And Again

by Jessica Chiarella

  I find a large canvas and set it on the easel, adjusting the mirror clipped above it until I can see my reflection in the small, round pane of glass. I flick on the light next to it and pick up a pencil.

  Dread drives its way through me. Where do I even begin? How can I take it all in, when my own face still looks so foreign to me, even after all these months? How do I draw myself when I still see disjointed features, a Picassoian sort of creature, every time I look in the mirror? Then the answer comes, as it always does, as simple as a breath, as plain as a handful of earth. You start with the eyes. Always, start with the eyes.

  And then it’s easier, knowing that I don’t have to do it all at once. Knowing that the fear comes and goes in waves and all I must do is wait for it to recede before I charge on. I rough in the outlines of my eyes in four contoured strokes, two for the upper edges, two for the lower. The width of an invisible third eye is between them, showing me how far apart they should be spaced. Then the bridge of the nose, its rounded underside, the nostrils. The edges of the mouth align perfectly with the center of the irises, and I rough in the outline of its downturned fullness. Then the eyebrows, the ears, and how strangely it all comes into proportion, as if every human being were created using the same map, the same architectural schematics. When I finish with the faint pencil lines I begin mixing colors.

  I pick up a brush, wetting the tip and dipping it into the paint, then applying it to the canvas, just the way I have a thousand times before. The brush feels clumsy in my hand. I watch the inky wet tones seep into the canvas, the taut fibers inhale them. I paint the undersides of my eyes, the sunken patches below my cheekbones, the shadows around my nose and below my bottom lip and under my chin. Stepping back, the image looks skeletal with only the darks colored in. I mix middle tones, layering them over the foundation of darkness I’ve laid down. I rough some taupe into my hair, the basis of my rich brunette, a frizz of curls that now falls to my shoulders. It occurs to me for the first time that I haven’t cut it since the transfer, which means it has never been cut at all.

  As I work I remember the art room in my high school, watching my teacher’s impossibly weathered hands, the paint that clung to the hair on his arms, the gray fullness of his beard. I always imagined in another life he would have been a fisherman, sketching in his bunk while being tossed by rough waves, instead of an art teacher in a suburban private school. He had the kind of face that made you imagine the wind.

  I make tea while the paint sets by running hot water through my coffee maker, and it’s so bitter without cream and sugar that I can’t drink it. I return to the canvas and give myself skin, give myself burnt umber eyes, and rose-hued lips, and dark eyebrows that dominate the jagged moonstone of my face. She still looks skeletal, I find, even with eyes and lips and pink cheeks. Even with dark hair. She looks flawless and tired. A Victorian girl shut up in a tower. A waif. Primed for destruction.

  And she’s not right. Not even close. There’s no life in it. There is nothing close to inspired, nothing close to what I used to be able to pull from a paintbrush. Nothing close to what it takes to get in to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, or earn a prestigious artist’s grant while a student there. I want to burn it, but the painting isn’t the problem.

  I call Penny. I need her eyes, her honesty, the way I did in the hospital. She must hear the chord of panic in my voice, because she leaves a full grocery cart in the middle of Whole Foods to drive over. I chew all of my perfect fingernails off waiting for her to arrive.

  “Oh, Hannah,” she says from the doorway, as soon as she sees it. That soulless painting.

  “Yeah,” I say from my seat, feeling my bottom lip tighten over my upper, the tension in my jaw keeping everything else inside me at bay for the moment. “It’s gone.”

  She shakes her head. “It’ll come back, this is your first try.”

  “I don’t feel it anymore. It’s one of the many things I don’t feel now. I know what a dry spell feels like. This . . .” I swallow hard, trying to clear a path for the words. “It’s gone. My muse is hitchhiking down the fucking Jersey turnpike. Gone.”

  “Honey, it’s just your first try.”

