A Pinch of Ooh La La

by Renee Swindle

  I didn’t understand why Bendrix was being so pushy, frankly. There was a time, years ago, when he’d tried to convince me to start dating again, but those conversations had petered out once I became fully committed to opening Scratch. Besides, he was one to talk. If I feared getting hurt again, so did he, and he was as shut down as I was.

  The year prior, the love of his life, one Anthony Wilson, had confessed to making out with another man at a party. Bendrix was so upset after hearing Anthony’s confession, he broke up with him. Mind you, these two had been dating for more than two years by that point and were planning on buying a house together. I, for one, stood on the side of common sense and told Bendrix that he should give Anthony a second chance. At least hear him out, I’d said. It was a kiss, after all, not a full-blown affair, or anything close; and Anthony had confessed, which was a clear indication that the kiss was a cry for help. But Bendrix, stubborn and prideful, wanted nothing more to do with Anthony. I was so upset after their breakup, you would’ve thought I’d been dumped. I never knew anyone who was a better fit for Bendrix, who could make him do that rare thing he so disdained—smile—as often as Anthony could. They were good together. Then again, if Bendrix knew me better than anyone, I knew him just as well, and my guess was that after two years with Anthony, he’d been falling hard, and loving a person so deeply scared him, and that kiss had given him a way out. Bendrix waved away my take on the situation, calling it psychobabble, and after the split he rarely wanted to talk about Anthony, or, God help him, discuss his feelings. When it came to love, I was the Cowardly Lion and Bendrix the Tin Man. If I dealt with the Avery debacle by baking, Bendrix dealt with his heartbreak by working longer hours at the hospital, volunteering at a free clinic in East Oakland, and watching esoteric foreign films from the sixties.

  Anthony’s name worked like kryptonite against Bendrix’s cool exterior, and he had a way of recoiling whenever he heard it. Even so, I thought, if he kept bugging me about dating, I was going to pull out the name and throw it at him.

  He waited for Noel to leave the table before starting up again. “You have to think about egg production.”

  “You have to think about leaving me alone. You’re getting on my nerves.”

  “I’m concerned. From what I learned in medical school, eggs get old, and when they do, they don’t lay as well, making it harder to create the necessary zygote that eventually leads to diaper changes and midnight feedings.”

  It wasn’t fair that he mentioned kids, but he had a point and he knew it. Forty loomed: a six-foot-high billboard lit up on a dark highway and drawing closer and closer and closer. What’s more, if my heart was holding sit-ins and quietly requesting that I find romance, my uterus was holding protests with a megaphone and placards: What do we want? Sperm! When do we want it? Now!

  I looked at him from across the table. “Why are you putting all of this in my face? Why are you being a jerk?”

  He leaned in, his voice low. “If you want a family as much as I know you do, now is the time to start trying. The older you get, the higher the risks of ectopic pregnancy, high blood pressure, diabetes—”

  “You’ve made your point.”

  He reached over and took my hand. “I worry about you.”

  “I know. Stop it. It’s annoying.”

  I wasn’t a believer in reincarnation, but if past lives existed, I had to believe that Bendrix and I had lived together through several. I imagined us bumbling along through one lifetime after another as brother and sister, husband and wife, mother and son—we’d experienced it all together, only to reach this point now, best friends. We had met the first day of our freshman year of high school. When I saw him in the cafeteria in his oversized T-shirt with a picture of the Cure, it was love at first sight. His Afro had been straightened to within a short breath of its life, dyed lime green, and styled so that several oiled strands fell perfectly over his left eye. His pants were held together in spots by safety pins. I was in my black phase—black jumper, black stockings, black shoes—and my own hair was shaped like a block of cotton candy. Frankenstein’s bride had nothing on me.

  He was reading Baudelaire and eating an elaborate sandwich on a toasted baguette with various kinds of sprouts and vegetables sticking out. He didn’t look up from his book until I made a show of clearing my throat and opening my Plath. When he saw what I was reading he smiled. “Child, I cannot believe we have another four years of this shit. I feel like Oliver Twist trapped in that damn orphanage.”

