by Meg Watson
Relief flooded me and I wanted to giggle.
“Really?” I asked, plainly begging for affirmation like a puppy.
“Oh my god, yes. They’re genius. They’re… totally unlike you.”
“Hey!”
She shrugged. “Well you know what I mean.”
“No I don’t,” I pouted.
“It’s just.... well I’ve always wondered if you came pre-assembled with that stick up your ass, or if you had to have it installed special.”
“Hilarious, Bridge,” I drawled sarcastically.
“But this,” she continued. “This is good. This really good.” Her head went sideways as she peered each of them over, one by one.
My heart leapt. She hadn’t done the sideways-head-peer on one of my pieces in years.
“OK, talk it through for me,” she asked.
I sighed. Where to begin? She knew I hated having to explain myself. The work should speak without me. If it didn’t, I knew the piece had failed. But this time, I felt like I just needed to give it a proper vocabulary.
“All right, well… These are the lemons I promised you, obviously. But then I wanted to show them sort of pushed and pulled, like something unattainable, or something in a dream. So here,” I waved my hand in front of the drippy, thick layers of paint upon paint, “they’re obscured. But here... they’re revealed.”
She nodded. “Uh huh, yes. Go on.”
I stared at the next piece, trying to give it words. “It’s just.... Like, here, I didn’t want to just document the literal thing, I wanted another layer on top of that… Like a laid-out emotional layer. The way things in dreams aren’t just things. They have like a whole fairy tale around them... How much you want them, how tender they are, how delicate. I wanted to show how I felt, while also showing what it is. To make lemons and oranges more than just… you know. Lemons. Oranges.”
She shook her head. “Girl, it’s so right on.”
I bounced on my toes. I had taken a real chance, basically obliterating the paintings I owed her and replacing them with something else. Everyone knew me for my carefully controlled still lifes. This was risky. Hugely risky.
“OK, I know you’re trying to figure out if you can sell this. I can start again and give you what I promised if you want. But painting the life out of something right now felt so wrong. Painting life into it, stuffing as much as I could of myself, basically bleeding on the canvas…. That’s what I needed to do. It had felt fucking triumphant at the time, too.”
“Damn right it’s triumphant,” she muttered, not talking her eyes away. “I can see why you had to disappear.”
“But like I said, I can start again…”
“Oh fuck you,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You leave the selling to me. You do… whatever this is. Again. And again.”
“It’s still just a lemon branch,” I said modestly.
“No, seriously, fuck you. It was just a lemon branch. It was just a technical exercise. And don’t get me wrong, babe, you’re the goddamn queen of the technical exercises. But this is… real. This has some fucking balls. And it’s about time.”
“I think it’s great,” came a voice from the door. Jackson’s blue eyes shone brightly.
Bridget whirled around on her stiletto. “Oh no!” she shouted. “Hell no. Grownups are working here. You: out.”
“Excuse me?” he said, raising his eyebrows as though she were joking. I shrugged at him in apology.
Bridget flung her arm out, pointing, and started to walk toward him. Jackson got the threat and left immediately, closing the door behind him.
“Goddamn, this house is overrun with man meat,” she muttered. She wrinkled her nose and stalked back to the easel. “You smell that? It’s like a locker room.”
“Oh shut up, Bridget.”
She folded her arms in front of her chest and stared at the paintings some more, sucking her teeth loudly. “Can I smoke in here?”
“Nope,” I said for the millionth time.
“Fine,” she sighed. “Well I love them. I absolutely fucking love them. It’s the boy toys, isn’t it.”
I shrugged. “I doubt it.”
She cough-barked. “It is, totally. You’re different already. You look different.”
“I feel different,” I admitted.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, I feel like one of those movie vampires. I’m on fire… like all over.”
“Goddamn. I bet.” He heaved another great sigh that ended in a chuckle. “Well, keep doing it, bitch. This is… alive. You’re alive. It’s a nice change. And kudos for the evil plan to humiliate Kevin. I totally approve.”
