Dark Things I Adore

by Katie Lattari

  “We just can’t stay away, Gus.” I smile, shoving my hands into the pockets of my hoodie.

  “Ah, Juniper—don’t I know it.” Juniper. Juniper. I’d been at Lupine Valley for three days when I was first christened. I’d been told by LV veterans that Gus granted every student a nickname. In the first few days, all he seems to do is study the new faces, trying to sort them out. Name them. Make them part of Lupine Valley’s universe. On that third day, it came out of him: Help Falcon get some more firewood, Juniper. He’d looked right at me, and I felt reborn. He took a picture of me as he spoke it, and that photo is now part of a collage in his office cabin—hundreds of intimate, close-up portraits filled with wonder, honor, good humor, confusion, sometimes annoyance or relief. He caught us all in our newness. Trying on a new skin. The collage, Gus’s pride and joy, extends back years and feels almost painfully private to look at. Like a priest opening up the door to the confessional booth.

  To come back to Juniper is to feel reborn once again. Jordana is far away now. Jordana lives out there, beyond the boundaries of the Lupine Valley Arts Collective. Beyond King City, Maine. She exists in a modest, dysfunctional home in Pittston, Pennsylvania. Jordana, then deeply into cocaine, exists in the squalid apartment I shared with my ex-girlfriend Chloe while doing undergrad at Hunter College in Manhattan. Jordana, condescending and performative, exists in the overcrowded house I rented with my fellow MFA candidates in Providence, Rhode Island, near the RISD campus. She exists back in Rita’s yuppie loft in Washington, DC, unemployed, sexually ravenous, pathologically into cigarettes. Jordana lives elsewhere, in the mundane, ugly, ordinariness of life.

  Jordana got broken up with this morning.

  But Juniper is finally home.

  May 5, 1988

  In the bright morning, I put on my flip-flops and carry my shower caddy across the pine-needle-padded earth to take a chilly shower and get dressed in the shared bathroom facilities. I feel like a new woman when I emerge. I return my toiletries to Motif and then head toward the mess, where they are serving breakfast alfresco on the collection of picnic tables outside. I’m excited to see who’s already here and just as excited to see the fresh meat.

  Old Gus prowls around the far edges of the outdoor dining spot in a hitching, lumbering way that indicates a bad hip, taking pictures of all the introductions and reunions taking place around the picnic tables. The place is abuzz with chatter. I recognize River, a cook who’s been here at least since I started coming in 1983. He’s a heavyset, bald man in his fifties with a lilting tenor voice; he wraps me in a crushing hug when he sees me and tells me he’s been waiting on my return. I also recognize Lotus, a dark-haired cleaner in her early twenties who was here during my last term. She gives me a warm smile when she sees me, clearing her plate into compost and moving off to start her work for the day.

  I meet a few new-to-me folks as I fuel up with strong campfire coffee, beans, and eggs—Hillock, a stately, gray waif of a woman who advises on weaving and all manner of fiber arts; Toad, a plump metalworking student in his forties; Ash, a seventeen-year-old painter new to LV who asks me all about my MFA experience at RISD before he takes his breakfast back to his cabin. His were the wired eyes of an artist up all night, creating. When he leaves, I start leafing through one of the worn, dog-eared novels left on the table. Books of all sorts and conditions are scattered around the community, shared, passed along, enjoyed. I brought a few this time to add to the mix.

  “Junebug—dude. I didn’t know you were coming back this term!” I know the voice immediately, even as I lift my eyes from my beans and eggs and copy of Miss Lonelyhearts. Moss. And then I see my friend. A smile spreads to my lips even as I try to swallow a mouthful of beans. About a year ago, Moss was a baby-faced, neatly trimmed Midwestern boy. Now he is thin and lean, as if stretched out and solidified, with a dark mop of hair and a wildly growing beard and mustache, espresso black. He must only be scarcely into his twenties now, but a handsome man has replaced the scraggly boy. I feel dazzled at the transformation in the five months since we were last together back in December. The Maine winter has winnowed his body into something utilitarian and refined for solitude and the elements. He walks toward me, barefoot, a bright smile showing through his mane. “So good to see you!”

