Chapter Twenty-Four #2
“I mean, yeah, I remember. But it’s more than something technical. Like, more than skill in taking the photo. It’s not just a pizza, you know? Or a shell. Or a photo of a photo. You feel something when you look at them.”
“Maybe you just do.”
“I don’t mean it like that. I mean, each photo speaks. Margaret. They speak like art speaks.”
“No way.” I was blushing so hard, I swear to God.
“Yes way.”
I took my phone back. I tried to view the photos the way she had, but all I could see was my own feeling about them, my own feelings in them. I tried to tell her this.
“That’s exactly my point. That’s art. That’s when art has impact. That’s when art connects. You are connecting. You should do something with these.”
I shrugged, but I felt so pleased. That someone as talented as Sandrine felt that way about what I’d made, yeah. But even more, I was pleased that I had done it. The thing that was so important to you. I made an outreach. I connected. Even if it was just to Sandrine in her living room.
“But, wait. Why do you need the barking?” she asked.
Oh, God. I felt anxious and uncertain all over again. I would wreck it now, maybe. This wasn’t art, I was pretty sure. Still, I chanced it. That was another one of your things, the chancing, the you never know. Okay, okay. She might think this was completely ridiculous, but fine.
I played her the glug. I played the rain and thunder I recorded the other night, rain and thunder that reminded me of another night, the one on Tiger Mountain, prom night, when I arrived with Maurice and there you were, like a miracle.
“I hear rain and thunder, but the other one…No clue.”
I realized I was holding my breath. “It was, uh, one of the noises from the day we met?”
How could she have a clue? I was suddenly embarrassed. This had maybe been a bad idea, to show her what I’d been doing. It was private. It was small. Meaningless, or, at least, it had meaning only to me. “Is it a belch? Don’t tell me. The first thing he said to you was buuuuurp.”
“A watercooler. In the doctors’ office. Remember? I saw him there the first time.”
I worried she would laugh. Instead, she looked at me with an expression that was hard to read. A quizzical astonishment plus compassion. “Margaret,” she said. “You’re making a Golden Record. For your voyager.”
She understood. I knew she would, and she had. My chest was squeezing again, but not from fear. From emotion, from some sort of relief that felt a tiny bit like hope.
She made me show Maurice the photos when he got home.
“Wow.” He rubbed the nonexistent whiskers on his chin, the way he did when he was surprised.
“See?” Sandrine said.
“These are really good.”
“Told you.” Sandrine was pleased with herself. And this is hard to describe, too. But I felt a little bit of her old energy. Just talking about this, I could see that her own creative spark was still there, trying to shine.
“That pizza box…I don’t understand how, but it makes me want to cry.”
“But you have the story already. About Mars and the Sarafina.”
“Even if I didn’t, it would. That shell, too. The photos of the photos. Huh.” He couldn’t believe it. He looked at me like I was new.
I did that scoffing in the back of my throat, the ckkk kind that sounded like Frank about to hack up some gross thing he ate. (When you heard it, you’d rush him outside, and then he’d sometimes stare up at you, like, Why am I here?)
“Seriously, MG. You should do something with these.”
“Margaret, yes. You have to get these out there.”
“Out there? I have no idea what that even means.” My voice was starting to sound panicky.
I shouldn’t have said anything. I shouldn’t have told them.
Making art, if that’s what this was, was one thing.
It was me and you and it, no one else. Telling Sandrine and Maurice was another step, still okay.
Out there, though, was…out there, my God. That took a whole other something.
“It means you offer it,” Sandrine said. “What came from inside. It’s one of the most beautiful, powerful, most magical tricks in the world.
People feel it, and then they give that back to you, and you give it back again, in this incredible…
” She finished her own sentence by making a figure eight with her finger.
Oh, Mars, she was making an infinity symbol.
Were you sending me a sign right then and there, through Sandrine?
God, I was going to have to listen, wasn’t I? Well, look. I’m here right now.
Maurice tilted his chin down and stared at Sandrine, scrunching his face.
“What?” Sandrine folded her arms. We all knew what. “Stop. You’re better off working for your dad! How do you actually see this going, anyway? We make a record? We succeed in a business that’s basically impossible to succeed in?”
