Chapter 21
21
One summer, Max’s mother worked with flowers as her medium. She’d pluck white ones, dip them into resin, and create layered bouquets that were also shapes, surprising and dense. A door, a shovel, a bookmarked book. She worked on them all day long in the sun at their North Fork rental. He remembers her back, shiny and pink, as she leaned over a large wooden door that she’d fashioned into a table outside. She’d shear and cut and paste and mold. He remembers that her hands were always rough with something: glue, paint, petals. He remembers there was a finch flower sculpture that she was partial to. She kept coming back to it. One night, his parents went to a cocktail party and Max brought the finch into his room, plucked just a few petals. Why? Because he was jealous. Because he was fifth on her list. And because he was like his mother in certain ways: silent, effective. He had her dexterous fingers too. Sometimes, a feeling like have-to would rise in his chest. To ignore it would be like walking around with one shoe off.
Did his mother ever hurt anything? That is something Max would like to know. One two three four five.
In her show, his mother included the one Max had vandalized. What a word. Of course, she never said anything. Never would. The finch sold first. His mother left the money under Max’s pillow in a bulging envelope. It was a lot. She never said anything, never would. Some people would call that the beginning of Max’s fiscal tendencies in art. Some would not call it that. Max is not sure what he would call it.
Max’s new assistant doesn’t pan out. He finds another female. Younger, girlier, does a kind of yoga that involves electrodes on the body to eradicate fat, of which she has none.
Max knows that Jaclyn will marry. He knows that he will think of her for many years. Not their relationship exactly but of the moment he imagined being a father. It was the first time. She will be the only one like this, etched in his brain, a visual branding. He knows that once she’s found her right match, Max will ask around about him. He’ll be wealthy, aloof. Jaclyn won’t have to lift a finger again but she will. Sort of. Foundations and such. Max will spot them one evening. He will go up to the man. Max will be strong from triathlons again. Healed in certain ways. Which? Max will be just drunk enough to say what he really feels.
What else does Max know? That Max will win. Whatever there is to win besides her. He’ll win all of that.
His father says his mother is on her last legs.
Max goes to Orient, stays at a hotel nearby. The idea of watching his father’s shoulders, robed, kitteny, making tea is too much—though the right thing. But he has work to do. Calls. The hotel is nearly empty. Off-season vibes. There is a decent-looking bartender. And yet. After a while, Max gets just drunk enough that he goes outside, takes what is left of his vodka, puts his feet up, sits under the stars. He smokes three cigarettes. His mother hates that he smokes, but does she say anything? She does not.
Max remembers four of the constellations that his mother gold-leafed on a bathroom ceiling in their apartment decades ago. Cassiopeia, Vulpecula, Draco, Lynx. He is drunk enough that he doesn’t notice the teenagers doing wheelies in the wet street, playing Drake on their iPhones. He doesn’t smell salt or dead fish, feel the cold from the pavement up his denim into the small of his back.
Instead, he longs for what could have been in the way someone longs for a hit, or fresh air. A delirious urge, an itch, an actual heave. He could have driven Jaclyn here, taken her to the sea, bought her a book and a postcard and an ice-cream cone with nonpareils. He could have remembered that every woman wants to be a mother. Don’t they? He thinks of his own mother then. Didn’t she? For a moment, brief, confusing even, he longs to hold her too. Perhaps it is too late. Perhaps he wouldn’t know how to do it. He’s mastered such a particular kind of intimacy, inert in the daylight hours, impervious to grief.
Max grasps the cup of melting ice. It reminds him that he’s alive. He closes his eyes and lets his head fall back. The longing weighs even more than he can imagine.
Back then, in the interviews, they never asked about motherhood, did they?
It is Todd who tells Max about the article. Jennifer has told Todd. Everyone told everyone, and knows. The whole thing has gone viral. Max had no idea. And anyway, it is not really about him. Jaclyn does not mention his name or profession. Never would. She talks about love and loss and sex and societal expectations of women. She talks about disappointing herself. Todd asks him how he’s holding up with everything. Jennifer lost a baby years ago too, he says. It was rough.
The rage that Max feels is toward Todd in particular. Asking him like this. It feels solicitous and out of character. Max knows they won’t speak again. He imagines someone, he doesn’t know who, telling him: this is your pattern. At least he knows, right?
Max’s assistant pretends she’s reading something else. She slaps at the keys. She looks at him differently though not with less lure. In a week, they’ll go out to dinner but skip dinner. This is also his pattern.
Be good, Max!
Years ago, Max’s mother painted an impressionist piece: cormorants carrying green bouquets in their mouths, making a zigzag formation against the gray winter sky. It hangs in some admissions office at a fancy private school somewhere. Max doesn’t remember where exactly. And he hasn’t seen it in years, or thought about it. But then, here it is. On Max’s last visit to see his mother, he stands outside for a moment. In front of him, eight of the rubbery birds appear. They are arranged as though they’ve been tacked just so with pins against the winter sky. There is green hanging from their mouths. Are those fish or plants? Max is a city kid. He doesn’t know. There are lines like slats separating sky from water from sand. There is no sound but a blanket of wind. Life imitating art, he thinks. Momentousness like a warm gust. Max doesn’t move. He has the syrupy urge to tell Jaclyn—his mother even—but it is too late. Also, for some reason, he just wants to see it. And have them know. To have a bond like that. Stronger than blood, than love, than everything else.
