“Remember that time we went to the Salish Lodge and Dad’s patient who owns it got us that really big room and then we woke up and it was super-quiet and then you said, ‘Open the curtain,’ and it was snowing and then I ran outside and rolled around in my pajamas and then I caught snowflakes on my tongue and then Dad and I made a snowman that was full of leaves and then I thought a bee stung me but it was just ice inside my slipper?”
“Why don’t we do that more often?” I said.
“Because you don’t like being cold.”
Oof. Instead of my accustomed rat-a-tat-tat, I paused to let myself feel the ache of the myriad ways I’ve disappointed Timby.
We walked quietly for a while.
“Mama?” Timby said. “Piper Veal called me a bad word.”
“What did she call you?”
“Then I’m saying a bad word.”
“Tell me the first letter.”
“C,” Timby’s voice cracked.
“C!” I said. “A third-grader called you the C-word?”
“Yeah. Cow.”
“Cow?”
“Why are you laughing?” he said.
“I’m sorry. It’s not funny. It’s shocking and rude.”
“It means I’m fat,” Timby said.
“Oh, sweetie, don’t say that. I wouldn’t have you any other way. Besides, soon you’ll shoot up like a bean stalk.”
“I hope it’s really soon,” he said.
“When I was your age, my father took me shopping and I had to buy my clothes in the Chunky section.”
“Who called it that?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Some awful store in Glenwood Springs. There was a section with a sign. ‘Chunky.’”
“Poor Mama!”
Eight. Eight was the best age.
“That’s the thing about hard times,” I said. “Generally speaking, one survives.”
Yo-Yo stuck his head into a boxwood and emerged with half a burrito. If there’s one thing that dog has a talent for, it’s sticking his head into a bush and coming out with 7-Eleven. He gobbled the burrito, foil and all.
“Mom!” Timby cried.
I reached into Yo-Yo’s mouth, hooked out the drooly stub, and tossed it in the trash. Yo-Yo, on the verge of panic, fixed his attention on me.
“It’s gone!” I presented my empty hands with a Vegas dealer clap, but it meant nothing. “Let’s go, you stupid dog.”
I yanked the leash. He yanked back. I nudged him with my foot.
“Don’t kick him!” Timby cried.
“That’s not kicking.”
People hadn’t stopped to watch, but they were certainly slowing down to judge.
We arrived at the bottom of the hill, looked both ways for cyclists, and crossed the bike path onto a lawn that rolled down to the water.
A square of grass had been staked off in CAUTION tape. Within, two framed panes of glass were mounted on poles at eye-level.
“Is something going in those?” Timby asked.
Like I had any idea.
A guy in painter’s pants and T-shirt was crouched over something, his back to us. At his side was a black plastic cart piled with tools.
Suddenly, a spray of water arched over our heads and squirted the glass. The worker jumped out of the way.
It was Spencer, behind us, pointing a hose.
“You found me!” he said.
The glass on the left glistened with water pebbles. But the one on the right…
“It’s coated in high-tech liquid repellent,” Spencer explained. “Water bounces right off.”
I ducked under the yellow tape and touched the glass. It was magically dry.
“When the Seattle Art Museum commissioned an outdoor piece,” Spencer said, “I thought, Yay, I get to play with rain. I remembered you’d moved here, et voilà.”
“Me?”
Spencer led me by the hand. The workman held a level between his teeth as he affixed a plaque to a concrete stump.
“CAREERIST / ARTIST”
SPENCER MARTELL
American, b. 1977
If it was shock and delight Spencer was after, I certainly delivered. In one frame, the cedars beyond wobbled through water drops. In the other, the same view, bold and crisp.
“Careerist is the canvas covered with tears,” I said, figuring it out. “It’s distorted by emotion. Artist is the identical image freed from self-pity.”
Spencer’s hands flew up to his face in mock horror. “Could you make me sound any more maudlin and faggy?”
Timby gasped at the bad word.
“This is what an artist does!” Who was I even talking to? “Look around. There’s everything to choose from. The vastness of the sky, the blues of the water. Ferries, sailboats, mountains, and everywhere you look, people. Timby, come here.” I was apparently talking to him.
He instinctively took a step back.
“Have you ever seen such abundance?” I picked up my son so he was eye level with the frames. “But this is art, daring to put a frame around something, signing your name, and letting it speak for itself.”
“Listen to your mother,” Spencer said.
“At Cooper Union, I had to take History of Photography. Who’s the guy who took the pictures of those sisters? In the seventies? Lined up like a Christmas card, year after year?”
“Nicholas Nixon,” Spencer said. “The Brown sisters.”
“Thank you! I was having a serious problem with photography in general. When we got to Nicholas Nixon, I said to my professor, ‘That’s so random. I could have taken those.’ And he said, ‘But you didn’t. Nicholas Nixon did. And he put his name on it. That’s what makes it art.’”