by Susan Gloss
“Oh, I know,” Annie said. “That’s actually why I’m here.”
Mary raised her eyebrows, appearing interested all of a sudden.
“There’s a demonstration organized for outside the Miss America pageant today. Protesting traditional women’s roles. I’m doing an art piece to go along with it.”
Mary looked intrigued, but skeptical. “You think you’ll have many people?”
“A few hundred have signed up,” Annie said.
“You think anyone will listen?”
“I don’t know if it will change anyone’s mind about anything, but it will definitely get some attention. All the media will already be there for the pageant. We’re just adding to the conversation.”
Mary leaned out the door and took a look up and down the sidewalk. “Okay, I can show you where you can find a mannequin that’s not being used right now. But you better not let on to anybody where you got it.”
“Promise.” Annie put a hand to her heart, then followed Mary through the department store.
The overhead lights were off, with just a few service lights illuminated here and there. In the dim light, without all the customers and the piped-in music, the store seemed frozen and eerie. They went down a cement stairwell to a basement storage room. A dozen or so mannequins lay sprawled about, some fully assembled and some limbless like ancient Greek statues.
“I’m not sure what goes with what,” Mary said.
“Doesn’t matter,” Annie said. “I’m putting it in a straitjacket and I’ve got lots of glue.” She chose a slim, plastic body from a heap in the corner and found a blond head sitting atop a worktable. “You’ll do,” she said, looking into the mannequin’s painted blue eyes.
Mary grabbed the mannequin’s feet and, together, the two women heaved it upstairs and out a back door.
“I can take it from here,” Annie said. She stuffed the mannequin head into her backpack and balanced the stiff body across her shoulders, like a milkmaid carrying a bucket yoke. “Thanks again. I wouldn’t be able to create my piece without this.”
Mary waved her off. “It’s no problem. I’d go with you and watch the whole thing if I didn’t have to pick the babies up from my sister’s. Just remember not to tell anybody where you got it from, okay?”
Annie nodded. Then she made her way toward the boardwalk—a young girl carrying the weight of a plastic one.
Chapter Eight
Odin
PIECE: Dr. Evermor, Roost, circa 2000. Rooster sculpture constructed from scrap metal.
Odin clipped the padlock on the barn door. He wished he had more to show for all the hours he’d spent inside the barn, his makeshift studio for the past six months. He’d started out with good intentions, rising early every morning to sketch what he wanted to sculpt that day. But as soon as he began to work with his materials—the metal and the welder that shaped it—he lost sight of what he was doing and became discouraged at how pointless it all seemed. Even on the family farm, he hadn’t been productive enough. He’d done what he could, helping out with the harvest in the fall. Yet it wasn’t enough to keep new creases from cropping up on his father’s forehead as he pored over corn prices in the paper.
On rare days, Odin would feel like he was actually getting somewhere with his artwork. For a few golden hours his ideas would translate seamlessly from his head to the hot arc at the tip of the welder to the metal beneath it. But when he stopped working and stepped away, he’d realize that the scale was all wrong. He was making everything much too big and straying from what he was “supposed” to be doing—small-scale sculptures that fit on people’s mantels and end tables. The kind that sold well in his girlfriend’s Minneapolis art gallery. His late girlfriend.
He turned his back to the barn, with its drafty corners and peeling, rust-colored paint, and surveyed the scene in front of him. The field that separated him from his parents’ house sparkled like honed quartz, but he knew the smooth surface was just an illusion of perfection. With each step he took toward the house, his boots cracked the brittle crust of ice atop the snow.
Through a first-story window of the farmhouse, Odin could see his mother in the kitchen, standing at the sink. He’d moved back in with his parents only as a last resort after Sloane died and her older sister swooped in and sold not just the gallery, but the condo loft above it. As was her right. Odin’s name wasn’t on the deed, nor had he paid the mortgage or even any rent. As far as the sister was concerned, Odin was a freeloader who owed everything to Sloane. And maybe she was right.
