Chapter 21
Twenty-One
KIERAN
Isabel returns the next night. I step out while she changes into the same clothes she wore the night before. She pokes her head out from behind the curtain and knocks on the glass to tell me to come back in.
This becomes our nightly ritual for the next few weeks: she returns, gets changed, and settles into her position.
I take my place behind the easel, too. We’re two dancers learning new choreography by feel and instinct.
I have no doubt the same tune plays in our heads.
Through me, to her. Reversed. She is not a mere subject, and I, an observer.
We’re in sync. We’re doing this together.
Philip Guston once said that a painting is a feeling captured on canvas. Each brushstroke brings me closer and closer to narrowing down that feeling. Four letters, quite simple, sought after by all, but which required great strength and courage to name.
After I’d finished the initial sketch, we grew accustomed to relaxing on the couch and talking. There was no need for this; she could easily return to her room and leave me to my own devices, but I suspect she enjoys my company as much as I enjoy hers.
After our conversation on art and politics, she seems a lot more comfortable with me.
And you know what I’ve learned? That girl can talk.
And talk. And talk. For hours on end. I love when she goes into tangents.
I soak up every word she says, every piece of information she feeds me about how she sees the world.
I pay attention to the way the light hits her face, the way her nose and hair casts shadows on her cheeks, and the rumple of her shirt over her chest.
Beautiful. So beautiful.
What’s more surprising than any of that is how she gets me to talk. I don’t think I’ve talked so much in my life, but there doesn’t seem to be anything I can’t say to her.
“Do you know what’s fucked up?” I told her one of those nights, the two of us sunken into the cushions, our feet propped up on the coffee table.
“In schools in the UK, when they talk about the Great Famine, they act as though it wasn’t orchestrated.
It’s taught as ‘The Great Hunger,’ and they make it out like us Irish were just so crazy for potatoes that we wouldn’t eat anything else.
But potatoes were the only thing we could eat, because it was all we could afford.
All the meat and fish and vegetables were shipped off to the UK—even with the famine.
“A million people died. A million more were forced to flee the country.”
“That’s fucked up,” she said. “That’s fucking fucked up.”
“Some of the people in power used divine providence as an excuse. Or said that it was because us Irish lacked moral character.”
“There’s always something,” she said. “They always find a way to make it your fault. You know, the US had a policy they called benevolent assimilation? That’s what they called their violent colonization of the Philippines.
They framed it as a humanitarian effort.
That it was their altruistic mission to protect our rights and liberties—against I don’t know what.
Then they exhibited the indigenous Igorot people at the 1904 World’s Fair because some anthropologist asshole thought they were the most uncivilized tribe in the Philippines. Like, what the fuck?”
“What the fuck,” I echoed.
“What the fuck,” she repeated.
“People always find ways to excuse their barbarism by calling another group of people uncivilized.”
“Exactly!” She sat up, pointing at me. “Exactly.”
Our conversations weren’t just about history and politics, though. We also talked about our favorites—food, movies, music. I put her on Fontaines D.C. She made me listen to Adie and translated his lyrics for me.
Some nights she reads me chapters from Mere Christianity while I worked.
We’re hoping to make our way through it quickly so we can jump right into Philippine literature: Dead Stars by Paz Marquez Benitez, Cave and Shadows by Nick Joaquin, the Noli as translated by Soledad Lacson Locsin (which she assigned me as required reading); and her favorite, the epic romance set in the late 19th century Spanish colonial time, inspired by Eros and Psyche, that catapulted her boss, Amparo Banaag to fame: Amor Perdido y Encontrado.
Other nights, we talked about nothing. We would just listen to my music, sometimes hers: “Anemone” by The Brian Jonestown Massacre (me), “Blue” by Joni Mitchell (her), “Right Around the Clock” by Sorry (me), “Duvet” by b?a (her), “Age of Consent” by New Order (me).
Those nights, I’d show her my favorite paintings, including In Love by Marcus C. Stone. She said she sees its influence on my work.
No matter what, she found a way to make me laugh. Every night, without fail. And if I were lucky enough to get her to laugh, I savored the sound, the burst of warmth it released in me.