  “Maybe it’s because it’s not even my goddamn face.” I pull the first painting away from the wall, shoving it onto the easel beside the second. The contrast is staggering, both in the quality of the work and the subject of the portraits. It’s painful to see them this way, my two selves. It’s painful to see that, even though the first is a brilliant painting, the second is clearly the more beautiful subject. Penny sees it too. It’s a bereft look. This seems like the end to a horrible fairy tale, the girl who traded all of her talent for a pretty face.

  Penny offers to drive me home, but I need to be alone. To think, to wonder who I am, what I should be, if not a painter. The question has never really occurred to me until now; even in high school it was always apparent that I would be an artist, that my life would never be fit for anything else. Through everything, through the screaming matches I had with my parents about my disinterest in an Ivy League education, through Lucy’s quiet, placating disapproval, I never felt a single moment of doubt. Now that certainty feels so foolish it sours my stomach. I think of the practical things that I can do with a bachelor’s in 2D Art and Design, and most of an MFA from the Art Institute. I assume I could probably get a job at Starbucks. I blink back tears as I climb the stairs to the Blue line.

  Maybe I should start over entirely, I think, as the train rattles up and the doors squeak open, releasing a gush of stale, slightly rancid air from inside. Become something that doesn’t take much skill, or education. An office assistant, or one of those hippie massage therapists, or a court reporter. I try to imagine myself in a pantsuit, showing up to some fluorescent office that smells like burned coffee and air freshener.

  But then another image overtakes me, like a veil of fog eclipsing my vision. Me in an expensive dress, with perfectly manicured nails and Chanel earrings framing my face. Me in pumps, pulling an oversized SUV up to a school’s pickup line. Wearing a sweater that strains over my swollen belly, making a cake for Sam’s birthday. Going into real estate, or interior decorating, or starting a blog about parenthood. It’s a life I’ve been drifting toward for the past four years; after I took out my nose ring and quit dying my hair, after I let Lucy take me shopping, after I convinced myself that only kids marked time with tattoos and wore clothing with paint stains and holes in them. It’s a life I could enter as easily as one drifts off to sleep. I could marry Sam, I could have his children. I could become the perfect housewife and do charity work and paint mediocre paintings that Sam would insist on hanging in our home. It would require nothing of me but to remain on the course my life has already taken. It would require nothing, save to forget the questions that I’ve been afraid to ask Sam, to repress the memories of waking up in the hospital and finding him gone, of seeing the effortless way he and Lucy smile at each other. It would be easy, to forget who I was before. The artist, the girl with all the talent, the one with the sharp edges.

  Sam is making dinner when I get home. I’m exhausted; all I want is to fill our bathtub with piping hot water and submerge myself up to my ears, but he must have heard me come in because he appears in the kitchen doorway.

  “Hey. Where have you been?”

  I drag myself toward the kitchen, and its stainless-steel appliances, its huge basin sink, its chrome-and-glass splendor. I realize I’m hungry, and it only adds to my exhaustion.

  “I stopped by my studio,” I say. Sam brightens immediately.

  “Yeah? How did it go?”

  “Fine.”

  “Did you get some work done?” he asks, lifting a lid off a pot and stirring its contents. Curry, by the smell of it. It’s hugely pungent, a hot aroma, both familiar and shockingly foreign to me.

  “A little,” I reply, fishing in the cabinet for a bag of pretzels and popping a few into my mouth.

  “Dinner will be ready soon,” Sam
says, not really looking at me. I take another handful of pretzels.

  “You really think curry was a great choice?”

  “You love curry.”

  “Loved, Sam.” I rustle the plastic bag in my hands pointedly.

  “You can at least try it, Hannah. I’m getting a little sick of pasta and peanut butter sandwiches.”

  “I never said you had to eat what I do.”

  Sam sighs, rubbing at the back of his neck with tense fingers. “Did you do any painting while you were there?”

  “A little,” I repeat. I don’t want to talk about this, not yet, not while it’s still fresh. Not in a kitchen with so many sharp objects around.

  “And how did that go?”

