6 #2
The video’s about halfway through when I glance up towards Andy’s bedroom door. To my surprise, I find him standing there, looking at me from the doorway.
He startles a little when our eyes meet—like one does when the person they’re looking at looks back, and you have to avert your eyes and look around a bunch to make it clear you were just looking around and weren’t specifically staring at that person…
you know? It makes me smile and huff out a breath of a laugh.
“You ready?” I ask.
He clears his throat and looks back at me again, and his cheeks are actually a little pink as he says, “Ready.”
He’s the weirdest man alive.
I pocket my phone and head towards the door, but Andy doesn’t follow. Instead, he walks over to the kitchen table where I left my peanut butter spoon (whoops). He takes the time to wash it and return it to the drawer before following me out.
“I love it,” I say.
Andy doesn’t reply, just tilts his head to the side a notch.
We’re shoulder-to-shoulder in the Gardener Museum’s famous Blue Room.
It’s famous because—get this—there was a literal heist here.
It was back in the ‘80’s or ‘90’s I’m pretty sure, and real-life art thieves came in and cut the art out of its frames and just walked out the front door with, like, Rembrandts rolled up in their back pockets.
But Isabella Stewart Gardener had put so much love and care into curating each room of this museum—which used to be her house, by the way—that she said in her will that nothing could ever be moved under any circumstances, so the museum just had to leave the empty frames hanging where they were.
It’s a really good story, and honestly I’m sure the museum has made a mint off of it. Bummer about the Rembrandts, though.
“I just think it’s amazing,” I explain. My gaze doesn’t leave the ornate gold frame, which now surrounds nothing but powder-blue brocade wallpaper. “They took a tragedy and turned it into its own kind of art.”
“Still a tragedy,” Andy returns flatly.
I turn towards him. “Would it kill you to look on the bright side?”
“Would it kill you to look on the main, obviously bad side?”
“Oh sure, I’m sorry. I forgot the first rule of a fun night out: focus on the bad side. Should we chat about our relationships with our dads next? Or maybe the untimely deaths of childhood pets?”
He fights a smile. “The empty frame looks ridiculous. Admit it.”
“I will do no such thing.”
The night goes on much like this. I point out my favorite pieces; Andy responds with shrugs and grunts. But by the time we’ve each had a few glasses of wine and listened to a strangely good bass/harp duo, his mask starts to slip.
“Not to be that guy,” he says in a slightly tipsy whisper, “but I’m pretty sure I could’ve done that.”
We’re in the museum’s New Wing now, having already wandered the entirety of the old mansion house. This area is basically one big room of white walls and sparse modern art, including the current object of Andy’s ire: a large vertical piece covered in an abstract spray of blues and yellows.
“Ah, but you didn’t,” I whisper back. “That’s the thing about art, you have to actually make it to get credit.”
“Would we call this insipid Pollock imitation ‘art’?”
“You are such a snob, Walsh.”
I shove his shoulder sideways, but he catches my arm and pulls our bodies back together, clasping a hand over my mouth that makes me realize just how loud I’m being.
“I’m not a snob,” he smirks, overcompensating for my volume with a whisper. “I just think my mom had something like this on her fridge when I was about six.”
I drag his hand from my mouth and lean towards him. “Maybe this piece isn’t the problem. Maybe you’re a prodigy. You’ve set the bar too high.”
“Maybe you’re just too generous,” he insists. “I want to know which piece in this room you hate the most.”
I realize I’m still holding his hand with both of mine, and let it drop as casually as I can. “Okay, but in exchange you have to tell me which piece you feel an emotional connection to.”
Andy rolls his eyes dramatically. “It couldn’t just be which one I like best? It has to be an ‘emotional connection’?”
“Yes. I want you raw and vulnerable, Andrew.”
“You’re the worst.” He shakes his head, even as he starts to scan the gallery room. “Alright, divide and conquer. Let’s give ourselves ten minutes to choose something, then we’ll meet back here and show each other.”
“Deal.” I extend my hand. He shakes it once, firmly, before heading off.
When you think about it, Andy has a much easier prompt than I have.
He just has to feel any emotion about a piece.