  “More like Carrie,” I rejoined.

  “Yes,” he said, widening his eyes. “Pig’s blood and all. Bendrix Henderson.”

  “Abbey Lincoln Ross.”

  • • •

  I took a bite of my pain aux raisins and Bendrix sipped his espresso while staring at me. In the momentary silence that followed, I felt a sense of anxiety coming from him that I hadn’t noticed before. I could feel my heart quickening because I just knew that something was up. Something was wrong.

  “What happened?”

  He stared down at his tablet longer than necessary. Waffling, I believe it is called.

  “Bendrix.”

  He sighed and swiped, then pushed his tablet in front of me. I picked it up and stared directly into Avery Brooks’s caramel peepers and shockingly white teeth. Avery stared back at me from the photo as if no time had passed at all. I read the headline—AVERY BROOKS MAKING QUIET COMEBACK IN AMSTERDAM—then let my gaze wander back down to the photo. He stood in front of a large abstract painting flanked by potted plants and an oversized red chair; a staircase peeked out from behind. Sunlight shone through the windowpanes to his left, and at his feet there was a small stuffed rabbit, a kid’s toy. His home, presumably, in Amsterdam.

  “I guess Mexico didn’t work out,” I heard Bendrix say.

  I remained quiet, until—“How long have you known?”

  “I found out a few hours ago while I was at the hospital.”

  I skimmed the text long enough to catch familiar phrases like impassioned artist, fraud, Oscar-nominated documentary, and the more unfamiliar phoenix rises, sales doubling, and second life. I clicked to the next page and saw Avery with his arm around a ruddy, freckled girl whose blond pigtails flipped upward as though pulled by strings. She wore clogs and lederhosen.

  I exaggerate, but only slightly. She was in her twenties and pretty in a pale, freckled, Scandinavian way.

  “They have a son,” Bendrix said.

  “That explains the pink rabbit. Good for them. Pippi Longstocking and Basquiat’s love child.” I pushed the tablet toward him and covered my eyes with my fingers as if I’d been reading for hours. “What else?”

  “Apparently he’s working on a series of paintings.”

  “Original this time?”

  “So he says. He’s been selling. The price for his work is up. They love him in Europe. His show hasn’t opened and most of the work has already sold.”

  Bendrix gave me the necessary time to pout before speaking. “He’s putting his life back together—all of his life, not just work. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, Abbey. I love what you’ve done with Scratch as much as you do, but you need to get on with living.”

  “But you don’t understand. I need time. Yes, you were there, but you don’t know what it’s like to be humiliated in movie theaters and on Blu-ray and DVD and live streaming.”

  I always fell back on my humiliation when I was pushed too hard. And why shouldn’t I? Who else could say they had discovered their fiancé was cheating while watching a documentary about his life? Show of hands? Anyone? Anyone at all?

  Avery B: His Rise and Fall was a Sundance Audience Award winner and went on to be nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary. I mean, how does something like that happen?!

  “That movie was years ago, Abbey.”

  “Feels like yesterday.” I glanced ar
ound the bakery. By now the tables were filling up and a line was snaking to the screen door in the front. My bakery was a success, but the article made me feel like a complete failure. He had a baby—a son. During all those years with Avery, I had dreamed of starting a family with him. Avery was making a comeback and had a kid and a girlfriend, while I was spending my life making cupcakes. Where was my child? Where was my family?

  “You of all people know how much that man hurt me,” I said.

  “I also know that you’re letting your fear take over. I also know you’re so afraid, you’ve stopped trying.” He looked up from his tablet. “What are you going to do? Spend the rest of your life hanging out with your best friend?”

  “Yes?” I said weakly.

  “Abbey, you’re not getting younger. Life is short. There are no guarantees. You’re the star of your own show.” He was on a roll now and enjoying himself. “The driver of your own car. Only you can make it happen.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  Thankfully, Noel called over that one of my suppliers was on the line, saving me from breaking out into tears on the spot. My life sucked!

