Lesson In Red

by Maria Hummel

  A clanging noise interrupted my thoughts, and I turned to see a stream of dancers, a dozen of them, wearing fatigues and holding mirrors, swaying in tandem as they threaded their way through the crowd. They followed a woman in all white, her face covered with green makeup, pounding an army helmet with a hammer. Clang, clang. As the dancers passed out of sight, no one in the crowd actually responded to the performance; no one paused to remark on its meaning. There was so much art at LAAC, all around you, it was like leaves in the autumn wind.

  A quick survey of the crowd didn’t reveal my friends. I was sure that Yegina and Hiro, and Janis and Dee were here, but I didn’t mind exploring on my own. I needed to be open and ready tonight; I had my recorder, my handheld boom, extra batteries. At the posted studio map, I paused and read through the graduates. One name popped out, and I froze. The noise of the room flattened to an incomprehensible babble. A crowd began to grow behind me.

  Finally, I stepped aside and dialed a contact on my phone. Ray answered on the first ring.

  “Are you home already?” He paused. “It’s only ten here.”

  So he remembered. I’d e-mailed Ray the invitation to Brenae’s memorial screening at LAAC. I thought he’d want to know. Part of me hoped he might fly out to see it, but only the part of me that wanted to hurt as I lay awake at night, missing his body with mine. We’d made no promises or plans, by mutual agreement. We steered away from long phone calls. It was the rational choice for now. Ray couldn’t leave North Carolina, and I couldn’t leave California. But it wasn’t easy.

  “The screening is in an hour,” I said. “Layla’s got an open studio, though. Should I go?”

  “Does she?” He sounded disappointed, as if he’d hoped I’d called for another reason.

  “I wonder if she’ll actually be there.”

  “Hard to say,” he said. “Doubt it.”

  The rumor was that Layla had gone to some expensive rehab retreat and now didn’t leave her parents’ house.

  “Are you afraid of her?” Ray asked.

  “No,” I said. I missed his voice, its warm reassurance. “Well, maybe I am.”

  “It’s your call,” he said. “Though technically, neither of us should talk to her without lawyers present.”

  “Since when did we let that stop us?” I said, plucking a map. “Come with me.”

  LIGHTS FESTOONED THE LITTLE COURTYARD to the studios, outlining the benches and the Canter’s Deli stone. The glow and the crowds made the place festive, but as I described them for Ray, I could also see the starkness of the buildings beyond, how the night exposed the dinginess and the worn paint, how the lit hallway could look long and scoured and vacant when all the doors were closed.

  Layla Goetz-Middleton’s studio was not on the same wing as Brenae’s—how could it have been? How could Erik have sneaked around between them without being seen? But it wasn’t far, either: less than fifty yards apart, just another room in LAAC’s maze of rooms. I tried to explain to Ray what I saw through the doorways as I passed—pink prongs extended from three walls, and an urn at the center bubbled over with red cloth; a black-and-white projection showed a diver jumping into an empty pool; a giant hair dryer, the size of a bear, blew on the hair of a blond doll figure posed on the floor. Ray’s befuddled responses made me grin and almost forget my destination until I reached Layla’s studio.

  “I’m here,” I whispered in the hall outside the door. “It sounds like it’s empty.”

  “Go in,” Ray said. “You’ve got nothing to be afraid of.”

  I leaned on the corridor wall instead.

  “Maggie?”

  “I’m imagining you here. With me.”

  Ray was silent, and then: “That could go many ways.”

  I laughed sadly and pushed myself through the doorway.

  A simple line of photos circled the studio, most of them close-ups: of hands, of bent heads, of crumpled gloves, of pans full of cotton swabs. At first it looked medical—nurses and patients—but this was Layla’s series on nail salon workers. Accompanying the images was a timeline of a single worker getting her job, getting paid low wages for long hours, getting pregnant, getting sick, losing her baby. Nothing shouted outrage or injustice—but the chronology and its visual juxtaposition were painful to read. Layla didn’t have the flair of Erik or Brenae, but she could drive home a point, and she had.

  A small sign read, DUE TO PERSONAL CIRCUMSTANCES THE ARTIST CANNOT BE IN ATTENDANCE TONIGHT, BUT PLEASE USE THIS PHONE TO ASK HER QUESTIONS. A flip phone sat beside it. I related the scene to Ray.

