Very in Pieces

by Megan Frazer Blakemore

  A particularly loud crash makes me shudder. Then the noises stop, and I think maybe I can go see her. It’s true she’s made it clear that she doesn’t want us in her studio, but everything’s changed now, hasn’t it?

  So I climb the stairs.

  Of course I shouldn’t be surprised by what I see, not after all of the commotion. It is as if every inch of floor is covered by torn canvases, their frames splintered. She smashed some of the glass jars she uses for paints. The floor sparkles with the shards.

  “Don’t come in,” she says. “Your feet.” I’m not wearing any shoes. But I can’t leave, not with the room like this. I sidestep shards of glass and splinters of wood. Mom stays by the window, looking out. Canvases are piled in the middle of the room. Picking one up, I smooth out what I can: it is Nonnie. A portrait made with heavy oils, the colors off so that her skin has a green hue, her hair almost purple, but there is no doubt who it is. Her eyes flash just right, as if she is composing a poem—or a quip—in her mind.

  Another painting is bent in half, but I recognize this one right away, too: it is me. My skin is rosy—too rosy—and she has made me more beautiful. My hair is smooth and pretty—still long—and I purse my lips in a seductive manner. When I pick it up and see the lower half, I see that she has dressed me in a top with a plunging neckline. It is like she painted me the way she thinks I ought to be. I put my portrait on top of the one of Nonnie.

  Digging through, I next find a Ramona painting. Mom has captured her younger than she is right now—probably eight or nine. She is laughing with her head tilted back, face bathed in the light of an unshown sun. That’s the way Ramona used to be.

  Then I find Mom’s self-portrait. The colors are dark, ominous almost. You nearly can’t see her face because of the shadows. But she is gorgeous. There is no doubt of that. And it is the most realistic. The jawline is absolutely correct, the fleck of gold in her eyes. I realize then that not all the glass is from the paint jars. Some is from a mirror. She studied herself to make this painting.

  The other canvases are in various states of completion, but they are always of the four of us, and always playing the same roles: Imogene grotesque, me glamorous, Ramona in the sun, and Mom overshadowed.

  “Mom, these are beautiful.”

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  She smirks. “Derivative. David Hockney did it first and better.”

  “Well.” I have no idea who David Hockney is. “There are only so many ways to do a portrait, right?”

  “The thing about art is, it needs to be an original thought. Your grandmother had her words. I thought I had . . .” She shakes her head. “Your sister, she’s an original thinker. The way she sees the world. If I could just get in her head for a day, an hour.”

  Ramona doesn’t need anything or anyone else inside her head. “I think she’s breaking down.”

  Mom tilts her head back and closes her eyes. “That’s just what I was trying to say. All the best artists were a little crazy, a little depressed. Hemingway. Van Gogh, of course. Emily Dickinson. Plath; your grandmother. Your sister is lucky. If only I had been more touched.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “What do you even know of art? I didn’t want them to be beautiful. I wanted them to be true.”

  “But they aren’t true at all.”

  Damn it.

  “That’s not what I meant,” I say.

  “It is. And you’re right.” Mom crosses over to a sink and begins washing her hands, roughly rubbing them with the paint-stained bar of soap.

  “Mom.”

  Scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing until her hands are pink.

  “Mom!”

  “What?” She turns, sprinkling water out around her like a fan. The sun coming in the window catches it and it refracts the light into a hundred rainbows. We both stop, breathe in, as we watch it.

  “What is so important now?” she demands.

  Everything, I want to say. Everything is important. “You painted us how you want us to be. That’s its own truth, isn’t it?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, me sexier than I am. More like you. And Ramona, you kept her young, so she isn’t a—” This time I stop myself from saying the word: threat.

  Mom dries her hand on an old dish towel. “And Nonnie? Tell me, what secret is hiding in those paintings?”

  “I’m not trying to be mean, Mom. I’m trying to help.”

  “So help me, Very. Oh, please do. Tell me what you see.”

