And Noah. His love was so big and fierce it was like a dragon, waiting for me.
I could feel the resentment growing in him.
My return visits consisted of Noah and me sleeping together whenever and wherever possible, and seeing the two friends I’d kept in touch with from high school. My dad was the only one who asked me the questions I wanted to answer, who listened with real interest as I described the wonder of the Duomo di Milano’s rooftop, the hundreds of different shades of green in Ireland, that moment when I stood at the very tip of South Africa, one foot in the Indian Ocean, one in the Atlantic, and compared the shades of blue. He was the only one who didn’t ask when I was going to come home, the only one who believed I could succeed out in the world.
New York had its hooks in me, and I believed with all my heart that I would make it.
When you’re a student in that city, all you see around you is what you could become. It is a city of wanting—wanting to live in that neighborhood, have that view, stride through that lobby every day. Wanting to show at this gallery, eat at this restaurant, be a regular at that bar. Wanting to shop at that boutique, wear those clothes, be invited to that person’s parties. Wanting to know all the city’s secrets.
I started bicycling all over the city, and the overriding emotion I felt was a combination of wonder and hunger. When I saw a woman who seemed to have it all, I wanted to be her—the confidence, the look, the way she belonged, the casual grace and comfort she exuded just walking down the street or sitting in a restaurant. Me, I’d almost killed myself gawking at a particularly beautiful building on the Upper East Side, and a cop yelled at me when I attempted to zip through the intersection on a yellow light, which apparently wasn’t done in the Big Apple. Everywhere I went, I wondered, Who are these people? How do they pull it off? How do they make it?
I wanted to weave myself into the fiber of this city. I wanted to paint it, eat it, breathe it, own it. I wanted to be right without even wondering what right was. I wanted to live in a building with character and flair. I wanted to walk into an art exhibition and have people murmur—“Oh, my God, Sadie Frost is here.” I would be that strangest anomaly—a warm, welcoming, super-successful New Yorker who knew everything and shared everything. The parties I would throw! The students I would mentor! The love and admiration of my peers and teachers! I would be celebrated, and I would give back.
Except I wasn’t, and I didn’t.
The thing about going to art school is that you’re surrounded by talent. I might’ve been the best artist in my graduating high school class, but as I hit the end of my sophomore year of college, I started to see that I was . . . average. Skilled. We’d all started off as talented kids. All of us had different strengths. But while I’d been great at the technical aspects of art, now was the time where my professors were using words like fragility, vision, articulation . . . and they weren’t using them on my pieces.
That was okay. I’d learn. I’d change. I could refine my voice and clarify my point of view. My travels had deepened and educated me—didn’t I backpack through Europe with ten bucks in my pocket? Didn’t I sleep under a tree in the Parc Municipal in Luxembourg? I bought breakfast for the old woman who begged for food outside Temple Expiatori del Sagrat Cor in Barcelona and talked to the heroin addicts of Manchester. Surely all those things made me a real artist. I would take it all and express it, beauty and darkness both, hope and despair, rage, loneliness, love . . .
“Sadie,” my professor sighed during my senior year conference, “you have to stop trying to be what you’re not.” She pointed to the angry scribbles of charcoal. “This is what you think art should be.”
I tried not to let my confusion show. Wasn’t that the point?
She tilted her head. “Do you even know what you want to say with your art?”
“Of course I do,” I said. “It’s the melding of rage and darkness with the, um, the scope of architectural beauty and . . . uh, poverty. But hope, too. That things will change. For the better.”
She grimaced.
“How is this worse than Zach’s work?” I asked, because yes, my classmate had also done a series of black charcoal abstracts and gotten a show at Woodward Gallery in fucking SoHo.
My teacher folded her hands. “Zach’s work shows a modernist fusion and battle of urban life and nature. It’s a poem to the fragility and strength of humanity. The minimal quality of movement, the strength of message . . . if you don’t see the difference, Sadie, I’m concerned.”
