Chapter 2
2
I wake up with Lily stretched across my bed. Listening to her soft snores, I lie around and imagine my day. Get up. Get dressed. Walk Lily. Make breakfast. Apply for jobs. Scroll through Instagram until lunch. Apply for some more jobs. Feed Lily. Walk Lily again.
Go to therapy and ruminate on everything that’s gone wrong in my life.
This routine is nothing new, but this time it feels off, and not just because of my new apartment. I’ve had my moments of happiness, of course. I was not always a miserable wench who has brought down everyone around her. I had been dreading the move terribly. But it was over now, and the relief washes over me in the way a cold shower does, shitty at first, but it gets you to snap out of the panic attack.
Now, I must decide on a new thing to dread.
Work. Money. Food. Loneliness .
Do you still get emails if you don’t check them? Does the news still happen if you don’t read it? Is my life falling apart even when I’m not living it?
I rub my temples, hair strewn over my pillow, my feet twisting in a whirlpool of blankets and sheets. I check my phone for new emails, new notifications, any kind of sign that people still care about me. A calendar reminder for group therapy. A text from Stuart asking if I’m going to pick up my package that’s been in the lobby for two days. An email reminder to pay my WiFi bill. Fuck it. I get up, tossing my phone onto the bed.
After walking Lily and settling down on my table-designated Rubbermaid bin, I open my laptop to look for a job. Maybe today will be the day I find a new full-time gig—working part-time at the local Blick Art Supplies isn’t cutting it any longer—both monetarily and socially.
I have a little nest egg saved up from donations folks made after Grant died, but it’s starting to dwindle, and it’s going faster than I had hoped. Before he died, I was able to pursue freelance painting, picking and choosing my projects because Grant’s salary as an architect and freelance designer was enough for both of us.
In the years since he passed, I’ve worked on odds and ends, finishing up old projects that were long overdue. I do the occasional commission, but they aren’t enough to sustain Lily, let alone myself, in the long term.
I’m applying for pretty much anything I qualify for—other part-time jobs, illustrator jobs, curator jobs, freelance work. My Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting is feeling extra useless as I apply for jobs at cafes and nursing homes.
I open Craigslist on a whim. I have gotten commissions from there in the past and it’s been good for quick cash. An elderly woman looking for a portrait of her family of cats and a couple looking for custom art for their new bed and breakfast come to mind, but weeding through the multilevel marketing schemes, research studies and perverts is tedious.
A new submission comes through my artist website just as I’m checking my email.
Email: [email protected]
New Submission: Hi! I’m interested in a quote for a 8x10 foot mural in arestaurant with oil paint in a timeframe of six weeks.
Mae
The budget is more than reasonable for the size, but one thing stands out to me: that large a mural with oil paint, in a restaurant? It would take me twelve-hour days and a very, very careful hand to finish in that short a time frame, and it would also depend on how intricate a design they wanted, and if the surface was suitable for oil paint.
If the restaurant were in operation, oil painting could be a potential health hazard, as it can stay wet for days. I hope they’d be willing to close the restaurant at least some of the time, otherwise it would be nothing short of a stressful experience for the owners and for me.
But the commission on this large of a budget is nothing to sneeze at.
I reply to the ad.
Mae,
Thanks for reaching out! Can you tell me a little bit more about what you’re looking for in terms of design? Feel free to attach some reference photos or a pinterest board. Then, I can give you a quote and sketch.
Thanks,
Riley
The reply comes back almost instantly.
Riley,
We would love something colorful, whimsical and nature inspired! See attached photos.
Mae
I can’t remember where my sketch book was, so I grab my landlord’s move-in papers and begin sketching some designs on the back. What’s in my head?
Tea. When was the last time I had tea?
This morning.
When was the last time I saw a teapot?
I have an electric kettle, but I also have an inkling they aren’t looking for something so modern.
The little red kettle on the chef’s jacket.
That man again. That was the last time I saw a kettle.
I lightly draw a kettle with a big billow of steam. I sketch a branch with blooming cherry blossoms through the handle. A finch on the upper branch. No, maybe a dove. Or an albatross.
I erase the billow of steam and add a flowing stream of water into a porcelain cup adorned with cherry blossoms and hibiscus flowers. There.
