She directs him to a cluster of low houses, and into the drive of a modest condominium with a “For Rent” sign out front. Susie jumps out, peering over at the house like it’s the most beautiful thing she’s ever laid eyes on.
“What do you think? It’s only a sublet, but it’ll give me some time to buy everything they need.”
“Holy Mary, Susie B. Did your man see the light, then?”
“I’m doing this without him,” she says.
Shit. All those years of complaining, and she’s finally doing it.What kind of bastard wouldn’t move out here with her?Anyone could see how much she needed this. Still, the poor fuck had a nasty shock coming to him. Watchful tears rim her eyelids, and she reaches for the sunglasses on top of her head.
“You’re sure this is a good idea?”
“Well, if it’s not, it’s too late now. Come on inside.”
She leads him. The house is full of someone else’s family, their smells, their furniture, their children in framed school photos on the wall behind the door. One bedroom has a vague Disney theme. Simple, sedate. Plenty of light. As she steps in the room, she is still talking about the children, how the bunk beds will be perfect. She seems so much older to him, the problems in her life so much more real.
Down the narrow hallway she hovers in the doorframe of the master bedroom, and he is suddenly aware of how quiet it is in here with the carpeting and the low ceilings, how different it feels from being in his lonely bachelor apartment.
“So, I guess the thing is to figure out schools around here. You know, because they’re starting next year. And that will make it easier, I think,for filming and all that. Kids make friends pretty quickly at this age, right? They’ll adjust?”
When she pushes up her sunglasses, her eyes are searching him for something solid, some level of certainty that he could not possibly contain. God, what can he say? The whole house feels like a set, like they are about to do a scene in here. Like she wants him to be a character.
Like an audition.
“I guess I wouldn’t know, Suze. I’ve never known a thing about kids.”
It would be unkind to let her believe anything else. To conflate him with her desire for a happier life.
She nods, and places her sunglasses back over her eyes, moves her mouth to one side.She’s just scared, he tells himself.She’s just worried about being alone.
“God help me,” she says quietly.
“Fuck God, I’ll help you,” he says. “Anything you need, Susie.”
But she knows as well as he does: anything has a limit.
2012
Swipe down the illuminated screen of your phone to get a sense of his work: aerobics girls set against celestial clouds, retro nudes with marigolds flowering from orifices, a long, tanned leg becoming a nuclear missile. It’s not bad, kind of interesting, and you think you understand the project more or less. The eighties are in again, the new flavor of nostalgia. Maybe it’s political—after all, dissatisfaction is in the air. But there’s something in his stuff that makes you feel good, magic superimposed onto ordinary lives. Maybe you’ll buy one. Not now, because who has time for that, but at some later moment. The followers are increasing, so maybe you’ll consider, if he becomes a bit bigger.
Art is a commitment.
That’s what Sebastian tells himself as he plunges into Sadie’s attic for his ritual trawl through the stacks of magazines and report cards and class photos and Christmas cards from decades ago. Paper dolls. Nancy Reagan. Michael Jackson. Leather. Sex. Whitesnake. A photo of his grandmother. Glamour and grunge. Unlivable, sure, but when you think of it as time travel, you can forget the chaos, all the space it is taking up in their lives. After all, this was once his mother’s house.
Score.Timemagazine, Brooke Shields, those eyebrows, that hair. He swipes it and stumbles back down the stairs to the bedroom that has become his studio, unmade bed pushed to the corner, clippings organized into neat Tupperware boxes, a large piece of paper taped to the wall, sticky brushes and a small armada of Elmer’s glue bottles at varying stages of emptiness, translucent skeins wisping off orange beaks. This is his largest project to date: a giant mosaic of his mother’s face composed of everything she might have encountered in her life, things that hesupposes would have made her feel something. Faces of people from her work, faces of celebrities, Barbie dolls, hair products, fast cars, sunsets, Meat Loaf. Lola. Sadie. Himself. It’s amazing what you find when you take apart a face.
Scissors travel over glossy paper in a severance that has come to feel like prayer. He is beginning to realize that no masterpiece—no magic clue—will clarify her, will clarify his existence within his family. His mother’s giant, half-finished face looks down at him with a single green eye. He has been working off of one of the nudes—she is covering her breasts, turning away slightly from the camera, her ribs articulated. A scar on her stomach.Was that from him? Or another surgery?He drifts his hands over the scraps that he has organized in a spectrum: varying shades of blush and deeper pinks that will become the cheeks, and a mountain of dark brown: coffee cups and grizzly bears and leather jackets.What to leave in, what to take out.The process used to feel like detective work, like he was getting closer to a kind of truth, but now has started to feel like deconstruction. The choice is overwhelming. He’s been stubborn really, never asking his father about his archival work, even if he can imagine the excruciating answer (there’s content and context, and really it’s as much about understanding historical value as anything…). He sighs, steps back, examines the blank spaces of her face. Like it or not, Al was also a part of her life. He is beginning to feel stupid about avoiding him. About everything he used to believe. Nobody is getting any younger. Prompted by Tillie, undoubtedly, Al has begun to send encouraging messages about the work Sebastian posts. It’s embarrassing, really. But also, kind of sweet.
He takes his phone out of his back pocket, snaps, uploads a photo:WIP.He used to fantasize, when he started this account, that someone would see his work, someone like Orson Grey, and recognize a familiarity, and claim him. Stupid, now, he can see. As an artist, you have to train yourself to see what is real, not what you want to be real. He is trying to evolve. Still, the most rewarding thing remains the reactions; everyone sees something different in his work.
Lola
Do you want to come visit?
The text from last night eyes him, marked red for unread, a zit demanding to be popped.Fuck.
He understands she is doing more school, endless degrees. Avoiding the real world. No point in telling her that. There are lots of things he doesn’t tell her. Like about trying LSD or what girls he sleeps with. He assumes she doesn’t sleep with anyone; she’s a nerd after all, and not the one-night-stand type. She’d have told him about anyone serious, wouldn’t she?
Are you close?someone asked him recently. Are you close to your own heart, to the insides of your pockets? He wasn’t sure how to answer. She will never not be a part of him. But she doesn’t come back for Christmas anymore. He does not know what she eats for dinner on lazy weeknights, or what music she listens to, or whether her friends are good people, or how she feels about her life.
