by Anna Birch
I was there to see the artists. Beautiful, mature seniors in solid black, standing beside their senior projects and answering questions like professionals:
“Yes, the Conservatory has been an excellent way to explore my artistic journey.”
And
“I believe that fiber arts are a manner of reinventing the wheel. Each new impression tells a story all its own, and the act of spinning, shuttling, and weaving all tells its own tale.”
And
“No, the imperfection of art is an expression of the humanity that inspires it.”
At fourteen, I was scattered. I was sloppy and unsure as a freshman, driven and achingly precocious. The mere sight of the Conservatory’s eloquent, well-spoken graduating class was the nudge I needed to complete my portfolio and throw myself into the ring as a visual arts–track candidate. The unlikelihood of being accepted as a late transfer didn’t matter to me then. Impossibility was a word I refused to incorporate into my lexicon, and tonight is no different.
It paid off then, but will it pay off now?
I’d never been to the Frist Center for the Visual Arts before the Capstone Award’s project presentation, and I’m just as awed now as I was on the day of the project presentation. Standing here now is more than I could have ever imagined three years ago: It felt like a pipe dream to imagine myself as a student at the Conservatory at all. But with Frist’s gorgeous art deco aesthetic and gleaming marble floors, this is the first time I’ve ever felt like a real artist.
We aren’t escorted through the delivery entrance this time.
Rhodes reaches between us to hold my hand. We stand at the base of the concrete stairs that run the length of Frist’s entrance, and Broadway is nothing but noise and color behind us. The Frist Art Museum stands at attention over us, glowing from the inside with welcome, bearing its standards in banners of every color and anticipating war.
Here we are, again.
Two weeks ago, we were ripping each other’s hearts to shreds and we had no idea.
Last night, we held each other’s hearts in our hands.
This morning, too, with clasped hands under a blanket on the great room couch while we sipped coffee and took in a part of the local news. With her breath on the back of my neck while she helped me with my hair before we left the condo.
With a kiss for luck just before we stepped off the otherwise-empty elevator and into the vestibule that opened onto the street.
Dense clouds obscure the sky over our heads, and the air smells like rain.
“Let me read your cards,” Rhodes whispers. Her hair is up in a high, soft bun and Frist’s warm light reflects off her pale skin. “We didn’t read your card yesterday when we were unloading the car.”
“What?” I force my attention away from the dip at the base of her throat and meet her eyes instead. “You don’t believe in it.”
“You do, though. It makes you feel better, right?” She extends her hand, palm up, and waits. “Give me your deck.”
“How do you know I need to feel better?”
“Going off the looks of you, I can’t tell if you’re going to pass out or barf on my shoes.”
I give her a look. She returns it.
“Fine.” I reach into my bag, pull the deck out from the front pocket, and place it in Rhodes’s hand.
She shuffles the deck like I did yesterday, cuts it, then lets me put it back together.
“Let’s do three cards,” I say. “A card for me, a challenge card, and an outcome card.”
“This sounds complicated.”
“Just draw three cards.”
She draws the first and places it in my upturned palm. Justice, again.
“What does it mean when you keep drawing the same card over and over?” Rhodes asks.
“It means it’s particularly meaningful in your life,” I say. “The fact that I drew it for you and drew it for me—well.”
The cards are telling me what I already know: Tonight is a reckoning. We can’t keep going on like this, like Griffin said, and it’s time for me to restore balance in the universe. Apparently, there might not be a timeline where Rhodes doesn’t hate me.
She places the second card in my hand, my challenge card: the Four of Pentacles. In this illustration, a vine tightens around a young woman’s neck, and four flowers bloom with pentacles in the center.
“That looks … bleak.” Rhodes frowns into my hand.
“It means I feel like I’m being held down by my money—or lack thereof. It isn’t wrong.”
Rhodes nods, and places the third card in my hand. “The outcome card.”