I cried on the phone that night to Noah. “She’s wrong,” he said. “You’re fantastic, Sadie. You are. You just have to . . . I don’t know. Find your audience.”
“You mean, paint pictures of sunsets and sell them to the summer people?”
“Well, yeah. What’s wrong with that, Special?”
It was the wrong time to use that nickname, beloved though it had always been. I had just been told I was anything but special. “I want more, Noah! I don’t want to be stuck in that stupid town, painting stupid pictures of stupid clouds!”
He answered with silence.
Right. I’d given him that painting of clouds, and he’d just hung it in the little apartment he’d rented over the hardware store. He’d sent me a picture of it there.
“I’m sorry,” I said belatedly.
A few weeks later was the senior art show. Our school sent out invitations to art buyers and critics, gallery owners and collectors. Some students got a big break this way, and I was hopeful, anxious . . . and a little desperate.
Noah came, as well as my parents. “Your stuff is the best here,” he said, ignoring the fact that everyone seemed clustered around Zach the charcoal boy and Aneni, a woman who painted strange animals with miraculous detail.
My work wasn’t the best. I knew it, and so did everyone except Noah. Dad told me he was so proud of me and couldn’t wait to see what was next . . . which, in my funk, I interpreted as “keep trying and maybe you’ll get better someday.” My mother bought one of Zach’s paintings. “Imagine what this will be worth in ten years,” she said, and I wanted to bite her.
I latched on to one woman who owned a gallery in Greenpoint, my voice high and fast as I tried to describe the references to Warhol and my love of Venice in my sculpture, only to find that her gallery had closed last month and she was going back to school to become a physician’s assistant. The art critic from the Village Voice glanced at my display as she moved across the space and didn’t even slow. My heart cracked.
I didn’t sell a single piece, except to my dad.
My parents were staying at a hotel; Noah came back to my dorm room. My mind buzzed and fretted as I swallowed the sharp tears in my throat.
I hadn’t been discovered. All those trips, the thousands of photos I’d taken, the open heart and mind I’d kept for four years had resulted in the Village Voice reviewer walking right past and my father pity-buying the Zach knockoff.
I’d have to keep working. Be more daring. Be different. It would be hard, but wasn’t it better this way? Who cared if you were discovered at a school show, especially at Pace (which had been good enough until this moment but had now completely failed me as an institution).
No. A much better story would be of Sadie Frost who, believe it or not, was told she was unoriginal by her own art professor! I’d be in the same league as J. K. Rowling, who was rejected a zillion times, or Gisele Who Married Tom Brady, once told her nose was too big for modeling. Bill Gates. Oprah. I’d be in great company, goddamnit.
Then Noah got down on one knee.
“I know we’re young,” he said. “But I’ve loved you since I was fifteen years old, Special. Marry me. Come home. I promise we’ll be happy.”
The timing . . . it really sucked.
“Are you kidding me?” I asked, my voice squeaking with disbelief.
His dark eyes lost their light. “No.�
�
“Noah. Honey. Come on. I haven’t accomplished one thing I want to. I can’t marry you! I can’t quit before I even get started!”
He stood up. “I’m not asking you to quit. I just want us to be together. I love you. You love me. Why are we wasting time?”
“Because I have to be here!” I said. “Noah, I’ve never wanted to live in Stoningham. That’s your dream. Mine is something different. You move here, and we’ll see how it goes.”
He wasn’t going to move here. It was loud. Dirty. Crowded. The air smelled bad.
“I have to stay here,” I said. “And you know what? I love it here. This is where I have to be right now. If I leave, I’ll never prove I’m good enough.” My voice broke.
“Sadie. You’re more than good enough.”
“You’re the only one who thinks so, and Noah, I’m sorry, you just don’t know that much about art.”
“I do know about you, though.”
Tears slid down my cheeks. “Then you know I have to stay.”
