I immediately feel not just the strength, but the life flooding out of his body, as he collapses, his dead-weight on top of me, half rolling off as I crawl out from underneath him, the ax still embedded in his head. There’s no blood at first. Then it starts to gush out, like a gurgling Miami Beach drain, almost fountainous, soaking into the antique rug. I sit back on the couch, my arms wrapped around myself, unable to move.
I’m there for a very long time, cold in the air conditioning, immobilized as the lifeless body’s blood seeps through the rug, pooling on the wooden floor and flowing slowly toward my feet. Luck, skill, deceit: you can upset the odds. You can force the hand of chance. Fuck the numbers; life is about exceptions. The exceptional make the exceptions, Dad used to say to me.
But to what end?
I don’t care about him. Some people can do nothing except exploit others. They see themselves as lions or tigers, high-end predators, but in reality they’re more like rats or cockroaches, just dirty fucking time-wasting pests. They are there to teach us to be guarded, cautious, and circumspect in our dealings with others. But they are vermin and they need to be crushed. There can certainly be no remorse at their passing.
I look through to Lena’s small office where the big Apple Mac sits on the desk. I’ve really messed things up, and it strikes me that there’s only one thing I can do to try and make it all a little better. And as I get into the computer and Lena’s email account, I can see my perfect opening.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Please Can We Just Talk?
Lena,
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what you said. I just wish you would try and be less hurtful in your tone and more like the daughter I know. And whom I love more than anything, whatever you might think.
Yes, we do fear for you. Maybe it’s stupid. We’re small-town, God-fearing people, and perhaps we’re wrong to feel that way, but the world sometimes seems such a horrible and dangerous place, and perhaps when you become a mom, you’ll realize the overwhelming need to protect your children.
But I do realize that I have made mistakes, and I want to put it right. I want this because I really love you so much.
I’ve actually lost some weight myself, as I’ve been following a Weight Watchers’ program.
I noticed you have a new iPhone. Can you please answer it when I call?
Love,
Mom xxx
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Yes We Can
Mom,
I’m sorry if I’ve seemed hurtful. I had to get things off my chest. I hope we can now have a more measured correspondence without recourse to manipulative behavior (you) or nasty, coldhearted abuse (me).
First things first: I want to express how proud you’ve made me, taking the first steps with this Weight Watchers’ program. We can argue the effectiveness of different programs, but mine is working very well (I’m at 132 lbs) and we should be encouraging each other. I’m enclosing an exercise plan and a diet sheet, which my trainer, Lucy, feels is appropriate for someone of your weight and age and general health. Follow this and you will see rapid and sustainable improvement.
The iPhone number isn’t mine, but belongs to Lucy. I only borrowed it to check some texts. My own phone isn’t up and running yet, as, to be quite frank, I’m enjoying the freedom from interruptions as I’m working flat out on my new art project and have a deadline of two months from now. After this I’ll get a new phone number sorted out.
I’ve been renting a space in a high-rise in downtown Miami, and working from there rather than the dark old studio. It has great views over the bay, the light floods in, and it’s working wonders with my mood.
Love,
L xxxx
PS Lose the weight for YOU. Dad’s affection/attention shouldn’t be related to how much you come in at on the scale, but if you respect yourself and realize that YOU are worth the effort, then other people will respect you more too.
WHEN YOU SUFFER
from depression, you just have to hang in there. I read every darn self-help book on the subject. Unbelievably, following the advice of one, I even wrote stupid letters to and from my ten-year-old self. “Lena, you are such a brave and beautiful person . . .” All silly, hollow, useless stuff from snake-oil salesmen, profiteering from the misery of the weak, desperate, and insecure. There are plenty of miserable people in America. I know, because I was one.
It took me a while to realize that Jerry was having an affair with Melanie Clement from the GoToIt gallery in New York. Or not so much to realize it, but to
admit
to myself that I realized it. I sat and ate and painted and sculpted. Or tried to paint and sculpt. The more I ate, the less I worked. I usually watched movies or shows on cable, pretending, as many artists do, that it was all research, all about the images. How many episodes of
CSI Miami
do you need to watch?
