Sorrow

by Tiffanie DeBartolo

  October was still studying me. “Rae said you used to work in construction?”

  “I did. For years.”

  “On a scale from 1 to 10, how tech savvy are you?”

  “About an 8,” I said. I was probably closer to a 5, but, like I’d told Rae, I’m a quick learner.

  October looked at Rae and nodded, and Rae said, “All right, then. How soon can you start?”

  I figured I had to give FarmHouse some notice and said, “Two weeks?”

  It was a Thursday. October’s eyes widened and she said, “Monday would be better.”

  I nodded. I wanted the job. Or, more specifically, I wanted the apartment. I still didn’t know what the job was. “I can probably make that work.”

  The three of us stood inside a lingering silence that was awkward for me and ostensibly for Rae, who was picking bits of almond skin from her teeth. But October seemed relaxed and content, her eyes moving back and forth across my face as if it were a page in a book she was reading.

  “If you need a place to live, it makes sense to live on the property. My days start early.”

  Rae said, “Maybe wait and see if you like the job before you decide.”

  “No,” I said quickly. The apartment was the main reason I’d come. I already had my heart set on living in it. “I’ll take it.”

  “Great,” October said. “Follow me.”

  I went with her to the back of the studio, to a tiny office with a desk, a computer, and an old futon. She picked up a bowl of keys, pilfered through them, found a keychain shaped like the Golden Gate Bridge, and gave it to me. “The blue key unlocks your apartment. The white one is to this building.” She grabbed a Post-it note, wrote a series of numbers down on it, and handed that to me too.

  I looked at it, chuckled, and said, “My birthday.”

  She looked taken aback. “That’s the gate code.”

  I laughed and said, “Your gate code is my birthday.” I gave the Post-it note back to her. “I probably don’t need that.”

  “No, I guess you don’t.”

  She walked me to the front door of the studio and told Rae to show me the apartment, discuss the salary with me, and, if everything was acceptable, have me fill out some paperwork.

  “You can start moving in over the weekend. We’ll hit the ground running on Monday.”

  As I followed Rae across the driveway, I glanced back toward the studio. October was standing in the doorway, leaning against the jamb with her arms crossed and her giant, mastodon dog beside her. They were both watching me.

  FOUR.

  My landlord said if I moved out on such short notice I would lose my deposit, but I left anyway. I was convinced this job was a sign of good things to come. A fresh start. I was going to show up on day one as a new and improved Joe Harper. Leaving my miserable years in Berkeley behind. Leaving the Mill Valley of my past behind. The Mill Valley of Bob, Sam, and even Cal behind.

  Leaving my sorrow behind.

  I didn’t have much to pack—just clothes, books, some kitchen paraphernalia, a couple of lamps, my laptop, and my guitar.

  I threw it all in my truck and headed back to Casa Diez on Saturday morning.

  The studio was dark when I got there, and I went to the main house and knocked, figuring I should let October know I’d arrived. The furry dinosaur greeted me first, rushing out through a linebacker-size dog door on the east side of the house.

  “Hey there, Diego.” He walked underneath my hand and leaned into me, and I scratched his back without having to reach for it.

  October opened the door seconds later, holding a pair of dirty sneakers.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey,” she said back at me, a broad, thousand-watt smile immediately lighting up her face.

  Only then did it hit me how pretty she was. I don’t know why it hadn’t been more obvious at our first meeting. Sometimes I can’t see things when they’re right in front of my face. But I saw it then. I saw how her eyes were like the forest that surrounded her house: mysterious but fresh, bright, and alive. And I saw how all of her features seemed kaleidoscopic: colorful and constantly changing, depending on the angles, the reflections, and the light.

  However, it feels important to say this: It wasn’t anything as superficial as the way October looked that eventually drew me to her. It was something else. Something deeper. An energy. A spirit. Her presence warmed my heart and terrified me at the same time.

  She sat down right where she stood in the middle of the doorway and put on her shoes.

  “We’re about to head out for a hike.” She nodded toward the dog. “He won’t let me do anything unless I tire him out first. Walk with us. Then you can unpack.”

  We followed the path that wound around the back of the house, through deer ferns, sorrel, and ivy, and up a short hill to the property line, where a chain-link fence with a gate entangled in wild blackberry bushes opened onto the fire road that led to the top of the mountain. It was a trail that Bob, Sam, and I had spent a lot of time on when I was a kid and, later, Cal and I as teenagers. I knew it as well as I knew the five-string triad arpeggios I used to practice with my eyes closed.

  Diego ran up ahead, zooming in circles around a big tree until we reached him. I knew that tree too. Bob and I had named it together. He’d claimed it was the tallest coast live oak on that part of the trail, and we’d called it Beanstalk, then, later, Bean for short.

  After the quick sprint the dog calmed down, ambled back over to us, and walked beside me, as if he thought it was his job to usher us up the trail.

  We walked for maybe a quarter of a mile in silence. Finally October said, “Did Rae warn you not to talk too much, or are you just generally quiet?”

  “Both.”

  She chuckled. “Don’t let Rae scare you. She the oldest of five kids. Thinks she has to mother everyone. Including me.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that except “OK.”