I flinched and shook my head, rolling my eyes silently and scowling.
“That’s not what I’m doing.”
“Oh isn’t it?” she persisted, eyebrows raised. “You didn’t invite him here to ambush him with your new love life?”
“No of course not.”
“Lies,” she accused. “But like I said, I approve.”
“You never cared for Kevin…”
“Damn right,” she agreed.
“So don’t manipulate me, OK? I know you never liked him. It’s over now, just like you wanted.”
“You never liked him,” she corrected.
“Fuck you. I wanted to marry him,” I retorted.
“You wanted to marry some whitebread regional sales leader. You wanted to marry an idea. You didn’t want to marry that guy. I mean, look at him out there. Booooooorrring.”
“I did. I loved the shit out of him,” I protested.
“You loved an idea. You were just grateful someone neatly fit into the puzzle piece you had pre-sculpted for them.”
I reeled. My mouth must have fallen open because my tongue went dry. “That is a truly shitty thing to say.”
She shrugged. “I’m sorry. This isn’t news.”
I glared at her and breathed through my nose but she wasn’t looking at me. Was she right? Some part of me thought she had a point. I had wanted Responsible, Reliable, and Grown-up, and that was precisely what I had got.
And what had I expected from tonight? I thought having him here would have brought back some old feeling, maybe. Maybe if I had still felt something, all that time I spent pining over him would have made some kind of sense. Or maybe I hoped that I would see him as my real life, and maybe wake up from this crazy dream I kept having where I was sleeping with two billionaires and loving every minute of it. But that was definitely not happening. Kevin was the one who didn’t seem real, while Declan and Jackson were as vivid as Technicolor.
Was she right? If I couldn’t feel anything for Kevin now, had it ever been a real thing in the first place? Was it just wasted time? The thought boomed in my mind like it had been shouted through a megaphone. Then I kicked that thought square in the nuts and waited for it to double over and crawl away.
“You know what, Bridge, you just stick to your job and I will stick to mine,” I suggested lamely.
She shrugged. “You got it, sweet cheeks. But get me more of this,” she said, gesturing at the paintings. “Whatever it takes.”
CHAPTER 3
“I DON’T WANT to rush you, but you need to fucking hurry,” Bridget drawled over the phone as I stared down three new easels with three new paintings perched on them. Where to begin? It was like Christmas. All exciting possibilities.
“I am hurrying,” I muttered distractedly when I realized she was waiting for me to say something.
“OK, so when?”
I really wanted to stop talking and start painting. The new techniques I was playing with were exciting, dangerous. There was every possibility the painting would just fail, but so far none had. I was ready to jump in. Why was she still talking?
“I don’t know, Bridge. Tuesday.”
“Tuesday.”
“Probably yes.”
“Well is it Tuesday or not? Because Tuesday is great. But next Friday is not great. I’m looking at empty wall space here.”
“Your walls are empty because I’m making you money.”
“Not if you don’t finish.”
I sighed dramatically. “I’m hanging up on you now.”
“The hell you are, Margot! I need pix by the end of today, sizes, and a real ETA. OK?”
“Fine, yes, OK.”
“Margot, listen to me. Are you listening?”
“Yes,” I half-lied.
“I need you to take this seriously. I can’t have empty walls over a weekend during the high season. You told me I’d have new work Thursday, and now it’s Saturday.”
“Yeah,” I admitted. “I’m sorry about that.”
“Tell me the truth: are your legs in the air right at this moment?”
“Oh, haha, fuck you.”
“No, fuck you, Margot,” she whined. I had to admit, she really did sound pissed. “I am loving the new work, collectors are loving the new work, but I am not one hundred percent thrilled with the new Margot who created it.”
“What?”
“You’re being an asshole.”
“I’m working,” I stressed. “I’m working out something new, and that takes some effort. Cut me some slack here, OK? It will settle out. Everything will be back to normal soon.”
“Swear it.”
