18. Rome, November
ROME, NOVEMBER
As we became closer friends, Mary occasionally referred to previous issues she’d faced growing up.
Sometimes I worried about the occasional skipped meal or the complaints Mary made about her parents, but it was all outshone by her dazzling wealth, which I couldn’t imagine would be imprisoning.
During my teens, I’d been obsessed with Andy Warhol and all the beautifully elfin heiresses that had decorated his world.
So I saw Mary as my Edie; I misread her damage as glamorous dishevelment.
Half friend, half fantasy figure. I couldn’t stand the grayscale boredom of the days when I didn’t get to see her.
By the start of November, we were going out almost every night, though often in a group rather than alone.
After the sittings, we’d go to the spots around Campo de’ Fiori with the fake flame patio heaters.
I’d sit in the corner, quietly proud to bask in the company of Decca, Mary, and the twins, who had embraced me now that I was Mary’s model.
At the time, I worshipped their exuberance, the garrulous way they glided from bar to bar, attracting attention, getting drinks for free.
Back then, I read their behavior as confidence, a wild and mysterious energy that I was lucky to witness.
Now I can see that their behavior emerged from egregious entitlement. Nothing else.
My own lack of confidence was something that Jean often brought up.
We started to go for lunch together on the Mondays and Fridays before my sittings with Mary.
Over amatriciana and wine—in restaurants I never normally could have afforded—she referred to the different ways I was blocking myself.
It was a shame, she used to say, how low my self-esteem was, when everyone else could see what a bright spirit I had.
“You’re getting in your own way,” she’d warn, sipping her glass of Frascati. “You’re obscuring your own light.”
Jean knew I’d dropped out of art school by then, but she blamed that on my parents’ failure to take my work seriously, rather than my chronic inability to see anything through.
According to her, it all stemmed back to my parents’ rejection of who I was.
That was why I couldn’t conceive of myself fully as an artist. I was afraid to open up, to act as a channel for my true creativity.
“I see it all the time with my clients,” she’d say, glancing carefully at me. “And it’s just incredible how my treatment benefits them. One day, we really should dedicate some time to it, Gus.”
Whenever Jean mentioned her clients, I felt a shiver of envy toward them, these girls with glamorous names like Oriel, who seemed to phone Jean all the time.
Therapy, I had already concluded, was a rich person’s privilege that I couldn’t afford.
The girls from the Melrose often talked about their shrinks’ analyses of their thoughts and actions: why they drank so much, painted badly, fought with their parents, or slept around.
They were given a narrative framework for their lives. A better story to tell themselves.
When I listened to their accounts of what they had learned, I felt a deep longing.
How badly I wanted a story, a way of making sense of all the muddled patterns I had fallen into.
How I craved a container for the unmanageable feelings that flowed toward Mary.
But also in those moments, I felt a giddy gratitude toward Jean.
That such a generous and worldly woman would take an interest in me seemed an insane stroke of luck.
She knew I couldn’t afford to have proper sessions with her and was kind about it, joking that one day, she hoped, she’d get me on her couch.
She often reminded me that she had a special payment structure for students.
“But I can’t even afford a haircut, Jean.”
“Well, perhaps there are other ways. Think it over. I just want to see you shine.”
One of the things that Jean was adamant about was bringing Mary into my own creative practice. In her view, the Melrose school was making Mary miserable, teaching her nothing but paint by numbers. “You could be the one to set her free from that,” she suggested.
Once or twice a month, our residency hosted evenings where alumni and current members of the program sold pieces of work.
Jean insisted that I invite Mary, instead of following her moonily from bar to bar.
Not only that, but Jean announced she might try to come along, too.
She was dying to meet Mary, especially after everything I’d told her.
The next event was the second week of November.
Jean got very involved in the whole evening, helping me plan what we’d do afterward, and even lending me money for a new outfit.
But when the event began and I stood around in my new clothes, I grew agitated.
