“So…a way to leave a shadow in the world, even when you’re not in it.”
I nod. “That’s a beautiful way to say it.”
We watch a puppy race to the fence, turning on a dime to grab a tennis ball. “Felix would be terrible at water ballet,” Win says after a moment.
“But he’d do it for you.”
“I know,” she says, on a sob. “That’s what’s even worse.”
She lifts the hem of her dress and wipes at her eyes. I stand, rummaging for a tissue.
“You asked me why I don’t paint.”
I give her the tissue and then sit down with my back against the chain-link fence so that I am facing away from the dog park, but looking at her.
“When you’re an artist,” Win says, “it’s because there’s something inside you that you can’t keep from spilling out. Maybe it comes in the form of sentences, or a grand jeté, or a stroke of a paintbrush. The end result can be a million different things. But the seed, it’s always the same. It’s the emotion there isn’t a word for. The feeling that’s too big for your body. To show someone your soul, you have to bleed. People who are comfortable—people who are content—they don’t create art.”
“You stopped painting because you stopped hurting.”
She nods.
I reach for her hand, hold it between mine. “But you’re hurting now, Win.”
“I know. But not because there’s too much inside me.” She sucks in a breath. “Because there’s nothing left.”
I shake my head. “I don’t buy that. I know you. Iseeyou.”
“You see what I’ve let you see,” she scoffs.
A dog owner hurls a ball, which bounces high enough to jump the fence. Win catches it before it can crash into her. She holds it up, as if surprised to find it in her hand. She turns it over like it is a Fabergé egg.
“Did you ever wonder who you would have been, if you hadn’t become who you are?”
I take the ball and lob it over the fence. “You mean like a center fielder?”
“No,” she says. “Youknowwhat I mean. I know you do.”
There are moments that feel more like spun sugar than time. A summer evening on a stretch of grass, when your tongue is blue with the heart of a Popsicle. A heartbeat when a hummingbird stops moving long enough to look you in the eye. A first kiss. A star flashing once in the sky before the sunrise. A goodbye. Blink, and it’s like it never happened.
“What if I want to be remembered by someone who may not remember me?” Win asks.
I wait for her to continue.
“I grew up in New York City. I was a good painter; I already knew that. When I was a freshman at NYU, a gallery owner saw my work at a student show and wound up representing some of my paintings. When I was a junior I went to study for a semester in Paris. I took an art class, and the professor was constantly standing behind me, criticizing this line or that intention. He said I was too technical, as if that could be a thing. I went to his office hours to tell him he was an asshole, and he brought me back to the studio. He tied a rag around my head like a blindfold, and told me to paint how he made me feel.” She twists the fabric of her dress in her hands. “I didn’t know how to do what he was asking, and he wouldn’t shut up, so I picked up the palette and threw it across the room. He ripped the blindfold off, and he was smiling.Now we’re getting somewhere,he told me.
“What I drew that night—I’d never done anything like that before. It wasn’t just art. It wasn’t measured or literal. It was like being a medium, and having spirit pour out of you. I started spending all my time in the studio. I met my professor for coffee. We were inseparable, even though he was twice my age. He took me to the Louvre; we’d have a scavenger hunt for the artist who was most in love with his subject, or for the mangiest dog, or ugliest Madonna. He taught me how to copy the masters and then to deconstruct them. And one day he asked if he could paint me.
“He set up the studio and locked the door. He sat me down near a window. First he did sketches, and we talked about stupid things—how the prime minister was caught with his mistress, where the best falafel could be bought. He couldn’t get it right. He was more and more frustrated. He asked me to close my eyes. I heard him get up and move, could smell the coffee on his breath. Then I felt the lightest stroke on my forehead. Down my nose. Over my cheek and chin and lashes. I opened my eyes, and he was painting me, just like he had asked. But with a dry brush. Tracing my ear and my jaw and my throat and my lips.”
She holds her breath, lets it out in a rush. “You know where this is going,” Win says. “I got pregnant. I was going to tell him, but then I found out he was married. And his wife was also due to have a baby in a couple of months. So I left.”
I look down between my bent knees.
“You’re judging me,” she says.
“No.”
“I like to believe I loved him so much that I couldn’t make him choose. But mostly, I think I was afraid to find out who he’d pick. I came home and wore baggy clothes until I couldn’t hide it anymore. I told my parents I was dropping out of school to have the baby, and that the father was a one-night stand I’d met in a club in Paris. A few years later, I married my driver’s ed instructor. Clearly, I have a pattern, falling for authority figures.”
