Twenty-Two
Alistair has been staring at my paintings for four minutes.
Not that I’m counting.
I am absolutely counting.
Four minutes and eighteen seconds.
Four minutes and nineteen seconds.
I stand behind him with my hands shoved into my pockets.
The gallery isn’t open yet, and the silence is painful.
Three canvases are propped against the wall.
Twenty completed works sit in my studio. Two more are almost done. One is currently turned toward the wall because I hate it.
But these three are different. I know they are.
Alistair steps closer to the first.
Two figures sit at opposite ends of a long dining table, their bodies rendered in muted greens and bruised blues. Neither has a face. Their hands rest on the wood between them, separated by inches.
He examines the second.
A woman stands behind a man with one hand resting between his shoulder blades. He’s leaning away from her.
The third is the one I’m least sure about.
It’s just three pairs of hands.
One holding too tightly.
One hanging loose.
One reaching into empty space.
The rest of the canvas is almost bare.
I nearly painted over that one yesterday.
Alistair tips his head.
Four minutes and forty-seven seconds.
“Can you say something?”
“Obviously I can. I’m choosing not to.” He takes another step toward the third canvas. “Do stop hovering. You’re breathing on my neck.”
I take a step back.
Twenty-one days. That’s all I have left.
Twenty-one days until this room is full of people holding champagne and discussing my work as if I’m not standing three feet away.
Fifteen days until installation starts.
A week until the final press images go out.
Somewhere in there, I need to decide what goes on the end wall.
The very large, very blank end wall I’ve been deliberately avoiding looking at since I walked in.
I thought showing Alistair these would make me feel better. That it would be proof.
See? I did it.
I didn’t disappear.
I didn’t leave you with an empty gallery again.
Instead, I’m watching him stare at the evidence and wondering if I’ve somehow failed in a completely new way.
Finally, he steps back and turns, but his face gives me nothing.
“Well?”
He smiles. “Spectacular.”
I look at the paintings. “Spectacular?”
“Don’t become irritating. Yes. Spectacular.”
The word settles inside me, but I don’t trust it yet.
“These hurt to look at.” He points to the couple at the dining table. “There is extraordinary loneliness in this one.”
I stay very still.
“They could touch. That’s what makes it painful. If you’d put them at opposite ends of a room, I’d understand the distance and move on. But you’ve put them within reach.”
He moves to the second. “This one is worse.”
“Worse good?”
“Yes, darling. Keep up.”
I smile despite myself.
“You’ve always understood bodies.”
“That’s a weird compliment.”
He gives me a sidelong glance. “I’m discussing your work, not propositioning you.”
“Just checking.”
“You understand where people put tension. Hands. Shoulders. Backs.” He gestures toward the canvas. “Most painters would give me a face here. Tears. Something obvious. But you haven’t told the viewer what to feel. You’ve trusted them to find it.”
This is what I wanted.
I wanted somebody to look at them and feel something before they figured out why.
Alistair walks to the middle of the room and studies all three together.
“When I first saw your work, you were very good at grabbing people’s attention,” he says. “You understood color. You already had a distinct hand, which is rare in someone as young as you were. But you were careful.”
My smile fades. “Careful?”
“Beautifully so.” He gestures toward the paintings. “These aren’t careful, and they’re better for it.”
His approval means more to me than I know what to do with.
He saw one of my paintings at a group show two years ago, stood in front of it for ten minutes, then found me and asked if I had representation.
He gave me my first solo exhibition, and I gave him an empty room four weeks before opening.
“I’m very proud of you.”
Oh.
I turn toward the nearest painting before I embarrass myself. “Don’t be nice to me. It’s weird.”
“Would it help if I called you an emotionally constipated nuisance?”
“Enormously.”
“Consider it done.”
I smile, though my eyes still sting.
“I told you I’d have the work. I know last year—”
“I did not give you another exhibition because I felt sorry for you.”
I look down at my boots. “You took a chance on me.”
“I represented an artist whose work I believe in.”
“And I pulled out four weeks before opening. The press had already started. You had collectors coming. You’d spent money.”
“Yes.”
“And now you’ve given me the same room again. I wasn’t going to let you down twice.”
“The fact that you’re worried about disappointing me is not the problem with these.”
My head snaps up. “There’s a problem?”
Alistair walks back toward the first painting. “Do you know what’s missing?”
I scan it.
The faces are intentionally absent. The upper-left section could probably use more contrast, but I decided against it.
“No.”
He points at me. “You.”
I stare at his finger.
“I can see your observations everywhere. I can feel your sympathy for them. Your fascination with the things we do to one another when we love badly, or quietly, or for too long, yet you’re standing outside all of it.”
The observation room flashes through my mind.
The glass and semicircle of chairs.
Everybody else talking while I draw.
“If this is the entire exhibition,” he continues, “then you’ve given me an extraordinarily beautiful record of everybody else’s pain.” His eyes come back to mine. “You haven’t given me yours.”
I say nothing because what the hell am I supposed to say to that?
“You’ve spent years painting around yourself.”
My hands curl deeper into my pockets. “You’re just making this up because you want another painting.”
“I always want another painting.”
That gets nothing from me.
“You know what I see when I look at these?”
“Apparently everybody’s trauma except mine.”
“I see an artist who understands what it is to sit inside a room full of people and make sure nobody notices what she’s carrying.”
He knows last year was difficult. He knows I stopped producing work. He knows I canceled.
But he doesn’t know why.
“I see grief,” he says. “Want. Shame. Fear. You understand all of it, but you’ve made it safe by giving it to somebody else.”
I look at the third canvas.
Everybody else’s hands.
None of mine.
“What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to decide whether you’re satisfied with a very good exhibition.”
“And if I’m not?”
His gaze shifts toward the large blank wall at the end of the gallery. “If you want people talking about this show a year from now, give me the piece you’re avoiding.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“Yes, you do. You have fifteen days before installation.”
“That’s not enough time.”
“Then work quickly.”
I gape at him. “You just spent ten minutes telling me you’re proud of me, and now you’re giving me a nervous breakdown.”
“Excellent. Use it.” He smiles. “One piece, Rowan.”
I look at the empty wall. “One?”
“One honest piece.” His voice softens. “Make it the one you don’t want anyone to see.”
Fifteen days.
One piece that’s mine.
I’m going to be sick.
“I’m leaving before you ask for anything else,” I tell him, grabbing my bag from the floor.
“Rowan?”
I stop at the door.
When I look back, he’s facing the paintings again.
“Spectacular.”