Her head was fuzzy, but she was lucid enough to feel guilty about missing her second-period class—Principles of Advanced Collage—and she totally phoned in her Drawing Architecture third-period elective. She chose to draft a charcoal-on-newsprint replica of the painting studio from the safe distance of the swing set, yards away, and did a lousy job of it. As she sketched and swung back and forth, lazily, Indy thought less about the work on the page and more about how much she hoped Nick wouldn’t find her there, as she was certain she looked sweaty and twitchy since she first got high.
By the time the sun had set and she’d shuffled over to dinner, Indigo had bitten her fingernails down to the cuticles—a bad habit that came and went, despite her stepmom’s splurging on manicures for her at Elizabeth Arden. She barreled through the meal—a deconstructed pheasant pot pie with a quinoa crust and a kale and organic pancetta side—and even ate a third portion.
“Oink much?” Eleanor said to Indy, then added “J.K.,” even though she totally wasn’t kidding. Then Eleanor went back to lecturing Indigo on the subject of her expertise—herself.
“So, pointe class went awesome. I can’t believe I was ever intimidated by Renée. I mean, she’s just a bitter old frog who’s only nasty to her students because we’re more limber and castable than she is. It has nothing to do with how good we are at a pas de chat. Although this one new girl—have you met Desi?”
“No, of course not,” Indy said, with her mouth full. How would she know another dance major who wasn’t Eleanor? She hung out with her only because they roomed together. Usually artists and dancers stayed as far away from each other as they possibly could.
“Well, she’s a moose,” Eleanor said, “and a totes Johnny-come-lately. I think she’s one of those girls who saw Black Swan and thought she could dance just because she’d hooked up with a girl once when she was drunk.”
“Listen, I’m gonna head back to the bunk,” Indy said, realizing there was nothing left to eat. She was suddenly dying to get out of the dining hall.
“Well, so am I, dummy. I was just waiting for you to finish inhaling all those portions. Let’s walk back together. Duh.” Who taught Eleanor her social skills, Temple Grandin?
The walk back to the Beat cabin with Eleanor was interminable, even though it was a perfect summer night. Fireflies speckled the dim sky as the sun set, and Indy listened to Eleanor’s smack-talk about the other girls in her classes, all of whom were, apparently, fat and incapable. Behind them, the rest of the campers filtered out of the main house—Indigo heard the treading of various ballet flats and UGG boots and half wished she’d tagged along with the majority of the camp to attend the evening activity. She remembered hearing Yvonne saying something at the table about an outdoor concert that would be taking place after dinner in the lantern-strewn tent that Lillian erected near the ballet studios. That actually sounded kind of nice, but she had already made the decision to go back to the bunk.
By the time Indy changed into the boxer shorts and enormous Kenyon College T-shirt that she slept in, it was only 8:30 PM. She felt dumb for screwing herself up earlier in the day with pot. Indy thought about how she hadn’t gotten any work done, she ate too much at dinner, and her fingernails were all short and gross. But camp had only just started. There was a ton of time left to turn things around and focus, especially now that she was positive that Lucy had not hooked up with Nick. That, at least, was an incredible relief.
Eleanor got out her laptop and logged on to a BitTorrent site to find all the new eating disorder–themed episodes of Intervention that she’d missed. Indy climbed into bed, even though she wasn’t really tired. She shifted to her side and stared at the wall, while music that scored some family members’ tearful testimonials blared from Eleanor’s computer. Finally, she squinted her eyes shut, conjuring up images in her mind for what the perfect summer project might look like. But her imaginary canvases were all filled with Nick’s face. Focusing this summer was going to be harder than she expected.
8
A week had passed since Indy had gotten stoned with Lucy by the lake, and even though she no longer had pot to blame for her fuzzy head, she still had a hard time producing anything in her classes that she was particularly proud of. She showed up every day and did what she was supposed to, but her hand wasn’t shaping the clay or guiding the paint into any sort of shape that made her feel good about looking at it. And she had no idea what she was trying to say.
