One of Sam’s eyebrows shot up. My reply was to nod, meaning Yes, send up a Bounty Burger with the works. Now that was taking a risk, consuming a massive burger with chopped onions, gherkin, bleu cheese, bacon, and a fried egg.
Two more flights of stairs brought me to my studio, nothing more than a small room with one window. The room held my drawing table and stool, as well as a long table with books, supplies, and printer. The only bit of comfort came from the green overstuffed chair left in the flat across the hallway by the tenants evicted for nonpayment. Chris had vacuumed it for over an hour to lift out every speck of anything living in the fabric.
While I waited for my heart attack burger, I paced the perimeter of my studio. City sounds rolled through the open window. Even though I was two floors above the pub, the smell of roasting meat and beer somehow wafted up through the floorboards. The family living in the flat between me and the pub must gain weight just by breathing.
Coward? Comfort zone? Chris’s labels stung. But I wasn’t a coward, and I wasn’t afraid to step outside my comfort zone. However, when I considered the eight light and airy watercolors tacked to my board, paintings for the most recent Mr. Froggity book, a shiver ran down my spine. Was Chris right? The book publisher’s art director had requested pastel colors, so the blandness wasn’t my fault. Still, Mr. Froggity easily fit within my artistic comfort zone.
I’d worked hard all my life and achieved more than I’d hoped, yet I was cowardly?
Chris had still been a graduate student when we met, so we needed to live in the Twin Cities. While she attended the U of M, I got a job teaching art and art history at Carleton College, a private college fifty minutes south in the sleepy river city of Northfield. I loved the slower pace of life there and had nurtured an unspoken dream of the two of us becoming Northfielders one day.
In addition to art department classes, I also taught an art class for non-majors called Art Isms: How to Sound Smart at Parties. The course proved to be one of the most popular on campus, so my star rose high enough to be short-listed for tenure. My brothers, Jake and Marcus, said I was the family’s go-getter, the super-ambitious one who fought her way up the academic ladder. But they also both held wonderful jobs. Jake ran an anti-poverty nonprofit, and Marcus was a computer programmer. We were all three pretty happy and content with our lives.
Then a few years ago, Chris discovered an obscure branch of psychiatry called cognitive neuropsychiatry and decided this was her future. She suspended her therapy practice, went back to grad school, then decided she needed to attend the University College London for one year. Our options? We could lease our house while Chris was in London and I’d take an apartment in Northfield and keep working. Or I could take a sabbatical and join Chris in London. After nine years together, the prospect of twelve months apart was too painful, so even though I was next in line for tenure, I convinced my department head to release me for a few semesters. Hopefully, I’d still be at the top of the list when I returned, but it wasn’t a given. Putting my career at risk to support Chris’s was brave. I didn’t deserve the “coward” label.
I texted my brother Jake. He was my Bullshit-O-Meter. No one got to the heart of a problem quicker than Jake. Do I lack courage? Stuck in comfort zone?
Too impatient to await his reply, I texted the same questions to Ashley. Our friendship was cemented the day in third grade when we both stood up to a kid bullying a second grader. She was my cheerleader. No matter what I wanted to do, Ashley supported me unconditionally. She thought I was the smartest, bravest person in her life. I didn’t agree, but whenever I felt a little falter in my step, Ashley made it disappear. Stout and fierce as a bulldog, Ashley defended me without hesitation.
I waited five minutes. Nothing. Then I texted Mary, my art department colleague at Carleton. The tall, outspoken black woman stood out in the mostly white river city of Northfield, but she wasn’t self-conscious. In fact, she loved playing the inner Chicago kid shocking the rural white folks. Mary was my go-to party girl, but she was also my analyst. When I had a problem, she expertly deconstructed it until we could see all the pieces and make sense of what had befuddled me.
I moved my easel to better see the view outside my window—the roofs of surrounding buildings, a few tall trees adding color. Then I jammed earbuds in and turned on my music.
