by L.J. Shen
It was a fantasy book. As such, the cover was full of colors, silhouettes, and faces. The composition was all wrong. I remember looking at it and scowling. It offended me on a personal level. I think that was the moment I realized I wanted to create symmetric, beautiful things.
The moment I found out I was going to be an artist, like my mom.
Then I looked up and saw your face, and again, it wasn’t symmetric (I hope you don’t mind).
Your eyes were huge, the rest of you small, which gave you an almost infant look. Your nose was sharp, your lips thin. Your blonde hair twisted in curls that were not perfect or carefully brushed. Yet, somehow, you were more beautiful than any beautiful girl I’d ever seen in my entire life.
I would later stumble across a line from Edgar Allan Poe that made sense of it all—he said there’s no superb beauty without some sort of strangeness in the proportions.
That explained why I had to talk to you, even though it wasn’t in my nature to speak to someone when completely unprovoked. I approached you, casting a shadow over your face, blocking the sun. I remember the moment you looked up and stared at me, because once you held my gaze, I couldn’t look away.
It wasn’t a good or exciting feeling. It was terrifying. I gave you a brownie because I needed to do something. But when it came down to eating my part of it, I couldn’t do it.
I was too nervous to eat.
From that day forward, I wouldn’t eat much in front of people in general.
I always wondered where you were, if we’d meet again, and as crazy as it sounds, it always felt like we might.
You never came.
Until you did.
Until you showed up at my school senior year.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t surprised when you didn’t move with Poppy and Edgar. I took it as a personal offense. Was I not good enough? Were you disgusted with me? By me?
You were pure, beautiful, talented, and carefully tucked in your own rich world of art, books, and music. I was torn, miles away, in a rich beach town I hated, a kid who’d seen and felt way more than he should have.
A part of me wanted our worlds to collide so I could burst yours and tear it to pieces, and another wished we’d never see each other again.
And then you came.
Defiant, infuriating, and completely out of my control.
You stirred me to savagery at a time when nothing could move me at all.
You must understand, Len, that hate is nature’s most flawless drive. It is infinitely renewable, reusable, and fuels people far better than love. Think about the number of wars that started because of hate, and the number that started because of love.
One.
There was one war in the history of the world to start upon the legs of love.
It was the Trojan War, and it was Greek mythology.
Which brings us right back to zero.
That’s the logic I worked with, and fuck, did it do the trick.
I hated you because I had to feel something for you, and the opposite of hate was out of the question. Not on the goddamn table. Falling in love with a girl who hated me, who thought I was a monster who killed jellyfish and had been involved with a middle-aged man? No, thank you. Your face alone made me feel defanged, so I had to get creative. To bite harder.
We were an unfinished business, personal and always walking the tightrope between love and hate.
But we were always something, Len.
We will always be something.
You might move on and marry someone else, have his children and get your happily ever after, but you will never be completely done with me. And that’s the small chunk of mirth I allow myself. That’s my half of the brownie. That’s my one, perfect summer moment in the South of France, watching the face of the girl I will love forever for the very first time.
Because, Lenora Astalis, this is love. It’s always been love. Love with many masquerade masks, twisted turns, and ugly truths.
I don’t know where I’ll go from here, but I’ll be wishing you were there.
The internship has always been yours.
I blackmailed Harry for it at age thirteen, in the darkroom. Since your father was the deciding voice, I convinced him I’d give him something in return. You were always Alma’s favorite. She chose you, but Harry and Edgar were the majority.
And so, it feels fitting that because the internship should have gone to you, you are going to show your sculpture at Tate Modern.
It is worthy and beautiful, just like you.
I wish I were strong enough not to do what I need to do.
I wish I could get the girl.
Because, Len, you are her.
You are that girl.
My safe place.
My asymmetric happiness.
My Edgar Allan Poe poem.
You are my Smiths, and my favorite fantasy book, my brownie, and summer vacations in lush places. There will never be anyone else like you.
And that’s exactly why you deserve someone better than me.
Love,
Vaughn
The weeks leading to the exhibition had been so busy, I was sometimes surprised I didn’t forget to breathe. I certainly forgot to eat and sleep.
Papa and Poppy stuck by my side throughout, taking time off from their own schedules to assist me. It’s like they could see the hole Vaughn had left in my heart when he packed his bags and vanished. Neither of them talked about him. He just hung in the pregnant air, suspended by strings of cruel hope and tragic impossibility. Heartbreak had a taste, and it exploded in my mouth every time I tried to smile.
I worked on autopilot, putting the last touches on my assemblage piece. I’d met with curators, designers, and the exhibition coordinators. I’d signed contracts and smiled for cameras and explained my work to people who oooh-ed and ahh-ed. I’d interviewed, along with Pope and other young artists, with magazines, local newspapers, and even the BBC.
Pope visited me every other day, his face marred with paint and triumph.
His piece was good.
Real good.
We’d share a kebab and drink Irn-Bru and crochet our plans for the future. The theme for the exhibition was the most promising young artists in the world, and I was excited to be included. Although no matter how much Papa assured me I’d earned my place fair and square, doubt gnawed at my stomach every time I looked at my piece.