“I solemnly swear it,” I answered. I totally meant it, too.
“So no more public buggering in the grocery store parking lot.”
“Oh! Haha,” I laughed. I’d forgotten I had told her about that. Declan and I had run out for a few things and as I bent over to hoist the bag into the back seat, he had flipped my floral skirt over my ass and jammed himself right into me. He didn’t even close the car door. The parking lot was mostly deserted, but any of my neighbors could have been there. One of my collectors, or just anybody. The thrill of the risk of getting caught made me come in a fast, torrential explosion.
“It’s actually not funny anymore, Margot. I saw that hickie on your neck.”
“Yeah, that was a mistake.”
“That’s not a mistake. It’s like you want everyone to know what a slut you are.”
“I don’t think we are allowed to slut-shame anymore,” I shot back.
“You are miles beyond shame, pumpkin.”
I wanted to disagree, but I couldn’t stop giggling and sighing. Thinking about our daily and twice-daily interludes kept me going on a constant high. I was either recovering from sex, remembering sex, or anticipating sex with one or two of the most beautiful men I had ever seen. It was a totally new way of life. I couldn’t get enough.
“Hey!” she yelled into the phone. “What are you, fifteen? Get a grip, OK? Actual people rely on you in about six hundred ways!”
Rolling my eyes, I considered just hanging up on her. “You don’t have to tell me that.”
“No I think I do. Somebody needs to tell you to reign it in. Fun is fun, but it’s time to resume Margot Trask’s million dollar art career.”
“I am taking care of everything. There’s no harm in a little personal exploration. The work alone, you can see it’s going well… I mean, I feel different, Bridge. I feel like some… I feel like I was buried, and something just dug me up. I feel alive.”
“You’ve always been alive, Margot. You’re a self-taught, self-made fucking pro who gets everything she ever wants. Twice, these days. What’s not ‘alive’ about that, you ungrateful twat?”
I heard her sigh for a long time and just let her go on. The painting in the middle was starting to speak to me. I knew what I wanted to do with it.
Finally she just emitted a series of disgusted moans. “There’s no talking to you. Just fucking paint the paintings. They’re leaving soon right?”
“Tomorrow,” I responded automatically, trying not to think very hard about it. The date had been pushed back twice, but now I guess they really meant it.
“Did you hear me?” She was yelling again.
I had enough.
“I gotta go, Bridge.”
“Paint the goddamn paintings!!” she yelled again as I let my arm drop and thumbed the phone to disconnect.
I cocked my head at the middle painting. It was still barely a sketch in charcoal, scrawled like graffiti in the vague outline of a cross. But in the smudges and masses, I could see a whisper of forms. Tangled vines, sweet things, fruit ripe past bursting. A stretching strain in the shapes… I could feel it. My fingers twitched.
I had to watch it grow in my head, let the image evolve, throb into something that rang like a bell in my mind, and then dive for it. But it was still nascent, not yet firm. Soon.
I padded to the laptop for music and brought up a moody, sing-along-type playlist with Neko Case and Patty Griffin. If I was going to bleed emotion all over the panel, I wanted music that left some blood on the floor too.
Within seconds, Neko was singing about being a tornado who expressed her love by destroying whole towns. That’s poetry.
Squeezing out neat piles of paint onto my flat glass palette, I arranged some brushes I knew I would need. The gooey, perfumed mediums that made the paint more or less slippery sat in neat puddles at the bottom of small jars. I undid the metal latch on the brush cleaning tin but left the lid closed so the solvent wouldn’t evaporate too much into the room.
The image was forming ever clearer in my mind as I indulged in the simple ritual of preparing my tools. All these tinctures and potions, these pastes and waxes: they were the magical, alchemical mixtures that painters have been using for the last 2000 years, give or take. Preparing it felt like a prayer. I aligned myself with all the history that came before me, mindful of my teeny, tiny place at the end of a very long parade.
“Dad says to tell you ‘bye,’” came Marnie’s voice from the door. I turned to her, smiling.
