“This piece was rejected twice from the Paris Salon, because of its departure from the notion of classic beauty.
“Rodin liked this one so much, he replicated it in stone.
“It’s actually a monument to Joan of Arc.”
He pauses at that. “What is Joan of Arc’s favorite coffee?”
I narrow my eyes. “What?”
“French roast.”
I groan. “Oh my god. That’s terrible.”
He laughs, and we start walking to the next bust.
“So, do you sculpt, too, or just paint?” he asks.
“I dabbled in all different mediums in college, but painting is what I love most. My best friend, Raya, is an incredible sculptor, though. She welds metal. What about you?”
“Me? No, I’m terrible at welding.” He grins.
“I meant your writing. Is it just celebrity books or do you also write, I don’t know—novels?”
“Oh God, am I that much of a cliché?” Before I can respond, he answers his own question: “Yes, yes, I am. I have written a novel. Unfortunately, no one else wanted to read it. Thirty-seven rejections later . . .”
“Ouch.”
“‘Pedantic’ and ‘tedious’ were some of the flattering descriptors. And those were the nice ones.”
“Ooh! I can play this game,” I say. “‘An incohesive amateur display, without the talent to add depth and substance.’”
He raises his eyebrows. “One of your paintings?”
“A collection of them. My first—and not surprisingly last—exhibition.”
“A big success, then?”
“Rousing.” I grin.
He pauses, his eyes growing serious. “Is that why you’re sad?”
I hesitate. “How could you tell?”
He shrugs. “I’m not a makeup expert, but I think the mascara is supposed to stay on your lashes?”
“Oh geez,” I mutter, quickly rubbing beneath my eyes with my index fingers.
“You know,” he says, tilting his chin down as if sharing a secret. “Someone once told me that the first sculpture Rodin ever submitted to the Paris Salon was rejected twice.”
“Is that right?” I say, mock wide-eyed.
“I don’t really know—she might have been making it all up. But the point is, what the hell do critics know?”
“What the hell do critics know,” I repeat, a grin spreading across my face. And I realize Harrison was wrong. Dreams are not the only thing Oliver and I have in common.
We walk slowly, stopping in front of sculptures, but not really seeing them. Not anymore. We’re deep in conversation. Trading bits of information about each other like kids swapping Halloween candy.
Finally, we reach the last sculpture—a large, solid piece of white marble. It’s one of Rodin’s more vibrant and overtly sensual works: Eternal Springtime. A couple embracing, the woman arched back while the man bends over her, clutching her in his arm.
“Well?” Oliver asks, arching an eyebrow.
I clear my throat, reassuming my position as tour guide. “So this is one of his more famous pieces. It, too, was originally supposed to be a part of The Gates of Hell, but was deemed too cheerful and, therefore, antithetical to the theme. The model was a woman named Adele Abruzzesi, but most historians believe he consciously or subconsciously included features of Camille Claudel as well.”
“Who?”
I hesitate. “His lover.” And maybe it’s my imagination, but when I say lover, his eyes meet mine and I swear to God he can see what I’m thinking. The two of us in a very Eternal Springtime situation from my dreams. But then, just as quickly, his eyes flick back to the sculpture. As heat creeps up my neck, I start rambling about Camille and how she was arguably an even better artist than Rodin, but doesn’t receive as much credit.
“Why not?” he asks.
“Because, patriarchy. Obviously.”
“Obviously,” he says, grinning.
I get a chill and start rubbing my bare arms. “God, it’s frigid in here.”
“Huh,” he says, a half grin on his face. “Guess you should have worn a hat.”
* * *
When we’ve made it through every sculpture and find ourselves back at the entrance, I glance outside. The sky is still doomsday, but the rain has held off.
“Come on, there are a couple more pieces out here.”
Oliver holds the door open and then follows me out. I walk down the stairs and then turn around, pointing out The Gates of Hell. And then we meander past the reflection pool, taking in the various plots of flowers and manicured bushes on the opposite side, still colorful even when drenched.
“How’s your latest book coming? The Penn Carro thing?”
He grunts. “Not well. The guy talks in circles, basically reiterating his one main point ad nauseam.”
“Which is?”
Oliver puffs out his chest and his voice comes out deep and full and energetic: “You know who succeeds in life? It’s the people who act. Who do something. Who make decisions. That’s the difference between CEOs on Wall Street and janitors that clean the floors and empty the wastebaskets on Wall Street. Are you decisive? Or do you leave things up to fate? You have to create your fate.”
“Oh my god,” I say. “You sound just like him!”
“Yeah, I just wish writing this book was as easy as imitating him.”
“Sorry. What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know, but I’ve got to figure it out by the end of September.”
“Is that your deadline?”
“Yeah, self-imposed, anyway. I leave for Finland.”
“Oh. You already heard back?” I don’t realize I’ve stopped walking until he does, too.
He nods. Our eyes lock and I don’t know what I’m feeling or why—only that it seems too soon. I clear my throat. “I think it’s so cool that you do that. I always thought my life would be more adventurous, more jet-setting, more, I don’t know—living in the moment.” I shrug. “Maybe everybody does. But you’re actually living it.”