I wasn’t supposed to be a part of the exhibition.
I was a last-minute replacement, second best, a fill-in.
And it wasn’t the only reason my stomach always felt hollow.
Three days after Vaughn tore me to pieces with his letter, the news came out that Harry Fairhurst had committed suicide in his St. Albans mansion.
His death was met with cold, unnerving silence from his colleagues, close friends, and fans. Shortly before he was found dead in his bathtub, swimming in a pool of his own blood, some past and current students at Carlisle Prep had plucked up the courage to come forward and call him out for his sexual abuse.
Dominic Maples, a current senior, had led the petition against him.
Apparently, the posters I’d hung everywhere, combined with a traumatic experience involving my uncle, encouraged Dominic’s decision. He explained in the news that there was something sinisterly liberating about watching Fairhurst’s face on paper poked, dented, and smeared in paint, almost beyond recognition. It made him look less powerful, human. It occurred to me that many mortals were burdened with the false status of a god, and almost none of them enjoyed the power that came with it.
Vaughn Spencer, as an example.
While Poppy refused to believe the mounting evidence against our uncle and insisted on attending his small, intimate funeral, my father seemed furious and disgusted with his cousin. He refused to speak of him. We both opted out of any and all tributes and memorial arrangements for Fairhurst.
Father wasn’t stupid. He must’ve connected the dots leading to Vaughn’s disappeara
nce. All the same, he never questioned Harry’s so-called suicide.
But I knew.
I knew Harry Fairhurst hadn’t committed suicide.
To put an end to your life, you must first feel acute regret, guilt, or unhappiness. I’d grown up next to my uncle. Not once did he look uncomfortable in his snakelike skin.
In the week leading to the exhibition, my art piece was shipped, right along with Pope’s painting, to Tate Modern. I packed all of my belongings and said goodbye to Carlisle Castle for the last time. I returned my key to Mrs. Hawthorne, gave flowers to the staff, destroyed my student card and cafeteria pass, and threw out my cape. The finality of it frightened me to death. I was never going to live here again. I would visit, perhaps, but not often, and I certainly wouldn’t be roaming the hallways with confidence, like I had before. I had no desire to return as a teacher. The idea crippled me. I didn’t want to teach; I wanted to create.
Papa drove us to our house in Hampstead Heath, where I was going to live until I found my next gig. Like many artists, I still wasn’t opting for higher education. I had the tools I needed from my studies at Carlisle Prep, and I believed in autodidactism. I wanted to work at a gallery, perhaps snag an internship with someone creative and patient, if I had any luck.
Everything was in motion, yet life had a stale feeling—like trying to run underwater.
“Tell me three things: something good, something bad, and something you are looking forward to,” Papa requested in the midst of a traffic jam, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel of his vintage AC Ace/Cobra. I looked sideways, tapping the edge of the window. It was difficult to think about anything that wasn’t Vaughn. He drenched my thoughts, contaminating everything else I wanted to focus on.
“Something good? I’m excited for tomorrow. Something bad? I’m frightened about tomorrow, too. Something I look forward to…” I trailed off.
For Vaughn to come back.
But I knew that wouldn’t happen. He said he’d disappear after he killed Harry Fairhurst, that once he had blood on his hands, he wasn’t going to smear it on me or anything in my life. And he was a man of his word. I needed to come to terms with it. Although he was crazy if he thought I could truly move on with someone else.
“I’m looking forward to nothing,” I finished quietly.
Nothing really mattered that much anymore. A journey without Vaughn was not worth taking. I wanted him to challenge my every step, to keep me on my toes. To drive me mad. To give me his laughs, his thoughts, his blood.
That didn’t mean I wasn’t going to do things with my life. But the aftertaste of nothing, the one I’d felt every day the past couple weeks, was going to chase me to the grave. I knew that with depressing clarity.
Nothing was going to taste as good as those brownies and chocolate.
I should have known they weren’t divine because of some secret recipe—he’d sent them from different places, in different countries, even. They’d tasted divine because I knew, subconsciously, that they came from him.
Vaughn didn’t stop sending me chocolate and brownies after he left, but I stopped taking them into my room. Frankly, it was a relief to move somewhere he couldn’t send them anymore. He didn’t know my personal address.
“That saddens me to hear.” Papa clucked his tongue, his thumb brushing the steering wheel.
We’d had many intimate conversations since Arabella left. Her father had picked her up—I saw them from my window, hugging, shedding tears. I hoped he was in a better mental place, that he could be there for his daughters the way my father couldn’t after my mum passed away.
“I’ll get my groove back,” I lied, feeling an incredible urge to down a bottle of gin. I understood alcoholics now. Numbness was far superior to pain.
“I know you will.” He nodded and started talking about the weather.
I rested my head against my seat and closed my eyes, drifting.
