Chapter 26
26
The first time Jane goes into her studio after having Max—fourteen months later—she is surprised by the smell. It is earthier, woodsier than she remembers. And quieter. And brighter. It is morning and sunlight splatters on her giant table like flattened white petals. It lands between the sketchbooks, wooden paint boxes, and a desiccated plant, the soil like magic powder in the light. There is a glass of water, half-full, covered in a layer of dust, on an easel. There is an art book, open to Miró, and a magnifying glass, tentatively balancing on a smattering of red beads. There is a half-finished abstract charcoal sketch that Jane cannot, for the life of her, remember the inspiration for. She doesn’t even remember doing it. Did she?
Her brushes, in a dirty mason jar, are pale and dried out, like the flesh of an apple left in the heat. There is a cup of light blue paint, sweet, innocent even, that feels unlike anything she’d ever use. There are splattered buckets, uncleaned tools for clay, and, lining the entire floor, pages and pages of newspaper. Jane checks the date. One full year ago, plus a couple of months.
Jane finds her radio on the windowsill, the spiral antennae making the whole thing ungainly, insect-like. She turns on opera. It blares. She turns it down. She turns it off entirely.
There is a yellow Navajo blanket that Abe got for her at a street fair, folded on a chair, and Jane wraps herself in it, sits on the floor. She’s not sure what else to do. She isn’t in the mood. It isn’t the art that she can’t do. It is the failure in its face. The day looms.
For some time, Jane makes shadow puppets with her hands. Soon, she tries to draw a shadow puppet. She can’t. She trickles purple paint into the water glass and splatters it on paper. The washed-out effect is depressing, reflective. She takes two fistfuls of clay and squeezes. Time goes by. Disappointment is doubled by the fact that everyone is rooting for her.
Downstairs, her mother-in-law is making matzo ball soup. Max is asleep, or feeding himself cheese, or propped up with pillows on the sofa as she folds laundry. Later, Abe will come home early from work, take Max for a stroll outside. He’ll pick up cookies and flowers. Maybe he’ll have some time to look over his manuscript while Max plays with blocks. Lucky.
When Jane leaves, all she will have to do is have dinner with them at the table, comment on the flowers, the smell of the place. Delicious! Likely, there will be a glass of wine poured for her. There will be a napkin. It won’t take much for Jane to sit down, be polite and appreciative, to look like a nice mother having a nice dinner with her nice family. Still, it is too much. It bears down.
She’s been given the day.
Jane makes nothing. Instead, she sleeps.
The second time Jane goes to her studio, she eats a bag of pretzels, reads the old newspaper, tries her hand at collage. She cannot get the scale right. The glue is dry-tacky. Her fingers aren’t used to texture and she just wants to pick. She throws out four rounds.
She picks up the phone to call Bea, but when it just rings and rings she imagines Bea in the world, searching for bottlecaps, paging through photography books, seeing a thought fully through—start to finish. Rain to gold.
What would she even say?
There is no noise outside, but Jane keeps looking down at the street as if someone is coming for her, someone who can help. Ever since Max was born, Jane has seen no one she knows—not a family member other than Abe’s parents, not a friend. Not even Bea, who has twice nearly banged down the door and then finally given up, calling Abe at work. Is everything all right?
She’s stayed at hotels and hurried to and fro, hoping not to be caught. And though the excuses are not untrue—we’re not feeling so good today, there is so much to do, the place is a mess—it isn’t just that. Jane doesn’t know what to say, even how to say. The sensation is being too exhausted to speak but it is also that if she were to be honest—and she can’t not—it doesn’t sound good.
I don’t want.
Today, Abe and his mother have taken Max to the carousel in the Park. There is laundry to do. And dishes. Jane tries making something with clay, but the smell itches her nostrils. She washes her hands three times. There is nothing to accomplish in here and accomplishing feels like the only thing attainable.
