Still Life with Tornado (11 page)

What happens for the next six days is nothing new. What happens for the next six days is unoriginal. I don't want to see ten-year-old Sarah because she wants to talk about Mexico and I don't want to talk about Mexico because Mexico wasn't original. I stay away from Alleged Earl's street because I don't want to see Alleged Earl because he's an original idea and I don't want my dullness to rub off on him. That happens, you know. That happens to people.

One minute you have a guy and he's full of energy and spark and he's ready to take on life and then the next thing you know he meets another guy who likes to sit at home and watch football games and drink beer or something. Then his spark just gets smaller and smaller until he's the same as the other guy. Happens all the time.

On Tuesday morning I leave the house before Dad even gets up. I see the sunrise. I see all the people rushing to work. I see a college girl walking along singing to the music in her ears that no one else can hear. She has a nice singing voice. I see people coming out of the subway stations and I see people running down into them. Subway stations are mysterious from street level. It's as if thousands of people just disappear down there every day. I decide that subway stations are like portals. You leave at eight in the morning, you arrive back at five thirty in the evening in the same clothes, with the same briefcase. It would be a lot cooler if the subway portals took people somewhere original, though, instead of just to work.

I decide not to think about art for a week. I decide art is futile. I decide there are better things than art. I decide not to take any buses for a week. I decide that if I want to go somewhere, I will walk.

On Tuesday, I decide to walk to the Liberty Bell.

The Liberty Bell is at Independence Mall. It's a state park, but it's not a park. It's just another part of the same city I live in. I stand in line and when I get to the room with the Liberty Bell in it, I learn all the things I learned the last time I was here. The crack. The repair. The second crack that ruined the bell for good. The inscription. What it's made of, who made it, and when.

Did you know that no one living today has actually heard the Liberty Bell ring?

I think that's a metaphor for something, but I'm not sure what.

I have to stop my brain from thinking about it because metaphor is art.

I notice the groups of schoolchildren. Some can't stand still. Most aren't listening. Some are trying to reach in and touch the bell and they know it's not allowed but they do it anyway until a chaperone stops them. None of this is original, but I can't figure out what's so important about being original right now. Who cares?

I can't stop my brain from thinking about art. I watch the kids and think:
Those kids are art.

I think:
That bell is art. It's on display like art and it's viewed by millions like art and it's a symbol of something artistic. Freedom. Freedom is artistic.

For lunch, I stand by a trash can and wait for someone to throw food away. It only takes a half hour for some tourist guy to buy a vendor hot dog and take a bite, then toss it away. I wait for him to round the corner and I lean in and pull the hot dog out. He put mustard on it and I hate mustard, but I wipe it away with the napkin and then I eat the hot dog by the side of the trash can.

The hot dog is art. The napkin with the mustard all over it is art. The trash can is art.

Outside Dunkin' Donuts, a woman tosses in a bag with half a cruller still in it. It's the nicest doughnut I ever ate even though it had her lipstick smeared on one side of it.

I don't know why I'm doing this. I have money in my wallet. Five bucks. I have a SEPTA pass that could put me on any bus, subway, or trolley in the city. Instead, I hang around tourist areas and eat food out of trash cans.

I think I'm trying to become Alleged Earl.

Which is stupid. I am a boring middle-class girl who has a house and a bed and a favorite umbrella.

But on Tuesday, I learn that other people's food tastes especially nice. That and the thing about the Liberty Bell never being heard by anyone living today. You can learn things by just walking around and listening. Mom asks about dinner with my friend and I tell her my friend is sick. She says, “Maybe next Tuesday, then.”

•   •   •

Wednesday I leave for school because Dad wakes me up and makes me pretend. He stands at the door and tells me to have a nice day and to keep our deal and Mom is still asleep even though she didn't work last night, and before I leave, I pack my backpack full of every piece of sidewalk chalk we have.

And I go.