  “Do you think anyone’s called?” I said.

  “Doesn’t seem too popular a spot,” said Ray. “But you’re there.”

  I was there, and I felt like I needed to do something, to confront something.

  “Stay on the line.” I took in a breath, and then picked up the phone, holding it to my other ear, dialing the only number in Contacts.

  Layla answered on the third ring. The sound of her voice made my cheek go cold, as if the phone was made of ice.

  “This is the artist speaking,” she said after a moment.

  “Hi, I’m a visitor in your studio, and I just wanted to say how moving your show is.” My heart was pounding and my throat almost choked, but I forced the words to come out. “Really.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “That means a lot.”

  She didn’t recognize me. I lowered her phone. My thumb drifted over the end button, but I didn’t hang up.

  “Do you have any questions about it?” came her voice.

  I raised the phone again. Hearing Layla brought me back to her scorn in the car to the Westing, back to the dead look in her face when she dragged me into Nelson’s office. Maybe she had called the police that night. But it had been to save her life, not mine or Ray’s. And yet I felt I owed her something. Not forgiveness. Not pity, either. I steeled myself to talk without hesitation or emotion.

  “Who or what inspired your work?” I said.

  “Great question,” she said. “I like to see what’s invisible. Nail artisans wait on people all day, all over L.A., literally at our feet, breathing toxic chemicals, and we don’t think about them at all, or what we’re doing to them—”

  I interrupted her: “I mean, was there one person or moment that made you want to be an artist?”

  “My father,” she said automatically. “He loves art more than anything.”

  The phone felt small in my hand. There it was, the note I was looking for. Not forgiveness. Not pity. Layla’s truth. She had never astonished or dazzled her father, not in the way Erik or Brenae had, not in the way she wanted to. He didn’t believe in her talent, had never hungered for it to prove itself. But then one day Layla herself, as a young girl in the arms of another knowing and powerful older man—had become an artwork of his making, desired by him, shaped and defined by him. How could she let that go?

  I thanked her and hung up. Two men drifted into the room, gazing at the photos, but too fast. Seeing and not looking. “Steve Goetz’s daughter,” commented one. “They’re letting her graduate.”

  “What happened with her again?” said the other.

  I listened to them diminish Layla to a crude item of gossip before I realized Ray was still on the line, waiting for me.

  “Did you get the answers you wanted?” he said in my ear as I joined the flow of traffic into the next wing of the studios.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But I have nothing more to ask her.”

  “You tell me how it all goes,” said Ray, his voice softer and more distant. “Or maybe one day, I’ll listen to it on your show.”

  “That could be a long time yet,” I said, struggling to sound hopeful.

  “I’ll wait,” he said. “Good night, Maggie.”

  BRENAE’S STUDIO WAS AS EMPTY as the day we’d visited. The scuffs on the floor. The fake stars on the ceiling. The pushpin holes in the walls. A sign outside read, IN HONOR OF BRENAE BRASIL, and inside, people pivoted in silence bef
ore wandering out again. As I hung back in the hall to watch, I wondered how many of them were thinking not of Brenae’s art, but of her death, here, in this very space. Putting the gun to her mouth and pulling the trigger. To know these walls as the walls that had absorbed the sound of the shot—this floor as the floor where the mattress lay, her corpse upon it—was to see a still chamber of death amid the life and creative force of the rest of the campus.

  It was also to hear a silence. A silenced voice.

  The morning of the screening I had been listening to my interview with Nancy Brasil, Brenae’s mother, marking the best quotes. I had earned Davi’s trust over several sessions, and their mother had warmed to the idea of my visiting Brenae’s hometown and talking with her. Nancy bore an eerie likeness to Brenae, with a rounder, older, less expressive face. It was clear she wanted to speak, but the act unraveled her. Long pauses trailed into unfinished sentences. I was about to excuse myself out of compassion when a dog barked loudly on the street outside and Nancy burst into a story about the girl her daughter had been.