A woman sits in a chair overcome with all manner of vegetation. Butterflies perch in her hair and on her shoulders, and cocoons hang over her head. Bones are scattered at her feet, and she holds a bull skull—complete with horns—in front of her face.
“Death,” I whisper.
“Why is this comforting to you, again?” Rhodes picks up the card and observes it closely. “This illustration makes no sense to me.”
“It means death in the sense that something has to die for something else to live. See the cocoons and the butterflies? The flowers in the background? Flowers come from seeds, which come from dead flowers. Caterpillars die to their identity as caterpillars to metamorphose into butterflies.”
“Rebirth,” Rhodes says. She says it again, for herself this time: “Rebirth.”
A beat of silence hangs between us. The wind rattles bare tree branches together like old bones, and police sirens wail past us on the street.
I have to tell her.
“I wonder if Kiersten is as scared as I am?” I ask instead.
“More,” Rhodes says after a moment of thought. “Confident people don’t cheat. Everything she’s done so far tells me she doesn’t think she has a chance.”
If only that were true.
“Every bit of this has been because Kiersten hates us,” I say. “Because Kiersten hates me.”
Rhodes makes a face. “Kiersten is a toad.”
“Yeah, but one of those dangerous ones people use to poison darts.” I can’t help but frown, and for some reason this makes Rhodes laugh.
I reach between us to take her hand, and she pulls me in for a swift kiss.
I don’t have a photographic memory, but God knows I try my damnedest to take a snapshot of this moment and keep it forever.
I want to remember how she feels, she smells, she tastes.
By this time tomorrow, I will want to come back to this and remember what it felt like to have everything I wanted.
* * *
Frist’s courtyard is a small, contained space that sits between the museum and a large parking lot. I’ve only seen it in daylight, with its wide swaths of manicured grass bordered by pergolas and seating areas, but night has transformed it into something different. The gossamer tent stands tall over our heads, thin enough to see silhouettes of the tree branches that arch toward the sky. It’s thirty-seven degrees out, but you’d never know it—tall, lantern-style heat lamps paired with other bodies in close proximity have prompted nearly all of the attendees to shed their coats by the entrance.
The tent is lit by large, white paper lanterns, and the table arrangements in the center of the space are comprised mostly of tea lights and mirrored objects, sleight of hand to project tiny sources of light into larger spaces. Everything is black, white, and cream, and over-the-top jewelry glitters in the muted light. The only splash of color are violently red roses in the table arrangements, on the buffet, and tucked into the waitstaff’s jacket coats.
“Do you think this will be a little bit of what heaven is like?” Rhodes glitters, too. Her knee-length, robin’s-egg blue dress is scattered with tiny iridescent beads that catch in the light. It hangs straight from her shoulders, obscuring her shape, and it’s accented with a white Peter Pan collar.
She reminds me of Alice, skirting the edge of the Queen of Heart’s croquet game.
“What do you mean?”
I’m in red, of course—a red sweater, a black leather skirt, black tights, and flats.
There weren’t attire suggestions in the email from the Capstone committee, and I’m too short for anything Rhodes could have loaned me from her suitcase.
I cross my arms tighter over my chest. Maybe if I act like it doesn’t bother me, people will think I chose to underdress.
“Everything is, like, glowing and white. There are all these people we know, and everyone looks happy.” She smiles a little.
“Are there people we know?” All I see are people’s backs.
“Sure. Your parents are over”—she scans the space for a minute, then points over peoples’ heads to a table toward the center—“there. Oh, ugh, they’re talking to Bootsie, God help us all, and Griffin is waiting in line for something to drink. Kiersten is looking at somebody’s Capstone entry—Marianna Walters’s? Was that her name?”
“I don’t believe in heaven,” I say. “I think what Oscar Wilde said works better for this: ‘We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.’”
“God, you’re in a dark mood.” Rhodes makes a face.
“But am I wrong?”