“Or maybe I’m just running away from it.”
I peer at him. “What?”
“That’s what Caroline says. That it’s my way to avoid getting too close to anybody. To keep from getting hurt.”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know, she’s probably right.” He wets his lips. “But I’ve never told that to anybody before—so maybe I’m cured.”
I know it’s a joke, but he doesn’t smile, just holds my gaze. I feel my mouth going dry.
A crack of thunder startles us, and then a fat raindrop hits me square in the nose. I blink, and look up in time to see hundreds more falling around us and on us, pelting the tops of our heads, our shoulders, making pinging sounds as they hit their targets—the cement pathway, the reflection pool. And before I can react, Oliver has grabbed my hand and is running, tugging me toward a tree with large weepy branches. We reach it just as the clouds bellow with another burst of thunder and a flash of lightning illuminates the air around us.
I’m about to make a joke—something about being under a tree during a lightning storm and safety—but my brain short-circuits when I realize Oliver’s still holding my hand.
I jerk my hand out of his and take a step back, my heart hammering harder now than when I was running. I look at the ground, the bark of the thick trunk beside us, anywhere but at him.
He clears his throat. “I can’t believe you were so scared of a little thunder.” He teases, but something in his voice sounds off, artificial. And I fake grin at his joke, but we both know it’s not the thunder I’m scared of.
Chapter 18
Raya is sleeping, curled up like a cat on her sofa, when I let myself back into her apartment later that evening, soaked to the bone, my hair matted to my face. I
walked back to her place, meandering down side streets, popping into stores when the rain got too bad. I was lost in my head, replaying the afternoon in my mind—the spark in the air between us, the easy way we bantered, the thrill I got when something I said caused him to bark with laughter. And I reveled in it, the little thrill, that buzz of excitement that courses through your veins at the beginning of a relationship that, after years with someone, is impossible to replicate. But I’d been telling myself this entire time that it was harmless. An innocent flirtation.
But then under the tree, my hand clasped firmly in his, I knew he felt it, too. And it was more than thrilling. It was formidable. As big as the storm clouds hanging in the sky. And just as threatening.
“Hey, Mia.”
“Jesus,” I say, clutching my chest and turning toward Peter’s voice. He’s standing in the doorway to his room, his bird-like pale torso bare from the waist up, the left side of which is covered in a large tattoo of a man, presumably Jesus, nailed to a cross. I asked him about it once, and he shrugged. “I was Southern Baptist. For, like, a year.” I remember Marcel’s tats, and how he is going to donate them to a museum when he dies. And I decide it’s definitely something Peter would do, too.
“I didn’t know you were home.”
“Yep,” he says, grabbing a T-shirt off his doorknob and pulling it on over his head. “Headed out now, though.” He walks toward me and bends over to scoop up an army green messenger bag from the floor at my feet. I step to the side. “Catch you later.”
“Later,” I say, as he walks past me and out the door. The sound of it slamming shut behind him wakes Raya. She pushes herself up to sitting.
I point at the closed door Peter just exited with my thumb. “Does he still deal drugs?”
“Yeah. He tried to get out of it for a while, but working for FedEx doesn’t pay quite as well.” She eyes me. “Forget your umbrella?”
“Something like that.”
I pad to her room, and as I’m changing into a dry shirt and pants from her drawer, I spy a pair that looks familiar, and I realize I must have left them here at some point.
“Oh my god,” I say, tugging them on and walking back out to the den. “I’ve been looking for these.”
She eyes them, squinting. “Sweatpants?”
“Harrison gave them to me for our anniversary and I haven’t been able to find them.”
“Your husband bought you sweatpants for your anniversary. How romantic,” she deadpans. I settle next to her on the couch. “Do you want to order something?” she asks. “I’m starving.”
I realize I haven’t eaten a thing since the raisin toast that morning. “Yeah, me, too.”
I grab the wine as she calls for Indian takeout, and then when I settle in on the opposite end of the sofa from her, I ask, “How’s Marcel?” before she can ask about Harrison, because I’m too tired to even think about him right now, much less talk about it all.
“Oh, we broke up.”
I jerk my head toward her. “What?”
She sighs. “We got in a fight over carrots.”
I stare at her, but she doesn’t elaborate. “I’m sorry—I’m gonna need a little bit more.”
“We were making salad, for dinner,” she says. “And he julienned them.”
“The carrots,” I say, trying to understand.
“Yeah. Everyone knows you cut carrots for salad into coins,” she says. “But when I said something, it turned into this huge argument over what was the most aesthetically pleasing and then it kind of devolved into essentially an all-out war about artistic expression and talent and commitment to craft.”
“As these things do,” I say.
“Then he called me a David Smith wannabe and I called him a sidewalk mime and he stormed out.”
“Ugh. You are not a David Smith wannabe.”
She shrugs. “He apologized. But I broke up with him anyway.”
“Why? I thought you really liked him.”
She shifts her eyes.
“Raya?”
“Jesse called.”