“The most beautiful, powerful, most magical tricks in the world…” Maurice said.
“Yeah, Sandrine! God! You have to offer yours again,” I said. She didn’t, of course, and neither did I, but I remembered, how could I not, the way her voice made me feel. The way her voice made all of us feel.
“She said, from the safety and comfort of her brother’s couch with the soy-sauce stain on it,” Sandrine said.
“I always wondered what that was. I feared worse,” I said.
“Let’s just get pizza and forget it,” Sandrine said.
I put my phone in my pocket.
“Real artists are the ones who fight lethargy,” Maurice said.
“Who put stuff out there not just in spite of what’s going on in their lives and the world, but because of what’s going on in their lives and the world.
Honest stuff, because if it’s honest, it’s felt.
And if it’s felt, it has meaning. That’s what you always say, S.
And if I see or eat one more pizza this week, I’m going to scream my head off. If we order, we’re getting Thai.”
“You’re bossing us around like a true misogynist,” Sandrine said. Maurice couldn’t be a misogynist if he tried. A miracle, after our dad. Some people seemed to become their most difficult parent, and others their opposite. “Fine, Thai.”
“Fine,” I agreed.
“Just one gig, S. One,” Maurice urged. “And if you don’t feel it anymore, okay. If you don’t want to be who you are anymore, all right. You can be someone else. But right now, I’m looking at three people who are just locking their talent behind a door.”
“Three?” I grinned.
“Have you seen Frank’s paintings?”
Sandrine smiled, and I laughed, and we loved Maurice so much. We loved each other so much. We loved Frank so much, even if his only paintings were wet paw prints on the rug.
“Margaret,” Sandrine said solemnly. “I will if you will.”
“Will what?” I truly didn’t know. She was putting us both on the same line, and this made no sense to me.
“Offer it, Jesus! Put your project out there. Seriously. I hate seeing talent go to waste.”
Now I really saw the glimmering of the old Sandrine. Her drive. Her passion. I wished it weren’t directed at me, though. I should have known that if she liked my photos, she would push me forward. Maybe I did know, but…Not right this minute! “I wouldn’t even know how.”
“Just take a step forward. Reach out. An account on Snapshot, even.”
“Social media?” My voice was full of…Don’t laugh, Mars.
Terror. Oh my God! Sure, I scrolled through other people’s stuff on Snapshot, but I was never brave enough to post on social media myself, as you knew.
“And it’s him, though. Us. I mean, how would your family feel about that?
I don’t want to, like, claim him in some public way! How would Janite feel?”
“That’s not claiming him. It’s honoring him.
And he didn’t belong to anyone. He belonged to himself.
” Sandrine stuck her hand out toward me to shake.
To make a deal. “I’ll do one show.” She was so stubborn.
No wonder she was already successful. And she was going to be a great mentor to a lot of people one day, too.
“Fine, I’ll try to put it out there somehow,” I said, hedging my bets. Regret was pouring in. Fear was. Somehow could mean anything, right? I could maybe fulfill my end of the bargain without truly fulfilling my end of the bargain.
Sandrine’s hand was in mine. I squeezed that hand with its chipping green polish on her fingernails, the remaining bits of color from December.
We shook, made a pact. It was like jumping off a cliff, or stepping, together, out of the murky underworld.
But she had done it for me, I knew. And I had done it for her.
That night, after Thai food and Mario Kart, Sandrine walked outside with me as I headed to my car. We stood together under the moon, with the triangle of pizza grinning at us.
“The record you’re making…” she said. “It’s a love letter.”
My throat tightened with emotion. My eyes filled with tears. She was right, I understood.
She touched the tip of her Crocs to my Converse, toes to toes, same as you used to. “How’s he going to get it if you don’t send it?” she said.
That night, in bed, in my room, I reached for my phone. I scrolled through those photos. I listened to the rainstorm, and the thunder, the glug, and Frank the dog, barking.
Next I scrolled through Snapshot. Oh, jeez, no. Intimidation joined the roar of anxiety, and I closed it.
I couldn’t do that, but I could do this: With Carl Sagan looking on, I backspaced over Album. The cursor blinked, waiting for a new name.
My Voyager, I typed.