Drawn to You

by Jerry Cole

EVERETT: I have a feeling he isn’t in the world right now.

  INTERVIEWER: Suicide? What are your thoughts?

  EVERETT: I can’t go into it. I can only say that my artistic career has no allegiance to my father. That’s it. Thank you.

  That was the end of the interview. Max balked at it, marveling at how “old” his daughter seemed, speaking about both her hatred of her father, along with her youthful lust for this man, this Mario. She alluded to loving him, but she said nothing about him loving her back. Max’s heart felt squeezed at this, wondering if there had been something? Had Mario returned any sort of…

  It was useless to wonder. Wasn’t Max meant to be some artistic, laissez-faire soul? When he’d been in his twenties, he’d hardly batted an eye at any sort of story regarding sexuality or swapping partners or threesomes or orgies. It had been par for the course for many of his friends Although, of course, not for him, as he’d by then married and had Christine.

  Even still, he supposed it was different when it came down to your children. You became just as crumpled and aged as your own parents had been, when you assumed they, themselves, were endlessly lame…

  The bespectacled woman appeared just below him, her claw-like hand outstretched. Max slid the pamphlet back onto her palm, giving her a heavy sigh.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “Shouldn’t you be celebrating Christmas?” she asked him.

  Max had forgotten, for a moment, what day it was. He shrugged. “What if I’m Jewish?”

  “You’re not Jewish,” the woman said, as if she could smell it on him.

  “What if I’m atheist,” he asked, tilting his head.

  “I don’t know what you are. But you believe in something,” the woman said. With a tart voice, she continued, “Call someone who loves you. Or else you’ll regret it. Mark my words.”

  She was gone after that. Max heard her feet click down the hallways, echoing out across the MOMA floor. Max again took up stance in front of the painting, pressing his palms against his chest. He couldn’t get over the drama of it. Each time he opened his eyes after a blink, he felt the view like a crashing wave. His daughter had made this. His daughter had crafted this.

  And now, she was somewhere in Paris. He tried to imagine it. Was she holed up in some square somewhere, painting the days away? No, of course not. The article had mentioned that she’d made two billion off of the painting. Two billion! Did she possibly know how to handle that amount of money? Probably not. Max had never taught her anything about money, or about taxes…

  Jesus, all the things he’d never told her. And now, she was out in the world, the chaotic, swirling world. It was clear she wasn’t going to return to school. This made his heart burn with panic. What would she do? Spend her money on drugs? Fall into whatever dark black wild party scene existed in Paris?

  Max fumbled for his cell phone. He hadn’t turned it on in several weeks, but it had remained half-charged and ready for him. He rushed for the exit, ambling into the darkness outside the MOMA. He paced the sidewalk outside of Central Park, staring at his phone as it flashed its little song and dance and turned back on.

  Immediately, he dialed Amanda.

  The phone rang several times. Actually, seven times — which was far more than several, in Max’s mind. He waited, unconsciously biting at the side of his mouth. He tasted blood. Finally, Amanda answered, showing her half-drunken Christmas mood.

  “Hello?”

  “Amanda,” Max huffed. He hadn’t realized how close to tears he was.

  “Well! Here you are,” she said, chuckling. Max imagined that if she’d been sober, she would have blared angry words at him. Perhaps he’d called at precisely the right time. “Merry Christmas, darling. Where in this blue world are you?”

  “I’m at the MOMA,” he told her, his voice raspy.

  “Ah. I suppose you’ve just seen…” Amanda began.

  “How is she?” Max demanded.

  In the background, Max could hear the chaos of whatever Christmas party Amanda was holding. He tried to make out the voices, recognize past friends who’d once known him and loved him. How quickly it all rushed away from you.

  “Just a minute, Maxy. I just want to get into a different room. So loud out here!” Amanda said.

  “How many people do you have over there?” Max asked, genuinely curious. It was difficult to imagine such raucous happiness in the house he’d left behind. “It sounds nice.”