  I told Noel I’d take the call in my office and rose from the table. “Thanks for the morning pep talk and news about my ex. I feel much better about life. You are a fine friend, Dr. Henderson. Thanks. Heading home yet? You must be exhausted.”

  He eyed me from over his espresso cup before holding up his tablet with a grin, and the online dating site flashed before my eyes.

  Jerk.

  3

  Let’s Face the Music and Dance

  A quote from New Yorker art critic Charles Rappaport: “Avery Brooks’s artwork speaks on a level outside the realm of abstraction and encapsulates the vitality of the mean streets where he grew up and the irony of his generation. Even at his young age, his work stands with that of the great artists he once studied.”

  I was twenty-eight when I met Avery and working at Contemporary Art Now as a staff writer. I’d been following his career since grad school and lucked out when I was assigned to interview him at his opening at Kerr Gallery in San Francisco.

  I’d recently earned my master’s degree in art history, my thesis on Kyrah Hegl, an artist who’d worked with mixed media before her suicide in the early 1980s. I was never an artist myself and not nearly as talented as my musically and artistically inclined siblings, but Bendrix and I had earned a name for ourselves back in high school as graffiti artists. We were serious enough that we were getting commissioned gigs by the time we were seniors. (Oh, how I was tempted at times to tell people that the one and only Dr. Bendrix Henderson was once known as Benz to the graffiti world.)

  Bendrix had felt even more trapped in high school than I had and was always coming up with oddball ideas: “Let’s go to a hockey game!” “Hockey? Who goes to hockey? We live in Oakland.” Or, “Let’s go see Pearl Jam!” “They’re in town? Where are they playing?” “Oregon! We could take the train!”

  He’d been going through some of my art books one night (I was obsessed with graffiti art back then, especially that of Barry McGee and Shepard Fairey), and he looked up from one of the books and suggested that we find an abandoned building and make graffiti art just as easily as you might say, We should take a walk. I was hardly paying attention because I was struggling through my algebra homework. Bendrix had been whisked off to gifted and Advanced Placement classes two weeks into freshman year and was already taking trig, but math remained my nemesis. “What do you think?” he asked.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Are you listening?”

  I tried the formula I was working on for the millionth time. X minus Y . . . “Yeah. Graffiti. God, I hate algebra. Who cares about Y? I hate Y. I hate Z. I hate all these stupid formulas. And why are we using letters with math?”

  At this point Bendrix sighed, climbed down from my bed, and grabbed my book. “Here, child.” He took my pencil and began marking up my page like Zorro signing his signature with masked flair. “There.”

  I stared at the answer.

  “Now will you pay attention?”

  Neither Bendrix nor I could really draw, per se, so we made abstract portraits of our favorite artists instead. Van Gogh riding a skateboard. Paul Klee bungee jumping. Or we’d spray-paint a poem or haiku.

  Daddy was big on three rules: Be honest, be yourself, and stay out of jail. So when I told him I wanted to try my hand at graffiti art, he made me promise to make my mark only on abandoned buildings and freight trains—as if we knew where to find a freight train. Our odd creations caught on, and at the height of our “fame” an indie rock band took a picture of one of our designs and used it on the cover of their CD. Later, the owner of a skateboard shop in Alameda asked us to come out and paint the side of his building. Thanks to those early years in high school, I hadn’t merely studied art like my colleagues in grad school; I’d also created it. I’d learned in some small way what it was like to feel a creative spark, to experience the aliveness and elation that come from creativity.

  All this is to say, while I wasn’t model gorgeous like the women Avery usually dated, I was able to meet him in a place other women couldn’t—that place where we could spend hours on end at MOMA gazing at a piece of art or sitting at a café discussing favorite artists and evaluating their work. I also introduced him to artists he’d never heard of, mostly female, who were ignored in academe and the art world. I knew a bit more about art criticism and history than he did, only because he was mostly self-taught. He once told me he thought one of the sexiest things about me was my love and knowledge of art. He proposed a year after we met while we were traveling together in Italy.