That’s partially why she was dreading her first session with Jen Rant. She had no idea how Jen was going to “advise” her. Camp had barely just begun, and apparently, Indigo’s dry streak was already a hot topic among her fellow visual arts majors. She’d even overheard Megan Stein telling Suzie McLandish that she had “completely lost her voice,” which was a little extreme. Plus, Indy had seen Megan Stein’s indigenous-fern sketches hanging up in the drawing studio. They were bland and uninspired, so Megan didn’t really have the right to criticize.
On the hottest day of the summer so far, Indigo headed toward the Theater Row complex of acting studios, which was next to the Performance Art Center, where Jen Rant kept office hours every other day between 9 AM and noon. Indigo scuffed her purple Converse on the shale steps that led into the building. Her black skinny jeans and tank seemed to cling to her skin like a wetsuit, and Indy found herself wishing she’d worn something looser, or lighter, or had just stayed inside her air-conditioned bunk all day. But hiding out would have only prolonged the inevitable. She was required to meet with Jen, and if she didn’t go, she would get in trouble.
The Performance Art Center was a boxy, modern building that was situated both geographically and ideologically between Theater Row, the cluster of stages and studios in which drama majors took their acting classes, and the art studios, where Indy was during most of her day. As the center’s glass doors opened automatically with an unnerving beep, Indigo made her way toward the Karen Finley Yam Wing, where Jen Rant waited for her in her tiny office.
“Hello?” Indigo called out from the hallway. She was outside a room labeled with the nameplate RANT. That struck Indy as funny—like Jen’s office was a designated place to bitch about things.
When she walked in, Jen was sitting on the floor, her head tilted back, making gargling sounds. She stopped as soon as Indy cleared her own throat.
“Indy! Perfect, you’re right on time. Come in,” she said, seeming not at all embarrassed to be caught in the act of some kind of bizarre warm-up exercise or whatever that was.
Performance-art people.
“Hey.” Indy nodded, settling in on one of Jen’s folding chairs.
“Are you sure you don’t want to join me on the floor?” Jen asked, from below her.
“Yes. Yes, I am.” This experience was already uncomfortable enough without having to crouch down like some kindergartener during circle time.
“Okay, no prob.” Jen, in black leggings and a black tank top, sprang up from the floor and cracked her knuckles, then took a seat across from Indigo at her desk in a rolling chair. “So, how are you doing?”
“Fantastic,” Indigo lied.
Jen pulled out a folder with her name on it.
“Have you had a chance to write up your mission statement?” Jen leafed through Indy’s file, which documented the extensive time she’d spent at Silver Springs, from her administrative records to reproductions of her own work. She saw Jen pause on a color photocopy of the third panel from Epilogue to Rain, the abstract color series she had done about the death of her mother.
“You know, I haven’t,” Indigo replied, surprised at her own defiance in admitting to her own failure. She looked down and began to play with the snaps on her black leather wrist cuff.
“Why not?” Jen wore her best “concerned” face.
“I just haven’t felt very inspired lately, to be honest.”
Jen shuffled more through the folder, as though she were looking for a clue or something else to respond to besides Indy’s flip answer.
Indy looked around the room at the posters on the office wall. Eric Bogosian live at the Public Theater. A huge black-and-white photograph of Yoko Ono. Clippings from what must have been Jen’s hometown paper, The Scarsdale Inquirer, featuring photos of Jen covered in mayonnaise, wearing a leotard, under the headline “Local Girl Makes ‘Art’ Onstage.”
“You know, I’ve personally found, in my work, that inspiration counts for very little. Most of the time, it’s just showing up in the morning that gets me to where I need to be, productively.”
“Well, I do show up in the morning,” Indy responded slowly. “I showed up at sculpture class this morning and I left with a lump of clay that I’m ashamed to put my name on.”
Jen looked up from the folder and straight into her eyes.
“What’s up, Indy? Is there anything that’s been bothering you since you got to camp? I saw in your file that you might be at risk to—”
“I’m fine.” Indy cut her off.
