I sit on the kitchen counter and watch as Sam cooks. It’s one of my favorite pastimes, watching Sam in the kitchen. He moves with a deliberate expertise balanced with a casual, practiced ease. He eyeballs the amount of milk he pours into the pot, chopping dried cherries as he waits for it to boil, then adds the oatmeal and stirs in a few shakes of cinnamon. It smells delicious. I sip weak tea that’s full of sugar and begin to feel warm again. Perhaps all we need is to keep busy, to not let the silence drag on for too long.
“I miss my tattoos,” I say, rubbing my wrist against the leg of my pants, as if I can unearth the design still hidden underneath my blank skin.
“Yeah, me too,” he says, holding up our nutmeg grinder. I shake my head, and he returns it to the cabinet.
“Liar,” I say. “What was it that you said when we first started dating? That I should consider what I’ll look like when I’m seventy?”
“I liked your tattoos,” Sam said, handing me a steaming bowl of oatmeal and a cup of brown sugar. I heap in a few heavy-handed spoonfuls.
He picks up my wrist and presses the blank skin of it to his mouth. There’s potential in this moment, the first time we’ve touched outside the hospital, in an apartment with a locked door and no chance of anyone banging in to draw my blood or clear my tray of food or test my memory. All of my nerve endings seem to rush to the surface of my skin, crackling with the electric potential to feel. An image of David comes forward, unbidden, the way he squinted against the sun before I kissed him on the roof. And then Sam is stepping back, looking as if he’s shaking off an ill-conceived impulse. He clears his throat and scratches at the nape of his neck, where his hair is just a bit too long.
“Do you think you’ll have them redone?” he asks, picking up the pot and rinsing it out in the sink. Keeping busy so he won’t have to look directly at me.
“What?”
“Your tattoos.”
“No,” I say, my voice too sharp, trying to turn my attention back to my breakfast, trying to ignore my own ill-conceived impulse, to throw my bowl and its steaming contents in his direction. All he has for me is kindness and pity, and I want neither. The brown sugar melts into my oatmeal, and I eat a few hot mouthfuls to distract myself before I continue.
“It wouldn’t be authentic, if I just got them all over again. I wouldn’t be getting them for the same reasons. They wouldn’t mean what they used to.”
“Right,” Sam says, as if he understands. He acts as if he understands all of it, the bits of me that I’ve never quite been able to smooth out, the pieces that I never quite managed to fit into this life of ours. But the truth is, he never has.
Sam and I met for the second time during my fourth year at the School of the Art Institute. It was at a gallery in River North, during a posh up-and-coming event where my friend Trevor was showing one of his paintings. I had always liked Trevor’s work. He had a modern Egon Schiele thing going on, and I’d sat for him a couple of times when he wasn’t happy with his other models. Trevor said he always preferred to paint other artists anyway; he had a theory that painting another artist watching him created a double-mirror effect, opening a corridor of space that hadn’t existed in his work before. Of course, he would have had to pay one of the gamine young women who posted fliers on the SAIC bulletin board, whereas for a while I was willing to take my clothes off for him for free.
There must have been something to his theory, though, because it was one of his paintings of me that had created enough of a stir to get him into the show. I dragged Penny with me that night, unwilling to venture into a gathering of North Shore art collectors by myself. We tottered in on stiletto heels, looking like a pair of lost hippies in thrift-store cocktail dresses. The painting, of course, was on its own wall, seven feet tall and vibrant with color, me in purple knee socks and nothing else, lying on rumpled sheets and walking my feet up Trevor’s bedroom wall. My eyes peered right at the observer. Looking at it made me a bit dizzy, seeing myself the way he’d seen me in his head, all swirls of color and those huge, demanding eyes. It made me wonder if all my mirrors had been lying to me my whole life, though I couldn’t exactly decipher the nature of the lie. I couldn’t tell if I was more beautiful or less, the way he’d painted me.