  • • •

  Like Pollock and his alcoholism, Frida and that pole (!), van Gogh and that ear (!), Avery also came with the requisite Artist’s Story, his involving a drug-addicted mother and a series of foster parents. It also didn’t hurt that he was fine, as my stepmother Bailey noted more than once. Years of climbing the art world’s ladder led to a two-page spread in Vanity Fair that catapulted him into the national spotlight. Even readers not interested in art stopped short when they saw Avery standing next to one of his drawings, barefoot and wearing a clean white T-shirt and jeans. Oh, those light brown eyes and that caramel-like skin; those muscles, and that grin starting at the corner of his mouth. Ladies on Park Avenue sitting in gold-plated chairs turned the page of Vanity Fair, saw Avery Brooks, and sucked in a breath of air.

  Hollywood came next. Larsen, a documentary filmmaker, asked if he could make a movie about Avery’s creative process and life. Avery and I were three years into our relationship and had already formed an impenetrable bubble around us against the ever-mounting requests for his time and attention. Larsen seemed trustworthy, though, and the opportunity of a rising documentarian filming Avery’s life was too good to pass up. We said yes, and the camera crew began following Avery around.

  Sometime during the filming of Avery B, it was discovered that Avery had forged his last series of paintings off a former assistant. Admittedly, he was already heading into territory where artists begin to copy old ideas. Think Factory Warhol and those tired stills, or late Keith Bosworth and those dreaded cartoons. When Avery’s assistant took him to court, he eventually admitted that he’d copied “a few ideas.” He was sentenced to pay damages and was sued on all fronts by people who’d bought paintings from his last series of work and by other patrons and gallery owners who feared they’d been scammed. He put the loft in San Francisco on the market, as well as his New York City studio. Everything had to go. Larsen changed the title of his documentary from Avery B: His Rise and Genius to Avery B: His Rise and Fall.

  I watched movers come in and take everything from our loft. I watched Avery try to work his smile on his manager, curator, patrons, and press as he did his best to explain his way out of the shithole of lies into which he’d dug himself. I’d had to defend myself as well. Did y
ou know about the forgery, Ms. Ross? No, I hadn’t. I hadn’t known a thing. I could have added that there’d been a time when Avery had told me everything and asked my opinion on whatever project he was working on, but that had ended months before—as had the sex and most of his attention.

  So, yes, I was as surprised as anyone. I mean, forgery? Cheating is no surprise in places like Wall Street or the government, but in the art world—where creativity, your creativity, your insight, is your absolute treasure—to forge, to cheat another artist . . . it was unthinkable. Naturally his crime was the talk among critics, reviewers, and other artists. Charlie Rose dedicated a segment to the scandal, and when the movie premiered, Larsen was invited to speak about his movie and Avery on Fresh Air.

  About a week after the scandal broke, I told Avery off and moved in with Bendrix for a while. Avery knocked on the door a few days later and asked if we could talk. He told me he was going to Mexico because he needed time to think. The documentary was showing at Sundance that month and he didn’t want to have to “deal” when it opened. When I said I’d think about going to Mexico with him, he told me not to bother because he was going alone. That’s when I knew we were finished and tugged off my engagement ring. He refused to take it back, though. He loved me, he said, and he was “deeply sorry.” I deserved the ring and should keep it. He told me he’d be in touch, and then he turned and walked away.

  Since I had tickets to the festival, I went with Bendrix to see Avery B. We pointed out actors and directors and acted like kids. We sat in the back of the theater during the showing, and I gripped his hand, humiliated every time I appeared on camera; my nose alone looked six feet tall. All in all, though, I had to say, it was an excellent documentary, just as much about the creative process and the importance of art as a story about Avery’s life. I started to relax and enjoy myself. Until the nymphs appeared: one blond, one brunette, both thin boned and wide-eyed and full lipped.