Every time our eyes meet, it feels like it will be the last time.
“I guess it just depends on how you look at it,” she says.
Mom and Dad swoop in, all kisses and cigarette-scented hugs. I don’t have a chance to tell Rhodes I’ll come back for her as soon as Mom and Dad head to the buffet line. I don’t even get a chance to tell her goodbye.
I’m ushered over to stand by my installation, and almost immediately I’m subsumed with adults asking the kind of questions about my work I’ve spent my life dreaming of answering—what was my original vision for my work? I didn’t have a set-in-stone vision, I say. I only wanted to see where my original idea would take me. Are the fragile, ink-stained paper-cuts a product of careful planning, or can I thank some kind of happy accident? It was a happy accident, actually—a run-in with a printmaking student in my school’s makerspace.
It’s easier to lie than I thought it would be.
With my shaking hands stuffed in the pockets of my skirt it isn’t as hard to push through the Capstone nerves as I imagined—answer the questions. Smile for photos.
Let the twist in my stomach push me forward.
Laugh when I need to blow off steam.
Ask questions when I’m tired of coming up with answers on my own.
In spite of all this, I can’t shake the notion that today is a day for endings.
Sarah is lost to me, and the worst part is that I don’t know if I ever want her to come back; Rhodes will be over as soon as it began. Alice is a figment of my imagination.
It feels very brave to admit these things to myself.
It’s very grown and mature and part of being a woman to look loss in the face and keep moving forward. But I am my own devil. I created this hellscape for myself, and now I don’t know if I have the courage to rip off the bandage to set Rhodes free.
CHAPTER 29
RHODES
Username: n/a
Griffin finds me by Kiersten’s entry, the first just past the entrance on the right.
Everything about Kiersten’s entry screams I WANT THIS. Her section of wall is wild with color: Hand-dyed silk is stretched over wooden frames as if they’re canvases, each of them embroidered with intricate beadwork.
One is a self-portrait of Kiersten, seated in a chair and staring off into the middle distance as if she’s some sort of historical figure. Another is a collage of patterned silks sewn together in the visage of a dark, inviting path through the woods. She’s been working on this for months, long before the Capstone Award essays were due.
I want very much to not care right now.
The Capstone Award was never my goal—those breathy nudes were never meant to be. Dusk always asks me how old I feel when my feelings threaten to pull me under, and right now I feel like I’m six: I was on the verge of tears when I was offered something I didn’t want, and now I’m on the verge of tears because that thing has been passed on to someone else and my hands are now empty.
It would be very grown-up of me to simply feel joy for the success of people who deserve it, but I’m not entirely sure I have it in me today.
“This is how it was supposed to be,” I tell Griffin.
It sounds right, but I don’t believe it.
He’s handsome in a narrow-cut navy suit. A cherry-red tie stands out vibrantly against the crisp white of his shirt.
“How what was supposed to be?” Griffin cocks his head to the side to observe Kiersten’s work on his own.
“Tonight. I was never supposed to be a finalist tonight—Mom tried to defy the laws of nature by forcing it into being, and my being disqualified only set us back to the way things are supposed to be.”
Griffin follows my attention across the tent. Like the rest of the Capstone Award finalists, Kiersten stands on the other side of a whole army of cameras. Adelaide Lyu and Chelsea Leath stand on either side of her, flushed with pride in their pretty cocktail dresses and chattering between photos; Marianna Walters’s smile is brilliant, while an entire battery of flashes illuminates her dark skin. There are a few boys, whose names I never learned, shoved to the back and wearing ill-fitting suits.
Iliana stands to the left of everyone, barely smiling at all.
Her eyes dart between the cameras and Griffin at my side.
Something passes between Iliana and Griffin, and it isn’t until he shakes his head that she’s even able to turn her attention to the journalists standing in front of her.
