“So, between now and our first session, maybe you can prepare a rough mission statement of what your goals are this summer,” Jen continued.
“Okay, sounds good.” Indy checked her phone, hoping she’d have enough time to run back to Ferlinghetti to change shirts before her first class.
“Cool. I’ll let you go to your first class.” Jen looked past Indy’s shoulder, as though she, too, was eager to end this awkward interaction.
“Nice meeting you,” Indy said, politely enough. But Jen Rant was staring at something far off into the distance. Indy craned her neck to see what she was looking at.
Nick was walking on the pine-lined path that connected the staff cabins to the dining hall. His hair looked like it was still wet from the shower, and half of his perfect face was hidden behind vintage Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses. He wore faded jeans with holes in them and a plain gray pocket tee that hugged his lean body. Just the sight of him made Indy’s whole body tighten up like a spring. He sipped from a massive portable coffee mug as he trudged up the path toward them, staring down at his filthy, formerly white Chuck Taylors.
There it was again. That lightning bolt of anticipation and excitement she got only when she saw Nick. Indy quickly ducked back into the dining hall—she did not need him to see her and Jen Rant wearing the same shirt; the poseur punk-rock twins on parade. But as she made her way through the doorway she couldn’t resist sneaking one last look.
It was going to be an awesome day. She could just tell.
7
Jim Dybbs, the hippie-dippie sculpture teacher, was lecturing the girls about clay.
“There’s more to terra cotta than meets the eye,” Jim said with a straight face, which was otherwise adorned with sleepy eyelids and a bushy gray beard. His shoulder-length hair was pulled back into a neat ponytail, and he stood behind the crotch-height worktable in the ceramics studio, kneading a ball of red-brown clay with his long, slender fingers—one of which, inexplicably, had a wedding band on it.
“Certain clays are more malleable than others, you know.” He added, “It’s a lot like flesh.” Gross, Indy thought. She really didn’t want to associate Jim Dybbs with flesh.
“Terra cotta, which translates to ‘baked earth,’ goes back to cultures that predate history. And when it comes to the first known sculptures of all time, what do you think those ancient people used clay to create? That’s right—the naked form. Flesh!” Indy cringed again. “And is it any wonder? Is there a more appropriate material from which to craft the human form, with its rippling folds of skin, fat, and muscle?” Jim pulled down a retractable screen from behind his desk. “Behold! The Venus of Willendorf!”
Indigo and the other girls who sat around the long clay-streaked table couldn’t help but giggle at the six-foot photo reproduction of a sculpture of an obese lady with pendulous breasts, no face, huge thighs and belly, and a poonanny that looked like an elephant’s in heat.
“This female nude was, at one point, and arguably remains, the ultimate fertility symbol. Look at those folds of flesh. Look at the way her hips drape over her legs. That is clay at its most sensual and virile.”
“Actually, Mr. Dybbs?” Erin O’Donaghue, a redheaded overachiever from a New England family that owned sailboats named after each of the chapters of The Iliad, raised her hand. “I’m pretty sure The Venus of Willendorf was carved from limestone, and tinted with red ochre. It was sculpted in 22,000 B.C. If it was made out of the same crap my dad uses for tiles in our house in Kennebunkport, I highly doubt that fat bitch would still be around for us to look at.”
The class stifled its snickers.
“Thank you, Erin,” Jim responded politely. What was he going to do, reprimand the girl whose dad was responsible for half of the instructor salaries this year alone? “And now let’s go around the room and talk about what your artistic goals are for this summer and how they will involve sculpture. Please also mention what materials you enjoy working with and why. Oh, and your favorite flavor of ice cream. Just to keep it fun!”
Jim Dybbs was greeted with a studio full of blank faces.
“Indigo Hamlisch, why don’t we start with you?”
Noooooo.
“Uh, hi. I’m Indy…and I can’t really digest ice cream.” Off her classmates’ stares, Indigo couldn’t resist adding a joke. “I get diarrhea when I get the full-fat kind.”
“Okay, Indigo. Let’s get serious.”
“Fine, okay. Every once in a while I’ll get some Chubby Hubby.”