It was a sunny Chicago afternoon, where spring had just kicked in and the city was visibly coming back to life. Jerry had returned from a “business trip” to New York, (or perhaps it was a “visit” to his parents in nearby Connecticut, in whom he’d hitherto shown zero interest) and he looked at me as if seeing me for the first time. There was something in his scrutiny which went beyond embarrassment and concern. Culpability? Guilt? Whatever, his tone was softer than it had been of late. — You’re depressed. So am I. We’re in a rut here. We need new inspiration. We have to get out of Chicago.
— I’m not moving to New York!
— Who said anything about New York? Baby, this stuff with Melanie is all in your head, he preemptively attempted to assure me. — No, fuck New York. Miami is the place. Every photographer worth their salt, he began, then corrected himself, — every
artist
worth their salt goes there, for the light.
I had no interest in leaving Chicago, I loved the city and had come to regard it as home, but Jerry persisted. And I knew we couldn’t carry on like this; at least by leaving town it seemed as if we were doing
something.
So we drove south, a U-Haul truck towing Jerry’s car. We mixed it up between luxury hotels and seedy drive-through motels, where every room looked like it had a horrible story to tell. We pulled into Miami Beach just as the sun dipped over the back of the downtown skyscrapers. When we reached Ocean Drive, an angry rasp of neon assailed us, screaming
party time
in our faces.
We headed for an art deco hotel on Collins, pulling into a parking lot, which was a field of tiny white pebbles, cemented into place. Inside, the hotel lacked the promise of its facade: a stack of functional rooms with floors covered in linoleum and windows darkened by shabby curtains. Ours faced onto an alley and another parking lot. Not that we were around much; we immediately hit the bars, nightclubs, and galleries of South Beach. Initially, it was wonderful, it seemed like the big adventure we needed to restore our relationship. We decided it was for us and went house-hunting. I took out a mortgage on the place on 46th, which had a big self-contained workshop space at the back. I instantly decided to convert it into my studio. This took a long time and consumed a lot of my energy. My weight started to drop.
I had planned to work with metal in addition to plastic, so I needed welding equipment as well as a kiln, drying racks, tool storage, and workbenches. Good fireproofing was also essential due to the proximity of inflammable materials, as was a proper extractive ventilation system because of the chemicals and resins I’d be using.
My biggest purchase, though, was a large stainless steel Phoenix incinerator, designed for animal carcass disposal. This model was both highly efficient and simple to operate. Unlike other incinerators, it had one chamber only, as it functioned at extremely high temperatures. You just loaded in the carcass, switched it on, and walked away, without needing to monitor the heat levels. It even had an inspection door so you could see when the animal carcass was reduced to ash. And you could get a medium-sized dog in there.
Inspired by Germaine Richier, I was enjoying my move into sculpting, and loved my new space. The workshop became my refuge. It seemed like the transplant was working out for me, at least creatively. Jerry was out all the time, drinking (“networking,” as he put it) and, for all I knew, fucking. But by that point I scarcely cared. My work was my real passion. I had my first exhibition in a gallery in Wynwood. Although many of the critics were still sniffy, the smaller 3D pieces I was producing were even more popular with collectors than the paintings. I was doing well: working hard, and losing weight, having gotten out of the habit of rewarding myself with eating.
Jerry told me he was desperate to exhibit his pictures of me. Before, I might have acquiesced, but my confidence had grown due to the success of the sculptures and the validation it gave me as an artist. I also knew his so-called project was a shallow, pitiable attempt to cash in on my fame, and would humiliate me in the process. I point-blank refused and told him he was crazy. He kept on at me, growing more enraged with each rejection, to the point I grew fearful at what he might do. Jerry was strong, physically intimidating; he’d wrestled and fenced, and he regularly worked out with heavy weights. We argued, and he slapped me hard across the face. Time froze. All I could feel was the steady throb on my cheek. That and my heartbeat. Jerry didn’t even try to apologize. Then he packed up his stuff, and the strangest thing was that
I
begged him to stay, even though I knew, with that slap, it was over. He said he had to go to New York as he needed “time to think and to get his exhibition together.” In his sulky, disappointed tones, he acted like
I
was the abusive party.