“Aw, you look completely adorable!” I cooed, smiling broadly at her vintage valley-girl outfit complete with mall hair.
“Thanks,” she said, then stepped into the room and squinted at the easel. “These look weird,” she said boldly.
“Weird?” I echoed with a small smile.
“Yeah, they’re cool,” she said decisively. “Much cooler than before.”
My heart swelled. “Well, thank you. That is high praise. What do you think is cool?” I asked, feeling sheepishly like I was just begging for more praise.
She shrugged, stalling slightly, forming the words.
“I don’t know,” she began. “They’re… Confusing. Like, you can see the things you always paint, but then you can’t. They have… Something… Like a dream. Like they look like something you dreamed.”
I shook my head, amazed.
“That’s pretty awesome, Marnie. That’s exactly what they are. You have a great eye.” I wanted to hug her. If she could see it, I hoped everyone could see it that way. Early responses from collectors seemed positive, at any rate.
“OK, well, bye,” she said with a shrug and was gone.
As soon as she left, I tested the image in my mind. Was it ready? Congealed into sense? I could feel it vibrating in there. I could see the image, hold it on my tongue like something sweet. And I knew exactly how to get from here to there.
Striding forward to push the rolling cart to the right side, I started to hum with the music. Patty Griffin started to sing. Oh Heavenly Day, all the clouds blew away…
The hours flew by as I painted, scraped, and repainted the image. I brought passages to life then wiped them back. Brought others to fine detail and then painted right over them, obscuring the image with veils of new paint.
Soon the images started to come together in pieces. A section would seem to be correct, then the adjacent sections lifted themselves to their rightful imagery. It was like dragging a net from the water, bit by bit. My hands flew over the lines, adjusting here, trowelling on more paint there… It was almost more like a spiritual possession than a painting. The imagery birthed itself.
Finally it was all just a few details. A few final notes. I picked it up and drag
ged it to the large mirror at the side of the room to see its reflection. This is another thousand-year-old trick. A painter needs to see it with fresh eyes, and the mirror image can sometimes show startling omissions and other things that would be obvious to a stranger. But when you’re in the act of painting, you can become blind to the errors. You need new eyes.
But here, no. The reflection was fascinating, bringing out details I had forgotten I’d inserted. I stared at it proudly, analyzing the flow, the swirling path of the composition, and the desperate burst of life of the branches. Those fruits wanted to be born. That was what this painting was about: striving to be born.
Perching it back on the easel, I snapped a photo with my phone and texted it to Bridget. That should buy me a day of silence, I thought.
She texted me back almost immediately:
All right. Yes. Gorgeous. I forgive u.
Suddenly I was ravenous and wondering what time it was. The playlist had started itself over so it must have been hours, and I had only time for coffee that morning before work.
Padding into the kitchen, I heard Jackson’s melodic whistling before I saw him. A smile crept across my lips. On tiptoe, I peeked around the corner.
He was standing at the granite-topped kitchen island, shirtless, slicing zucchini into strips. His linen trousers draped elegantly from his hips, rumpling slightly at the ankles. As I watched him, the muscles on his back rippled and smoothed with the motions of his arms.
He whistled some sort of classical lullaby. The sound was amazing. I had never heard anyone whistle more than tuneless impersonations of pop songs or screeching commands of Come here, the sort you give to taxicabs. Whistling for him was like playing an instrument. It had emotion, vibrato, and dynamics. I was astounded that something so simple could be made so beautiful.
The long furrow of his spine swayed slightly as he moved back and forth. I breathed deeply, hoping I could catch his scent. Whenever we were together, his scent made me hungry, ravenous. I drank him in gulps. In the last week I had swallowed so much of his seed he was practically food for me. But still I wanted more. Rather than finding myself sated, I found my appetite only increased.
I wanted to sneak up behind him and touch him, run my fingers down the silky valley between his shoulder blades, but I didn’t want to startle him. I cleared my throat gently just to let him know I was there.