  “Really well, actually,” I say, yanking open the fridge and grabbing a container of cold pasta from earlier in the week. I pop the lid off and dig in with a fork, leaning against the counter. “Another couple weeks and I’ll be able to steal that Daley Center show away from Penny.”

  Sam is calm as he opens the cabinet above him, handing me a plate. “You knew this was going to take time.” I hate the way he says it, telling me all of the things I’m supposed to know. You know I had the flu. You know the doctors wouldn’t let me see you. You know. You know. I set the plate down too hard on the counter and it breaks with a bright, sharp sound. A couple of pieces skitter along the counter.

  “Goddamn it, Hannah,” he says, dropping the spoon he’d been using to stir the curry and clattering a lid onto the pan.

  “I’ve got it,” I say, trying to preclude his interference by grabbing up the pieces myself. But a sharp edge presses into my palm with such light precision that my skin opens, and suddenly my hand is cupping a map of blood as it spreads through the lines of my palm. The pain is sort of staggering, catching me off guard. I’d forgotten physical pain, in these days since the hospital. It strikes me how delicate this body is, with its new skin and its clumsiness and all of its nerve endings turned up to full volume. Like a child. Something vulnerable, something that must be protected.

  Then Sam’s got me by the wrist, pulling me over to the sink, turning on the tap full-blast and sticking my hand underneath it. The map of blood is blown away by that gust of water. The pain reaches its way up my arm. He turns off the tap and crushes a dish towel into my hand.

  “I know,” he says, and then pauses, as if collecting his thoughts. “I know this hasn’t been easy. Fuck, it’s been an absolute nightmare. But I want things back the way they were, and I know you want that too. We just have to find a way to get there.”

  I think of the lines in my palm. It’s a different map now. And I think of all the territory we would have to retrace to get to where we were. I think of David, and Connie, and Linda. I think of waking in the hospital and finding Sam gone. I’m a pioneer, I want to say. My eyes will always be on the horizon, charging forward and making a home wherever I land. Pioneers don’t go back.

  David

  “Burt,” I say into the webcam on my laptop. “How the hell are you?” The blurry, hangdog face of Burt Leeland moves closer to his own camera, filling up more of the window on my screen. I hate seeing the little image of myself nested in the bottom corner, looking even less like me than all of the mirrors. Of all the conference calls I’ve done since the transfer, S&J’s CEO is the first person to warrant a camera on my end.

  “Worse than you, looks like. You look like they shaved ten years off your life.”

  “It’s all this clean living,” I reply. “Beth won’t even let me have a celebratory cigar.”

  “I’m glad to hear this . . . treatment has done you such good,” Burt replies. I’ve always liked him, this humble billionaire. Both because he is so unlike the insufferable power-players that permeate the private sector and because he’s savvy enough to use his affability to his full advantage. He’s a snake, like the rest of us. But he’s the snake you want to play a round of golf with, and he tips his caddies better than anyone I know.

  “It’s miraculous.” I clear my throat. “Listen, Burt. When everything was happening so quickly, when I first got diagnosed, I’m not sure if I ever properly thanked you.”

  “Your wife sent us a basket of things. Caviar. Good wine. Tickets to the opera. My wife appreciated it a great deal.”

  “I’m glad. Beth has always been better than me at those sorts of things. I would be sitting around, wondering what to get for the billionaire who has everything.”

  Burt sits back in his chair, his hands folding over the round bulb of his paunch. “That’s the thing. There is something I can’t get for myself. And it certainly isn’t opera tickets.”

  My foot begins tapping, as if of its own accord. Maybe I don’t have full control over this body yet; I’d banished all outward signs of nervousness from my old body years ago. “I expected there might be something,” I reply.

  “Listen, David. I’m tremendously glad that everything worked out for you, and that I was able to play some small part in your recovery, I really am.” He taps his fingers on his stomach, but I know it’s not nervousness. This man doesn’t fear anyone, certainly not me. It’s a show, a physical tick to make him appear weaker than he is. To soften the blow.