  “I see Nonnie as someone who shaped you, and, well, you’re always painting yourself in shadows, so I guess you think she overshadowed you.”

  “You think I’m that literal?”

  “I don’t know, Mom. You know I’m no good at this.”

  She throws the rag onto the counter by the sink.

  The sun is pounding through the windows that circle the turret. I have to squint my eyes against the glare and I start to sweat. “You can’t change us by changing how you portray us.”

  “Oh, can’t I? What do you think Imogene did with me, Smart One? Trotting around her beautiful daughter. Using me to get into parties when no one wanted her there anymore? ‘Taste the wine, Annaliese. Tell them about the modeling you’re doing, Annaliese.’ Did she ever tell them about my painting? How do you think I ended up like this?”

  “Like what?”

  “For a smart girl, you miss a lot.” There’s a small cosmetics bag near the sink, and she pulls out a tube of lipstick. She puts it on without a mirror, perfectly in place. Her gaze flits about the room, looking at everything but me.

  “Not as much as you think.”

  She raises her eyebrows.

  “Anyway, right now, I don’t really care about the problems you had with Nonnie. Nonnie’s gone. Ramona’s still here.”

  Mom throws up her hands. “That’s the problem, isn’t it!” she cries out.

  “What do you mean?”

  Her body stills. She opens up the toiletry bag and pulls out a compact. Moving it around, she looks at her eyes, widening them, then narrowing them.

  “Mom, what do you mean? You can’t tell me you’re jealous of Ramona?”

  “Me? I was talking about you!” But her voice has lost her fire. I know I have caught her out.

  She snaps the compact shut and drops it back in the bag. “I’m going,” she announces.

  “Where?” I ask.

  “I thought you had everything figured out.”

  She strides past me and down the stairs. A few moments later I see her car driving down the driveway way too fast.

  iii.

  So I am alone in the house. The weight of it presses down on me.

  I run out into the evening air. I want to be anywhere but here. I pull my phone out of my pocket. Dominic’s number is there in the missed calls. I could go to him. The phone is warm in my hand. Then it starts to vibrate.

  How’s it goin?

  The text is from Christian. I just stare at it. I don’t know how to respond. It would be pretty hard to sum up in a text message: My lifes fallin apart. Nonnies gone. moms losin it. Ramona’s craz, 2. Not exactly my style. So I type: Fine.

  Almost immediately, he responds: Workin on chem. Want 2 come over?

  My fingers are on the keys typing Yes! and Getting into the car now. I will just go to his house, lie down on the floor of his furnished basement, and we’ll spread out our books. I’ll correct his math, he’ll explain the reactions in a way that makes sense when it never does in class. Good and warm and comfortable. I can practically smell him—the Right Guard he uses and his cinnamon toothpaste.

  I drive over there with the music off and the top down. The cool air cyclones around me, chilling my fuzzy head, and I don’t think about where I’m heading and I don’t think about what happened with Nonnie or what I did to Christian. I don’t think about any of it.

  When I get there, he is waiting for me. He smiles, cheeks pi
nk, and I follow him to the basement. He turns and looks at me over his shoulder, still grinning ear to ear.

  He doesn’t know, I realize. He doesn’t know that Nonnie is gone, and it’s like a time warp, jumping back to when she was still alive. My heart races as if it could be true.

  Downstairs, Christian has his chemistry book out, and a bowl of potato chips. “I thought this part might be hard for you.”

  “Gee, thanks,” I say.

  He punches me lightly on the shoulder, like we’re old football buddies or something. “You’re just better with the practical than the theoretical.”

  He is right. I’ve been struggling with this unit, though I ascribed the problem to everything else going on in my life. He looks over my shoulder at what I am writing. “See, you’re off to a bad start.”

  He explains the problem to me with his hand flat on my notebook. I stare at the veins in his hand, the torn cuticle on his ring finger. Maybe Christian doesn’t make me as happy or excited as Dominic does, but he also doesn’t make me as angry. And he is here. He is always right here.