I hate it.
I want to do something whimsical but comforting. Somewhere you could imagine yourself going to and drinking a nice cup of tea. Somewhere you could escape to. Where you could go whenever you felt lonely, or strange, or when you wanted to talk to an old friend. I rub my temples. The very place I want to be in.
I crumple the paper, and take a fresh sheet, and let my wrist do the work.
Thin pine trees in the background. A large, shimmering lake in the middle ground. A large cherry blossom tree in the foreground, to the left. A grassy clearing to the right, little wildflowers swaying in an imaginary breeze.
A steaming red kettle with matching teacups on a red-checkered picnic blanket. A rattan woven picnic basket filled with treats. Orange frosted scones and berry custard tarts.
A wide-brimmed sun hat. Finches dancing around the cattails in the lake. A man and a woman holding hands on the shore of the lake.
I smile to myself. It looks like heaven compared to now.
If this idea is rejected, I might paint it myself. It would make a fine first painting in this new home of mine.
I snap a quick photo and open my email.
Mae,
What do you think of something like this, in this style? That being said, these are
all done with acrylic paint. I think acrylic paint would be better suited to your needs. This might be easier to discuss over the phone, so give me a call!
Riley
I attach photos of my previous murals. One of them is on the side of a building for a recreation center in Brooklyn, one of a Tuscan Villa inside a mom-and-pop Italian restaurant in Queens, one on the roadbed of an outdoor dining structure in New Jersey. I also attach some photos of my paintings—a waterfall in Upstate New York, an elderly couple napping on a bench in Central Park, and finally, one of Lily lying in the sunshine. I click send before I lose my nerve.
I’m not confident I can do an oil painting that large in six weeks. The drying time of oil paint certainly proves to be a risky factor. I don’t think they’ll find anyone willing to do an oil painting of that scale, in that time frame. Surely, if they like my sketch, I can convince them to do acrylic paint in order to stay under budget and in the time frame.
Now, I wait.
Resigning myself to not check my email until after therapy at 2:00, lest I obsessively check all morning, I decide to unpack. I place my phone on the countertop, and look for Lily, who is nestled in her eternal favorite spot—the corner of the couch arm. I cup her squashed face in my hands and give her a fat kiss on her noggin. She barely lifts her head as she lightly snorts in response.
I walk to a stack of Rubbermaid bins and lift the lid off one. Kitchenware. I begin unpacking. I thought I would dread it more, but it becomes therapeutic to find a new home for things. Spatulas and spoons and ice cream scoops in this drawer, silverware and scissors in that drawer. Pots and pans on the stovetop and in the oven. My cabinet space is limited. I stock my shelves with the odds and ends I didn’t throw out: boxes of pasta, bags of rice, instant oatmeal and dry cereal.
I empty bin after bin, but even after an hour of unloading books and towels and trash bags, it still feels like I have a thousand more things to unpack. I sit on the floor, Lily skittering across the hardwood floor to climb into my lap. I could be unpacking all day. I didn’t know I had this much stuff, as I’d hired movers to haul it all. When you’re one person with no one but a dog, you surround yourself with more material objects to fill the void of warmth. Surely a new box of cereal could replace the warmth of a hug.
Is this what makes a house, a home? Unpacking? Belongings on a shelf?
I clench my teeth and bring my hand to my chin, my shoulders hunched. I had relied on Grant to make our last house a home. He had decorated. He was the one always bringing home a new rug for the living room and suggesting a dinner party on a weeknight.
He was always the one full of life, even until all of his life was pulled out from underneath him. When he died, the light was snuffed from our home indefinitely, and I hadn’t cared to bring it back. I had stumbled in a never-ending marathon.
For the longest time I thought, what was the point if it wasn’t him? If the light wasn’t brought by Grant, I didn’t want it. I wanted to live in darkness. I didn’t have a reason why. It’s just how my grief was.
You never knew why; you could never explain. It was as if you’d handed me a calculus book and asked me to teach it to a group of seventh graders. I could read the words and the instructions, but I couldn’t explain anything past addition.
How do you put something so enormous, so gigantic, into a digestible sentence to a friend who only wants to get a cup of coffee?