  I stand and we hug heartily, taking each other in. “Good to see you, too, man,” I reply, wiping my mouth with my hand. It is good to see him. To see everyone. He sits down with me and pours himself some coffee, pours me a refill. “You seem like a man who has been here all winter. Are you on carry-over?”

  “Yes, indeed. On carry-over, my friend. Three sessions in a row. Can you believe it?”

  “Wow—three in a row? That’s a solid year!”

  “At cruising altitude now, Junebug. Why come down to earth?” He winks and spears some sausage links from the communal platter onto his tin dish then scoops some beans. We catch up. He tells me about the projects he’s been working on, some of the students he’s become friends with, the dawn meditation sessions he’s started doing out on the Ledge in the nude. The Ledge, as we call it, is through the woods about a half mile up a steep trail from the Village Commons—a rock face in the side of Little Chickadee that looks out across the wilderness of King City and beyond. It’s a spectacular view.

  “I’m talking to a man who’s got it all figured out, if you ask me,” I say, brushing an ant off the picnic table and onto the soft ground.

  “Ah, well. When the mood strikes me, I’d be tempted to say that’s true. But what about you?”

  “Not as figured out.”

  “Not even when the mood strikes you?” He pushes his chopped, black hair back from his face.

  “Was living in Washington, DC, with my girlfriend. Who was beautiful. Smart. Redheaded.” Moss whistles his approval. “Funny, articulate. And it felt like when she looked at me, she really saw me, you know?” Moss nods as he scoops up some beans with a triangle of toast. “Even kind of rich.” I sigh.

  “A patron of the arts?” He holds up his fork to punctuate his question, asking me if she was a meal ticket.

  “She did buy one of my paintings for a thousand dollars. A thousand dollars. That’s how in love with me she was.”

  “Nah, that’s how good the painting was. A steal at a thousand. A lover’s bargain.”

  I take a breath and run my hand down my face. “She broke it off right before I came here.” I push my dish back and forth the space of an inch or so with my forefinger, looking down into the wood grain of the table. Moss makes a sound of deep contemplation but says nothing. I frown.

  I look away from him, feeling judged somehow, and see another one of my friends—Mantis, a local on staff. He’s emerging from the mess hall with sausage and toast to add to the family-style array on the large serving tables. We became close my last session over a bummed cigarette behind the mess, both of us bonding over our blue-collar upbringing and Motorhead. He catches sight of me as he steps back from the table and gives me a nod. I wave at him, a smile growing on my face as he starts making his way over. He’s a tall, square man. Built like a football player. Or at least a man who used to play football (which he did, and never lets you forget it). Mantis is probably twenty-five, twenty-six years old, about six foot three. The scaffolding of the relentlessly cut, muscled high school star he must have been is very much still there, it’s clear—but time and beer have thickened him, softened him slightly. His hair is buzzed close to his skull for summer. I can see a small scar on his scalp now I’ve never noticed before, an L shape where hair doesn’t grow.

  “Mantis, hey, man.” I smile and stand as he comes to greet me. Moss looks over his shoulder, and when he turns back in my direction, his lips are pursed.

  “Gus said you were coming back, but I had my doubts.” Mantis’s voice rings sure, loud, and gravelly. He smiles, putting his chipped front tooth on full display.

  “Well, doubt no mo
re,” I say as we hug heartily.

  “I thought you were outta here. Done with this place.” He claps my back firmly. “Washington, DC, I mean—come on. Seat of power.”

  “Not for artists,” I say as we withdraw from the embrace.

  “Even so. I got your couple of letters. You have that pretty redhead down there,” he says.

  “Now you’ve stepped in it,” Moss says, mischief in his eyes. “The redhead is no more.”

  “Dead?” Mantis asks with worry, his eyes flashing to me.

  “Jesus, no—” I laugh. “Just broken up. She broke up with me yesterday morning. Right before I drove here.”

  “Well, sorry to hear it all the same, J,” Mantis says, giving Moss the eye for a second. “It’s Bark, right?” Mantis says to him. An unexpectedly tense silence erupts between us. I look between the two. Moss’s face is a tense, borderline pout. Mantis looks smug.

  Oh, so this is a thing.