I would show Chris. I primed the canvas with black acrylic, then when it was dry, I attacked with color. In a fever, I gave no thought to matching color with reality, but only matching color to emotions. The heavy bass line in my ears set the rhythm for my brush.
I took a break to eat my Bounty Burger. Soon all my fingers but one pinkie were covered in melted cheese so I used it to open and read my texts.
Jake: Don’t be stupid.
Ashley: You are much braver than I am!
Mary: Sounds like you need wine. Even if you have a comfort zone, who the hell cares? Fire truck anyone who says otherwise. Blinking back tears, I finished my burger and cleaned my hands. I didn’t tell any of them that the words had been Chris’s, since protecting her came so naturally to me I hardly gave it a thought.
It was eight p.m. when I finally stepped back. A thread of cadmium red dripped down onto the black border, adding an edginess I could feel in my teeth. Red buildings, green sky, blue trees all crashed together in a riot of color that made my heart ring like a Caribbean steel drum. Instead of delicate watercolor lines, the painting vibrated with thick slashes and broad splashes of color. Black glowered around the colors, an angry outline to the ragged buildings.
“Oh, my God.”
I jumped. Chris stood behind me, two glasses of lemonade from downstairs in her hands. “That is fucking amazing,” she continued. She’d never spent much time with Aunt Nicole.
I pressed my lips together and shrugged. I accepted the glass, then perched on my stool and waited. The only other chair in the room was the green saggy chair that sat much lower than the stool. Chris took it.
“I’m sorry about this afternoon,” Chris said.
I sipped the sharp lemonade, enjoying the cool slipping down my throat. “You called me a coward because I don’t want to let your Dr. Raj shoot me full of his GCA.”
Chris bent her head, nodding. “Yes, that was really inappropriate. I’ve been thinking this evening about why I did that, and I think it’s because I’ve been wanting to talk to you about something kind of hard, and it came out sideways.”
My heart thumped up into my throat. “Hard?”
Chris rested her head back on the chair and flashed her dark blues at me. “I’ve been trying to find the courage to ask you what you want.”
“What I want? Right now? I want you to apologize for being such a jerk. Then I want us to make up and move on.”
She smiled weakly. “No, not right now. I mean what you want out of life. What do you yearn for, Jamie?”
Because it was obviously important to Chris, I took a moment to consider, then shrugged. “I don’t really feel any deep yearning.”
“Everyone yearns. There has to be something you want that’s bigger than you, unattainable even, something that drives you.”
“Chris, I’m happy. I’m content. I have a great job at Carleton, at least I think I still do, where I love the faculty and the students. My life is full of art. And now? I’m living in London, for God’s sake, and most of the people we love have come to visit. I’m healthy. My brain works. And most of all, I have you. I have nothing left to yearn for except world peace and a rational plan to combat climate change.”
Chris pressed her lips together. “I can appreciate that you’re content. That’s not a bad thing. But…but you seem to lack ambition.”
I could feel my eyes double in size. “Chris, I work hard. I learn something new about myself, and about the world, every day.”
She struggled out of the chair and began pacing in a circle around me. “Don’t you want a painting of yours to hang in the National Gallery some day?”
“The Gallery
only shows Western European art, thirteenth to nineteenth centuries.”
“Okay, then, the Tate Modern.”
I nodded toward the board on the wall. “I suppose, but it’s highly unlikely the Tate is going to devote much wall space to Mr. Froggity.”
“So that’s why you’re not trying?”
“Not trying? Chris, I’m painting nearly every day. I’m proud of these paintings. Yeah, the Froggity thing is getting old, but it’s paying my bills.”
“But you could be so much better than this.”
“Why must everyone push for the best job, the best body, the highest position? Why must you take something wonderful, like contentment, and turn it into a horrible weakness?”
“Because it’s important to me.” She stopped pacing.
I tipped my head back and drained my glass. “Well, okay, then what do you want?”
“I want to break open the field of neurobiological psychotherapy. I want to conduct history-making research.” She hesitated. “I also want you to want more than you want.”