My emotion has to specifically be hate. And as someone without an artistic bone in her body, I suspect the pieces I “hate” are actually ones I just don’t understand.
It’s not the artist’s fault I’m a plebian.
I glance over at Andy, who’s scowling violently at a sculpture that—to be fair—does look like a pile of garbage on a table. But the overt disdain on his face is so funny to me that I have to bite my lips between my teeth to keep from giggling out loud.
People think Andy is hard to read because he’s not very talkative, but he’s really an open book if you bother to learn the language.
But back to the task at hand: a piece I hate.
On the wall to my right I notice a small white canvas with a vertical red line slightly off center.
I lean in to read the artist statement, and it has lots to say about…
the violence of menstruation? Jesus, deliver me.
Okay this might be it. I take a few steps back to consider it from another angle, just in case there’s something I missed, but nope.
Still a wiggly red line that’s supposed to be a statement about… “reproductive patriarchy” I guess?
I look around for Andy, trying to see if he finished early too, but when my eyes land on the back of his head I realize he’s been joined by a woman.
She’s tall and thin with a black french bob that looks incredibly chic on her but would make me look like I just got laid off from the Wonka factory.
They’re standing side by side in front of a painting, but the woman’s face is turned entirely towards him.
Unsurprisingly, Andy’s posture looks much less invested.
As his girl best friend, it occurs to me that it might be my responsibility to educate him on female expectations for body language in polite conversation. This poor woman is giving flirting her all, and Andy looks like he’s barely noticed.
Oh my god, now she’s giving him her card! She’s really going for it! You go girl. Andy takes the card from her and she walks away and wow, I couldn’t even hear what she said but I could tell it was smooth.
I raise one hand in the air, frantically waving him over to me, and when he gets within earshot I whisper-yell, “Did you just get that woman’s number?”
He shakes his head. “No, she gave me her business card.”
“Andy.” I take a breath, composing my patience. “Why do you think she gave you her business card?”
He shrugs. “I think she wanted to go to the contemporary art museum.”
“As a date.”
“She didn’t say it was a date.”
“Andy.”
“What?”
“You cannot be that dense.”
Andy cocks his head as if to say, how can you be so sure?
I raise my eyebrows to say, because I have two eyes and a brain.
Another fascinating layer to Andy’s personhood: he’s like catnip to women.
Oblivious, elusive catnip. I have plenty of hypotheses about it, as someone who’s spent the better part of a decade studying him in action.
There’s something about his stoicism and dry humor that makes people work even harder to win him over.
And I kind of get it. Nothing makes your endorphins spike like getting a real two-dimple smile from him, knowing his smiles aren’t freely given but earned.
Also like… he does look good. I don’t have to be into him to see he’s objectively cute.
In all the time we’ve known each other, I’ve only seen him make the first move with someone once—yes, once, ever—and even then I had to practically script the texts for him behind the scenes.
If there was a gold medal for romantic inaction, Andy would win it hands down, no contest, cue the American national anthem.
But—and this is the really perplexing part—out of everyone in NASA, he has had the most relationships over the years.
He’s always with someone, or seeing someone casually, or talking to someone, or getting asked out and not understanding that that’s what happened.
It’s infuriating. Especially when I’m over here pulling out every tool in my arsenal just to get my boyfriend of three years to even notice me.
Ex-boyfriend, I mean. Elliot is my ex-boyfriend.
“Hey, where’d you go?” Andy’s voice pulls me out of my head.
“Nowhere, nevermind.” I grab his hand and pull him towards the wall. “Here, I’ll go first.”
When we stop in front of the depressingly wobbly red line painting, I start my explanation in the middle. “It’s not even that I hate it per se. I’m sure there’s something to be said for the artist’s intent. I just…” I stick both hands out towards the painting, then look to Andy to see if he gets it.
“It’s shit,” he says.
“It’s shit!” I yell. “Exactly!”
He lets out a single, surprised “Ha!” and it sets me off. In an instant I’m laughing too. Loudly. My hands come up to cover my face as if I could shove the laughter back in. Andy’s fingers wrap around my elbow, keeping me upright.
“It’s just—like—” I wheeze between giggles. “I could draw a red line on a canvas and call it menstruation and no one would hang it in a museum.”