If Mary didn’t appear, I’d have nothing to show for Jean’s investment in my clothes, for all her goading and coaching.
She wanted me to text her as soon as Mary arrived, and that made me uneasy, too: the sense that Mary’s no-show might upset Jean even more than me.
As I waited, I tried to quiet that fear by drinking a lot of wine.
The exhibition space at Creta was an echoey place that had once served as a storage room for grain.
Although our basement studio was crowded, I loved the area upstairs and was proud to show it off.
Its walls were pale blue, but the paint was starting to crack and peel like eggshells.
I liked that about the room—the way its rough walls underlined the solidity of all the exhibited pieces.
Supporters of the program, and friends of the artists, gathered in circles, drinking wine and eating cheese and fried artichokes.
They were well-dressed in that typical Roman way: The men wore wide, soft loafers on their feet.
The women wore belted puffer jackets with fur hoods.
I milled around for about an hour, trying to keep up with conversations I couldn’t understand.
There were a couple of trips outside for anxious cigarettes.
More wine. Some staring at the wall. Then, just as I was about to text Jean to say there was no point in coming because Mary hadn’t arrived, I felt a hand on my shoulder.
“Look at you!” Mary said, playfully flicking the silver trousers Jean had helped me buy. As Mary rotated and admired me, I inwardly blessed Jean’s generosity.
We hugged. Mary’s own outfit was all black, and tougher than normal: dark jeans and a leather jacket, which rested on her shoulders like a cape.
Her hair was drawn up to the top of her head in a tight bun.
As I held her, I could feel the notches of her shoulders through her clothes, birdlike and fragile beneath all that leather armor.
For a sad moment, I thought of Lawrence. Had he detected that, too?
We collected drinks, then I led Mary over to where my work was.
I’d just finished my first sculpture, the only piece of work I’d made that wasn’t, as Jean put it, functional .
It was a modest-sized sculpture of a gymnast, a work that Jean had helped me source the materials for, covering the costs, she promised, until someone had the sense to buy it.
The idea had come to me over the summer, inspired by an American gymnast I’d grown obsessed with during the previous year’s Olympics.
I was moved by her physical freedom, her flight as she sprung over the vaulting horse, the thud as she shifted her weight between her hands, the brown beans of muscle in her arms. There was a hypnotic rhythm to the flow of her body that made me want to try to sculpt her.
Or, something in her power that eventually dared me to.
Although I was proud of how it had come out, and happy, too, to hear the praise of my peers at Creta, it was Mary’s approval that actually made my work feel interesting.
“ Beautiful ,” she said, smoothing the gymnast’s flanks and abdomen admiringly, like a trainer with a racehorse. She listened as I explained how I’d modeled the piece, the steel wool I’d used to polish it. My heart soared.
“Is he falling or what?” Mary interrupted, cocking her head to the side.
“Falling?” I laughed. I pointed to the surface at the base of the sculpture, which the gymnast held on to with a single hand, her legs pressed together neatly as a knife. “No, look,” I said, then hesitated. “It’s also a she.”
“Wow, I didn’t get that.” Mary paused, turned her head again. “Quite butch, isn’t she?” I said nothing. She went on. “I see it more like she’s desperate, like she’s gripping on to an edge with only one hand. Like she’s fallen and is about to let go.”
I squeezed my lower lip and glanced over Mary’s shoulder to where a woman was feeding bits of food to the dog she held in her arms. What I wanted to portray was the gymnast’s control over the horse, her mastery of gravity. Mary had got it wrong, though there was no point in correcting her.
“I wish I could do hands as well as you,” she murmured, gripping mine and bringing it next to the sculpture.
“They’re perfect.” For a moment, the room fell quiet.
There was nothing around except the feeling of her hands on mine, the flood of excitement this caused me.
Then she burst out laughing and the spell was broken. We moved away.
“Can we go soon?” she whispered loudly, swiping drinks. “I’m getting museum legs.”