[cont.]
Since she didn’t know when she’d be back in the city, she decided she should see the shows up at the Whitney. But once she crossed over the little moat and past the doors to the line for tickets, she suddenly wasn’t interested. The show she really wanted to see of Kusama’s work wasn’t open yet and Symbols in Contemporary Art were so strained, so imposed and inorganic. How could anything in that exhibit be as powerful as the Spirit Boat or as fear-inducing as the ritual costumes? She was far too tired to bother trying to decipher the arcane masquerading as profound so why pay so much to walk through a show she wasn’t interested in? As she turned to leave, she literally ran into Jenna Trumbell, all six feet two and a half inches of her in a tight fitting lavender striped jumpsuit, strands of burnt orange beads bouncing as she walked. And those bright cobalt blue lines around her eyes, making her look exotic, some splendid creature from another planet.
“Maggie,” she purred, reaching out to embrace her. “What a great surprise! Are you going in? You could be my tour guide if you want. Oh, you’re leaving. That’s sad. Can I entice you to go back in? I know, there is too much to do. Well, how long are you in town?”
“Three days.”
“We have to get together,” she smiled as she reached down to push back a strand of Maggie’s hair, the finger tip caressing the length of her cheek. “What are you doing tonight?”
Sibling rivalry. That’s what Maggie saw. Not a beautiful face, a lovely seductive body. Just a quest to one up her sister. How strange to look at such beauty and feel no desire.
“I’m staying with friends.”
“Well, I know of a great club where we could all go.”
“I’m not exactly a club person.”
“But this is a great club. The music is the best and you can get anything you want there, absolutely anything.”
“Why don’t you give me your phone number and I’ll talk to them and get back to you.”
Jenna opened her purse which probably cost more than Maggie’s semester tuition and pulled out an engraved card with her cell number on it. “I only give this out to people I really like,” she said, even batting her long lavender eye lashes.
As Maggie watched Jenna walk away, she wondered how much practice it took to get that wiggle in her walk so perfect. She really was an artist, her own art form. The long hair pulled back into a pony tail, not a single hair out of place. The earrings, jingling like tiny cymbals. Not a single element was wrong. All she needed was a text, a message to deliver and she could be a performance artist. Well, that would probably be a step backwards in her world: she already was a celebrity, her face on so many magazine covers. And as beautiful as those images were, she was more stunning in person, a bright light to any room she entered.
But, Maggie reminded herself, some mistakes should not be repeated. You don’t fit in that family. You really don’t want to be part of that world. And then she realized, yes, that had been the attraction. How simple. She wanted to be part of a bigger world, a more expansive world and Barbara and Madison represented that. She hadn’t wanted them as much as out of her own small world. How sad to realize they had no escape to offer. Alex would scoff: you are over thinking it again, Magpie. Such an willing and lovely opportunity as Jenna should be embraced. All night or even two. Remember Hondo’s theory that our flaws make us human. Our self destructive tendencies are not mistakes to overcome: they show us who we are. Everything else is camouflage. This, however, was not a mistake she cared to repeat. Life is short. Every mistake should be a new one, shouldn’t it?
Back in the Bushwick loft, stretched out on the lumpy couch, trying to make restitution to her poor tired legs, flexing the toes, elevating them with cushions. As hard as she tried, she could never pace herself in the city. The sharp ping of the cell phone startled her from the cusp of sleep. A text message from Alex. “Catching early am train back. Don’t sleep naked. Warning: photog friend coming for brunch. Must introduce u 2.” He had mentioned this friend several times before, saying that she photographs clouds the way Annie Leibovitz shoots the famous.
Alex, the matchmaker. Everyone always trying to fix her, fix her up. But in this case, it was a nice thought to fall asleep to. Clouds as mannered and refined as authors and actors. Clouds as clamorous as celebrities. Cirrus, cumulus, fog and buttermilk skies. Tumultuous and tender, masking the blue.
Just before dawn the sound of garbage trucks rattling down this industrial road on their way to residential streets woke her. Dreaming about the Asmats feasting on the flesh of Michael Rockefeller, taking his adventurous spirit and absorbing it into their own bodies in what probably was a tasty meal. We are what we eat – that was integral to their culture, a way of recycling the spirit. Ingestion was certainly a different take on how to obtain eternal life. In their creation myth, it wasn’t God creating Adam and Eve as reflections of himself. It was the first woodcarver, alone in the woods. Out of loneliness he carved human figures. But they were wood and immobile. Then he carved a hole in a stump and covered the hole with lizard skin. He pounded upon it out of frustration, out of loneliness, but the reverberation diverted him. He began to move side to side, swaying as he hummed to the rhythm. As he forgot his loneliness in the wonderful rush of percussive sounds, the wooden figures with their elbows on their knees, like fetuses, like the buried dead, began to unwind and dance. They stood, all reveling in the sound and rhythm. The first woodcarver was no longer alone. They danced together.
Isn’t this the dilemma for all of us as well? Do we sway alone or dance together? So many things impede the dance. Being a lesbian kept all connections at bay when she was growing up. She was different and her school mates could sense it. But even more off putting, she was introverted, always preferring to play alone. Both traits were anathema during her childhood. Now being homosexual was mostly accepted but introverted – mass murderers were introverts, serial killers were introverts, all the whackadoodles were introverts. Being by yourself was unhealthy and wrong. And for most it truly was. Prisoners kept in solitary confinement lost language skills, lost the ability to communicate, not just with language. They became filled with sullen rage. They lost the ability to mesh. We are a herd species. We derive our strength in numbers – except when we don’t. That is the dilemma. Do we operate by our own internal needs or do we fit into the herd? Which is right? Which is damned?
Everyone kept telling her to get out and socialize more. Could it really be fear that kept her apart as the psychiatrist had warned her? Or was it some intrinsic need to hear the soft voice of her being? Not paying attention to her voice in order to be with others was truly self destructive, a kind of suicide. She did need others, though. She did need Alex and Odessa. Maybe her herd was very small. Maybe they were enough.
But every story needs a happy ending and happy endings always seem to revolve around finding a loving partner. We need to think that there will be an end to our isolation, that the perfect person will come to complete us as Plato postulated and then we will live happily ever after, whole at last. Sometimes that perfect person is actually part of yourself. Sometimes it’s as simple as pulling your own parts out of hiding and putting the pieces all together. Being whole. Yes, being whole, warts and all. That was the moral of this story.
Acknowledgments
Many, many thanks to Barbara Schreiber, Jerry Cullum and Linda Dolejs for their invaluable honesty and perceptive suggestions during the seemingly endless stages of revision.
The characters in this novel are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to actual people is unintended and unexpected.
Mery Lynn McCorkle is a visual artist who has lived in both Brooklyn and Los Angeles. She currently lives in northwest Georgia where the silence is deep and the pines are tall. This is her second novel. Her first, Last Judgment, is a suspense story situated in the New York art world.