I watched him load up his car and drive away. It was a stormy night and the hot air tasted like dust, the dry wind whipping my hair into my eyes. I was both terrified and relieved that he was going. I had grown scared of him, of what he might do to me. Yet I couldn’t see what my life would be like without him. Everything I had ever imagined about myself had disappeared into the last slam of his car door and that engine starting up.
So he stayed up in New York, with her—Melanie—trying to get his stuff exhibited in her GoToIt gallery. Still flogging the dead horse of his clichéd pictures of Chicago’s downtown homeless. He called me most weekends, usually from a bar when he was drunk. In between trying to harass me into signing a “contract” he had sent down, allowing him to exhibit those horrible pictures, he would make everything out to be my fault. — You never want to come out and enjoy life. You’ve reverted back to being the no-fun fat girl from Potters Prairie you were when I first met you. I tried my best. But I guess we are what we are, he’d muse: pretending to be sad, but sneering and dismissive.
His words ate away at me. I kept trying to work through it, but they resonated in my head. It was like a switch I couldn’t turn off.
And Mom kept sending me food. She always had. Her brownies, cakes, and pies, wrapped in those vacuum-sealed packs, arrived in a box each week, sometimes twice a week. Back in Chicago, in the loft, I just put them out where the other occupants or our constant traffic could gratefully munch through them. Here, alone in the house on 46th Street, they were all mine. Previously, I had just guiltily trashed them or let them go stale, but now I started to reward myself with them again. When I was rushing with the sugar or feeling that comforted, satiated way, I couldn’t hear Jerry’s voice.
The voice of disapproval
.
The weight came back on, and as for the art, I got stuck. I could put a lump of clay on a wheel, but I couldn’t form it. The welding I kept messing up. My touch and eye were out of sync. The molds wouldn’t set right. I took out my frustration on the suppliers, criticizing the quality of the materials they sent me. Inevitably, they stopped supplying.
Then Jerry told me that he was opting to stay in New York for a while, as it was more “vital” and “real” than Miami. In reality, he’d left me for Melanie Clement, that immensely privileged daughter of a wealthy financier and his fashion-designer wife. Melanie’s trendy GoToIt gallery ran one space in TriBeCa and another out in the Hamptons. I heard she was opening a third in Brooklyn, which promised to be “a new cutting-edge environment for more challenging artists.” I assumed this was the niche Jerry was desperately trying to wedge himself into.
Yes, and he still had the audacity to keep hassling me to sign a release form to exhibit the photographs of me at Melanie’s gallery.
I kept refusing.
He stopped calling.
I got fatter and more depressed. I couldn’t understand how I’d gotten from Chicago—fulfilled, successful, and in a relationship—to this lonely, humiliating existence in Miami. I was so desperate that I went back to Potters Prairie for a break, weighing in at over two hundred pounds. Dad didn’t seem to notice. He only really spoke about his work, usually to complain about Menards driving him out of business. Mom was actually pleased. — I thought you were anorexic before, and she’d shovel another slice of pie toward me. — I was so worried!
It wasn’t all a waste, though. I’d enrolled to do another taxidermy course with an experienced instructor who gave one-on-one tuition. Kenny Saunderson was a manic guy who existed on coffee and chain-smoked. He was an amazing taxidermist, specializing in waterfowl, and had once been world champion in this category. I admired his skill at gutting, cleaning, stuffing, and reconstructing dead swans, ducks, geese, and restoring them to some sort of former beauty. I wasn’t afraid to get my hands dirty. It was the only time I felt like myself.
But most of the time I was slumped with Mom and a jumbo bag of Doritos in front of daytime TV. My depressive descent was even more rapid than back in Miami. How could people live like this? I wanted to go, but couldn’t face Miami right away; I drove back to where I now regarded as home, Chicago.