A surprised chuckle bubbled up my throat and slipped out. “Let me get this straight. Your ambition is that I get more ambitious.”
“Yes.”
“Chris, I’ve loved you with every fiber of my being for ten years. I care for you when you’re sick. Every day I look for new ways to make you laugh. For ten winters I’ve filled your hot water bottle.” One of the strange things that had glued us together was a hatred of electric blankets, and a love of snuggling our feet up to the spreading warmth of a hot water bottle. Filling each other’s bottle had become a symbol of our love and devotion. I drew in a shuddering breath, not afraid to show her I was upset. “You think I’m unambitious, that I’m wasting my life. That’s really, really hard to hear.”
Chris’s face softened and she took my hands in hers. “Good. Maybe it will get you thinking about your future and what drives you.”
“What drives me is love and beauty and the feel of a brush on canvas. Isn’t that enough?”
We stood facing each other. Chris’s eyes were shaded in the poor light. “Not for me,” she whispered.
So. Now it was out. Chris didn’t want a contented me. She wanted an ambitious me.
Chris hugged herself. “I don’t know what to say. I can’t help wanting what I want. You are so smart and talented that I just wish you would push yourself harder.” She waved toward my painting. “Like that.”
I filled my lungs with air. “You want to know what I want? One, I want us to hold hands and be okay. Two, I want us to figure out a way through this by talking more about ambition and see where it might take us. Three, I also want all six original My Little Ponies and an Easy Bake-Oven and a Crocodile Dentist game that works. Four, I want directions to Rajamani’s lab so I can show up Monday morning at nine a.m.”
Chris’s face crumpled into tears. “I want all of that too,” she said softly. “Except for the Crocodile Dentist game. It scared the pee right out of me, literally.”
I pulled Chris into a hug and held her tightly enough that her crazy expectations about ambition couldn’t fit between us. Finally, she pulled away and blew her nose. “Let’s go home. I’d be happy to give you directions to Rajamani’s office.”
Home was a two-bedroom flat in a four-story building of brown brick that faced a small park called Red Lion Square. The view outside our windows wasn’t the park, but the apartment building next door. The narrow street between the two buildings was a shortcut for commuters walking to and from the Holborn Tube station two blocks away, so the sound of feet scuffling and pedestrians talking came with the flat.
The flat had worn mustard carpeting, cream walls, glass door handles, and white fixtures. My favorite was the faucet in the tub—the shower head rested like an old-fashioned phone in its cradle. The first time I took a bath and tried to wash my hair with the “phone,” I managed to spray everything in the bathroom but my head.
That night I lay awake for hours, puzzling through all that had been said. I’d never really stopped and analyzed my life. What if I had stopped trying? What if I’d let complacency look like contentment?
Fire truck.
Chapter Three
I smoothly navigated around the parked cars on Hampstead Road, pleased with the used bike I’d bought from Sam at the pub. A warm mist brushed my skin, soft as the caresses Chris had offered last night but which I’d declined, surprising us both. I pulled up at the red light and checked my watch. Plenty of time. Steadying myself against the curb, I inhaled the city smells—hot streets, gasoline, and fresh naan being sold by a street vendor.
The first few months we’d lived in London, I’d been overawed by the city’s heady mix of history and architecture and royalty. Gradually, I transformed myself from London tourist to London resident, learning to take out the rubbish instead of the trash, grousing about the prime minister, and accepting that the rain would, eventually, ruin all my leather shoes and boots. And it had.
I’d learned that exploring London meant getting lost, an unusual experience for someone with a great sense of direction. Yet getting lost was a rare treat I cherished. Chris would reach for her phone’s GPS app, but I’d stop her. “No, let’s figure this out on our own.”
The traffic light changed, and I surged ahead until the Wilkins Portico, the iconic image of University College London, rose up in front of me. I turned right, then left, weaving my way deeper into the compact but bustling campus. I slid into the last free slot of a bike rack and snapped the lock shut.