  We were quiet again. Then October said, “Come on. Tell me about yourself. Besides your birthday, since I already know that.”

  I made it a point not to tell people the pitiful details of my life, and I didn’t think I’d be working there longer than the project would last, so making shit up didn’t seem to matter. When I’d moved to Berkeley as a college freshman, I’d gotten into the asinine habit of telling people the tale of Bob’s childhood as my own, and I’d been doing it ever since.

  “I grew up in Spokane. Moved here to go to Berkeley. How about you? Where are you from?”

  “Rochester. New York, not Minnesota.”

  That surprised me. She seemed too interesting to be from Rochester. “Did you study art there?”

  She shook her head. “RISD.”

  “How did you end up out here?”

  “Got recruited to do graphic design for a tech company in the city.”

  “Which one?”

  “Ribble.”

  “Wow. What did you do for them?”

  She looked down and kicked at some rocks. “You know the little logo cartoons on the search engine homepage?”

  “The Ribble scribbles?”

  She squinted up her face and gave me a quick nod.

  “You used to make those?”

  She stopped walking, turned her head slightly in my direction, gave me a sharp side-eye, and whispered, “I still make those.”

  “Really?” I was genuinely impressed. “That’s cool.”

  She nudged me playfully with her elbow, and I remember thinking the gesture felt weirdly intimate, like something you’d do with an old friend, not a virtual stranger.

  “It is not cool. It’s mortifyingly corporate. But it pays the bills, if you know what I mean.”

  I nodded. I’d heard even the interns made six figures at Ribble. “I liked the one you did for Bob Dylan’s birthday
last year, the one where his face was a cake, with the animated harmonica.”

  She halted, wide-eyed. “You remember that?”

  “Yeah. And the April Fool’s Day one with the spinning kangaroo. That was great.”

  She threw her head back and laughed so hard she had to wipe tears from her eyes.

  “What?” I mumbled.

  She nudged me again, this time a playful push with her palm. “That wasn’t a kangaroo! It was Diego!”

  “Ah. Shit.” I laughed too, our eyes met, and right away I felt like I was doing something wrong. To change the subject, I asked her how long she’d been living in Mill Valley.

  “About three years. I lived in the city first, but I didn’t like it. Sensory overload. I moved over here as soon as I could afford it.”

  We continued hiking uphill, and October spoke mostly to the dog, telling him what a good boy he was, pointing out birds and squirrels for him to see, stopping to give him water every so often. She talked to him like he was a child, and he looked at her with rapt attention anytime she said his name or raised the pitch of her voice.

  I remember thinking that perhaps she was testing me, to see if I could be unobtrusive, and I’d been trying not to speak too much unless she spoke to me. But I also didn’t want her to think I wasn’t interested in her work; eventually I got up the nerve to ask her what kind of artist she was.

  She bent down to tie her shoelace, looked up at me and, with a chuckle, said, “You took this job without knowing that?”

  I shrugged, gestured toward the mountain. “I like redwoods.”

  She smiled. “It’s funny; when people ask me what I do for a living and I say, ‘I’m an artist,’ their next question is almost always ‘What kind?’ I suppose they imagine I’m a painter, sculptor, photographer, you know, one specific thing. And I work in all of those media. But if it were up to me, it would be enough to say, ‘I’m an Artist of Life.’” She covered her face with her hands for a moment, as if anticipating a scoff. “I know that might seem vague or, worse, pretentious, but it’s honestly the closest I can get to explaining my career.”

  She turned toward me and met my eyes, focused and serious, her hands moving enthusiastically as she spoke, as if my question had opened something up in her. She’d gone from awkwardly quiet to aflame in an instant. “At the core of my work is the belief that everything we do and every moment we live can be a work of art. Every experience can be a thing of beauty or love, sorrow or pain. We choose. We impart the moments with meaning. That’s what art is to me. Imparting objects, sounds, creations and experiences with meaning. Making even the most mundane into something significant and extraordinary.”

  “I like that.” Her words rang true inside of me. I didn’t know how to articulate the idea like she did, or how to live it, for that matter, but I understood it, and I believed in it.

  “Good. Because it’s crucial to your role here that you do.” She paused to gather the rest of her thoughts. It seemed important to her that I grasp what she was saying. “That’s how I approach my work, and it’s how I approach my existence. I feel things, and then I try to inspire other people to feel things. I want to connect my humanity to the humanity of others, and somehow I’ve been lucky enough to make this desire my life’s work.” We resumed walking, and October continued glancing at me as she spoke. “As if you can’t tell, I like talking about art.” Someone had discarded a plastic bottle on the trail; October picked it up and put it in the little backpack she wore to hold Diego’s water. “But, to answer your question, society likes labels and our culture likes to put people in boxes, and because I’m mostly known for my performance pieces, Ribble and Google and Wikipedia and all the other cyber boxes tend to label me a performance artist. But, like I said, if it were up to me, it would be enough to simply say, ‘I am an Artist of Life.’”

  I didn’t say anything in response to that, and she mistook my silence for something it wasn’t.

  “Told you it was going to sound pretentious.”

