Twenty Three
León arrived empty-handed on his parents’ doorstep, and they made up the guest room. It was pure luck that no uncles or cousins were visiting. Space would have been found, regardless. León, the family’s artistic itinerant, had turned up before when sales didn’t keep up with rent.
He told his parents that Los Angeles was great, that he’d already been in one show. The painting had been going well. He’d sold one. He had six completed pieces that were some of his best work. More were in progress. Andrew said hi.
He said he was back in New York to see some friends, and they didn’t ask questions. By day he stayed out of the apartment, and nights, he spent in his room. He could hear discussions about himself if his mother didn’t have music playing.
“He’s too thin. He barely eats.”
“He brought no paints. He must plan to go back.”
“No paints? He brought no clothes! I think he’s run from something there.”
“Surely not, mi vida. Surely he’s outgrown that.”
“It’s a girl.”
“Probably, yes.”
A girl, ha! He’d lost everything he wanted in life. Muse, career, love, identity.
He spent the first week trying desperately to not think at all, walking the length of the city.
The city was wrong, different. He saw only grays in the sky and pavements and river. Thin muffled crowds, faces hidden by scarves, veered past him with winter boots echoing. Even in the parks, lingering leaves fell in isolation, drifting slowly to the cold earth one by one.
No one made eye contact as they did in Los Angeles. Sunsets were invisible behind low clouds and looming buildings. Here, a layer of sooty grime climbed up. There, a dusting of dun spread wide.
He’d fled back to the familiar, but it was all changed because he was changed.
He tried to exhaust himself on his walks. The more mind-numbing, the better. It was futile, as he thought of everything in terms of painting, and now painting meant Celia. He could ignore the gray and the cold, but too often, a stab of color reminded him of his loss.
Mannequins in store windows held clean-lined poses. Black graffiti on a white wall sat waiting to be painted over. A woman on the subway wore a coat of bronze and green.
Just walk on by, look at the next thing, don’t think.
In the evenings, his mother’s music was all about new love or lost love. The sight of her stirring a pot in the kitchen tore at him. He’d never cooked for his mother either.
His father’s desk, laptop open, papers piled high, was begging to be organized and tidied. Paintings he’d made when much younger still hung on the walls. They were awful juvenilia, rife with self-conscious technique but no soul.
Even his own face in the bathroom mirror reminded him of her—blank, frightened, trying desperately to not feel.
In bed at night with the lights out, he was a child again, with no idea what the future held. Painting was finished for him. What else was there that he could do? He terrorized himself with ideas he knew would never work, imagining his failure at each. Nothing was right for him, not if he couldn’t have Celia to paint. And she’d told him to leave.
···
Construction began at Celia’s warehouse. Daily, she descended to the site, prepared for queries large and small. She was politely professional but knew the workers avoided her, this employer who’d memorized the precise measurements of each task they were doing and would correct them if they were off. Her obsessive touch was in everything.
Her general contractor, Carlos, was sometimes frustrated by her phone calls, always starting with “I need.” Tough. Her Incubadora had to be done right.
Her schedules had to be met. Not because she insisted but because she’d coordinated things so tightly. If cabinets weren’t installed on time, the appliances being delivered sat in the workspace, getting in the way.
At home, she filled notebooks with research, scheduled every blank space in her calendar with another task, and sifted through resumes submitted for her job postings.
She didn’t cook. The pool lights were turned off. She pushed off all overtures from Trevor, Andrew, and Kelsey, finally silencing notifications on the group chat.
Everything of León’s was closed away in his old room. If there had been a lock on the door, she would have gladly bolted it. Floor refinishers and painters were brought in to restore her craft room to its original white state while she continued working in the dining room.
When she had nothing left to organize, she sat alone at her dining table in the dark, looking up local artists and school websites, searching for people who needed a place like Incubadora.
At night, she itched for the new day to start so she could keep working. Her feelings sometimes almost got away from her, but she could fall asleep if she recited tomorrow’s list of tasks enough times. She just needed to work harder. The exhaustion was getting her through.
···
Two weeks into León’s stay, his father finally had a go at him. The guest room door opened and in his father marched, leaning against a chest of drawers with arms crossed.
“Why don’t you paint?” he barked.
León shrugged, sitting on the twin bed, looking down to finger some T-shirts waiting for him. His mother had bought them, unhappy with her son wearing oversized shirts left by a cousin.
“I’ve never seen you go so long without a brush in your hand, not since you were a child.”
León didn’t look up, didn’t speak. The futility, his missing future, sat like a stone in his stomach.
“Your mother thinks you are sad. I think sulky.”
Silence stretched out, but his father waited. He wasn’t accepting the brush-off this time. León finally spoke. “I’m just not painting, Dad.”