Jim Dybbs glared at her. She wasn’t even sure why she was being so contrary. It was probably because Jim was just such an easy target. Plus, they all already knew one another anyway, so this whole introduction was pointless.
“And what are you going to be working on for the summer?”
“I’m not sure yet,” she replied earnestly. “I mean, in the past I’ve done a lot with two-dimensional media. I did a ton of printmaking stuff last summer. And some paintings.”
“But what,” Jim pressed, “is your work about? I remember those paintings from last summer, Indigo. They were powerful. Don’t lose that.”
“Thank you,” she replied. Jim was referencing the series of seven oil paintings she’d done in remembrance of her mother. Each canvas was composed of abstract forms in one color scheme, one for each color of the rainbow. The whole “ROY G. BIV” thing. The sixth and final canvas was appropriately indigo-colored, representing that, at age six—the year she’d lost her mother—the color and light had gone out of her life. The seventh canvas was blank.
But Indy also remembered how, after the staff had gone fucking nuts for it, she had gone back to her bunk and sobbed uncontrollably for the rest of the night. In part because she missed her mom, but also because she was afraid that she’d completed the best piece she’d ever do. After that, there was no way to go but downhill.
“This year I do want to work with more multimedia elements,” Indy finally replied. “Sculpture, technology, audiovisual stuff, maybe? I guess I don’t know what I want to say yet.”
She looked down at the crisp new sketchpad on her lap and started fidgeting with its wire binding.
“Well, just remember, you only have three and a half weeks until the art show on Industry Showcase Day.” Jim Dybbs began to pace back and forth across the front of the room, then stopped right in front of her chair. “If I were you, I’d be working around the clock with my adviser on what exactly it was I, well—‘wanted to say.’” Was he was making fun of her?
Erin and a couple of the other girls—the ones with noses their parents bought for them during the school year, based on their new profiles this summer—snickered.
“Let’s move on.” Jim started walking the room again. “Erin, you’re looking terrific as always. Tell us what we can expect from you this summer! And don’t forget to tell us your favorite ice cream flavor!” Dybbs proceeded to kiss the butthole of the most influential Irish-Catholic ginger in media next to New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd.
Indy tuned him out and felt her cheeks get hot with embarrassment. It was pretty shitty to bring up the subject of her dead mother and then proceed to criticize her lack of direction on her summer project in front of everyone. They had plenty of time. It was the first class, for Christ’s sake!
But Jim Dybbs could never cause her to feel any significant sense of being unworthy in regard to pursuing what it is she’d known she was meant to do since she was old enough to hold a crayon. Indy knew she had more talent in the lavender-polish-adorned pinky toe of her left foot than in all of the O’Donaghues you could fit inside of a Kennedy wake. She couldn’t let these tittering morons—bursting with more ambition than ability—make her feel panicky and awful.
Erin gave way to Megan Stein, who sang the praises of mango Pinkberry, then launched into an enthusiastic account of her goals around her summer project—an exploration of the indigenous ferns of the Berkshire region, done in an impressionist style.
Indy rifled throug
h her camouflage bag for her cell, where she found a text from Lucy.
Hey gurl—I M BORED! Meet me by the lake for a j? ;)
The stand-alone merit of smoking pot with Lucy didn’t really appeal, but in comparison to this nightmare of a sculpture class, Indy couldn’t agree quickly enough. She texted back.
Omg. YES. C U in 5.
She collected her things and interrupted Suzie McLandish, a blond with short, spiky hair and brand-new breast implants her parents bought her to “offset her dykey ’do,” to tell Dybbs she wasn’t feeling well.
“Maybe it’s all this talk of ice cream. I think I should go to the infirmary to make sure I don’t have any stomach cramps by association.” Indy stood up and put her bag over her shoulder, then walked toward the door. “I’ll keep you guys posted either way.”
She headed to the lake.
The dry sun felt good on Indigo’s freckled arms, and the farther away she got from the sculpture studio, the better she felt. She took in the fresh air and closed her eyes, letting the breeze graze her hair and her skin underneath the silky, patterned Urban Outfitters top she’d changed into after that morning’s matching-T-shirt debacle.