What was she, a therapist? There was no way she was going to spill her guts out to Jen Rant about her problems, her lack of a mission statement, how sucky it was rooming with Eleanor, or her unrequited crush on a staff member. It would be better to just end this meeting as quickly as possible.
“Because, you know, sometimes art can be a cathartic way of dealing with things that are tearing us down in our lives. And sometimes, if we can’t deal with life, we can’t make art. So, I just want to make sure you’re, well, dealing with life.”
“Everything’s completely fine. I’m sure I’m just stuck. Something will come to me.” Indy looked to the door and thought about what would happen if she made a run for it. “It always does.”
“Okay, good,” Jen said, backing up her chair to its original position behind her desk. “It’s okay that you’re running a little late coming up with your mission statement. Maybe together we can work through whatever this block seems to be. You might just be suffering under the pressure of having to deal with the big picture too soon.”
She was probably right. Indy was probably just overthinking everything.
“Yeah” was all she could say. She acted like such an annoying teenager around others being generous. She even shrugged off the helpful stuff, like she was entitled to good advice from people who cared about her well-being.
“So, let’s just start right now,” Jen continued, like she was used to dealing with standoffish fifteen-year-olds. “How are you going to use your studio time this afternoon?”
“Well…”
“What have you been thinking about lately?”
Honestly? She’d been wondering if she could get away with deleting Eleanor’s music library so she didn’t have to listen to any more Bieber. She’d been worried that even though she and Lucy were getting along, things would one day change. But most of all, she’d been thinking about hiding out in the backseat of Nick’s truck and begging him to take her virginity, then take her far away from here, and years into the future when they’d both be grown-ups and they could have sex and make art and nothing would ever get in their way again, either from the world or from her own head.
But she couldn’t say any of that, so Indigo looked around Jen’s office for inspiration. The spines of Jen’s big art books glared at her. One had the word “PERFORMANCE!” on the spine. Another, called L’Art Nouveau, was hunter green and looked so boring that it was practically invisible. Then her eyes landed on a book that vaguely pleased her. Pop Art, it read, in yellow on neon pink in a sans-serif font.
“I’ve been thinking about pop. Pop music, pop culture…how it ties us together, how our tastes connect us to each other and also tear us apart. Like American Idol, or how you can say you like this band or that movie on Facebook, and that’s supposed to decide what you have in common with your friends.”
“Cool, okay.” Jen nodded enthusiastically. “And what else would you want to deal with? I mean, what other themes could you connect to that?”
“Gender disparity,” Indy answered, falling back on her old mainstay. “How men are perpetuators of the status quo, and women are just objects of the male gaze, basically.”
“Awesome! How do you think you’d want to work on a project about that stuff?”
“Maybe an installation?” Indy shrugged.
“This is great!” Jen smiled. “So let’s plan on meeting up this Friday to see how that’s going so far. Sound good?”
“Yeah. Sounds great.” And then, finally, she was released.
Indigo stood and extended her hand for Jen to shake, then got hugged. The smell of Marlboro cigarette smoke in Jen’s coarse, dark hair almost choked her. She disengaged before it got even more awkward.
Indigo headed out of the Performance Art Center and through the automatically closing glass doors into the sticky, sunny day, deciding to take the long way back to the dining hall for lunch. Maybe she’d be inspired along the way. Jen was right. If she just kept showing up to the studio every day and putting in the work, piece by piece, she’d figure out what she really wanted to do.
9
The sun blended into the breeze into the iced tea and lemonades Indy sucked down at lunch, into the fireflies and the swimming classes and the sunburns and the shouts of the younger campers playing jacks on the steps of the main house. She got frequent, cloying letters from her dad and stepmom (Yoshiko would collage pet and creamed corn photos from the coupon section of the paper onto her handmade envelopes) saying how much they missed her on Nantucket this year, and how they hoped she was making lots of wonderful stuff.