Sometimes, at the end of our sessions, she comes over to watch me paint.
I explain color theory to her, extol the grammar of hue, value, and chroma.
How you can start with a green base to depict temperature and end up with something closer to life.
She’s particularly fascinated by how I use that same knowledge to capture light and shadow on her skin.
How the same color can look different when held up against a separate shade.
It was nice to be able to talk about art without the pressure of commerce breathing down my neck, or even technical lingo that my peers in school liked to pepper in as proof they were experts. We talk about art as fans do: with an amateur vocabulary and an emphasis on feeling rather than theory.
Still, I can’t help but glow when she’s impressed by my knowledge, so I teach her about the picture plane, which she only half-grasps, so I dial it back and instead help her to view the canvas in terms of windows.
“So, you’re like a Peeping Tom,” she jokes, “but for life.”
“That’s one way to put it.”
One night, she stares back at me as I paint her. There’s this look on her face, somewhere between nervous and confused and focused.
“What?” I ask, chuckling.
“I know you like her and everything,” she starts, a hesitant and uncertain tone in her voice. “And I’m sure she’s changed—”
“Wait, who?”
“Natalia.”
I scoff. “Who said I liked her?”
She blinks at me. I sigh. “I mean, of course I do. We’re friends. But I don’t—I don’t like her like that.”
“But—“
“Did she say otherwise?” I ask.
“Well, no, not her, exactly. But the others—”
Ah, fuck. “They’ve kind of been trying to set us up for a while now,” I say. “But—no. It’s nothing like that.”
Silence.
“I mean, I know she likes me. And I guess that makes me an asshole for sticking around, but—” I look at her. “You think I should clear the air, don’t you?”
“Well, that’s your choice,” she says. “What is God telling you?”
Invoking God’s name is one way to force me to be honest with myself.
I mean—it’s the makeshift artist residency; it’s the fact that we share the same circle.
That’s what I’ve always said. But really, now that I’m thinking about it, it’s because I’m afraid that if I reject Natalia once and for all, she’ll kick me out of my friend group.
I was a lonely kid in school, and I was on track to be a lonely kid in college, too.
I spent the majority of it by myself; I would go to class, return to my dorm, do my work, and pass out.
I didn’t have much of a social life to show for until her.
Even my friendship with Cisco only deepened because of her.
It’s as if every good thing in my life followed after Natalia befriended me, but I still can’t bring myself to like her in that way.
“I don’t like it when they call you Sugar. I’ve told them to cut it out, but—” I shrug.
She presses her lips together into a thin, grateful smile. “Yeah. I really didn’t want to come here this summer, but you know, God gives us unlimited chances—”
“You didn’t want to come here?” I picture this summer without her. I don’t know if I would have survived it.
“No way,” she says, laughing. “I don’t have a death wish. I mean—not anymore.”
“I didn’t want to come here either,” I say. “Imagine if neither of us did.”
Our eyes meet, and then she looks away. “Yeah. Um—Rocío and my mom thought it would be a good idea for me to take a break, maybe get some closure, and give Natalia a chance, too. They got my doctor in on it as well.”
“Your doctor?”
Isabel bites her lip. “Yeah. Last year, I—” She drops her gaze to her lap. “Well, I tried to kill myself, basically. I was so burned-out and depressed, and I felt like I was going nowhere in life. At that time, I was working as a copyeditor for a BPO. Do you know what that is?”
I shake my head.
“Companies abroad essentially outsource work here. Call centers and whatnot. Work was overwhelming and I was barely earning, and it didn’t feel like there was any other way out.
It’s a great enough place to work if you’re in the right mindset, but I just wasn’t.
And then from there I started spiraling, that I was as worthless and pathetic as people in school used to say, that the best things life has to offer are forever out of reach for me.
I mean, I couldn’t even finish college. I’ve dropped out of every stage of school that mattered.
School made me depressed, and I looked around me at everyone meeting deadlines and thriving socially and I just…
I felt like maybe something was deeply wrong with me.
Mama kept insisting she could find a way to pay for things, but I didn’t want to put that on her, you know?
So, I dropped out. Quit work without telling anyone. ”
I grimace.