  I can’t say I’m surprised these two don’t like each other—Mantis hates pretention, Moss loves putting on airs—and even when we were all here together last time, during the small moments they would cross paths, I could tell they grated on each other. But this seems elevated now. Like it’s been simmering while I’ve been away. Mantis knows Moss’s nickname is not Bark, of course. They’ve been here, together—one working in the kitchen, one painting as a student—during the whole continuous year.

  “Moss,” he replies, annoyance on his face as he looks up at Mantis, who towers over him from his seat. My gut tightens.

  “Right. Moss.” A smile curls on Mantis’s lips. He pulls a pack of cigarettes from his jeans pocket and smacks the end of it against his palm, still staring down at Moss like they’re playing a game of chicken. Moss caves first, looking away, sheepish. He goes back to his breakfast, ears burning red. Mantis turns his gaze on me and pulls a face. I shrug and smile; I’m not sure what else to do. I like them both. They’re both my friends.

  Mantis slips a cigarette between his lips.

  Cigarettes. I have to get cigarettes.

  “I’ll get you back, but I could use an emergency cigarette or two. I’m totally out,” I tell Mantis. He raises an eyebrow at me then tips the mouth of the pack toward himself, close to his body, so only he can see the contents, as if wanting to keep his supply level a secret. His eyes flit from me to the pack, me to the pack, as if weighing us up.

  “Come on, man!” I laugh anxiously, pushing his arm.

  “Two,” he says, withdrawing the cigarettes and handing them over.

  “I’m good for it.”

  “I know you are.” He fidgets with the pack and looks around at the other campers clustered here and there. Then he looks down at Moss, who’s flipping through Miss Lonelyhearts and eating his breakfast like we’re not here and never were. “Anyway, I gotta get back to it. But let’s hang soon.” He looks from me down to Moss again.

  “Absolutely,” I tell him. “See you soon.” He gives me a nod and then playfully raps his knuckles against Moss’s shoulder, making him jump.

  Mantis smiles, that chipped tooth flashing again. “See ya’s around.” And then he’s gone, weaving through the picnic tables and off behind the mess hall, presumably for a smoke break. I look down at Moss, who’s holding the novel limply in his hand, eyes squinting in thought. Here we go. He’s going to go on some tirade about Mantis. I brace myself.

  “Does she still have the painting?” It takes me a moment to figure out what the hell he’s talking about. Rita. The painting she bought for a thousand dollars. He’s scratching his beard mindlessly with the tines of his fork, looking off into the middle distance, thinking. It’s like Mantis was never here, like we’d never been interrupted.

  “Yes. As far as I know. I mean, I left yesterday.” I look at him, and he just nods and nods. He eats the last few scoops of his breakfast, still nodding, and downs the rest of his coffee. He wipes his face with the back of his hand, then rinses his dish at the water pump, shakes it out, tucks it under his arm. I just watch him do all this, unsure if we’re still in a conversation, as other people move in and out of the scene, say hello to me, introduce themselves to me for the first time. He starts to walk away, deep in thought. “I’m in Motif!” I call out to him. A long pause stretches between us.

  “Focus,” he calls back, already twenty yards away. Focus is another nice private cabin across the Village Commons from Motif. I guess staying on a year solid—and paying a year solid—will win Old Gus’s kindness, too.

  May 19, 1988

  It’s unseasonably hot today. Into the eighties. The late-afternoon sun is baking me as I lie on the hood and windshield of my Jeep Grand Wagoneer, white with wood paneling. I feel broiled and light-headed and about fifteen feet off the ground. My jeans and dirty Keds are in the car. I’m wearing just underwear and a David Bowie tee, both wet with lake water from the dip I took fifteen minutes ago with Trillium, Zephyr—painting students new to LV this session—Moss, and Mantis six miles from here. Mantis’s dad has a nice lakefront hunting camp, and Mantis will invite Lupine Valley people he likes there from time to time. I’d had to do some real convincing to get him to include Moss. I’d felt like some sort of elementary school negotiator. But he’s so condescending. And entitled, June. I’d assured Mantis he just needed to give Moss a chance. That he was a good guy once you got to know him; insecurity made him the way that he was. Please? For me? I’d said. Mantis had eventually relented. And things had gone quite well, even if I did catch a few eye rolls and scowls throughout the afternoon.