  “No,” I said, too seriously. “I like the idea that a person can go about their daily life and be an artist simply by being. But that seems like the most difficult kind of artist to be. What do you think the key is? To making that work, I mean?”

  She shrugged, a lopsided, contemplative look on her face. “I think that’s a question I’ll be trying to answer for the rest of my life. I certainly haven’t figured it out yet. But my hunch is that just being here is a good start.” She locked her eyes on mine, and again it felt too intimate. “Being present, I mean. Like we are now. I’m looking at you, you’re looking at me. I’m listening to you, you’re listening to me. We’re engaged. Connected.”

  “This is art?” I asked.

  She nodded, and her face shone. “This is art.”

  As we turned and headed back to her house, completely out of the blue she said, “Have you ever done mushrooms? You know, the magic kind?”

  I laughed. “Why? Are you planning on drug-testing me?”

  She laughed too. “Inquiring for research purposes.”

  “Yeah. Sure. A couple times in college.”

  She looked at me again. Diego looked at me too, with so much interest and clarity I contemplated the possibility that he was a person in a dog suit.

  “What’s it like?”

  I wasn’t sure I could describe doing mushrooms in a way that an artist would appreciate, but I said, “It’s fun if you’re in the right mood, I guess. However, things can get weird pretty quickly if you’re not.”

  “I read an article this morning about psychedelic drugs and their effect on drawing. I want to do an experiment where I pick a subject and draw it naturally, and then draw the exact same thing after eating mushrooms, to see how differently they turn out.”

  There was a mischievous grin on her face that made me wonder how old she was. She could’ve been twenty-three or forty-five. It was impossible to tell.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not into drugs or anything,” she assured me. “It’s just that lately I’ve been feeling like I’m holding myself back. I’m stuck. I need to get out of my comfort zone, in the hopes that it will open me up and make me a better artist.”

  I nodded, wishing I could be more like her. Hoping I could become more like her through the osmosis of being around her. “How old are you?” I said, “if you don’t mind me asking.”

  “Thirty-four.”

  She was only two years older than I, but she seemed so much farther ahead. “One of my old coworkers sells mushrooms,” I told her. “He and I meet up for beers every so often. I could ask him for some next time I see him. If you want.”

  A little bashfully, she said, “If it’s not too much trouble.”

  I told her it wasn’t, and we were quiet again.

  Once we got back to her property, she mentioned she was going out of town to visit her boyfriend, who was working in Denver. “I’ll be back late Sunday night. Get yourself settled this weekend, and I’ll see you Monday morning.”

  As I was walking toward my new apartment, she said, “Hey, Joe.”

  I turned around.

  “I’m really looking forward to working with you.”

  FIVE.

  On paper, I was the project coordinator and studio assistant at Casa Diez, but the majority of my day was spent working on the specific Living Exhibit that October was focused on during that period.

  October dubs her long-term performance pieces Living Exhibits because that’s exactly what they are—life experiences she turns into performance art. The one she was working on when I started there was a film project called 365 Selfies. My tasks included but were not limited to: set designer, camera and lighting crew, website and mailing list admin, general contractor, handyman, and occasional creative consultant.

  365 Selfies was intended to be a statement on the “selfie” culture that was all the rage on
social networks and in social lives at the time. However, as a contrast to the somewhat narcissistic nature of the trend, 365 Selfies would only be available on a hidden website. October didn’t intend to publicize the page, and when she finally announced the project, she didn’t include a web address. Her fans and the art world found it eventually, though it took months, and I’m still not sure how it was discovered. However, I suspect it had something to do with the fact that the project was sponsored by Phil Pearlman, the art aficionado, entrepreneur, and founder of Ribble. Mr. P. was worth a couple billion dollars and chose to spend a miniscule chunk of his vast wealth supporting art and artists.

  October told me she’d worked at Ribble for over a year before Phil knew she was anything other than one of his designers. But she’d invited him to her first Living Exhibit, VooDo, and he was so taken by her that he pledged to fund and promote her Living Exhibits for as long as she continued designing his Ribble scribbles.

  “Basically, I’m a Ribble scribble whore,” she sighed.

  For VooDo, October had rented a small gallery in the Tenderloin. She wrapped her body in thick felt, crudely stitched it together at the beginning of the performance, and then stood on a pedestal while gallery visitors were invited to stab her arms and legs with extra-long, colored-ball pins she’d made especially for the exhibit.

  “A human voodoo doll,” she explained, as if that needed explaining.

  The video footage she showed me was hard to watch. But what shocked me more than the performance itself was the way people reacted to it. I had assumed the visitors would be gentle with the pins or refrain from using them at all. Quite the reverse, they were overly aggressive, laughing and looking at one another as they stabbed October’s limbs. She was a bloody mess by the end, and still has a few pinprick scars on her arms to show for it.

  “Most people didn’t understand,” she said. “The audience seemed to think it was a game, some kind of S&M nonsense. They missed the point.”

  I didn’t miss the point. As someone who has tried myriad ways to diminish and avert his own pain, I felt like I understood on an intuitive level what October had been attempting to do. It seemed similar to the reason I had liked working in construction. The physical struggle distracted from the emotional one.