  One day, teenage Brenae had chased a growling dog away from a child, and then adopted the dog when its negligent owners wanted to get rid of it. She trained it herself. “The dog became a sweetheart, a real pal to the whole town,” said Nancy, “and Brenae was the one who’d given him the chance. She saw that his circumstances were not who he was, you know? And she changed them.”

  She was smiling at the memory, but then her face quaked and she covered her eyes.

  What does anyone say in those moments that’s of any use? I told her how sorry I was, my own voice breaking. Her hand fell away, and she raised her chin.

  “The problem is that courage can look like anger to people,” she said, holding me in her full gaze, “until they actually understand the pain you’re feeling.”

  At the threshold to Brenae’s studio, I listened to the quiet for a long time. Then I pulled out my recorder to capture it.

  At quarter to eight, I clicked off my machine and was stowing it back in my purse when I heard someone say my name. I turned to see Zania de Wilde standing across from me, her arms folded, her head tilted back to regard my face. She wore a black suit with a high collar, and black boots that laced up her narrow calves.

  “You’ve moved on, I hear,” she said, as if she’d researched a few things about me.

  “In some ways,” I said. “How about you?”

  She shrugged. “Still at LAAC.”

  “How are your classes?” I said, hand on my recorder. Softly I clicked it on. I couldn’t use anything she said, but maybe I would want to hear it again.

  “Like you actually care,” she said.

  I asked if she was helping with Nelson’s case. He claimed he was not guilty of any assaults, only the illegal art trafficking.

  “No,” she said. “But I believe him.”

  My gut twisted as I fought the urge to contradict her. Zania stood at the threshold to Brenae’s studio, then brushed her hair back from her cheeks. “My dad had a reputation in London. He came from rough places. Nobody messed with him. He could have kept James Compton’s money and made himself huge.” Her chest swelled with a defiant breath. “But he moved away so he could become someone new, and devote his life to helping artists.”

  I wondered if Zania would defend her father if she’d seen pictures of Calvin’s body, of Ray’s fractured shoulder. Maybe she had seen pictures. Maybe Layla had told her about how Nelson had seduced her and controlled her for years. Regardless, I didn’t want to hear Zania’s thoughts on her father. I already knew who he was.

  “If you ever want to talk about Brenae, let me know,” I said. “You have a rare perspective on her.”

  Her hand went to her neck, tugging at the tight collar. “I hope I never see you again,” she said, looking into the empty room beyond us.

  I left her there. It was almost time for the screening.

  THE LOBBY WAS SO CROWDED when I arrived that the only space left was at the left edge of the projection, opposite the podium where Hal Giroux was now speaking, extolling the talent of Brenae Brasil, and “humbly asserting” his own regret at not celebrating it sooner.

  “What you are about to see will shock and pain you, as it did me,” Hal said. “But shock and pain should not be avoided for the sake of partial truths. I learned this the hard way. In art, as in life, we are always mastering this lesson, mastering our own understanding of the suffering of others and extending our compassion to them. I failed Brenae Brasil. I cannot make up for that.” He paused, letting the confession sink in. I looked around for Janis’s reaction, but her height made her hard to spot in a crowd. Hal went for a few more minutes, repeating himself and soaking in the spotlight, his voice rich and full, his collar parted at the neck, his forehead glistening with sweat. He did not look like a man ashamed, but a man grateful to relieve himself of his burden, and I was pretty sure that Hal thought that, once this night was over, he would be exonerated, privately and publicly. Maybe he would be. Maybe he was doing all he could. I could tell by the tense look on Lynne Feldman’s face that she didn’t buy it one bit, but when she got up to the podium, she simply introduced Brenae’s biography and both films, and when they were made.

  Packing played: Brenae shopping and eating with her weapon, sleeping with her cheek cradled against the barrel. As much as I understood about her now, she still seemed larger than life in the film—not a person, but an emblem, a figure, writ as large as any Hollywood movie character. A woman with her gun: her child and her defender and her killer in one. My eye sockets hurt from seeing her up there, so vibrant and full of life, but I didn’t cry. I was bracing myself for Lesson in Red, and I could feel the tension in the crowd shift as the white title text displayed, and the voice-over began.

  He comes. He asks me. I say yes. What can I say? What will happen if I say no? Where will I go?