  “Oh, it’s been such a splendid day,” Amanda sighed. “I met so many people during my exhibition in October. I have to say, I really am devastated that you missed that. I couldn’t get ahold of you. Anyway, it was an incredible success. People wrote it was my best. Although, I have to say, I can’t hold a candle to our daughter, now. Two billion on her first piece! Can you imagine!”

  “Is she all right?” Max demanded. “I… I haven’t heard anything from her. I’m worried sick.”

  “Well, darling. You did leave Venice in a kind of panic…”

  “I had to leave.”

  “It was obvious that you had to leave,” Amanda agreed. Her voice grew quieter, as if she were his mother, now, attempting to talk him down from his ledge. There was a long pause between them. “Where have you been?”

  Max sighed, unsure if he wanted to get into the intricacies of the past few months. “She’s in Paris?”

  “Yes,” Amanda said. “She went there immediately after the fire. I asked her why. She didn’t say. Just that she needed to get out of Venice, but she didn’t want to come home. Trust me, I asked her. Over and over again I asked her.”

  At this, Max heard a slight twinge in Amanda’s voice. It was clear that Amanda hadn’t taken this easily, either. The fact that Max had just disappeared like that, slicing their family into such succinct pieces, must have destroyed Amanda even more. Regardless of how far Amanda had moved forward; regardless of her new loves and her new parties and her new exhibitions, she’d spent the previous twenty years with Max as her partner. He had nulled and voided that, ripping himself away.

  It wasn’t fair.

  Max felt an icy tear shoot down his cheek. He didn’t bother to swipe it away. Instead, it froze at the tip-top of his beard, becoming a jewel beneath his eye.

  “That man she painted…” Max began, hating the quivering sound of his voice. “That man. Mario. Her teacher…”

  “She loved him,” Amanda murmured.

  “Yes. However, more than that… I was having a relationship with him,” Max continued, shoving through the boundary between truth and lie. “I don’t know what happened. I don’t know why Mario told her the truth, but it’s put a dagger between Christine and me. One I’m unsure I’ll ever be able to resolve. For that, I’m wretchedly sorry, Amanda. When it all began, I didn’t fully know what Mario meant to Christine…”

  Amanda didn’t speak. Max could hear her long, heavy inhales and exhales. He could almost imagine her face at this stage—taking in the relevant information, pressing her lips against one another in a thin line. It was the look she had so frequently gave him in the midst of any important conversation.

  “I loved him, Amanda. It was the first time I had fully allowed myself to be…well… Whatever it is I am,” Max continued, “and it all blew up in my face.”

  The silence hung heavily between them. Max could feel every square mile between New York and Chicago, could feel the counties like a quilt patchwork, plotting their distance away. He half-yearned to hang up the phone and exist in the silence, return to his solace in northern New York.

  Finally, Amanda asked him, “Do you regret it?”

  Max hadn’t verbalized this question to himself yet. Without a pause, he murmured, “No. Not at all.”

  “Then what are you going to do next?” Amanda asked.

  Max half-suspected she was crying. This was the sort of conversation they’d never allowed one another to have. Perhaps the lies had grown too heavy between them. Now, with their daughter far away — a billionaire ar
tist — they had nothing to lose. They didn’t have to pretend any longer.

  “Honestly? I have no earthly idea,” Max offered. “Christine has completely rejected me. She’s told everyone of that rejection. It’s the sort of thing she can’t take back, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t think—“

  “Please. I don’t need your pity,” Max said, hating, a bit, how pitiful he, indeed, sounded. “The man I love is more or less dead to me, now. Or I to him. He left me, Amanda. The very way I left you. Oh Amanda, I can’t possibly…”

  “Please. Too much has happened,” Amanda murmured. “You’re going to make yourself sick.”

  In the background, someone called Amanda’s name and then guffawed, showing the immense laughter and love and chaos, swirling in his once-home. Again, Max’s stomach felt squeezed, reminding him of all he’d left behind.