Her canvas shoes treaded on the manicured grass, then onto the dirt path that wound around the lower-grade bunks, the dance studios, and the outdoor Shakespearean theater that was built around a patch of elms. She hopped up onto the stage for a quickie shortcut, then dove into the brush where a secret, fern-lined hiking path led her to the lake. And like a hokey device from an old animated movie to introduce its main character, the leaves in Indigo’s eye line seemed to magically part, revealing Lucy in the clearing.
She had already taken off her staff T-shirt to tan in her bra and jean shorts, and was sprawled out on her back on a rock—her shiny blond curls tumbled down toward the water.
“Hey.” Indigo kept her voice low, so as not to disturb the fairy tale–like setting she was suddenly trespassing onto.
“There you are! I was starting to worry.”
Lucy sprung up from her reclining pose like she was a cat. She smiled so big her dimples appeared. Indigo, meanwhile, was half incredulous that in the quick, feline action of Lucy’s going from lying down to sitting upright, she managed to bare no belly fat at all. Not even a tiny roll of flab.
“Are you cutting class already?” Lucy asked, patting the space on the big, flat rock next to her. She moved her shirt and slipped it on, making room for Indy, who navigated the path as gracefully as she could, and climbed up to the rock.
“Sort of.” Indy crossed her freckly legs. “I walked out. I couldn’t take it anymore. Jim—you know, the sculpture teacher with the beard and the ponytail? He was giving me unnecessary crap about my summer project.” Indigo noticed a mosquito bite on her ankle and scratched it with her short nails. “Whatever. Have you seen how high up on his body he wears his jeans? Beyond.”
“Doesn’t he belt them with, like, yarn or something?”
“Probably.” Indy picked up a tiny stone and threw it into the water. “So, how’s life as a staff member?”
“Thrilling,” Lucy said sarcastically. “So far I’ve wrangled a group of seven-year-olds, restocked the dance studio’s Purell supply, and then I got to watch Rashid demonstrate the difference between jazz hands and spirit fingers.” She tucked her hair behind her ear with one hand and slid her other hand down to her hip. “Do you wanna smoke this?”
Lucy produced a hand-rolled joint from the teeny pocket on the inside of her jean shorts and twirled it nimbly between her middle and index fingers.
“Of course,” Indigo replied.
Lucy found a lighter from what seemed like thin air and lit the pinched end of the joint that dangled from her lower lip like a single tusk. She inhaled, then passed it to Indy, who gazed at the water, her hands resting atop her thighs.
“Your turn.” Lucy exhaled a triangular cloud of sickly-sweet marijuana smoke. She gestured with her hand again for Indy to take the joint.
“Thanks.” Indigo lifted the joint to her mouth and took a conservative puff, tasting Lucy’s strawberry lip gloss as she did. They sat in silence for what seemed like a full minute after that, looking at the water and sitting under the sun.
“Um, Indy?”
“Yes?”
Lucy laughed.
“Pass it along, kindly?”
“Oh, God, I’m sorry. I totally spaced.”
“Yoink.” Lucy brushed her slender fingers against Indy’s, stealing the joint out of her hand as she did. There was another pregnant pause as they both sat on the rock not looking at each other, just getting high together in what sufficed for nature.
“Luce?” Indigo felt herself ask.
“What’s up?”
“I think I may have been acting a little weird so far this summer. Unless I’m imagining it, in which case, I should just shut up.”
Was the weed to blame for her babbling, or the environment? Or was Lucy seducing her into saying what was really on her mind, just like she seduced audience members she got onstage in front of?
“No, go on.” Lucy turned her head of doll hair to look at Indy with her cornflower-blue eyes.
Indy felt her neck get hot and started sweating from her scalp. She realized she was stoned. Why did she say anything just now? Why did she even get high with Lucy? Why didn’t she eat more for breakfast? She was suddenly starving and panicked and rootless. If she were a boy, this would have been the time to lean in and go for a kiss, if only to shut off her mind from taking over entirely.
“Okay.” Her own voice sounded weird to herself. “Well, first of all. I wanted to tell you something. Remember that secret?”