Odin had done his best work with Sloane’s encouragement. When he thought of her now, he often remembered the early days, back before they’d started dating. She’d seen some of his sculptures on display at a coffee shop on Hennepin, not far from the Walker art museum, and contacted him about selling some pieces at her eponymous gallery. When they spoke on the phone, Odin pictured Sloane to be in her forties or fifties—someone tough and established enough to have her own business in the unforgiving art world.
He had not been expecting Sloane to be thirty-three and blond, with legs for days. Nor had he expected her to fret so much over where to situate each piece. She’d paced around the gallery, waving her freckled arms and apologizing as she asked him to move this one a little to the right and that one a little to the left.
Odin had teased her for being so picky about the placement. “They’re just hunks of metal.”
Her eyes had gone big. “You know better than anyone that’s not true. Like this one.” She’d stood next to a sculpture of a tractor made from bent steel, with dismantled computer parts standing in for where the engine should have been. “I think it should go near those wire trees near the windows. They’re by an artist from Bemidji. If I put some of your pieces next to his, they become part of a conversation about nature and technology.”
“You do a better job of explaining my work than I do,” Odin said.
She’d brushed a strand of hair out of her face. “That’s why I do what I do. Artists are shit at talking about their own work. They need me to market it. Make people realize why they’re drawn to it.”
And it was true. Sloane always found a way to articulate the ideas and emotion that went into his artwork. He’d come to depend on it, so much so that he often wondered, as he sat down to start on a new piece, what Sloane would have to say about it. Now, without that voice in his head, he had a hard time getting a start on anything. And, with the gallery operating under a new name and new owner, his old pieces stopped selling without Sloane to champion them. Not long after the new owner took over, she called to tell Odin that she was terribly sorry, but she could no longer devote precious space to his sculptures. Could he please come pick them up at his earliest convenience?
That call had been the motivation he needed to get up off the couch he’d been surfing on at a buddy’s house, toss said buddy the last remnants of the ounce of weed he’d been self-medicating with since Sloane’s death, and pack up his belongings. He’d piled his truck bed with his unloved hunks of metal, cushioned by his sleeping bag and a couple of blankets, and moved back in with his parents for a while. He may have been an unemployed, starving artist, but he wasn’t going to add homeless to his short list of attributes.
His mom had made for damn sure, over the last six months, that the starving part was no longer true, anyway.
Now, Odin walked into the farmhouse and grabbed the duffel bag he’d left in the front entryway. “I’ve got all my equipment packed up, so I guess I’d better get going,” he said.
His mother came over and hugged him. As she pulled away, she surveyed him with a satisfied smile. “At least we’re sending you off to Madison looking healthier than when you came here,” she said. “You know I think Sloane was a sweet girl, bless her soul, but all those vegetarian meals . . .”
“Sloane didn’t die because she was vegetarian, Mom.”
His parents had met Sloane only a handful of times, when Odin had brought her home for the holidays.
His parents almost never ventured up to the Twin Cities, since farmwork kept them from going many places. For as long as he could remember, the only times his parents had left the county were for weddings and funerals. Like Sloane’s.
“Of course she didn’t,” his mother said. “All I meant was that you were thin as a beanpole when you first showed up here.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Odin said. He was six foot two and “big-boned,” as his mom used to phrase it when he was a kid. Far from beanpole status, even at his lightest.
“Well, anyway, you’re looking healthier now,” she said.
“I’ve gained fifteen pounds since I got here, Mom. My pants barely fit anymore. I had to drill an extra hole in my belt to let it out.”
“You could always stop by Farm & Fleet on your way out of town for some new pants,” his father said, coming up from the basement.
“Thanks, Pop,” Odin said. “But I don’t think I have enough money even for Farm & Fleet. I’ll take my chances with the thrift stores in Madison.”
“You sure you want to leave?” his mom asked. “You know you’re welcome to keep working out in the barn as long as you want.”