  “I love you, Amanda. I love you and I love Christine. I love the man I once was, maybe. I can’t possibly do anything with that love, now. I’m just. I’m glad you picked up the phone. As long as you know she’s all right.”

  “We talk frequently, Max,” Amanda said. “Christine tells me she’s doing just fine. Perhaps we did all we could do, as parents. We gave her what she needed to survive whatever horrors we gave her. Maybe that’s all parents ever can do.”

  Max and Amanda hung up. An immense gust of winter wind thrust itself against his cheeks, making him close his eyes tight. The only image lurking behind his closed eyes was one of his daughter as a young girl, peering up at him, asking him whether there were ghosts in her closet, whether he would check. “There isn’t anything there,” he had murmured. “Go back to sleep. Everything will be all right.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Mario

  After Max burned his building in Venice, Mario darted back to the center of the city, anxious and sweating, feeling as though he’d been the seed for the great man’s demise. He arrived at the scene of the fire, kicking at the crumpled bits of wood and concrete and brick, all singed black. Just across the brick pile, a few construction workers and garbage collectors arrived, beginning to stuff the rubble into various plastic containers, seemingly to dispose of them. They give Mario subtle waves, but Mario didn’t recognize them as people he’d ever known throughout his life. He hunched his shoulders and darted away, heading back to his father’s school.

  Once at the school, he found a few straggler students, sliding their pencils and paintbrushes across sad canvases, their brows furrowed. He felt it was such a foolish thing, suddenly; teaching these young children, who hadn’t a clue about the weight of the world, how to draw and paint.

  “Class is dismissed for the day,” he huffed from the corner, his arms latched tight over his chest.

  One of them lurched his head up, seemingly incredulous that Mario was there in the first place. “Mario, where have you been?” he mumbled, dropping his pencil. “We haven’t seen you in…”

  “Get OUT!” Mario said, pointing toward the door. “Take your idiotic drawings with you.”

  The students looked as though they’d been punched. They took uneven steps toward the garage door, ambling toward the canal. Their canvases were stuffed along their sides, latched in place by their thin, wonky arms.

  “But we’ll see you tomorrow, yeah, Mario?” one asked. “Same time?”

  At this, Mario sprang up to his full height, gripped the top of the garage door, and slammed it to the ground. Dust was cast into the now-dark room. He huffed and then coughed, trying to clear his lungs. The dust built up a layer over everything. Mario had never felt so horribly claustrophobic. In a span of perhaps ten seconds, he made the abrupt decision to close the school for good, to send the students back home where they belonged. He couldn’t possibly push himself to teach another lesson, to say the words, “Soften your line, Brent!” or “That shading is quite good, Mary!” The words would be lies, and he was entirely tired of the lie. Wasn’t that what had gotten him there in the first place?

  He sent a mass email to the students. The email was unclear gibberish, showing his incapacitated mental state. It informed them he would tell all of their universities that they’d completed their work, that they’d gotten top grades. “You will receive the credit you thought you would get. And you can remain in Venice as long as you planned. Just don’t expect to see me again. I wish you the best of luck in all your endeavors, and urge you to do some true soul-searching regarding your artistic career. Is this truly what you want? Do you really want to put your emotions and feelings above all things, including love and happiness and family? Ask that question and then ask it again. And know that I will not help you to answer it.”

  Mario returned to his boat after sending the email. He deleted every sort of internet access possible, locked his boat near his friend’s on the other island, and then booked a bus to Rome. The bus clunked back and forth, casting his head against the window as they rode through the dark. He yearned for every bruise. Wanted his body to spin with pain. When he finally crumpled off the bus in central Rome, he was smelly and aching with hunger. He blinked up at the wide streets, feeling the October sun blast across his cheeks. Somehow, it seemed he’d entered into a far different reality, one that cared very little for the bullshit he’d just churned himself through.

  Mario paid for a teensy room in the trendy Trastevere district, pushing loads of euros into the landlord’s hand and demanding that he “not be bothered.” The little room had a twin-sized mattress in the corner, along with a thin mirror alongside the kitchen sink. He blinked at himself without any real recognition.