In the first year, I insisted if I had left any trace of him, it’d be like his light was still here. The toothbrush in the toothbrush holder. His razor hanging in the shower, scraggly beard hairs and all. His clothes, hanging in the closet, untouched by anyone or anything except dust bunnies. Architectural Digest and the New Yorker strewn on my coffee table, subscriptions left uncanceled, automatically charging my credit card.
Those things were his light beaming strong and bright from the lighthouse on the rocky island, and I was a little rowboat bobbing further and further from the shore. In reality, I was the island. He was the boat, bobbing away. I wouldn’t let anyone touch anything. I wouldn’t let my family visit. I wouldn’t let his parents take anything. I kept all of his belongings as a shrine the size of my entire life. Nothing in, nothing out. I had to keep the light on at all costs, and I was willing to shipwreck anyone who got too close.
In the second year, I started therapy. I let people prod from the outside at a distance, never the inside. I kept the lifeline shrine in the bedroom and Grant’s old office. I painted, I talked with my parents, and eventually I let go of some of Grant’s things.
But no one could brighten my mood for more than an hour or two at a time. I took solace in my grief. We were good friends by this time. I muddled my way through time, feeling like I was waist deep in quicksand. But it was my quicksand.
After much discussion between my therapist, and group therapy participants, I realized it wasn’t sustainable to carry on like this. At that point, it has been three years. It took all the courage I could possibly muster to admit I had to leave the apartment to my therapist. It was a disaster and so was my life. I’d been letting grief steer the wheel and I had to be ready to get back in the driver's seat, or risk losing myself.
So I had a choice to make. Move back in with my parents or get a job and a smaller apartment. After packing up our old apartment, I realize it wasn’t saltines and instant oatmeal in a cupboard and it wasn’t unwashed clothes in a Ziploc bag that made a home. It hadn’t been unwashed clothes in a closet, or crusty toothbrushes or rusty razors the year before.
The light had to be all on me, and I didn’t know what made a house a home in the slightest. I have picked this apart in therapy a thousand times and didn’t want to admit that it wasn’t material possessions that made a home.
It’s people, and the light that comes with them, that make a home. Stories. Good food. Movies and campfires and going for walks around the block. Everything that comes with having friends and family and someone to talk to.
When someone close to you dies, it’s not uncommon to lose all sense of yourself. You become a shell of who you once were. A caricature of the worst version of yourself. Sullen and snotty, someone who not even your mother could bear to look at. You don’t want to talk to your friends. And to top it off, your friends don’t know what to say to you.
“I’m sorry for your loss. Can we help with anything for the funeral?”
“My condolences. Do you want us to bring you dinner?”
“Is there anything I can do? We could make a donation in his honor.”
“We’re so sorry. You know you can always call us. ”
Everyone says the same things, no matter who died. You can only hear condolences so many times before you want to rip your ears off, Van-Gogh style, and finally get committed. And your friends can only say those things so many times before their answers get shorter and shorter.
“Hey! Sorry we didn’t invite you. We weren’t sure you’d want to come. Next time?”
“How have you been? We missed you at the book club.”
“What’s up? I’m good.”
“Lol..hru?”
I think back to my last group therapy and the answers everyone gave. We had been talking about ways we are developing our new self-identities.
“I’m learning the guitar, like Jessie always wanted. I’m enjoying it more than I thought I would.”
“I started having weekly dinners with his sister. We get McDonalds with the kids. They play in the PlayPlace. It's good for the cousins to bond.”
“I actually went on another hike! I had a good time. I surprised myself with how much I liked it.”
“I made his favorite food without crying last night. It was delicious.”
And what had I said?
“I’m moving to a new apartment. I want to find a new job. And I want to love again.”
And with that thought complete, my phone is ringing with a call. I hesitate before picking it up, then rush around the counter to answer before it can be sent to voicemail.
“Hello, is this Riley? This is Mae Cho from The Red Kettle calling about the mural.” The phone crackles.
“Yes, this is her.” I clear my throat.
Why does The Red Kettle sound so familiar? Oh, hell no. Jae. The Red Kettle. From yesterday.
“Yeah, so, we got your sketch, and like it a lot so?—”
“Forget it.” Before she can say anything else—in a panic—I hang up the phone and turn it off.