I stop at the food cart where they sell the best breakfast sandwiches. The woman's smile is art. The way she pronounces
oregano.
The way her husband fries the egg so it fits the roll, the way he places the ham and cheese on top—the way he folds it once the cheese is melted, the way he scoops the whole thing up and lays it on the roll is art.

I walk to the corner of South and 4th and I watch the tourists try to figure out which cheesesteak place to go to. Pat's or Jim's? That's the question. That's always the question. Truth is, the difference between these two cheesesteaks is so large that you should try them both. Everyone has an opinion about which one is the most authentic but what does authentic have to do with anything anymore?

Cheesesteaks are art. Some art is Rembrandt. Some art is Rothko.

I find a place on the sidewalk to doodle with my chalk. I'm still in yesterday's clothes. Some people throw me a quarter around noon. They just toss it like I'm a fountain and they made a wish.

Here's what I decide they wished: They wished they knew which cheesesteak place was the right one.

If they would have asked, I would have told their fortune.
Beware of any cheesesteak with bright orange liquid cheese.

I draw nothing. Just big blobs of color. Nothing comes to me. Did you ever see those people who draw those 3-D masterpieces with sidewalk chalk? I want to draw that. But I don't know how to draw that. I don't even know where to start. So I just rub the chalk against the sidewalk and I make dust. This doesn't feel like art—probably because I'm not enjoying myself at all. At least the breakfast sandwich couple love what they do. Or maybe they have to. Or something. Either way, this doesn't feel like art and I don't care. I am relieved that I've gotten it out of my system. Pesky art. Who needs it?

•   •   •

At dinner, Mom and Dad notice I'm still wearing the same clothing I've had on since Monday. Mom says something about my washing my hair. Dad says that my shirt is filthy and points at the chalk markings on my jeans.

No one asks me where I was all day.

Mom and Dad both look exhausted like they do sometimes. It's not work exhaustion. It's something else. They have exhausted each other. This is clear because they don't make eye contact. Maybe it was one of those parental meetings they do. I assume it's where they make those parental
deals.
From here it looks like they spent the whole day at
the tilt
, wearing hundreds of pounds of armor and racing toward each other on horseback. If I was to guess the outcome, Dad won.

•   •   •

Thursday and Friday I walk up Broad Street as far as I can and I sing. I sing anything. I sing “Jingle Bells” even though it's May. I sing nursery rhymes. I sing songs I learned to sing when I still took piano lessons.

No one on Broad Street says anything to me. But I'm not listening so it's not like I'd hear it anyway. By Friday afternoon, I think I might have gone crazy. I am not the Sarah I used to be. I am a different Sarah. I don't hear people anymore. I hear birds. I try to figure out what the pigeons are cooing to each other. I eat out of trash cans even though I have five dollars in my wallet. I walk even though I have a SEPTA pass.

I don't care about the pear I couldn't draw. I don't care about Bruce. I don't care about Mexico. I don't care if I stay this way forever.

I wanted to go to my new school one more day this week, but I didn't manage to get there. I have no idea what I'm doing and I don't know why I'm doing it. Part of me wants to stand naked in the middle of Broad Street with pineapple stuffing rubbed all over me while throwing imaginary vegetables at people. Another part of me wants to climb to the top of Liberty One and yodel until my throat bleeds.

I should probably see a psychologist.

I'm halfway home on Friday afternoon when I see a little girl with a dog. I'm too tired to follow them, but I want to follow them because I can't figure out why a girl this young would be allowed out alone with her dog in this part of town.

Maybe I don't understand the neighborhood. Maybe I don't understand the dog. Maybe I don't understand the girl.

Something about the girl is original.

Something about the dog is original.

I ask the girl, “What is art?” and she says, “Art is what you believe no matter what other people think.” I grunt at this. I yell, “I don't give a fucking tangerine what you think, girl! You think I'm out here trying to make friends?”

She and her dog recoil, and I try to figure out why I just yelled at her.

