“Cougars. The football team?”
“I’m not really into sports. Football is especially dangerous. Even going to a game as a fan increases your risk of bodily harm versus staying at home.” He widens his eyes anxiously. “Do you go to those games, Jasalie?”
“No, I don’t go to those games.” I pause. “But I’m thinking about starting.”
“Whatever for?” he asks me.
“I know someone who plays on the team.”
“Oh, yeah?” He looks at me more closely now and pushes his glasses more tightly onto his face.
“Yeah.” I stand and fidget a bit in front of him, feeling like a teenager heading out on her first date.
“And he’s safe”—my father pauses like he can hardly bear to say it—“on that football field?”
“So far.” I want to scream that he’s the quarterback and that he turned my world upside down, but I refrain. I’ve probably said too much already.
“Well, he’s a braver man than I am,” my father finishes.
I nod sadly. Dylan always was the bravest man I’d ever met, but then he pushed me away. Now he’s just another person who decided I was better off without him.
* * *
When I get home that night, I sit down on my apartment floor and try to continue the tradition I started. I take out my clay and attempt to sculpt my father. But nothing happens. I don’t get anything.
This can’t be right. It’s not like my father has no essence. Nobody has no essence. It’s not possible, or he’d be dead. There has to be a pulse in there somewhere right? I’d think after having seen the man for the first time in my life, I could find his pulse.
I pour myself a glass of wine and sip it while I stare, perplexed, at the mound of unmolded clay in front of me. All I can think of is opposites. Opposite of brave, opposite of calm, opposite of confident, opposite of Dylan. And when I get through all that, finally I reach for the clay. I sculpt quicker than usual and don’t give myself time to dwell. When I’m finished, I cover it up and go clean my hands, and then I begin to work on my sculptures for tomorrow night’s show.
I think a lot about how to title them on the descriptive placards I’m going to hang above each one. “Death” is an easy one, but remembering what happened right after I’d sculpted it, I decide to call it “Painful End” instead.
The sculpture of Dante and Harlow I title “Settling for Less Than You Deserve.” And the one of my mother? I keep that one simple: “A Mother’s Love.”
But when I get to the sculpture of Dylan, I freeze. How can I possibly encapsulate someone as vibrant and sexy and incredible as Dylan Wild in a caption?
And then, I know.
I fill out the note card quickly, and before I can second-guess myself, I go to bed.
* * *
I sleep fitfully. At dawn, I get up and go take a peek at what I sculpted last night. I inhale when I see the figure I made of my father.
Hard to breathe. Hard to live.
The sculpture of my father looks like a man gasping for air, gasping for life in a cold, cruel world, as he wishes he had a hand to make him feel safe because he never did. And for whatever reason, he could never teach himself that part. I look at the mouth, wide open as it fights for oxygen, and then my gaze shifts to the eyes. Once the clay dries, the eyes will be green. That’s the only color I plan to have on the entire sculpture because they were the only life I saw in my father, the one part of him that felt alive.
I look over at the sculpture of Dylan, and a lump comes into my throat. I don’t know how I met a man who’s so alive, and so filled with love and joy. But I did. And I wish to God he was still in my life. Passing angry messages through his security team doesn’t make a relationship. I wish I could invite him to my gallery show tonight.
But he made the decision to end things. When I remember how determined he was to break it off with me, my eyes fill with tears.
Needing a distraction, I check my website and do a happy squeal when I see I have my first sale. One sale, and I made more than I make at Apex in a month.
I reach for the phone to tell Lilla.
“I know I’ll see you at work in an hour, but I just didn’t expect to be selling so soon,” I say to her. “I thought it would take forever.”
“You’ve been sculpting forever,” she points out.