  “You’re not listening,” he says.

  It’s true; all of his words passed me by. “Sorry.”

  “Things, I mean, with you, your things—” It is unlike Christian to be so bumbling.

  “There’s a lot going on,” I say. I do not want to tell him, do not want to break the spell and jump forward in time.

  “I’m still— You can still talk to me.”

  “I know.”

  He pushes his book away, but I still stare at the pages. I don’t want to talk to him about whatever Ramona is doing in her room. I don’t want to talk about the dark side of my mother that flashed up when she saw Ramona’s work. I can’t talk about Nonnie. I don’t want to talk at all.

  “I’d rather just sit here doing homework. I’d rather things be normal.”

  “Normal.” The word seems to get stuck on his lips.

  “Normal,” I confirm.

  “I can do that.”

  And that’s why I love him. Except that is the whole problem: I don’t love him. Not the right kind of love anyway. It’s the way a person loves their first puppy, but of course that is something I could never tell him, even though at this moment that straightforward relationship is the most valuable one in my life.

  Straightforward until I confuse it.

  I try to focus on what he is telling me, but all I can do is look at his skin. I know how soft his forearms are, and how rough his palms. It’s my fault. I blamed him, but it is my fault we stopped being physical. I stopped seeing him like this, noticing every detail. I reach out and brush my hand against his, like I did in the beginning when everything was new and every touch mattered because the touches could still be counted.

  Nonnie and Mom, they always seemed so glamorous, but their glamour was just that—a magician’s trick. It was as flimsy and frail as a fairy house made of sticks. I can’t live that way. I don’t have the mind to create that magical glamour of a world. I don’t have the stamina.

  Well, Very. I suppose I was just like you.

  And so I will stay myself. I will build my house of sturdier things, of numbers and college acceptances. I will not be that girl made otherworldly by an artist’s hand. I am the girl in Christian’s sketch, eyes down, concentrating. That is me. To be otherwise is pretending. This haircut is pretending. Dominic is pretending.

  I turn my head so I am looking at his face. Yes, it is just like at the beginning, when every bit of him triggered one of my senses. I lean forward, my head tilted. Our lips brush, and then he rocks back.

  “I’m sorry,” he says quickly.

  “No, I . . . I shouldn’t have.”

  “It’s just too soon.”

  “I never meant to hurt you,” I tell him.

  “I know. But you did.”

  He can’t look at me. I look down, too. His hand is off of my notebook. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I never should have come.”

  “No, look, it’s nothing. It doesn’t matter.”

  Each word stings more.

  He goes on, “Let’s just focus on the chemistry. You want a distraction, right? To not think about your problems? So let’s just get this set done.”

  “I have to go.”

  “Very.”

  “I have to go,” I repeat while I shove my things into my bag.

  “Very—”

  “She’s dead, Christian.”

  He doesn’t say anything else, but I feel his eyes on me as I run up the stairs: his stupid, stupid girl running away again.

  iv.

  Dominic was always the one trying to get my attention, but now I’m the one throwing rocks up at his bedroom window. I hope it’s his window. There’s a light on and I can see a computer screen glowing. A moment later there’s a face behind the glass. He sees me, gives a wave, then disappears. A moment later he’s outside in an old T-shirt and pajama bottoms.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Hey back,” he replies. “Are you okay?”

  I nod.

  “I heard about your grandmother. Britta told me. I tried calling, but—”

  “I know.”

  “Let’s get away from here. My mom has the place on lockdown since she found out I was skipping school.”

  We hold hands as he leads me through his neighborhood. I shouldn’t be holding his hand, considering why I’ve come to see him.

  All the houses are dark, though each seems to have its porch light on, winking through the oak and maple leaves. We round a corner toward the old soccer fields. There’s a small playground there. Just a couple of slides and a swing set. He sits on the bottom of the wide metal slide and leans back to look at the sky. There’s room enough for me beside him, but I don’t sit down.