Upstairs, his mother doesn’t open her eyes but she is breathing. Max matches his breath to hers at first as a sort of game and then, imagining how he must have done in her belly. Is that how it happens? This is the sort of thing that would matter to her, wouldn’t it? This kindness. Either way, he feels it too. For a moment, he tries to imagine her as she was because it feels adulatory. One year ago, she went to the desert. One year ago, she yawned in the Park. One year ago, she floated on her back in the ocean in November. One year ago, he told her that it confused him: all her mediums. And she said, I confuse myself. Isn’t that the joy of it?
No, he’d said. At least it wouldn’t be to me.
Max looks outside for the birds. They’re gone. Everything is dying all the time. Max is too late.
His assistant calls. They’ve sold three more Reynaud-Dewars.
Fine, he says. Super.
In the dark, Max has a bourbon with his father. His father plays jazz. He seems to float, with Jane unwell. He is a puddle that doesn’t reflect. He used to always hold her socked feet, Max remembers. In fact, Max can barely remember a moment when they were not together. Foreground, background. Shadow, light. Maybe this explains something? Max is fine. What he means is, what choice do you have about the formations of things, really?
Do you remember, his father says, those beautiful little men you used to make with your mother’s clay? You’d make them ties and suits and briefcases? Was that just to spite us?
What made you think of that? Max asks.
I don’t know what else to think about, his father says. His palms are facing up. There are no one’s feet inside. Max wants to apologize but he is so tired he can’t muster the words.
Max is a child, walking down Broadway, screaming for a cookie and then throwing the cookie down the subway grate. At the same time, Max is eating a black-and-white cookie. It is late. Max and his father have had a lot of bourbon. Who brought these? Max asks, eating cookie after cookie, nearly asleep. His father puts the kettle on. Small back, robed. No idea, his father says.
Now Max’s father is by the window, looking out, holding a blanket that Max’s mother made in his arms like a child, but also like her life, work, art. She could make anything. Max knows this. The water boils. Thanks, Pop, Max says. Max picks up the tea, sips it. It’s too hot. He spits it back into the cup. Some gets on his shirt. He is so tired. He is so wired. He makes his way to his father, puts his face into the blanket, his mother’s smell, also her art. There is no money in blankets. He could have helped her. She never needed it. He still could. He has his whole life ahead of him, doesn’t he? Her work behind her but not him. Drink your tea, his father says.
What would your father have said? Max asks.
To what? he says.
Your own mother dying.
No, his father says. There is a divine order. An ordained chronology even if it’s shit.
Jaclyn gets married. Surely, there will be a baby soon, somehow. She deserves that. A divine order.
There are a lot of very long nights.
What bothers him the most? Everything. But really? That the thing Max wanted most in the world—safety from unwellness—was also the most impossible. It could not be bought or ascertained. What he would have done for a silent deal on that. Anything. Everything. To be one hundred percent that Jaclyn would never crack. That his knee would not give out. That the markets wouldn’t tank. That his father would not get smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller. So small, in the end, that Max would need to squint. Pop? And that art would not be most significant here, most imperative, at his parents’ home, with nothing at all for Max to sell. Max could not imagine a world indifferent to that longing and yet the world was always indifferent, wasn’t it? The world turned despite anything his heart might murmur. Despite heartache and whenever a heart might simply, impossibly stop.
Years later, Max will remember one night. His father is out somewhere. Bubbe too. Max is home with his mother, just them. It wasn’t usually the case.
After dinner, they find themselves painting in Max’s mother’s studio, windows open, leaves crinkling. It is autumn. It smells like that. Rust. Max is ten, maybe twelve. The light is low, as his mother liked it. There is a candle and Joan Baez playing or something of that ilk. Max is using the color blue on a giant canvas on the floor that his mother has set up for him, for them. His mother is using yellow nearby. Max is using a brush and his hands. His fingernails even. After a while, his mother comes close enough to whisper.
Tell me, Max, she says. And Max knows. She means about intention, inspiration. She was always thinking about that.
For a moment, Max isn’t frustrated; he isn’t jealous. He doesn’t have a plan. And his mother isn’t sentimental. She is curious. She is well.
Max thinks. His mother is asking him something.
I can’t, he says anyway. Jane nods in response. It is just how I feel, he says, not because he knows that she wants him to but because it is true. It is what he is sure of. He feels moved by the color as much as anything.
His mother’s face is full of encouragement and grace. It is open like a window to light.
That time, Jane doesn’t cry. She doesn’t beg him or try to hug him. She doesn’t walk away or find his father. Please.
For once, Max hasn’t broken or shaken her. For once, where he is concerned, there is something strong inside her, a spine of light or steel that he doesn’t recognize but that he loves. Truly. There is no quiver or collapse. His mother is stronger than him. He can recognize that in this moment, even if it wasn’t shown to him in many others until much, much later.
It is no one’s fault, he thinks. Life is impossible. Love kills us. The color blue. The color blue.
Good, his mother says, or maybe that is the fall wind or maybe her knees or his heart. Who knows.
In a moment, Max’s mother stands up. She runs her hands down her front, squeezes Max’s shoulder. Max doesn’t swat her away or recoil. He feels it. Her touch, affection. It is safety, a stingray baked in the sun.
Jane?
Max’s mother gets back to her work. Not as a distraction or punishment, but as a way to create more life, to make life longer, better.
Max gets back to his.