Griffin and I meander to the next entry, submitted by a boy named Brian Maguire (based off the nameplate), whose entry is a series of scientific illustrations of native Tennessean river fish using pointillism—entire pieces of art comprised of millions of tiny dots. The dots are larger in some places and as tiny as the sharp end of a pin in others, dense to the point of black in some places and completely absent in others to suggest light.
This guy knows how his bread is buttered: Because of the simplicity of his work, he clearly sank money into creamy, thick, hand-pressed paper. Based on the microscopic dots on the page, his pens would have had to have been special ordered from somewhere like Japan. Or Germany. Nothing you’d even be able to find in a specialty shop on the internet.
Kiersten’s shimmering silk, Brian’s paper and pens.
My very British spring break figure-drawing intensives at the Royal College of Art, my connections, my loaded, culture-snobby parents who are very willing to do whatever it takes to thrust my career as an artist into existence.
Iliana has been so many things: Brutally honest. Achingly correct.
Bitter.
Jealous.
But last night, she was something I’ve never seen in her before: vulnerable.
It never occurred to me before how much these things actually cost: Parental support. Money for supplies. Money for entry fees. Money for travel. The benefit of knowing the right people since birth. I don’t doubt that I got into the festival all these years because I deserved it, but Iliana and Sarah have deserved it, too—they just didn’t have the same resources to get here.
I can’t stop myself from turning again to check on her. She gestures to her entry as she speaks into a tape recorder that has been thrust into her face. Kiersten stands next to her now, all smiles and polite nods. Her pink-and-purple cotton-candy hair is swept back into a respectable knot, and a simple black sheath dress hangs just past her knees. Sarah stands cast to the side, wearing Kiersten’s hallmark crystal-studded, pink leather jacket.
Every time Kiersten opens her mouth to speak, Iliana flinches as if she’s been slapped.
“I’ve never seen Iliana like this,” I say.
“She’s not herself tonight, that’s for sure,” Griffin says. “Have y’all had a chance to talk today?”
I shrug. “Some. I’ve realized that being nervous is just about the only th
ing that shuts her up.”
“Mmmm.” Griffin polishes the face of his watch on the front of his coat. “I guess a common enemy can solve just about every kind of conflict.”
“Common enemy?” I blink at him.
I have no idea what he’s talking about.
“Whoever ratted you out and tried to destroy her Capstone entry.” Griffin crosses his arms and continues: “Somebody here wanted you out of the running, and you know it wasn’t Iliana. So…”
He isn’t wrong.
Caught up in the moment, it had been so easy to put it to the back of my mind. I pan the line of semifinalists one more time, pausing on each face. The nervous twitch in each set of hands. Who didn’t want us here?
Iliana had been so sure it was Kiersten. Was she right?
Iliana’s here now, does it even matter?
Iliana’s crumpled, fragile paper-cuts sway over our heads like a cascade of autumn leaves. Iliana’s entry is the only one that moves, and it swings and shudders against each wave of people. It’s beautiful as a whole, but each individual card stands alone as a piece of work: fifty-two ink-dyed paper rectangles, warped and curled and delicate like lace.
It’s not the whole deck like she intended, but it’s close.
A small crowd has formed around me, their eyes moving with each sway of the paper moving over our heads. The patrons are as captivated as I am, maybe even more—they didn’t watch Iliana’s installation push into existence like I did.
They’re coming upon Iliana’s work fully formed, and it’s taking their breath away.
I catch one in my hand and turn it this way and that.
I knew they were tarot cards, but I never gave it much further thought. The card in my hand would be the size of my palm if it laid flat, and the image cut into the paper is imagery I’d recognize anywhere: a white rabbit with a timepiece peeking from behind shrubbery trimmed to the Queen of Heart’s likeness, offset against scared-looking frogs dressed in livery.
Another card reveals tea cups and silly men in top hats, framed by flowers and leaves; yet another, the Jabberwock. Axes and croquet sets. A silhouette of a cat bearing a wicked smile.