  “I know it’s late,” I say.

  “Hey, you can show up under my window anytime.” That wolf grin, the not-really-him grin, is there. “You know I’ve always wanted to fool around in this playground.”

  “I’m sorry about the other day. The sex.”

  “You’re sorry we had sex?” He lifts his head to try to see me better in the dark.

  “You asked me what it meant. What it meant to me. And I couldn’t tell you. I didn’t know. I shouldn’t’ve had sex with you if I didn’t know.”

  “Hey, Very, things aren’t always so simple.” He reaches out toward me, but I stay rooted.

  “But I know now. I know I can’t be with you.”

  A bat careens across the night sky.

  “Can’t or won’t?” He sits up.

  Sometimes it’s easier to tell someone the lie he believes rather than the truth. Dominic told me that himself. So I don’t tell him that I’m confused and that I still don’t know if I can trust him. I don’t tell him that I want everything and nothing from him. Instead I say: “You were right about me. Mostly.”

  “What part was I mostly right about?”

  “I thought I could handle this—the ways we are different, who we each are—but I can’t.”

  He draws his eyebrows together. “Is that so?”

  “I just thought you deserved to know you didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “It’s not me, it’s you?”

  I look toward the swings, which hang still and straight as anchors. “Yes. It’s me and my hang-ups.”

  “Look, I know we come from different groups, but it doesn’t matter.”

  “Dominic, I—”

  “I can be an ass, I know that. Trust me, I know that. And if that’s why you don’t want to be with me, then I guess I can accept that. But if it’s because of what everyone else thinks of me—”

  What everyone else thinks of him: that he’s a screwup, a bad seed, dangerous. He is and is not these things, but that’s not what’s keeping me from him. But that’s what he thinks, and therefore what he will accept. “I wish it were different.”

  “Then make it different.”

  “I have to go. I just wanted to tell you. I’m sorry.” And then
once more, as if repeating it will make it stick: “I’m sorry.”

  I leave him sitting on the edge of the slide. I hope he looks up at the stars. The clouds are passing over them, shifting and changing, and it’s just like the ocean’s movement that he loves so much. Our Ocean. Maybe there wasn’t a specific someone. Maybe he was just looking for someone to share it with.

  v.

  I fall asleep on the sofa with the red afghan over my face, spider-webbing the world around me. When I wake it is morning, and Ramona stands beside the couch. “Are you going to school?”

  “Where’s Mom?” I ask.

  “Asleep upstairs.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. I heard her come in last night. After you.”

  I tug the afghan down off of my face. “I’m sick. Take the bus.”

  She shrugs and goes out the door. Whether or not she goes to school I have no idea.

  I lace my fingers through the holes of the afghan as my mother had done the night before. Who made it, I wonder. Certainly not my mom or Nonnie. Nonnie said she’d learned how to knit for that poem, but never very well. I couldn’t imagine either Mom or Nonnie buying it, though.

  Ramona could make an afghan. She’d just sit down and do it like it was nothing.

  And then she’d probably rip it up.

  I want to fall back asleep, but I can’t.

  I turn my head and see the bar cart. There are crystal decanters with different-colored liquids at various levels. Mom likes the clear stuff, gin and vodka. Nonnie prefers the browns. It has never before occurred to me that this is unusual knowledge for a girl to have about her family.

  Cocktails in the afternoon. Parties all the time. But Mom has just been hiding, building up this wall of a perfect life, when inside she is atrophying. And Nonnie is . . . Nonnie was. Nonnie is gone.

  I wish my mind would stop its whirling.

  I could get drunk. It would be a balancing act. Tipsy might be okay. It could lighten my mood, perhaps. But if I push it too far in the state I’m in, I’ll surely end up morose, and might make a terrible decision like calling Christian. Or worse, Dominic. I’m letting go of that false life, the one Mom and Nonnie were trying to write for me. So no drink for me, no moment of forgetting.