“No. Oh my god. What the hell, Raya?” I think of Jesse, her androgynous concave frame, the ball cap she always wore over her floppy Justin Bieber hair, the lip ring. Raya met her at a friend’s birthday party, and the two of them didn’t come up for air for eight months. Raya had slept with women before, but never had a relationship like this. They were inseparable, like trying to distinguish fire from its flame. But Jesse was also insecure and manipulative and wildly codependent and it took Raya years to extricate herself from their relationship. They’d break up in these dramatically angry displays of emotion, but Raya always seemed to get pulled back into Jesse’s orbit—until finally, the last time they broke up and Jesse moved to Portland.
“Did she move back?”
“No. She’s still in Portland. Said she misses me. That she’s my twin flame.”
“What the hell is that?”
“It’s like soul mates on crack. It’s your soul’s perfect mirror. And in all the reincarnations, you’re drawn to each other, but you’re so alike that the relationship is superintense and typically can’t sustain itself.”
I roll my eyes. “Well, I agree with the her-being-on-crack part.”
“Mia.”
“Raya.” I hold her gaze until she sighs.
“I know, I know. I think I just need to swear off creative types.”
I hold up a finger. “Um . . . first of all, Jesse’s a bartender—is that technically a creative type?”
“She’s a mixologist,” Raya says defensively. “Anyway, I’ve just started to think, maybe there isn’t room in a relationship for two artists. We’re all moody and narcissistic and self-loathing as fuck. There’s no balance.”
I stare at her, dumbfounded, recalling the one doubt she voiced when I was dating Harrison: Doesn’t it bother you that he doesn’t really get you, artistically? Her words cut me, because the truth was, it did, a little. He respected my work—he never trivialized it like some guys I had dated—but he didn’t share my interest in it. We would never have long, in-depth conversations late into the night, say, debating the ethical evaluation of art or the merits of a famous sculptor’s latest work—an exhibition of various windows that he did not create, but just purchased in flea markets and home goods stores and hung in a gallery in Bushwick. But I told her then, and I still believe now, that I didn’t think your partner had to—or that it was even possible for them to—fulfill you in every way. “That’s what I have you for,” I said to Raya, and I meant it. But that didn’t mean it didn’t cross my mind every now and then—like today, when Oliver so fully understood what having your art rejected felt like, and I didn’t have to say more than a couple of words. Not that I was comparing him with my husband.
“Maybe I need someone who has a real job,” Raya continues. “A retirement plan. Health insurance.”
“OK, now you’re just scaring me.” I force myself back to the present. “Have you been spending time with Harrison?”
“No,” she says. “But that’s my point! Maybe I need to. Be with somebody like Harrison. You guys don’t fight about carrots.”
“No, we fight about big stuff—like whether we should have a child.”
“Sorry,” she says.
I wave her off. “Look, every couple fights about stupid stuff,” I say, thinking about the entry table. The buzzer sounds.
“Food’s here,” she says.
Once we’re settled back on the couch with chicken saag and have refilled our glasses with Syrah, she turns to me, her face filled with sympathy: “So . . . what are you gonna do?”
I sigh. “I have no idea. I suppose we should go to counseling or something. That’s what Vivian says, anyway. That’s what she always says.”
“Well, maybe she’s right. It sounds like an impartial person might h
elp you find common ground.”
“Common ground? It’s not like you can meet in the middle when it comes to having a baby, though, can you? You can’t have half a kid.”
“I know. But still, it might help. At least understand why he’s changed his mind.”
“Yeah.” I wait a beat. “I think I’m just scared, to be honest. What if we go to counseling, but it doesn’t help? What if he doesn’t change his mind? If this is just who he is—forever? Then I have to do something. Make a decision between Harrison and a baby. And as much as I want a baby, I don’t know if I’m ready to do that.”
Raya grunts with empathy. “Well,” she says. “You don’t have to do anything right now.” She picks up the bottle and fills my glass. “Except drink more wine.”
I look at her gratefully and take a sip. “Can we talk about something else now?”
“Sure. What’d you do today? Did you make it to Prisha’s exhibit?”
Maybe a change of subject was a bad idea. “Not exactly.” I sigh, and with just one look Raya knows something happened. I tell her about meeting up with Oliver.
“Oh my god!” she says, as if she’s just had a serious epiphany. “What if he’s your twin flame?”
I stare at her a beat. “You think Oliver is my soul mate on crack.”
“Maybe!”
“You do realize that I’m married, right?” Which is awfully hypocritical since I was the one all heart-thumpy over touching his hand mere hours ago, but still.
She waves me off. “You know I don’t believe in long-term monogamy.”
“Yes, you only believe in sane things like past lives and twin flames and clearing a room of negative energy with smudged sage.”
“Exactly.” Raya grins. We sip our wine in silence for a few minutes and then she stands up. “OK, come on.”
I don’t move. “Come on where?”
“We’re going to a psychic.”
“What? No. I’m not going to a psychic.”
“Why not? Look, when you dream about someone and then meet that someone in person, and it turns out that person has been dreaming about you . . . it means the universe is trying to tell you something. And you need to listen. Besides, no one else has helped you so far.”
You Were There Too Page 18