“When you have lots of emotions, that’s the best time to paint.”
León looked toward the door and escape. It was effectively blocked. “I’m just doing a lot of thinking, okay?”
His father leaned down, ducking his head to try and catch his son’s eyes. “You’re trying to not think,” he said. “We both see it. Is it helping? No.”
“Dad, come on.” León hunched over, dropping his forehead into his hand. Go away!
“So, you give up. I’m surprised at you. What in Los Angeles has robbed you of your heart?”
León looked up sharply, clenched his jaw, then breathed out slowly. Tranquilo.
His father stabbed a finger at him. “Is our home a place to hide from this?”
“I’m not hiding.”
“Of course, you’re hiding. You think I don’t know you?” Exasperation was thick in his voice.
León knew what his father was doing. The goading and provocation weren’t going to work this time. His feelings were too raw to let out.
His razor-thin control wavered, though.
“Okay, I’m hiding.” he confessed. “I can still come here, right? I’m your son even if I’m not a painter?”
His father straightened, eyes wounded, and covered his heart with a splayed hand. León wished he could take back the words. Celia had asked that once, trying to be reassuring, and he hadn’t meant to turn the words around into an accusation.
“Of course, you are welcome,” his father said, softening. “But you are a painter even if you refuse to paint.”
León cringed inside. No, a painter who didn’t paint was nothing.
“I’ll bring you supplies. If you try once, you’ll see. When you’re hurting, that’s the time to paint more, not less.”
León bit his tongue. There was nothing to say, and it hurt to try defending a choice he didn’t want.
“Son, why don’t you fight? You’ve never been one to give up.”
León looked down.
“It’s when you give up that you are beaten.”
León closed his eyes. He was obviously beaten.
“If fighting doesn’t work, try the opposite. Be gentle and go quietly around this thing that stops you.”
León snorted.
“You think that doesn’t work? You wait and see.”
Dropping his head in his hands, León listened to his father leave and quietly close the door.
···
The knocking started as Celia pulled delivery schedules out of their colored folder. It was already dark outside. Who would show up at her place at this time?
When the knocking persisted, she realized. That languid pattern, the way the knocking went a little too long…Andrew.
Sure enough, he stood there when she opened the door.
“Hi,” she said, her lips pursed at his audacity. “I’m a little busy.”
“You can spare a few minutes for me, right?”
Not really! “If I said no, would you listen?”
His eyes widened. “Of course.”
She sighed, relenting. “Come on.”
She led him through the dim house to the only fully lit room: the new nerve center. The dining table was covered with folders in various vertical holders, and her laptop was surrounded by neat piles of papers. She sat down in front of it as he pulled out a chair of his own. She lowered its lid, but not all the way.
“How’s it been going?” Andrew asked.
Incubadora. The fire in her belly never smoldered out, and she let it flame up now.
“It’s going to work, Andrew. I can open just before Christmas. There are only a few more weeks of construction, and I’ve hired an administrative assistant already. Dolores, she’s wonderful. If you want to see your classroom this week, the main floor is almost done. I’ll need a list of supplies from you, so I can have those ready.” She reached for the laptop, then stopped herself. “We need to test the dumbwaiter and kiln. The signage will be installed next week, and then they’re delivering the furniture for my loft, up top. I don’t want anything from here.”
Andrew swallowed. “I meant, how are you doing?”
Her eyes flickered down. “Ah.”
“Girl, we’re worried.”
“I’m just busy. I’ll have more time after the grand opening. You and Trevor and Kelsey can come see it, come hang out. After I move—”
“We just want to see you,” he interrupted. “You stopped replying to us. I was worrying about you hiding away again. We’re still here. You don’t have to bury yourself in this.”
“I do, though. I want this. I have to make it work!”
“You sound like León,” he said.
Oh, that hurt!
“This isn’t picture painting,” she scowled. “This is my whole future.”
His eyebrows cocked at her. “You’re doing it alone?”
Celia’s lips compressed into a line.
“Look,” he said. “You two broke up, and then both disappeared. I’m worried about you.”
León had disappeared? Not just to New York? He’d left the group chat. Had he not talked even to—stop. Stop.
“I have to focus on Incubadora.”
“You can’t do that forever.”
“I can right now.”
“León—”
“I don’t want to talk about León!” she snapped, standing to glare down at him.
Andrew spread his hands. “Okay. Maybe later. I just…okay.”
She struggled to calm herself. Tranquila.
“Come by later this week and see your classroom,” she said stiffly. “Tell me if you need anything else in there. I’ve only got a few weeks to get it ready for you.”
He twisted his mouth, disappointed. “And I’m dismissed until then. Okay, girl, I give in. You better text Kelsey, though. She’s been frothing to come over.”
Good lord. She wasn’t up to that.