  What on earth would he do now?

  The days strung out before him, after that. He told himself to do as they said — to take each one as it came. He awoke in the morning and did twenty-five pushups, then one hundred jumping jacks. The adrenaline that surged through him made him feel a little bit younger, a little less decrepit. And with that bit of energy, he forced himself out onto the Roman streets, ready for a light lunch or a long walk that stretched out his gut and legs.

  He hardly noticed November. It passed by, becoming a bit foggier, a bit colder, but nothing that adjusted his schedule much. Each time his brain turned to memories of Max. The thought of the smell of him occasionally forced Mario to stop in his tracks, mid-stroll; he would scrunch his face up with the panic of it, knowing he could never have it back. He tried his best to shove it away. He would spend hours at cafes, reading philosophical texts, struggling through the complex thought structures and trying, trying to build new rooms in his head, so that he didn’t have to live in the other ones any longer.

  For whatever reason, he managed to avoid most forms of communication, most newspapers, most world announcements for over two months.

  Just after Christmas, he appeared at his normal cafe and rapped his knuckles atop the counter and ordered an espresso, as he’d done for the previous two months. He even allowed himself a brief bit of banter with Leonardo, the man who’d owned the cafe for the previous forty years and hadn’t raised his prices much more than a euro since, despite rising rates for tourists.

  As he sipped his espresso, Leonardo fumbled about near him, flipping a newspaper. His eyes searched Mario’s, then dropped to the ground. He suddenly reminded Mario of a rat, hunting for crumbs. Mario tapped his coffee cup back onto its saucer, tilting his head.

  “Leonardo?” he asked. “Mind telling me what’s gotten into you?”

  “Oh, my dear,” Leonardo said, his eyes twinkling. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Mario arched his brow, a bit incredulous. Throughout their brief time together, he and Leonardo had had very few conversations beyond the basics: “could you pass the sugar” and “it really is raining out there, isn’t it?” Mario couldn’t possibly comprehend what was on Leonardo’s mind. His mustache twitched.

  “I’m afraid I don’t follow, Leonardo,” he said.

  Leonardo looked as though he was flourishing a curtain. He swept the newspaper over the counter, spreading
his fingers wide over the top. He blinked down at it, seemingly pleased with his discovery.

  There, front and center, was Mario’s face.

  It couldn’t have been any other face.

  As Mario peered closer, he noted that, in fact, it was a photograph of a painting. That in the painting, Mario stood tall and strange and regal, looking every bit like the sort of paintings he’d crafted during his earlier artist days, lagging about with rockstar assholes, trying to assure them that their belief that they, themselves, are gods, was inherently correct, all for money. He ripped the paper open, allowing himself to see the full article.

  It was as though someone tore a hole in his stomach.

  How could he possibly have forgotten?

  The painting. Christine’s painting. He remembered it now, clear as day, displayed before him in her Venice apartment, the night he’d told her the truth about her father. About Mario, himself.

  “What the hell is this…” Mario murmured, agitation brimming within him.

  Leonardo snapped his fingers, seemingly bubbling. “It says something about a new artist. You must have known her? She seems entirely beautiful, Mario! There’s a photograph of her on the second page. She says something about you being her teacher? Well, Mario! You didn’t even tell me you were an artist. I had my ideas about you, of course, but this! It’s far and away different than I could have suspected.”

  Mario blinked wildly, trying to read through the article. Trying to make sense of it. According to the journalist, the painting of Mario had sold for two billion (!!!) dollars, and was currently hanging at the MOMA in New York City. Currently, thousands of people viewed it per day and reported being “completely mesmerized” at both the subject matter and the way it was handled. And the title, “VENICE IS BURNING,” clued the public in on the way Christine Everett felt about her father, Max Everett, the “once renowned, now spurned architect.” Of Max Everett, the journalist stated that nobody had heard from him in months, that some had whispered rumors of his apparent suicide after he’d set fire to the building in Venice.