  After the dip, Mantis, Zephyr, and Trillium had gone back to Lupine Valley, Mantis needing to get back to work, the other two wanting to return to their painting. So here we are, just me and Moss, at Stoneham Bog. I pass the joint we’ve been sharing back to him. He’s stretched out next to me in cut-off jean shorts, chest gleaming.

  “I love this fucking truck,” I say, adamant. “Perfect recline.” I hear him inhale and hold. I smell the smoke come from him. We stay like this for seconds, minutes, back and forth, back and forth. Now I’m thirty feet off the ground, and the dirt logging road below us is like a white-hot stripe through a green carpet.

  “You got any beers in this fucking truck with perfect recline?” He hands the joint back to me, and I hold the little nubbin, look at it.

  “Paper bag. Back seat.” He slides off the hood like water. I look out across the bog, deep and wet with marshland, fallen trees, bracken. Stoned ’Em Bog. Clever, no? At sunset, over weird, dead-seeming ground, the colors morph and transfigure. With weed, even better. Moss and I find it inspiring. The others think it’s ugly. I always say to them: Why can’t it be both?

  Moss returns with a warm can of Genesee for each of us. I drink it like I’m dying of thirst.

  “Maybe I’ll stay at Lupine forever,” Moss says then burps. I laugh, rolling my skull back and forth on the hot glass of the windshield.

  “You’ll be Old Moss. Running the place.” I take a few smaller sips of the flat, warm beer.

  “Fuck, no. Old Gus will never die. He’ll just keep on being Old Gus. And I’ll be Old Moss. It’s a tier of living. A state of being. To be Old.” Moss pushes his sunglasses up into his hair and raises his beer can toward me, squinting into the sun as he looks my way. “To being Old,” he toasts. We cheers and drink. “Anything left on that joint?” I hand the tiny nib back to him.

  “That Ash is pretty good,” I say. Ash, the pale, endlessly toiling wunderkind who’d been so eager to hear about my MFA experience that first morning at breakfast. I close my eyes, letting the sunbeams create strange shapes in the membranes of my eyelids. Everything tinged red. Oxblood.

  “He’s technical. Has no vision,” Moss replies, dismissive. I think of Ash, then of Moss and Ash, then of the three of us together until finally my whole beautiful flock has conjured itself before me. Moss (the charming and ambitious chameleon from So
uth Bend, Indiana), Ash (the serious-eyed and gifted teen from Tallahassee, Florida), Zephyr (the gorgeous and mellow natural, originally from Senegal), Barley (the young assistant professor of philosophy from India, now teaching at Colby College), and Trillium (the soft-spoken, soon-to-be Brooklyn College freshman from San Juan). We’re thick as thieves now, the painters. Intensely close. Aware of each other’s art, aspirations, bodies, histories in ways it’s hard to imagine. Hard to separate. And this in two weeks. But living together like we are—secluded, focused, way out in the woods—it binds you fast. Especially us; we spend more time together than most at camp because we genuinely like each other.

  The first time we all hung out, Moss had managed to gather everyone with the lightest of touches. They gravitated toward him, and he drew them to me and to each other. We sat packed in my cabin drinking bourbon, declaring our artistic manifestos with bombast. Ash and Moss fought over who’s influenced more by Eric Fischl. Barley told us that if he could sell one painting in his life, he’d be happy. Trillium listened with bated breath to everything Moss had to say, eyelashes batting in his direction. The small cabin stewed us in our body warmth, our physical proximity, our bourbon breath, the tinkle of glasses, our bounding voices.

  Zephyr watched in shyness and delight, casting gazes at me that seemed to ask, gleefully: Is this what it’s like here? Is this how we play together? Work together? And I drew her into the playful, performative half argument, half statement-of-purpose discussion to show her that yes, we are family and you are safe here. Squabbling is part of it. Then the conversation devolved (or evolved, depending on who you ask) into Who’d You Do: Outside the Painter’s Circle Edition. Ash listened, his face set into something hard. He seemed to find it all very silly, beneath him, which only goaded Moss to razz him more. The longer Ash refused to play, the more narrow and outlandish Moss’s guesses for Ash got.