Lucy straightened. “Yeah?”
“It was about Nick.…” She looked Lucy in the eyes, pacing her words slowly and dramatically in order to give Lucy a chance to react or to give her some kind of indication that Eleanor’s rumor was true or false. But Lucy didn’t even flinch.
“Oh, yeah? Out with it!”
Indy took a deep breath and tried to shake the not-high into her body. Maybe the more oxygen she breathed into her brain, the less she’d be stoned. She continued after she cleared her throat.
“He sent me an e-mail a couple of months ago,” Indy said, looking at the water.
“Are you serious? Indy, that’s awesome.” Lucy crossed her legs and scooted closer. “So, what did it say?”
“It doesn’t matter.…” Indigo trailed off, then suddenly turned her gaze from the lake back toward her friend. “Look, is it true that you and Nick hooked up? Did you lose your virginity to him?” She was shocked at how fast it had all come tumbling out. Her cheeks flared again. She stared down at the rock visible between her crossed knees and scratched her mosquito bite once more, dreading Lucy’s answer.
“What?!” Lucy’s voice was a loud bell of incredulity and friendly surprise. “Is that what’s been bugging you?” She put her hand on Indy’s leg. “You’ve gotta be kidding.” She made sure she caught Indigo’s eyes once she looked up. “Don’t be nuts. Nothing has ever, ever, ever happened between me and Nick. I mean, you’ve had a super-intense crush on him for how long? Forever? You’re my best friend. I’d never hook up with a guy you liked. And I’d never not tell you if I’d lost my virginity!”
“I’m sorry.” Indy looked down.
“Don’t be sorry!” Lucy said, still sounding—not angry, just shocked. “I’m just glad you said something. Where the hell did you get that crazy idea in the first place?” Her kind eyes seemed to look through Indigo.
“Eleanor,” Indigo said, shaking her head. “I should have known better.” Lucy scootched over on the rock to give Indy a sincere side hug, squeezing her friend’s body close to hers and resting her head on Indy’s shoulder. “No kidding.”
They sat like that for another five minutes, staring at the lake in silence, peacefully stoned, watching the clouds move in the reflection of the water below the perfectly blue Massachusetts sky.
It was arou
nd this time when Indy finally remembered why she didn’t partake of weed more often during the school year—it made her really anxious and paranoid. She tried to observe her mind racing instead of letting her frantic thoughts run away with her like a doomed train. But her ankle was itchy and her nails were too short and the sun was feeling too hot for the minimal amount of sunscreen she’d put on early this morning. Beyond the matters of physical comforts, Indy couldn’t help but wonder: Was Lucy telling the truth? She seemed sincere, but she was also really good at acting. “Acting.” The word itself made Indy cringe. So did the word “drama,” or “theatre”—with an “re,” not an “er.”
Indy, suddenly and completely, felt like a huge fraud. What was she doing at this sleepover conservatory when real artists paid their dues eating whatever they found in Bushwick Dumpsters and shoplifting art supplies from Lee’s? Nick couldn’t have grown up with a silver spoon in his mouth, and there’s no way he was given the privileges she was. He seemed so raw.
Indigo wished she could have hit some kind of fast-forward button, so she could skip ahead to when she was, say, twenty-seven and Nick was thirty-three. And they could live together in a loft somewhere in Brooklyn, where they’d shower together every morning—that would never get old—then head to their respective studios for long, rewarding days of making art.
How she wished she could jump into that reality right now. She looked to Lucy, who sat cross-legged and blissed out, and almost felt safe enough to open up to her. Maybe they were still on the same wavelength after all.
“Do you want me to be like, wing woman for you? Maybe hang out with Nick during staff things and, you know—push him in the right direction?” Lucy asked. Then she began to giggle.
“I would love nothing more,” Indy said, then began giggling too. All of a sudden, she was having fun.
Things were fine.
Indy stayed out at the lake, staring at the water, long after Lucy went back to supervising her classes. She ended up missing lunch, much to her rumbling stomach’s chagrin, and still felt the effects of the weed long after they’d smoked it.
Art Girls Are Easy Page 6