After Yanmei and I both made it through the metal detector and were standing inside the building, she turned around and gave me a sweet, gawky, double thumbs-up. I was about to give her at least one proper thumbs-up in return, but a familiar voice coming from the staircase froze my heart.
“Oh, no you don’t,” she said, the tone like bullets being shot in my direction.
I looked up and saw Rae racing down the steps, dwarfed in a long black blazer over a black oblong skirt and heavy black boots. She was heading right for me, seething. There were no snacks in her hand, and her hair was back to what I guessed was its natural color, black and shiny like wet tar. She had a museum staff nametag clipped to her lapel.
“Absolutely not,” she said, her hand reaching toward my chest, halting me. “You’re not going in there.”
Yanmei’s eyes widened and she looked back and forth between Rae and me. Jessie stepped to the side so he could see what was happening.
“Nice to see you too,” I mumbled sarcastically.
“I’m not kidding, Joe. What do you think you’re doing?”
“Waiting my turn like everybody else.”
“You know, I honestly didn’t think you’d be stupid enough to show up here, but since you are, consider yourself banned. No need to make a scene. Just turn around and go back to wherever you came from, yeah?”
Yanmei looked worried. Jessie seemed to have a newfound respect for me. “Dude you’re banned? I talked about my cock and didn’t get banned; what the hell did you do?”
“You can’t keep me from going in, Rae.”
“I can and I will.” She pulled a device from her pocket. It looked like an old flip phone but wasn’t. A museum walkie-talkie, maybe? “I’ll call Security and tell them you’re a threat to the artist, which you are.”
“Please don’t do that.”
I did not want this altercation to happen in public, but I couldn’t step out of the line. I’d been standing for almost four hours already, and if I left I’d lose my place and have to start all over the next day.
“Please,” I said again. “I need to see her.”
Rae laughed with condescension. “Oh, you need to see her? Is that so? That’s nice for you, yeah? And are you really insensitive enough to think that she needs to see you?”
It was a fair and cutting question, one I hadn’t contemplated, and I lost my breath thinking about it.
Jessie said, “Dude are you a Danko stalker or something?”
Rae took her eyes off of me to address Jessie. “Sir, I need you to step back and mind your own business or I’ll have you escorted out too.”
Jessie raised his hands and backed away. “Whoa OK just chill lady.”
“Rae . . .” I sighed.
“No, Joe. Don’t ‘Rae’ me. You weren’t there. You’d conveniently disappeared, yeah? I was there. I saw what she went through. She couldn’t eat. She couldn’t sleep. All she did was draw weird pictures of forest fires and listen to The fucking National. For a while I wasn’t even sure she was going to finish the selfies project. Meanwhile, you were off doing what? Gawking at trees in Wyoming.”
“Montana.”
“Excuse me?”
“I was in Montana, not Wyoming.”
“Whatever. You were gone. Didn’t give a fuck. So I don’t care if you need to see her, she does not need to see you. Got it?”
I tried to tell myself her words were not chipping away at my resolve, but when I said, “I give a fuck, Rae,” my voice sounded feeble.
I thought about screaming October’s name and wondered if she would hear me, if she would recognize my voice, if she would care.
Rae again raised her phone thing. After taking a closer look, I decided it resembled a pager from the nineties.
“I’m giving you ten seconds to turn around and walk out the door,” she said. And then she started counting backwards.
And I almost did it. I almost aborted the mission. But I thought about how Cal believed this was a good idea, and I trusted that. Not to mention that if I left, if I failed to speak to October, Cal would assume I’d chickened out, and I was better than that now. I had to be.
Rae was down to 2.
“Wait.” I was trying to think of the right words, the right tone to sway her. “Listen. The thing is. You’re right. You are.” I put my hand on her hand, the one holding the phone pager thing, and said, “But are you sure?”
She recoiled from my touch, and I felt awkward about having touched her. “Am I sure about what?”
I chose my words carefully and spoke as if I were asking for Rae’s advice, not disputing her. Because despite Rae’s valid disdain for me, I knew she could be reasonable. She cared about October, and I had to trust that her decision would ultimately be based on that.
“Are you sure about what October would want you to do?” I asked. “It’s highly possible you know better than I do what she wants now. But please be honest about it. If you can say with complete certainty that she would want you to kick me out of this line and send me on my way, I’ll go.” My voice was shaky, my mouth dry. I needed water. Most of the people in line had water with them. I was an amateur art aficionado. I cleared my throat and continued. “But if you think there’s even a small chance she might not want you to do that, then you have to let me in, and you know it.”
I could see her weighing my logic alongside her aversion.
Yanmei’s hands were tiny, like October’s, and she was pressing them, palms down, to her chest, one on top of the other like a lowercase “x.” I think she recognized my good intentions and was rooting for me.
Jessie mumbled, “I vote to let the guy in.”
Rae shot him another shut-up-or-die look and then glared at me with scathing hostility. And she mulled over my appeal for so long the line had to move on without me. Jessie walked by and I became number fifty-eight. The two women behind him apologized and did the same. Fifty-nine. Sixty.