Penny, of course, was unimpressed. “In the future, please make sure the men who see you naked know how to use a paintbrush,” she said.
“All of them?”
“All of them. You want a drink?”
I glanced back up at myself. “I think I need one.”
As Penny floated off, I tried to put space between my portrait and me. I wandered toward a collection of photographs on the opposite wall, unimpressive shots of abandoned bicycle frames locked to various racks around the city. Trevor was across the room, holding court among a small clot of older women wearing perfectly tailored silk dresses and intricate jewelry, and when I caught his eye he winked at me. As I tipped my imaginary hat to him, I felt someone sidle up next to me.
“It’s you in that painting over there, isn’t it?”
“Not exactly,” I replied, glancing over and swallowing my next breath when I realized that the man next to me was Sam. His boyish features were the same as ever, the light shadow of stubble on his chin the only evidence of his age.
“You have the same tattoo,” he said, motioning to the lacy lines of ivy swirling their way from my left shoulder blade down to my elbow. Those same lines crawled their way over my bare shoulder on the canvas.
“You’re very observant,” I said, searching his face for any signs of recognition. I’d dyed my hair a faint lavender color in college and invested huge amounts of money getting it chemically straightened from its usual tight ringlets. He’d also never seen me in makeup, particularly not the kind of heavy eyeliner I was sporting that night. It was exciting, like wearing a mask, to stand in front of Sam as a stranger. It made me feel powerful.
“So it is you,” he said.
“Not really. It’s only what Trevor sees.”
“Seems like Trevor sees an awful lot.”
I laughed, peering at him from under my bangs. There were differences, when I looked at him long enough. His brown hair was shorter than it had been in high school. His jaw was a bit wider, his mouth broader. All of his lankiness seemed to have hardened, become more defined. Maybe he wasn’t the best-looking guy in the place, but he was mine, a little, by virtue of having been my sister’s once. That familiarity alone drew me to him.
Penny reappeared then with a couple of vodka tonics. “Who’s your friend?” she asked, handing me the cold, sweating glass. I took a sip, relishing the sweet tang of it, preparing to enjoy my new game.
“Penny, this is Sam Foster,” I said, watching the rush of confusion overtake his expression. To his credit, he recovered quickly.
“I’m sorry, have we met before?” he asked. I could almost see him pawing through his mental Rolodex, hoping to find my face.
“Ages ago. If I remember correctly, you gave me a bootleg of the Smashing Pumpkins farewell show at the Metro for my twelfth birthday. Which was nice, considering my sister got me a gift card to The Gap.”
“Holy shit,” he said, taking a step back, as if seeing more of me would draw everything into focus. “You’re Lucy Reed’s little sister. Hannah. Jesus, I can’t even remember the last time I saw you.”
This struck me as odd, because I could remember exactly when I last saw him. It was at his father’s funeral, only days before he ended his relationship with Lucy. But I smiled anyway, brushing off the memory. “Probably back before I got my braces off,” I replied as Penny watched with curious amusement. It was a break in my pattern. I didn’t usually go for the jacket-and-tie types.
“How is Lucy?” Sam asked.
“Married,” Penny replied, before I could. “To a banker, no less. They’re picking out their white picket fence next week.”
Sam’s face showed no discernable signs of disappointment, only faint, polite interest. It was reassuring, to ima
gine how little Sam cared about Lucy and her banker husband in my presence.
“Well, tell her I say hello.”
“So what do you think of the show, Sam?” Penny asked.
“Can you keep a secret?” Sam asked. Penny motioned to him to indicate that he should proceed. “I don’t know much about art.”
“So what are you doing here on a Saturday night?”
“I’m writing up the show for the Trib.”
“You’re a reporter?” I asked, and he nodded.
“And they’re sending you here, even though you don’t know anything about art,” Penny said, and didn’t wait for an answer, waving her hands in front of her, as if she could fend off any additional conversation. “Christ, I don’t even want to know. You two have fun, I’m going to go rescue Trevor and pretend there’s still a thing called culture in this country.”
