.”
I’d called him that. I was hoping he’d forgotten.
“What’s a careerist?” asked Timby.
“I had to look it up too,” Spencer said. “It’s someone who only thinks about getting ahead in his or her career.”
“That’s not bad,” Timby said, disappointed.
Spencer put his hand to his heart. “Even now, when I think back on Looper Wash, the pangs of humiliation can make me drop the glass in my hand. I was so naive, such an embarrassment to myself.”
“Not at all,” I said. “It just wasn’t the right fit.”
“You had nowhere to live,” Timby prompted helpfully.
“I’d lost all belief in myself,” Spencer said. “But something deep within kept me going. A feeling of hope. And that hope was a pulsing, radiant green.”
“Green hope!” I cried.
“It was the tip of a crocus breaking through in the winter. It was the shag carpet in the basement of a ranch house. It was the lace on my sister’s quincea?era dress. Stop me if you’ve already heard this.”
“Me?” I coughed, completely baffled as to how I could have.
“If I captured those greens,” Spencer said, “it would release the artist who’d been taken hostage by the careerist.” He unbuttoned his shirt cuffs, held together by silk French knots. He rolled up his sleeves and brandished his inner arms. On each, a tattoo from wrist to elbow: green paint-sample strips.
“Whoa,” said Timby.
“That’s quite a commitment,” I said, then noticed his watch: vintage Cartier.
“I refused to let my failure at Looper Wash define me,” Spencer said. “I spent my last dollar on a painting at a thrift shop just for the canvas, painted it green, and while the paint was still wet, cried onto it.”
“Oy,” I said.
“Mom! You’re mean.”
Spencer removed the napkin from his lap, folded it, and placed it on the table. He stood up and walked over to me. Were my arms shielding my face? Maybe. But instead of striking me, Spencer hugged me. It took breathing exercises from childbirth class to survive his bewildering, tuberose-scented act of compassion.
Timby, traumatized, gave me a look: What’s he doing?
I gave him one back: No idea.
Spencer returned to his seat. Timby handed him his napkin. There was no choice now but to respect the dude.
“You’re right,” Spencer said. “It was sentimental and muddled. But it was the first true thing I’d ever done. That painting is here in Seattle. I’d love to show it to you.”
“I want to see it!” Timby said.
“Read a book.”
“Listen to me!” Spencer smacked his forehead. “I promised I’d make it short. So I came out, became a junkie, got these tattoos, cleaned up, and, well, you know about the past twelve years.”
“I do?”
“Yale School of Art, group show at White Columns, Jack Wolgin Prize, Venice Biennale, blah-blah-blah.”
My eyes closed; my face scrunched; my head shook a thousand tiny times. “Huh?”
“I thought you knew about me,” Spencer said. To Timby: “Your mom—”
But Timby had become absorbed in one of Spencer’s books.
Spencer turned back to me. “That’s why I crave you, Eleanor. You have a way of frying my motherboard when I need it the most.”
“It’s not intentional!” I said. “I promise.”
“The contemporary art world is so insular. We think our sky-high prices make us the center of the universe when of course only about eight people are paying attention. And they’re just gallery owners and art consultants.” Spencer joined his hands and lowered his chest in a slight bow. “I honor you.”
“That’s you?” I said, still gaga. “Yale, Venice?”
“I’m having a solo show at the Seattle Art Museum,” he said. “They asked me to do some stuff at the sculpture park too. There are banners all over town. Of course I just presumed you saw my name flapping in the breeze everywhere you went. But here you are again, holding up the mirror.”
This toadying wannabe, this sweaty ass-kisser, this fraudulent quasi-minority, now he was somebody? Now he was the shit? He’d turned everything topsy-turvy and instead of rubbing my face in it, instead of serving revenge cold, he was nothing but hugs and two-hundred-dollar pens and pervy gratitude and— “Mom?” It was Timby.
He held up what he’d been reading, from Spencer’s bag, a fancy magazine or catalog… It took me a second to even recognize it.
THE MINERVA PRIZE