Meanwhile, the other girls of Ferlinghetti were chipping away at their summer projects. Yvonne rehearsed her hour-long stand-up set in the shower; Puja storyboarded her new play onto the bulletin board in the hallway, obscuring the never-used “chore wheel” with index cards for acts one, two, and three written out in her illegible handwriting. Eleanor practiced her pliés in her and Indy’s room, and Lucy flitted back and forth from her acting studio to her quarters in the staff cabin on the north campus.
Sometimes, when they needed a break from working, the girls would sit together on the porch of the cabin and quietly poke fun at the younger campers passing by. Those mini-superstars looked like they owned the world, walking around in their little cliques, chattering about their auditions for Godspell and what they got in their care packages. Listening, Indy was reminded of the summer she and Lucy were twelve and thirteen and snuck out of their respective bunks with a bunch of other girls to toilet-paper the Degas cabin. The next day, when they were inevitably sent to Lillian’s office, Rachel Silvera, another visual-art major, claimed the prank was her installation piece and that she was trying to make a statement about crappy dancers. The girls had found it all hilarious even though Lillian did not, but they still got away with just a warning instead of being sent to Fairness Committee. Indy remembered that Nick, who’d been her teacher at the time, told her he thought it was awesome, too.
Nick. As hard as she tried to run into him, the night they spent in the studio together was starting to feel like a distant dream. Since he taught introductory drawing and painting classes, Nick shared space with Indigo only when they happened to be in the studio at the same time. But he was either leaving when Indy was coming in to work or coming in to work when Indy was leaving.
What was also frustrating was that Indy was still having a hard time producing anything she felt good about. The still life she’d worked on during her first night at camp collapsed beneath the labor she put into it—she overdid the brushwork that had, at first, made the rotting fruit so compelling. Since then, she’d painted over the whole thing with white gesso, penciled a self-portrait onto the canvas with a light, hard-lead pencil after looking into the mirror and back for three hours, hated what she saw, and painted over it again.
Tonight, she’d give herself a break. She decided to attend that evening’s activity, whatever it was. So when Eleanor dragged Indy back to the cabin as soon as they finished their dinner of yellowtail and jalapeño
sashimi with profiteroles for dessert, Indy didn’t mind. She felt like she wasn’t going to miss another dry evening in the studio or a chance at another interaction with the guy who turned her into cream and pastry with his voice alone.
“Where have you been lately?” Eleanor snapped at her, on the path outside the dining hall, handing off a napkin with her profiteroles inside it. Indy took the pastries and gobbled them up, feeling a little sick as she did. Maybe it was the dairy and maybe she was eating her feelings.
“The studio,” Indy answered once she swallowed, passing the bench by the stone vases blooming with rhododendrons that lined their picturesque walk back to the Beat cabin. “I’m not thrilled with the work I’ve been turning out lately, but I’ve been putting in the time, at least. I feel like I could be on the brink of something.”
Eleanor ignored her completely. “Well, you haven’t missed anything good, evening activity–wise. The other night, they set up Ping-Pong tables in the jazz studio, can you believe it? Like, rec-room chic? Just because Susan Sarandon owns a table tennis place in the village, it’s, like, three years later, and Lillian thinks it’s the new hot thing. Like cupcakes or James Franco.”
“Uh-huh.” Indigo listened to Eleanor describe and berate the other events she’d missed in the last week, from a “build your own medley” workshop led by the executive producers of The Voice to a visiting Cirque du Soleil production of Zarkana that took place in both the cafeteria and the Harpsichord Room once the main house had been cleared and rigged for the acrobatic elements. “The acrobats looked pretty fat, actually. Or maybe those were muscles.” Eleanor yawned. “Either way, it was gross.”
“Uh-huh.” Indy realized she felt pretty fat in that moment, since she was stuffed to the hilt with flaky pastry and vanilla crème. Her stomach mumbled its disapproval, and she found herself grateful that they were steps away from the porch of Ferlinghetti, so she could sneak into the bathroom before whatever activity commenced.
Art Girls Are Easy Page 7