Jane heads out. She closes the door to her studio behind her and makes her way to the sink instead. She does the dishes.
When Abe comes back home with Max, he puts the stroller in the corner, tucks in the blanket below Max’s sleeping face.
Tell me about your day, he says. His eyes are rich, rooted brown. Love like soaring. Like gaining footholds too.
Jane doesn’t have to say anything.
You’ll get there, he says. Jane is wearing his socks.
On the third day, Jane dips her brush into white paint. But she ends up doing her fingernails instead. She relishes the smell of acetone. Later, she does some yoga, push-ups, and dances to three songs. She reminds herself to bring real polish the next time and etches a haiku about honey into a mound of old clay.
On the fourth day, she dips her fingers into paint and closes her eyes and moves her hands and torso against the paper. She is the brush. She nearly rocks herself to sleep.
On the fifth day, the sun is out. The house is empty; birds are chirping outside. Jane locks the door to her studio just because. She feels different than she has—like she’s wearing silk instead of wool. It might be because she’s had some space: she’s stayed at a hotel three of the last five nights—as she has so many of the nights over the past year. But it is more than that. It feels as though her heart has settled into a reasonable pace, and Jane is aware of space between the features on her face, as though they’d been pulled taut with string, and the string has snapped.
Jane opens the window—it is the first time in such a long time—and the air comes in, softly, teasingly, like a stray cat. She sits down at her easel, feeling if not ready, then curious. She notices the raw floorboards, splattered with remnants of work she’s made, the strong legs of her table, a cracked plate from which she once made her way through an entire mound of cookies as she drew and bound a book of fish. Today, the noticing feels different. It isn’t just noticing. Her brain is a sieve, not steel and deadbolt. She can hear the leaves in the trees. Her hands are yearning.
She picks up a gray pencil. She remembers its weight, her favorite for so long. How many times has it been sharpened and dulled, sharpened and dulled over the years? Jane begins to draw. It is nothing at first, a slender figure, not a body so much as a shape. She keeps on. Soon, she feels herself not just here, in this seat, but in a lighthouse, in the sand, planting flowers. She draws flowers. The birds are chirping outside; she is drawing a bird. She runs her fingers over it. She thinks of her mother’s fingers. Soon, the fingers become part of the wings. She pulls out the red pencil and then the black. She shades and smudges, flicks and hatches. She draws a deer and a body, a tree and a baby’s mouth. She draws a room with a crib. Not Max’s room but a child’s room all the same. There are lambs and books and a small light with a shade that looks like an apple. There are no frogs. There is a shadow cast by a large tree outside with magnolia flowers, blushing pink, in full bloom. She doesn’t stand up. She draws pajamas, cast aside in a lump, and blue and green crayons and a small wooden stool with some letters that can’t be made out. She draws signs of a mother. A stained coffee cup, one slipper, bra like a broken shoulder, unfolded laundry, a tissue, crumpled.
She draws for hours. In the meantime, there is no resistance. The work comes through like silk thread on a needle. Jane is folding something together or unfurling it. She is content, peaceful. It is quiet, but that is a feeling too. The work itself, and also doing it, feels inevitable, but not predictable. She thought there’d be something, some fastening that needed attending to. There isn’t.
Jane makes things.
Soon, it is not just the figures, but the words come too. One at a time and then in phrases. As if from a vein. She goes through page after page after page.
Make different milk.
Be stronger.
Have a different body.
Comfort me.
I’m the child.
Take your art off the walls.
Stop crying.
What is wrong with you?
You should have done everything differently.
You should be a different mother.
It is dusk when Jane lifts her head, realizes she needs to pee.
Max’s cry comes through, but Jane yawns against it. She realizes: nothing hurts. She isn’t afraid of swirling into mud. There is an echo in the trees. There is a breeze. It is the world itself, she thinks, abiding. It does that when we make things. It says, Okay.
Maybe she can do things differently now. She goes.