“I’ve saved money so we can travel, and I’ll build us a house where you can have a studio with the right light—”
“You’re not listening to me. We’re twenty-two, Noah. I’m not getting married this young. And I don’t want to move back to Connecticut. Maybe ever.”
He closed his eyes.
“So let’s just keep going this way,” I said, reaching for his hand. “Long-distance. We’ll figure something out. Weekend lovers. It’s not perfect, but it’s enough.”
“No. It’s not.”
The weight of those words seemed to squeeze all the air from the room. “Are you going to dump me because I have ambition, Noah?” I asked. My throat felt like I’d swallowed a razor blade.
“I’m just saying you can have ambition and work from anywhere in the world. I’m asking you to make a life with me. I thought it’s what we both wanted. You can’t raise a family if one parent doesn’t live in the same state.”
“Okay, it’s way too early to be thinking about raising a family,” I said. “You can work from anywhere, too, Noah. You could get a job here in a heartbeat. There’s a housing boom, in case you didn’t notice.”
“I don’t want to live here. I hate this city.”
“Well, I hate Stoningham.”
“No, you don’t! You just think you have to because it’s small and quiet. It’s not part of the story you made up about how New York would fall over itself when you came to town.”
Oh. His words sliced me right through the heart. They were so big and painful—and true—that I was frozen where I stood.
And then I said, “So you won’t move for me, and I won’t move for you. I guess we’re at an impasse.” I couldn’t bring myself to say, I guess we’re breaking up. Not to the wild boy who loved me. Whose pet name for me was Special. Who lit up my heart in such glorious, vibrant, pulsating color.
“All right, then.” His eyes were shiny. I’d never seen him cry before, and I couldn’t now. I looked away. “I’ll wait for you, Sadie,” he said, his voice rough. “But not forever.”
“Same.” The lump in my throat was strangling me. I still couldn’t meet his eyes, and while I was staring out the window, he left.
At dinner that night, my mother asked, “Why isn’t Noah here?”
“We’re taking a break,” I answered, the words wooden and hard in my mouth. I drained my martini, even though I hated martinis, but it was what Zach had ordered the last time we’d all gone out, and . . . and God, I was so fucking unoriginal.
My dad squeezed my hand. “These things happen,” he said kindly. “Don’t worry, sugarplum.”
“Marriage is an outdated institution,” Mom said. Dad sighed and let go of my hand.
I cried so much that for the next month, there were salt deposits in my eyelashes. It felt like Noah had slammed the door on my pulsing heart. Why did I have to move? Why wouldn’t he even try living here? Why was there no compromise? What was this sexist bullshit?
And then I’d flip. Should I move home? What would happen to me if I did? Would I hate him for cutting my dreams short? How long was I going to try to be an artist in this vicious, competitive city? Was he right? Did I want five black-haired babies? The truth was, I wasn’t sure. I didn’t hate babies, but I didn’t stare at them or fawn over them like some of my friends.
He would wait, he’d said. Apparently in silence, because we didn’t talk to each other for a month.
Not many high school couples stay together, I rationalized. Not many twenty-two-year-old men really know what they want. Sure, I could marry Noah, and within a decade, we’d be stale and old and bitter, scratching to make ends meet in a town that catered to the wealthy. Our kids would grow up in the weighted gloom the way I had, tiptoeing around their parents’ disappointment in each other. We’d inevitably divorce, and those five kids and I would resent him. Or worse, they’d love him better. Who wouldn’t?
I’d picture his face, his wild beauty and curly hair, the rare smile with the power of the sun, and I’d cry again.
But I had to try. I’d always only wanted to be a painter, and I knew I had to give it my best shot. I had just graduated. It was too early to call myself a failure.
With a little help from my dad, I was able to rent a shared apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, the only part of Manhattan that had resisted gentrification. It was a grubby, stuffy place with two roommates, not counting the cockroaches. Mala never left the apartment and barely spoke, just sat with her face practically touching her phone, thumbs twitching away. (I had no idea how she paid her bills, if she worked, if she had friends or family . . . She never offered anything.) Sarah was a violinist and only came home with her friends to cook giant vegan meals and leave all their dirty dishes in the tiny kitchen for days at a time.