I wore a black wool, one-shoulder bustier dress, which flowed down my body with tulle made of lace. It had been sent to me by Emilia LeBlanc-Spencer the evening before the exhibition in a special delivery, and it contained a note that made my fingers itch to call her and ask for the meaning behind the unexpected gift.
Lenora,
No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.
Aesop
Thank you for giving my son a home away from home. You broke down his walls, yet gave him shelter. I am forever in your debt.
Emilia LeBlanc-Spencer
Though I’d been in the same place as this woman several times over the years, we’d never been officially introduced. To me, she was a famous painter and Vaughn’s mother. I knew of her gallery in Los Angeles and had admired her art from afar (and her son from up close). Why had she reached out? Had Vaughn been in touch with her since he disappeared? Had he told her about me?
The idea filled me with foolish hope that maybe he was missing me, thinking about me. That perhaps he’d changed his mind after all. The morning sweets deliveries almost felt like a force of habit at this point. An apology, perhaps.
Maybe he’ll be at the exhibition. My mind raced into dangerous territory: hope.
The love declaration he’d made in his letter grew watered down by doubt with each passing day, but I had to admit, slipping into the dress Emilia had sent me felt like walking into his arms. I swore it had his scent.
It was Gothic, chic, and enchanting.
Christmas hung in the air like an overripe fruit. The sweet scent of pastries wafted in the chilly London air, and white and red lights wrapped around the English capital like a bow. Tate Modern was a brown, boxy thing on the southeast side of London. It wasn’t as posh and beautiful as Tate Britain, but today, it looked perfect to me.
Poppy held my hand, and Papa draped an arm over my shoulder as we walked across Turbine Hall toward the exhibition room. The minute I entered the space, I spotted my piece. It was impossible not to. It had been placed in the center of the room, surrounded by the other works of art, most of them pushed against the white walls.
Bursting from the bowels of the gallery with pristine brilliance and vivid colors, his tin face stared back at me in challenge. The Indian yellow of his cape battled for attention with the ruby red of his bleeding crown of thorns. He was alive, deadly, and godly.
My Angry God.
My heart beat faster when I realized a cluster of people orbited around it, staring. Some seemed to read the little explanatory sign underneath:
Angry God/Assemblage/Lenora Astalis
Material: nails, wood, thorns, paper, fabric, metal, glass, plastic, hair, blood
From the artist: When I started working on this piece, I had no idea what it meant to me. I wanted to immortalize the depraved ferocity of a beautiful man willfully marching to his own demise. The name, Angry God, derives from “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” a sermon written by the Christian theologian Jonathan Edwards and preached to his congregation in Northampton, Massachusetts in 1741. It is said that Edwards was interrupted many times during the sermon by people asking, “What shall I do to be saved?”
What will you do to be saved?
Would you go so far as losing the love of your life?
“Come, come, the woman of the hour is here.” Alma Everett-Hodkins curved her wrinkly, thin fingers around my wrist and pulled me into the throng of people, all of them sophisticated-looking professionals in black.
“I noticed her rare talent when she was merely eight.” Alma grinned knowingly as my father and Poppy stood next to us, smiling proudly and cradling glasses of champagne. I would’ve killed for a drink, but I needed to remain professional and, unfortunately, sober. People asked me questions about the piece and gave me their interpretations of it. I answered dutifully, trying to cling to the moment, to be there, to experience the now, and to push Vaughn from my thoughts—at least for the duration of the evening. This was the height of my career, the peak I’d been waiting for. It wasn’t fair that he was going
to steal it without even being here.
Without even trying.
Pope stood on the other side of the room next to his floor-to-ceiling painting, talking to a cluster of young artists. There were many pieces of art in the exhibition, but most people were standing around my statue. Pride overwhelmed me. Maybe I really was good after all.
I craned my neck, stupidly looking for Vaughn among the crowd of people, but he wasn’t here. It felt so fitting; it was hard not to hope he’d show up, like in the movies, storming in frazzled and lovesick, with a Hugh Grant smile and a stuttered-yet-charming monologue that would rip everyone’s heart out, mine included.
“Did you have anyone in mind when you sculpted the face?” asked a stunning, blue-eyed woman with a brown chignon, the tips of her hair dyed lavender pink. She cradled a glass of red wine.
I turned to look at her and smiled. “What makes you ask that?”
“The cut of the cheekbones.” She motioned with the hand that held the wine in the statue’s direction. “The high brows, wide forehead, strong chin—it is symmetrical to a fault, more than King David. Almost godly in its beauty. I find it hard to believe a man like that exists.” She tapped her lips now, musing. She looked familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I would definitely remember if I’d met her before.
“Oh, he does,” I said, running a finger along the cold, metallic side of his face.
“I know.” She turned to me fully now, searching my eyes. “He’s my son.”
We both froze in our spots as I processed the information. My body prickled hotly, and my heart began to pound.
“Emilia?” I gasped.
She wrapped her arms around me, as if hugging were the most natural thing two strangers could do. I struggled to keep myself in check, knowing my tears were already planning their grand appearance. I had so much I wanted to ask her, yet somehow, I couldn’t find my voice.
