Seb
Wish I could afford it $$$
The truth is, having sold a few works, he’s doing better than ever, cash-wise. But it would be painful, wouldn’t it, to hope that this time she might change? Probably she’s only interested now that his art is getting a bit of attention. Maybe he’s finally worth her time.
As the sun dips at last below the house across the road, he goes to the kitchen, peels the dried glue off his fingernails, runs his hands under soapy water for a while.
“Ready?” Sadie asks.
“Let’s do it.”
On the side table by the television is a folder full of papers that he is going to help her understand. Since Sully’s laid her off after her knee injury, money has been thin. Someone has to figure out how to get heron benefits. Sebastian cracks open some beers and begins dissecting the impenetrable language.
“Okay, you’ll need to fill your name here.” He’s figuring it out as he goes along. Why isn’t this the kind of stuff they teach you in school? How many years did he spend pretending not to use his calculator for long division?
“What do I put for this?” she asks.
“I don’t know. Maybe non-workplace-related injury?” That sounds right. More convincing than “Slipped in Stop and Shop. Took down a tower of greeting cards.” For a week after, he kept saying:My Condolences. Objectively it was both hilarious and not at all a laughing matter.
“Lola texted me,” he says.
“Really!”
“She wants me to visit.”
“Aw, that’s so great.”
“I don’t think I’m going.”
“Are you kidding me, Sebastian?” Sadie stares at him. “I can’t even say what I would do for one more day with my sister.”
Seb
you know what
screw it
lets go
To promote Al’s new book,Colonial Worldviews and Imperial America, the college museum has invited him to curate an exhibit, and Tillie has come. The book made a splash in certain circles, and the show is at least likely to interest the geriatric alumni who donate to the institution. It’s the sort of thing Susie would have peered around, not bothering to read the meticulously written (and occasionally witty) captions, focusing on the glitzier (if less historically interesting) pieces, making him laugh, asking questions that she thought were stupid but were actually brilliant.
God, he still misses her.
But here is Tillie, quietly, thoughtfully engaging, nodding in a way that acknowledges his work. Pausing in front of a shrunken head, acquired (stolen? gifted? obtained through deceit?) by the East India Marine Society. People come just to see it, a novelty, grotesque and unimaginable. It annoys him, sometimes, that most people view the quotidian as disposable, unworthy of record. That it is the dramatic, the rarefied, that gives shape to our imaginings of the past. But the fact is: the head supports the rest of the exhibit. And so, it feels justified. Still, he cannot think about it as ever having been a real person, someone who loved and belonged. It would precipitate an unraveling.
“Does it bother you,” he asks Tillie in a low voice, “that sort of thing?”
Tillie thinks about this seriously before saying: “Of course. But you can’t write off everything with a problematic history.”
She’s right. He’d be out of a job if the public were to reject wholesale the country’s checkered past. For who could bear to look at the treasures of imperialism if they were thinking about the costs?
He hovers for a moment, rereads his caption. He had thought it sensitive, at the time that he wrote it:
“The EIMS received the head of an embalmed Maori Chieftain as a donation from William Dana. Out of respect, it was displayed under a veil.”
It’s obvious now that it is insufficient. That the perspective is wrong. That he has framed it as an object when it had once been a thing with a soul. That it deserves not a caption but an elegy.
When they’ve finished their circuit and polished off a few glasses of cheap prosecco, they head around the corner to one of Al’s mainstays, a dimly lit Chinese joint with white tablecloths and fried things on metal trays. Over time, Tillie has learned to push him, gently, artfully, toward the limits of his comfort zone. Nearer to, but never quite over the line. Mostly, he appreciates it.