Two months after my graduation, there was a knock on the door. I opened it to see Noah standing there with a duffel bag. I burst into tears and wrapped myself around him, sobbing with relief and love.
“I’ll try it. Okay? I’ll try.” His eyes were shiny again, and we fell into bed without another word.
He got a job in construction—not finish construction, which was what he did back home—trim work and custom cabinets and, occasionally, a piece of furniture. Here, he worked with a company that built skyscrapers—Juliet had connections and got him the job. So every day, he went to work with metal and cement, thirty or more stories above the ground.
Noah was afraid of heights. I remembered the summer I got him to jump off a rock into the Sound, and how he’d been shaking, how it took half an hour of my talking him into it, and when he did and we surfaced in the briny water, he’d kissed me, and I pushed his wet curls off his face and loved him so, so much. I knew he was doing this for me, just as he had jumped for me, too.
I worked, too, waitressing at a sleek restaurant in Tribeca (hoping my proximity to the heart of the art world would grant me a lucky break). I made a website featuring my artwork, dropping in the fact that I was (probably) a distant relative of Robert Frost . . . anything that would help. It didn’t. During the days, I painted in the tiny living room, my easel on the couch because there wasn’t enough floor space for me, the canvas, my paints and brushes, and Mala, staring at her phone, cackling occasionally.
Noah and I didn’t have a lot of leisure time together, but at least we were here. When we could, we’d take walks, because that’s the best thing to do in New York. We’d poke around St. Mark’s Place, or get some street meat near Central Park. I told him about the city, the history, the art, the famous people who’d thrived here and loved it here.
He was trying. I could see that. And he was failing. To him, the city was too loud, too hard, too full of chaos. He didn’t sleep well, and dark circles appeared under his eyes. He didn’t smile as much as he used to. He had always been the quiet one in our relationship, but now, he was rivalin
g crazy Mala in silence.
As Heathcliff needed the moors, so my wild boy needed to go home. Stoningham was as lovely a town as there was, but I knew it wasn’t the pretty streets and green that Noah loved. It was the birdsong, the tide, the sound of the wind in the marsh grass, the way a storm would roll up the coast and light up the horizon with lightning. The deep woods with their three-hundred-year-old oaks and maples, the farmland and stone walls that wandered through forest and field, marking out the history of the land. He missed working with wood; his job was now pouring cement. He missed his parents and knowing everyone he ran into.
One night, I woke up and looked at him. He was asleep, his lashes like a fanned sable brush on his cheeks, the scruffy beard that never seemed to fill out. He’d lost a little weight, and he didn’t have it to lose. With his arm over his head, his ribs seemed too sharp.
My city was hurting him.
In the morning, I made him breakfast as Mala stood near the window with her goddamn phone. “Mala, could you give us a minute?” I asked. She shot me a dark look and stomped to her room.
“I’ve been thinking,” I said to Noah, setting his eggs and toast down in front of him. “I think you should move back, honey. I know you hate it here.”
He took a deep breath, the relief clear on his face. “Will you come, too?”
“No. I have to stay, and you have to leave.”
“Are you breaking up with me?”
“No. I just can’t stand seeing you so unhappy.” My eyes filled. “I love you, after all.”
He looked at his plate. “I love you, too. I want a life with you, with kids and everything, but I can’t wait forever.”
“Fair enough.” Was it, though? Was it fair to ask someone to give up trying to get what they’d always, always wanted?
It was a wretched goodbye. I cried. A lot. My tiny bed seemed huge without him. And yet . . . and yet it was easier, too, without him looking like a beaten dog, without him silently judging my paintings, knowing he thought I should be drawing puffy clouds or dogs romping on the beach, rather than trying to stretch and grow. I missed him. I was glad he was gone. I loved being here, doing what I was. I hated being without him.
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