Rae’s face was a swarm of bees, buzzing, ready to attack.
“Rae . . .”
She gripped her hips, her elbows pointing out at sharp angles, even through her jacket. Her clothes were so boxy she looked like a child puppet about to break into a dance.
A little guy in a Chicago Cubs jacket walked around me. Sixty-one.
“Rae . . .” I begged one last time.
She exhaled with fury. Then she spun on all points of her feet and stomped back up the stairs in her big black boots, fuming and mumbling to herself.
It wasn’t until she was gone that I heard the music playing in the room, the volume so low it was scarcely perceptible. I hadn’t noticed it amid all the drama, but there it was. The same song, on a loop.
I don’t wanna get over you—
TWENTY-SEVEN.
I squinted at the shattered glass house with Yanmei inside, trying to make out how the experience was going for her. All I could see were blurry, broken up shapes at a table.
I had a hunch that October was going to feel a real connection to Yanmei, and I was right, because when Yanmei’s time was up, October stood and hugged the girl. She hadn’t done that with anyone else all day, and Susan, the woman behind me now—a seventy-one-year-old art-loving grandmother of seven, on her third visit to the exhibit—said she hadn’t seen anything like that the first two times.
Yanmei’s smile was so big when she exited the glass house, I thought it might lift her off the ground. I was hoping she was going to make eye contact with me so I could check in and give her that thumbs-up I’d missed out on earlier, but the security guard at the back door ushered her to the rear of the gallery, where she had the option to exit the museum or to go up the steps into the main lobby; Yanmei headed up the steps.
When I was second in line to enter, I noticed the computer screen to my left, positioned on a bronze base at the end of the queue, framed m
uch like the house itself, only without the broken glass. It displayed instructions pertaining to the performance:
SFMoMA and October Danko, in association with the Thomas Frasier Gallery, welcome you to Sorrow: This is Art. Please follow these directions to insure a pleasant and meaningful experience for all participants:
Be seated immediately upon entering the exhibit.
Once you are seated you may take the artist’s hands. You may speak to her if you wish but are not required to do so.
.
The artist will remain silent throughout the performance.
At no time during the performance are you permitted to use any electronic devices. Photography, video and audio recording are strictly prohibited, and failure to abide by this rule will result in your immediate removal.
It is not mandatory that you participate in the performance for the full five minutes and may leave at any time.
If you chose to remain inside for the duration of your segment, a chime will sound when your time is up.
When you hear the chime, please leave the room swiftly and quietly through the exit.
Thank you for your cooperation.
I broke one of the rules. Before I went in, I opened the voice memo app on my phone and pushed record. I wasn’t trying to be subversive, I just didn’t think I would remember what I said if I didn’t record it, and I wanted to remember.
The daylong wait had felt interminable, but when the guard finally nodded for me to go in, my turn seemed to come too soon. I hesitated at the door. Panicked about what I was going to say. Forgot to breathe. Wiped my sweaty palms on my jeans. Wished I’d brought a flask. Had the urge to bolt.
But I didn’t bolt.
I took one step forward.
And another.
And there she was.
Her eyes were closed when I approached the table. Eli, the Times writer who hadn’t missed a day, had prepared me for this. “Her eyes will be closed when you walk in. She keeps them closed until you take her hands and she gets a feel for you.”
I felt glad for it. It gave me a chance to take her in without seeing the scorn and disappointment I was expecting.
She was wearing a ruffly, dusty rose–colored satin gown, the top half of it a dainty camisole. Her arms were thin and pale like the branches of an aspen in winter, her collarbones prominent and graceful underneath the shoulder ties of the dress. She wore no makeup, no jewelry, no shoes, and her hair was pulled back into a knot, though the layers in front hung like wispy fringe around her face. She looked radiantly tired, the way someone carrying burdens is tired. And she was even lovelier than I remembered.
The inside of the house surprised me. When I think of museums, I think architectural austerity, but that’s not October’s style. The chairs were covered in supple white leather, so plush it looked like whipped cream. The table was polished redwood, and I tried not to attach any meaning to that. There was a thick, shaggy carpet underneath the table, and the subtle tint in the glass walls cast a delicate, rubicund glow over everything.
I sat down slowly, moved to the edge of the seat, and slid my palms underneath October’s hands. I was nervous, though my composure remained intact as I felt her gently grip my fingers.
In a matter of seconds, I heard her breath catch somewhere in her chest. A tiny, cognizant gasp.
She recognized me.
My heart pounded against my chest like a fist against a door while I waited for her to open her eyes, but she kept them closed for so long I worried she wasn’t going to open them at all.
“October,” I said. “Look at me.”
Her face was a blank canvas as she raised her chin and adjusted her posture. Then she took another deep breath and braced herself.
When she finally opened her eyes, a noise escaped my throat. A laugh or a cry, it was hard to tell. I began to sob, but I was smiling too. A stupid, blubbering grin. I couldn’t help it. I was happy to see her.
I pulled myself together as best I could and said, “Hey.”