“Don’t let her bother you,” I said to Sam once Penny was out of earshot.
“She’s got a point. I’m new at the paper, paying my dues in Arts and Leisure for the moment, trying to work my way up.”
It’s the sort of thing that would one day bother me, the idea that my life’s pursuit was his purgatory, his stepping stone into more practical and important matters. That he would arrive at the gallery, fully prepared to write about the work, and yet harbor no desire to learn anything about it that wouldn’t fit into a page of text. But those concerns would come later. That night I would have overlooked anything to keep him talking.
“What do you want to write about?” I asked.
“Politics,” he replied. “Political corruption, really. How money and patronage influence the system.”
“So you’re a crusader then. Trying to make the greedy and corrupt pay for their misdeeds?”
“Maybe just trying to shine a little light into a system that’s the worst at serving the people who need it most,” he replied.
“An idealist.”
He shrugged, completely self-possessed. “Maybe.”
“Well, you’re certainly a better person than I am,” I said, feeling myself drawing closer to him by degrees, even if my body wasn’t moving. “I would want to make them pay.”
“Hannah Reed,” he said, as if testing out how my name felt in his mouth. “You’re not at all what I remember.”
“You’re a lot like what I remember,” I replied. “Well, except your hair is shorter.” I brushed my fingertips over the close-cropped hair at his temple, watching him twitch a bit at the contact. “It was always so curly.”
“And you were such a shy little kid,” he said, glancing back at my painting, at the burnt umber and gold Trevor used for my eyes, the peachy swirls of skin, the dark russet of my nipples.
“It’s easier than you think. Sitting for a painting,” I said. “Once you’ve painted a portrait yourself, you realize it’s just about what’s in the artist’s head. It’s not really about the subject at all. It could have been anyone up there.”
“But doesn’t it feel a little weird? With that on the wall in front of a crowd of people?”
“Maybe,” I said. “But no one really sees me when they look at it. Here.” I took his arm and pulled him in front of it. “What did you think when you first saw it?”
“I’m not sure if I want to tell you,” Sam replied, and his expression made me laugh.
“I’m not thirteen anymore. I can legally drink and everything. Please, humor me.”
“I guess I thought she looks lonely,” Sam said. “I wondered what kind of idiot would leave a girl like that alone in his bed.”
I had to look away from him for a moment then, until the sear of heat across my cheeks subsided. “See, it’s not me. I’m not lonely.”
“No?”
“Well, you’re here, aren’t you?” I said, and I wanted to be thirteen again, so the younger version of me would know that Sam Foster would one day look at me the way he used to look at Lucy. To reassure her that her loneliness wouldn’t last forever.
Sam saw all of my tattoos that night. The dark lines of poetry on my ribs, the oleander blooms sliding down my thigh. The roman numerals on the insides of my wrists. The marks I had amassed in the years since I realized that it was easier to love my body as a collection of stories than as something sacred and holy, the body my mother had given me. It was easier to make myself into something I recognized, something I could love.
He asked about them, of course, about what their stories were. Men always asked. But he was easy to distract in the inky darkness of his bedroom. It took him three years, finally, to get all the answers. And then in the fourth year I was wiped clean, and there was no point to the questions anymore.
David
I’ve never liked Chicago much. It’s a city just big enough for its residents to have an overinflated sense of their own importance, while still harboring a deep inferiority complex because they don’t live in New York or L.A. That, and the Democrats have such a stranglehold on the political system that there hasn’t been a clean election here in the past hundred years. It’s the perfect example of liberal hypocrisy; the bleeding hearts and the unions and the welfare-dependent masses have had their way for so long that they’ve created a bankrupt clot of buildings surrounded by war zones on two sides, and one side by water. It’s a microcosm of corruption and institutional failures. Everything from its school system to its police force to its public transit system is either irreparably broken or chronically useless. And everyone who lives here thinks the deep-dish pizza makes up for it.