“Yeah, but I can’t afford to lose my fingers to frostbite,” Odin said, wiggling his hands. “And, in case you haven’t noticed, this place isn’t exactly teeming with galleries or other opportunities to sell my work. I think I’ve aged out of being eligible for the 4-H craft bazaar.”
“Can’t you sell pretty much anything on the internet these days?” his mom asked. “Jane from church has been selling her mom’s old Hummel figurines on eBay for years. Makes a small fortune.”
“With the sort of work I do, I think people like to be able to see it in person, though,” Odin said. “And anyway, I need some new inspiration. I think being around other artists, in a new place, will help.”
His mother let out a sigh of resignation and shoved a plate of peanut butter cookies at him. “For your trip.”
“Thanks,” Odin said. “For everything.”
His dad lingered at the door when Odin stepped outside. “You’re sure you’ve got the truck up and running okay?”
“Yeah, Old Gray should make the trip just fine. New battery and everything.”
“Okay, then. Make sure you watch for deer.”
And that was it. In his pop’s words, “watch for deer” was the utmost expression of paternal love.
Odin waved as he climbed into the truck. Before he’d even gotten to the interstate, he’d torn off the plastic wrap cover from the cookies and started in on one. It tasted buttery, still warm from the oven. When he drove by the Pine Tavern at the intersection of County Roads G and T—a locational coincidence that always made him smile—he saw that the parking lot was already half-full at four o’clock. Fridays meant fish fry. Whether the early cocktail hour that went along with it made the winter seem longer or shorter, no one could be sure. Odin suspected he might have ended up bartending there if Sloane hadn’t sent in the residency application for him.
He’d been dumbfounded when he got the acceptance letter from the Barrett Foundation. He’d never heard of it, let alone applied for a residency there. But the offer was typed out right there on the letter, and a visit to the foundation’s website confirmed that the place was legit. The letter had been addressed to Sloane at the gallery, then appeared to have been forwarded to her sister. Odin got it weeks after it was postmarked, mailed in a big manila envelope along with a couple of photos of him and Sloane and a sticky note from her sister that said, simply, “From the apartment.”
The sight of Sloane in those glossy pictures, with the almost imperceptible freckles on her cheekbones and her confident smile, shocked him almost as much as the letter. Sure, he had his own pictures of her, but he was the one who controlled when he looked at them. They never took him by surprise. In the couple of weeks before he got the envelope in the mail, Odin felt like he’d been doing pretty okay. He’d woken up a few days in a row without his first thought being She’s dead. He’d done some therapeutic hay baling, breaking a sweat in single-digit temperatures. He’d gotten his hands on some high-grade aluminum from the scrapyard, for a sculpture he was planning out. But then the pictures and the letter arrived, and the sight of all he’d lost, reduced to a couple of snapshots, ripped the tenuous scab right off the surface of his grief and stopped his work in its tracks.
The letter from the Barrett Foundation called into question so many things he thought he knew about Sloane and his relationship with her. At first, he was grateful she’d applied for him, since he didn’t have a whole lot of other options. And he felt flattered to be accepted. But why had she kept the application a secret? Maybe she hadn’t been expecting him to get accepted, and wanted to shield him from the blow of rejection. Then it sunk in that the artists’ colony was located in Madison, four hours away from Minneapolis. Had Sloane wanted to send him away? Had she planned to come with him? The latter, he doubted. She’d had a successful gallery to run. All her contacts and customers were in the Twin Cities. Maybe she’d been planning on breaking up with him, and this was her way of easing him along.
With all of these questions rattling around in his head, the idea of the residency lost a bit of its luster, and he’d debated whether he should even go. His inner critic whispered that the offer was nothing more than the final vestiges of his association with Sloane. That he’d never have been chosen if she hadn’t been the one to hand in the application. But what other choices did he have? Practicality won out over pride, in the end, which was how he’d ended up packing up his truck in mid-January, to drive south toward Madison.