Her face stayed as neutral as Switzerland, but her eyes were wide and shiny, and a few thick, elegant tears dripped down her cheeks.
I searched her face, trying to figure out if those tears were hers, or echoes of mine, but she was too focused, too committed to her role to reveal her internal world to me. She wasn’t there to give, only to take, to hold, and to release. I felt warmth in her neutrality though. Not the rejection I had expected and deserved, but tenderness, and the wide-open heart I’d always known her to have.
I leaned forward and tried to peer deeper into her. She and I have uncannily similar eyes. The same gray circles around the same redwood-brown irises. Maybe that was part of our connection, I thought. We saw ourselves in each other. Two sides of the same moon. The light and the dark.
I watched her take me in and wondered how I looked to her. I was in gray cords and a green flannel over an old T-shirt. I wished I’d dressed better and gotten a haircut. My nose was running from the crying and I wanted to wipe it on my sleeve, but no way was I going to let go of her hands.
For weeks I’d been imagining what I was going to say, entertaining the inane notion that I would be able to speed-explain the last three years of my life: where I’d been, what I’d been doing, why I’d come back. There was no place for that. The space felt too sacred to be filled up with banal specifics. I wanted to be poetic, not prosaic. Though what I ended up expressing was mostly just a series of apologetic tangents.
“I guess I should start by stating the obvious. I fucked up, and I’m sorry.” I thought of Cal, of what a looming presence he was in my life, of how his ability to forgive me gave me strength, and I got choked up again. “Fucking up is what I do. Or, what I did. Past tense.” October was listening with so much concentration and attention it stunned me and made me tremble. “I’ve spent a lot of my life taking the wrong turns off the right roads. I feel it when it’s happening, and I regret it every time it does.” I desperately needed to wipe my nose, but all I could do was sniffle. “There’s no excuse for what I did to you. I know that. I’m not here to make excuses. I’m here to acknowledge what a coward I was. I’m here to say I’m sorry. If I had more than five minutes, I’d say it a thousand times.” I ran my thumbs over her knuckles, caressed the tops of her hands. “I hope you can find it in your heart to hear these words and accept them as my truth and my sorrow. If I’ve learned anything in the last three years—and I have, I swear—it’s that I’ll never be any greater than the sum of my missed opportunities unless I stop missing them.” I shook my head, struggled to express exactly what I was feeling, and then collapsed into it. “Fuck, October. I tried so hard to let you go. All this time I tried to stop loving you. But it just dawned on me that I don’t want to stop loving you. I just want to stop missing you.” My affection for her overwhelmed me, and it was all I could do not to dive across the table and pull her into my arms. “Every day I think about what I did to you. I live with that every day. I miss you every day. And the worst part? You were my friend, first and foremost, and I hurt you.”
I started shivering, and seconds later I saw goose bumps all over October’s arms.
“I know that in the grand scheme of things, we spent so little time together, this might not mean anything to you anymore, but it means a lot to me. It always has. Even when I didn’t know how to say it. The way you used to look at me. The way you saw me for exactly who I was but never asked me to be anyone else. You believed in me. You changed me. You inspired me. And if I died tomorrow, I’d want you to know that.”
I figured my time was almost up, and I said, “Listen, I can’t not do things anymore. I can’t not try. So I’m going to ask you something I have no right to ask, but when this is all over, when you get home, do you think I could call you? I’m back in Mill Valley for good, and I’d really like to call you. Just to talk. Could we do that? Could we have coffee or go for
a hike or something?”
She didn’t respond. She couldn’t. Or wouldn’t.
“How about this,” I suggested. “Blink once for Yes and twice for No. Yes, I can call you; No, you want me to leave you alone.”
She held her eyes open and didn’t flinch. And then the chime went off.
“OK. I get it.” I nodded. “I understand.”
The security guard looked at me from the doorway.
October let go before I did.
She hadn’t blinked.
I went back the next day. Actually, what happened was I couldn’t sleep, and I drove to the museum at 3:00 a.m., this time with a backpack carrying two breakfast sandwiches from an all-night diner on Lombard, a thermos full of coffee, and drawings of the art project I’d been working on for the past month, the one that came to me in a vision after I dropped Cal off at the airport.
My original concept had been a sculptural, working hourglass filled with as much sand as it would take to flow continuously from the top bulb into the bottom until my life was over. I estimated forty years’ worth of material as a safe bet, the thought being that every day I’d literally be able to see my time running out, and that would be a quotidian impetus for me to stop wasting it.
I ran the idea by an architect I used to work with at Harper & Sons, and while he agreed it would be possible to build such an edifice, he concluded that the amount of sand needed, and the structural engineering it would take to hold the weight of that sand, would necessitate a sculpture the size of a small building. But I wanted something I could look at on my wall or, at the very least, in my backyard.
After further consideration, I reimagined the sculpture as a light installation made up of 14,600 tiny lights—the estimated amount of days I had left. The lights would spell the words “The Clock Is Ticking,” and every day one light would go out until all 14,600 lights had gone out and, most likely, so had I. Hopefully with fewer regrets.
Sorrow Page 29