My home is a house in upstate Wisconsin, in my district, where the people also might have a chip on their collective shoulder, but they work damn hard to make up for it. Unfortunately, somewhere in the stack of paperwork I signed before the transfer there was an edict requiring me to remain within an hour of Northwestern Memorial for the next few months, so for the time being Beth and I have rented a condo on Lake Shore Drive.
I’m sprung from the hospital on a Friday afternoon, and that’s where we go. Beth drives, because I technically don’t have a driver’s license yet. It’s something you don’t really think about when you get a new body, that you’ve never passed a driver’s test and not even the photo on your license is accurate anymore. I don’t know if I’m even capable of driving a car. After all, I just learned to walk again.
Beth waves to the parking attendant as she pulls our gray Audi into our parking space. She’s been living here alone for the past few months while I’ve been in the hospital. This is her turf. It’s an off-putting sensation, like I’m an intruder in my own house. But considering how much time I’d spend in D.C. every year, Beth is well accustomed to living alone by now. It was one of the reasons she stopped wearing her wedding ring. One of the reasons there were divorce papers waiting on my desk only a week before my diagnosis.
Beth leads me into the building and unlocks our door with a silver key, just one of many on her key ring. I can’t remember where my keys are. It turns out getting released from the hospital isn’t much like getting out of prison in the movies; they don’t hand you a plastic bag full of the clothing and possessions you had on when you went in. No, I only signed some paperwork in my shaky scrawl and was wheeled out to the curb like a helpless invalid. Hospital policy, of course.
The apartment we rented is modern and fully furnished, all chrome and glass and well-lacquered wood. It makes me homesick for the high vaulted ceilings of our remodeled farmhouse in Wisconsin, or even the antique faux-European accents of my apartment in D.C. This is yuppie artifice, as inauthentic and gaudy as a stretch limo. But Beth doesn’t seem to mind. She cares less about the soul of a place than I do; all she cares about is the price.
The apartment is so far-flung from the house I grew up in, it’s almost comical. Simply the fact that it’s two stories already makes it a step up. My family lived in a squat little ranch house on sixteen acres of farmland just outside of Athens, Wisconsin. My early life was flat and gray, speckled with mud, sweat stained. Everything was like that
, the house, the land, my family. Everything smelled like hay and manure and empty air. The idea of living in an apartment like this was laughable; of being a congressman, unthinkable.
I was never the smartest guy in my high school. Or, if I was, I worked too hard on the farm to ever spend much time studying, so my grades never reflected it. But I knew how to talk to people. I learned it early, after my mother died and my father took off, leaving my grandmother to take care of me and the farm by herself. I was suddenly the one to haggle with our equipment suppliers and barter with our grain distributors and fight with the mortgage lenders. I learned fast, how to get what I wanted. It was a survival skill back then, as important as knowing how to build a fire or find water in a desert. I loved my grandmother, probably more than anyone else in the world, but had it been up to her alone, we would have lost the farm in that first year. It was my responsibility to step in, to keep everything running as it had. And no matter what I did, it wasn’t ever enough.
In the end, we had to get help from the federal government to keep from losing everything. That was the worst part of those years, the food stamps, the subsidies, the government relief for small farmers. I hated those checks, hated my free lunches at school. Those were indignities my grandmother and I should not have had to bear, not in America. It should have been enough that we worked, and worked hard.
Of course, the Wisconsin where I live with Beth and David Jr. is very different from the Wisconsin where I grew up. Beth was New York City through-and-through when we met, when I was a freshman congressman and she was a budding reporter for one of those trendy Internet news sites. I had to all but crowbar Beth out of the Big Apple when we married, and she’s never been quite at peace with Wisconsin, even though we live in a veritable estate, even though she plays tennis at our country club every weekend, even though David Jr. is attending the best private school in the whole damn state.
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