IT WAS NEARLY nine o’clock by the time Odin could see the dome of the State Capitol building, lit up white at the end of East Washington Avenue, with its strip malls and brake shops changing to high-rise apartment buildings and trendy restaurants the closer he got to downtown. Odin hadn’t been to Madison since he was in high school, when he’d ridden a bus down to watch the girls’ basketball team in the state tournament. He’d been deep in unrequited love with a redheaded forward who killed him slowly by wearing short skirts and giving him the occasional hallway smile while changing classes.
Odin had to double-check the house number when he pulled up to the address written on the residency paperwork he’d gotten in the mail. The house was massive, and on a lake lot, no less. He noted with approval that there was a sculpture garden. Odin could only imagine what his rusty truck looked like parked in the mansion’s circular driveway, with his heap of tools and metal in the back. He grabbed his duffel bag from the seat beside him, went up the walk to the entrance, and rang the bell.
He wasn’t sure whom he expected to answer. Maybe a librarian type with pencils stuck in her hair. Or a wizened hermit, perhaps. He’d never set foot anywhere near an artists’ colony before. But the woman who came to the door looked normal—no, better than normal. She was cute. Maybe ten years his senior. She had one of those circular scarves wrapped around her neck, but in between some pieces of fringe he caught a glimpse of soft cleavage escaping from her blouse. He flicked his eyes away. Fucking lizard brain, he told himself. Be professional.
“You must be Odin,” the woman said. “I got your email. I’m Nell, the director.”
“Sorry it took me so long to get in touch,” he said.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “We’re glad you’re here.”
Odin nodded toward his truck. “Where do you want me to put everything? I’ve got a bunch of equipment out in my truck.”
“Why don’t you pull it into the garage for now? I’ll open up the door for you. Once you’ve had a chance to look around and see where you want to work, we can find all your things a more permanent place. Unless, of course, you were planning on working tonight.”
Odin laughed. “Nah. I mean, I have a lot of goals for while I’m here, but I think I can spare one night.”
“Great,” Nell said. “Then come on in and meet the other artists.”
“Sure,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
He saw Nell shiver as a gust of wind kicked up a dusting of snow from the porch. She pulled her scarf more tightly around her neck. “I’ll open the garage door for you. Feel free to let yourself back into the house. The rest of us are in the kitchen.”
Odin thanked her and went out to pull the truck around. Despite the enormity of the house, the garage was tiny, just one stall—a testament to the long-ago days when a car was a rare luxury. Maybe the building even housed a horse and carriage at one point. Either way, the garage had been meticulously maintained and looked far too fancy for the likes of Old Gray. Brass lamps blinked on either side of the wooden garage door, which went up as he approached.
After he’d secured his stuff in the garage, Odin went into the house and followed the sound of voices to a large kitchen dominated by a massive marble island. Nell sat at the island with two women: one older, one younger. The older woman looked to be in the middle of telling a story. She paused to take a sip from a coffee cup, then looked up and saw Odin. “Our token male is here!” she said.
Odin gave an awkward wave. He didn’t know how to take her comment. Was she trying to be funny or trying to insult him?
“Odin, meet Annie Beck,” Nell said.
He relaxed and smiled. “Seriously?” he said. “I can’t believe it.”
“What I can’t believe is that someone your age—especially a man your age—knows who I am. Usually only grad-school types like this one here recognize my name.” Annie indicated her thumb toward Nell.
“My girlfriend is—er, was—really into your work,” Odin said.
Nell smiled. “Sounds like a smart girl.”
She was. Odin felt his stomach sink as all of his mixed emotions about Sloane and the residency resurfaced.
“This is Paige, our youngest artist,” Nell said. “She’s a senior at the university.”
“Hi,” said the younger girl. She sat slouching on her stool with both hands circled around a beer bottle. She looked as if she’d been working that day. Her fingers were stained black and she had smudges of what looked like ink on the hooded sweatshirt she wore.