  “I appreciate that.” I keep an eye on my reflection in the little window at the bottom of my screen. The trick to these sorts of exchanges is to appear as unfazed by them as you’d like to be. It’s the sort of thing that takes practice, but luckily the one thing that the transfer hasn’t stripped from me is my poker face.

  “The thing is, I’m going to need the FDA to vote against it. The whole program. It can’t be approved, not this time.”

  “SUBlife?” Sweat seeps into my shirt, one of my best shirts.

  “S&J’s pharmaceutical branch is three months away from developing our own drug for, whatever it is you call it, when they move the memories over. The drug they gave you so the memories would implant in the new body. If ours gets approved, it’ll be worth more than the rest of S&J combined. But if the FDA approves the procedure as it stands now, well, there won’t be any use for our drug, now will there?”

  “Sir, what you’re asking is completely beyond my reach,” I say, but he waves a dismissive hand.

  “I know you have a guy at the FDA. Richard something-or-other. You two went to college together, pledged the same fraternity. You got him his job.”

  “Rick Preston.” My voice sounds hollow. I try to remember what I told Jackson about not selling the farm, about not giving everything over to this man. I never considered it would be something like this.

  “Right. So what I need you to do is to put a call in to this guy and assure him, in that way you do so well, that your committee will eviscerate the FDA’s budget if SUBlife passes. Blame your religion if you need to. I don’t care. Just kill it.”

  “If I do what you’re asking . . . It will be years before SUBlife can go back up for approval. All of it, the whole pilot program, all of it will have to be done again, at huge expense. This could irreparably damage the program, sir.” I think of Hannah. Of Linda and Connie. None of them could have waited years. Neither could I.

  Burt Leeland leans forward in his chair, his hands flat on the desk in front of him.

  “Son, as I understand it, you’re only sitting there breathing because of me. But if that’s not enough to motivate you to return a hell of a favor, well, I’m sure your chief of staff has informed you that human cloning wouldn’t poll very well in your district. Seems you have a bunch of religious fanatics voting for you, who are apt to vote for someone else if they catch wind of your . . . status.”

  And in that moment, there is nothing to be done. I think of my career, of the impossible prospect of going up against a man as powerful as this. And I know that if there is any of the redeemed man left in me, the good man, the one who could have changed, my next words will kill him stone dead.

  “Of course,” I say into the camera, with the most sincere look of admiration I can muster. “It’s not a problem, si
r.” I can see myself in the little nested window on the bottom of my screen, and for a moment I look exactly like my son.

  March

  Hannah

  Even though I’m late to Thursday’s meeting, I shouldn’t be surprised to find David out front, smoking a cigarette. At first I’m appalled that he would flout the rules so openly, that he would risk cancer in his new body after it had already taken root in his old one. But then I remember, it’s David. And David does what he wants.

  “You could get kicked out of the program for that, you know,” I say. He glances up and smiles. It makes me glad, foolishly glad, that he’s so happy to see me.

  “I have some friends in very high places,” he replies. “I’m not worried.” I consider for a moment if I should hurry inside to where Connie and Linda are surely waiting, but too much of me wants to remain with David, who doesn’t care if he’s late. As if I’m inoculated against any blame if I’m with him.

  “You’re one of those guys, aren’t you?” I ask, leaning against the brick wall beside him, enjoying its rough familiarity on the skin of my arms, as I always enjoy sensations that have not changed for me since the transfer.

  “What guys?”

  “The ones who could get away with anything,” I reply. “And took it for granted. Like they didn’t know that the world wasn’t engineered to revolve around them.”

  “I’d wager a girl who looks like you could get away with quite a bit of trouble.”

  I shrug, feeling the first pulse of a blush swarm up my neck. I motion for the cigarette, all the while wondering what it is about this man that brings out everything foolish in me. This man, who believes in all the things I abhor, whom I don’t even particularly like. He shakes his head, holding the cigarette a little farther away from me.