Traffic noise from Euston Road drifted between the buildings, but the campus itself was wondrously quiet. I inhaled the moist air, still marveling that approaching rain smelled the same here as it did in Minnesota. A few drops plopped on my face, and the clouds overhead seemed to thicken and swirl with sudden rage. In the distance, thunder rolled like a bass drum on parade. I ran for the door.
Dr. Rajamani’s office was in the Alexandra House, home to the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, and one of the older and shabbier campus buildings. Much of London was either new or very renovated. Old buildings such as this one created a sense of how layered the city was. For generations, buildings had been built, used, torn down, and replaced with others, which were used and then torn down for new ones.
I took the stone stairs two at a time until I reached the top floor, out of breath but not wanting to admit it. Clearly, I needed to spend more time biking and less time painting to stay in better shape. My body was an average size ten, maybe a twelve in winter when bread became my food of choice, but my muscles were going to mush here in London.
I knocked on Dr. Raj’s door, unable to see through the frosted glass. The door swung open. “You are here!” Dr. Raj clasped my shoulders and pressed one of his cheeks against mine, then the other.
“My lab is at the end of the hallway. Come, come.” He stepped out ahead of me, the sides of his white lab coat flapping like wings. Dr. Raj seemed to lean forward when he walked, as if he were pushing himself through water. From what Chris had told me of his career, that made sense. When everyone around you resisted, you pushed harder.
Dr. Raj hurried us down a gritty linoleum floor that buckled and bent in places from water damage. The bare fluorescents running down the dim hallway were either out or flickering like in a homemade scary movie. The walls needed a coat of paint fifty years ago. A small prick of alarm tickled the base of my skull.
The lab itself was no better, boasting a vintage look, sort of an Early Frankenstein. The walls were a puke green and could have used a good scrubbing. The floors, covered in what once must have been a snappy black and white tile, were gritty and dull.
I sat down on the cold folding chair Dr. Raj set up, then watched as he wheeled over a cart of really old equipment, stuff that hadn’t been dusted since the war, and I don’t mean Afghanistan or Iraq or even Vietnam. There were a few laptops, but the main instrument was a huge green metal box with twenty small gauges that looked like car speedometers.
Dr. Raj opened a box of electrodes and began peeling off the plastic wrap. At least those things were new.
“So,” I said, “how many people have gone through this experiment?”
He tipped his head. “I think you are the tenth person, in this round at least.”
I licked my lips. Even though Chris and a handful of others had gone through this and were fine, the whole setup was making me nervous. “This round? You’ve done this before?”
“Last year I was perfecting my GCA.”
I jumped as a crack of thunder rattled the window. “And now it works perfectly, right?” I watched as he opened another electrode wrapper, knowing the needle would be coming out soon. Apparently, I hadn’t left my fear of needles behind in Red Lion Square. It had stalked me and now shivered up from the soles of my feet. For Chris, for us, I mentally chanted.
I looked out the rain-streaked window and listened to the quality of the thunder—some were faraway booms, others so close and deep you could feel them through your feet.
“Yes, yes, I learned much from the experiment, even though a few subjects dropped out,” Dr. Rajamani said.
I attempted a laugh, but ended up coughing. “So GCA makes people disappear?”
Dr. Raj smiled. “Faulty reasoning, my dear. No, even though the man never returned my phone calls, I am sure he is just fine. But do not fear. The GCA is flawless now. Everyone in this study has returned for the follow-up.” He frowned.
“Everyone?” I jumped as the professor attached a cold electrode to my forehead.
“One other woman did not return, but she was having relationship problems, so I believe she moved from London.”
The electrodes continued around my face, then Dr. Raj attached some to the base of my skull, moving my hair aside. His dark brown eyes gleamed as he worked. Here was a man obsessed. “I am most appreciative that you are volunteering. Others will follow. I am sure of it. This work is too exciting to be ignored.” He picked up another electrode. “I am close. I feel most certain of this fact. I will locate the consciousness.”
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