I think I might have become Alleged Earl even though Alleged Earl doesn't want me to follow him anymore.

I think I care about art even though I don't want to. I can't get away from myself.

•   •   •

I see ten-year-old Sarah just outside City Hall. I wave to her but she doesn't see me. She's talking to another girl her age. I'm happy she's made a friend. Her friend looks like Carmen did when we were ten.

I think about Carmen and how much I miss her. I don't miss her much. I don't miss anything much. I think this is a side effect of whatever is happening to me.

Carmen knows about the
something
in “Did something happen at school?”

She's the only one who understands what's inside a tornado. She's the only one who understands that what's inside me and what's inside everyone who ever wanted to be an artist is a tornado. She seems okay with Miss Smith's idea about no one having original ideas. I don't know how she does it.

She is immune to discouragement.

I stop outside of City Hall and pull out a piece of sidewalk chalk. I draw an enormous tornado. Swirls and swirls of dust and debris. I walk three big steps at the top of the tornado—it's ten feet wide at the top. The only color chalk I have is sky blue and it's a sky-blue tornado and inside the tornado is everything that ever mattered to me and everything that ever mattered to you and every tourist and every Liberty Bell and every hot dog with mustard and every cheesesteak and every song I ever sang and every pigeon that ever cooed. They are all inside my tornado. I don't notice anyone watching me. No one stops to care. No one asks me to stop but if they did I probably wouldn't hear them anyway because I am still deaf to everyone except art—art that doesn't matter. This tornado doesn't matter. Not even with the skin from my index-finger knuckle in it. Not even with the sweat that dripped from my nose.

Then I turn around, City Hall at my back, and face the art museum down at the other end of the parkway and I yodel the best yodel I can as loud as I can. I sound like a bad imitation of Tarzan. If yodeling is art, I suck at it. I take my sucky yodel, put it inside my sky-blue tornado, and start walking home.

I can smell myself. I am so many days old I can smell more than just my sweat, I can smell my own five-day-old dirt.
Dirt is art.

•   •   •

When I get home, Mom is already at work and Dad is downstairs on the couch watching TV. He says something to me as I walk to the kitchen but I don't hear anything.

I see his mouth move, but I don't hear him at all.

His frown is big.

He makes an animated smile and points to it.

I realize he's telling me to smile.

As if smiling would make my tornado go away. As if what's on the surface matters. That's what Carmen taught me. That's what her tornadoes have always been about.

I smile and I get myself a bowl of Cheerios.

I take it back to my room and smile on my way through the living room and I go to sleep with my five-day-old dirt and I don't feel like art.

•   •   •

When I wake up on Saturday, Mom is heading to bed after her long night. I decide to paint my bedroom. The color in here is awful. It's the worst green anyone ever imagined. No wonder I couldn't draw the pear. I live inside of bile. It's taken its toll.

I look on the computer for nicer colors and I find the perfect one. Vanilla Milkshake. It's not quite white, and not quite yellow or brown. It's warm. But it's a milk shake so it's cold.

That's what color I paint my room.

I move all of my furniture into the center of the floor. I lie on my bed and start by staring into the southeast corner and I see myself on a step stool with a paint roller.
This is too fake.
I go to the hall closet and get the step stool and bring it to my room and I stand on it and roll my imaginary roller into the Vanilla Milkshake pan and then roll it onto the wall. I work my way around the room counterclockwise. Floor to ceiling. When I'm done I sit on my bed and I can see the truth: The truth is that you can't paint over bile in just one coat.

I take a pretend nap and then when I wake up I decide the whole room is dry and I can put a second coat on. A Sarah is sitting on the end of my bed. She's older.

“Forty,” she says.

“Oh,” I say. “Hi.”

“Do you want to talk about what happened in school?”

“No.”

“I know you walked in on Miss Smith kissing Vicky.”

“So?”

“So you can't paint over that,” she says.

I think I can. I think I can paint over what I saw and unsee it and not tell anyone. I think I have to.