  There was an audible gasp as the film cut to twenty-foot-high Erik, head still blurred, lying on top of Brenae, pushing into her while her face turned away. The voice-over repeated. The blanket shuddered and slipped from her breast. The scale of the video made the sequence a thousand times worse, and I turned away from the screen. That’s when I saw them in the crowd, Yegina and Hiro, staring at the video with pained eyes, and not far from them, Dee, looking queasy, and Janis, her head raised and shoulders back, as if braced for a blow. Janis had almost finished her treatment, but she’d lost weight and her frame looked thin, her complexion waxy in the flickering light. Somehow, she sensed my gaze and met it gravely.

  He comes. He asks me. I say yes. What can I say? What will happen if I say no? Where will I go? The voice-over grew louder and more desperate as all of us in the crowd listened and watched and did nothing. When the screen washed red, our faces washed red, too; for a moment, each of us wore the same stained color, and then the film ended and we wore plain light again.

  The silence after the video finished was long and deep. It was as if no one knew what to do with their bodies, and we just stood there, some heads bowed, some people furtively looking around, as if hoping to find a friendly face to free them from the tension. Finally, Lynne Feldman took the mic and encouraged everyone to see “all that LAAC has to offer tonight, and all the talented young artists who have brought their work to you. Let’s honor their spirit and inquiry. Let’s make them feel seen.”

  The crowd began to nudge apart. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Yegina waving to me. And beyond her, Janis and Dee, roped together by their arms, Janis’s face calm and resolute, her wig slightly askew. They paraded across the room. I felt a rush of affection for Janis, mixed with the old awe, and wondered what she would tell me now.

  But before I could reach her, a hand grabbed my elbow. It was the shaved-headed manager of the Super Shop where Brenae had worked. Dee had pointed me out to her, and she wanted to be interviewed. That conversation led me to one of Brenae’s coworkers, who rhapsodized about Brenae’s skills with the woodworking tools, and then to someone who’d
known Brenae since USC.

  As I filled my recorder with their words, I barely heard what Janis leaned over to say in passing, thronged as she was by her crowd of admirers and collector friends. Later, when I walked to my car alone, the school retreating behind me, the last few students still clustered and talking on the damp lawns, her comment registered.

  I reached into my purse for my phone. I knew it was too late to call anyone, and still I wanted to share all the stories I’d learned that night about Brenae, and to feel the release of knowing her, imagining her. Alive again. Here.

  She’ll be remembered now was what Janis said to me.

  Acknowledgments

  WHEN I SET OUT TO expand the Still Lives fiction project into new areas of the Los Angeles art culture, I knew I would need to cut out far more than I could include. All fiction about Los Angeles is an oversimplification. A city of four million people is four million cities, each filled with stories and points of view. And L.A.’s rich, multifoliate world of artists, dealers, curators, critics, professors, and students would be impossible to capture in its entirety, even in a slice.

  Instead, I have created fictional institutions and characters in place of real ones, and a tighter web of relationships, in order to demonstrate some of the fundamental issues in American art-making in the early twenty-first century: the “hot” market for contemporary work and its rapid commodification; varying ideals about what a museum should be; the charged mentor-mentee relationships in expensive, reputation-building art schools; and the challenges of being a pioneering artist for a historically under-included race, gender, or class. Death, via suicide or murder, is also a heightened reality in this fictional world, emblematic of the extremes of Los Angeles and the way that young and vibrant hopes are often executed by power.

  I owe a debt to The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, for teaching me firsthand about the tremendous complexity and history of L.A. art. The following books were instrumental in further research: Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton; It Happened at Pomona: Art at the Edge of Los Angeles 1969–1973 by Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer; Jack Goldstein and the CalArts Mafia and The Beat and the Buzz: Inside the L.A. Art World, both by Richard Hertz; and Creating the Future: Art and Los Angeles in the 1970s by Michael Fallon. The art documentary films The Cool School (director Morgan Neville) and The Price of Everything (director Nathaniel Kahn) were also illuminating. The study that Maggie Richter uncovers on campus rape and repeat offenders is a real study by David Lisak and Paul M. Miller; it can be found in Violence and Victims 17, no.1 (2002). The stories of assaults that Maggie read in the LAAC campus news are based on stories that victims related to me throughout my own undergraduate and graduate life.