Stone Lions, Grey Water

I’m dragging Erik to the Art Institute because it’s free on Tuesdays and I don’t want to go to Religions of the World. The course is taught by this woman who wears dirndl skirts and pulls her dark hair tight into a bun, stretching the skin near her eyes tight. Below her nose, her face is large and fleshy and I’m sure that someday it will droop. I hate her potential for ugliness. Today,  I want to see that famous painting by Caillebotte; the couple walking under the umbrella in the rain. I want to go into the blue and gray of that canvas and not come out. I want to stop feeling on edge. I want to see something carved by Rodin, something hard made soft by curves.

Erik has a car. We’ve been hanging out together for about two weeks or so and I think he wants to be my boyfriend. I can’t decide if I like him like that or not. He’s nice enough; it’s not that. I’m just not sure if there’s that spark. So, I’m trying to convince myself I can be a mercenary, a trip to Chicago, and then…and then I’ll end it. After the Rodin, I’ll explain that I just want to be friends. I’m not ready for anything more.

We’ve been hanging out together for about two weeks or so and I think he wants to be my boyfriend. I can’t decide if I like him like that or not. He’s nice enough; it’s not that. I’m just not sure if there’s that spark. So, I’m trying to convince myself I can be a mercenary, a trip to Chicago, and then…and then I’ll end it. After the Rodin, I’ll explain that I just want to be friends. I’m not ready for anything more.

We get into the city and eat at a trendy restaurant across the street. We can see the marble lions resting on their pedestals through the window by our table. Erik tells me how, when he was little, he thought the lions woke at night and, while everyone slept, roamed the city. At dawn, they got back on their pedestals and were as still as stone. “Sometimes, even now,” he says, “I think they move—just a hair.”

I like the story and the boy he was. I’m suddenly glad he’s a baseball player, and not into books, and that he listens to rap music way too loud and that he’s too nice. That his eyes are a really beautiful blue. That he’s not like most boys I know.

I’ve got to get a hold of myself. I’m not interested in dating. I am not going to date for a long, long time. Not for years and years. I shake my head at my soup in protest.

“Is there something wrong with it?” he asks. “We could send it back.”

“No, it’s fine. I was just thinking…I haven’t been here in a long time. Almost two years.” I look at the building across the street.

Back then, I was in love. Tony and I wandered from painting to painting together, his hand warm in mine. When he leaned in to tell me about a Titian, his hair smelled like almonds. I cut a carrot in two with my spoon. I want to crush those old memories into dust.

“You know, Kara,” Erik says from somewhere very far away. “I gotta admit I don’t get the art thing. I mean I know it’s important, but I don’t see it.”

I nod, but am well ahead, walking up the museum’s marble stairs, anticipating the Rodin at the top and the Caillebotte just beyond in the next room.

“It’s okay,” I say, folding my napkin smaller and smaller until it is a perfect square. Then, I look up at Erik. “Ready?”

* * *

We stand in front of Rodin’s life-size monk and Erik reaches for my hand. I feel his warm fingertips brush my skin, but I slip my hand into my pocket. I don’t want him to touch me. He hasn’t asked to kiss me yet, which makes me glad, although I’m not sure why because he is really attractive and sweet. That sweetness scares the hell out of me, although I know that shouldn’t be the case.

I will tell him as soon as we get back to campus. Just friends. That’s it. That’s all I can do.  I don’t want more.

Looking up at the monk’s face, he says, “He’s got no eyes. That’s creepy.”

“It’s because of the shadow. It makes him haunted.” He looks at me, one eyebrow raised. I giggle. “Okay, it is creepy,” I admit.

He smiles and I smile more and then, we’re standing there stupidly smiling at each other wider and wider. And I’m having second thoughts.

Then—over Erik’s shoulder, I see Tony, coming towards us like a ghost. It can’t be, it just can’t be. A part of me hopes I’m hallucinating, but I know I’m not. Too unbelievable. Of all the places to go in Chicago, how could he come here today? My knees start knocking and I try to regulate my breath because, damn it, I might hyperventilate. I grab Erik’s arm.

“Pretend you like me,” I plead like an idiot.

“What?”

“Pretend you like like me,” my voice is barely a whisper and Erik is looking at me like I’m nuts. “Please.”

I’m still hoping Tony hasn’t seen me, but of course, no such luck. A moment later his voice rises into a question, “Kara?”

I turn and face not only Tony, but his girlfriend Meryl Benson. Most definitely not the person I want to see. Once, Meryl and I had been friends, but that was a long time ago. Now, Meryl squints her eyes and glares at me. She is dressed to the hilt and carries a fine leather bag.  Her hands are like a vise around the handle.

“How are you?” Tony says in his soft familiar voice, nodding at me. He reaches out for me, but I withdraw. No way is he going to touch me. I watch Meryl’s knuckles whiten.

“I’m fine,” I whisper.

“How are things going? I heard you transferred schools? Northern Illinois?” Tony probably isn’t trying to be condescending. He’s always had weird vocal inflections. I should give him the benefit of the doubt.

I feel tremendously unsteady all at once like I might run or cry or faint. Erik puts his arm around me and its weight feels good against my back.

The tension must be obvious. When we leave, I’m going to have to explain everything to Erik—how I had an affair with Tony, my friend Meryl’s boyfriend, how Meryl found me at his place. I’ll have to tell him about how I was mugged that same night walking home in the dark, and how I tried to kill myself because of everything. I’ll have to tell him how I was in a psych ward for awhile. After that, I probably won’t have to make that “just friends” speech.

“Yes, Northern,” I say. There is dead silence. I have to think of something. “Erik Kerrman, this is an old friend of mine, Tony Valente. And this is Meryl Benson.”

“Hi.” Meryl turns to Erik and shakes his hand. “I’m Tony’s fiancée.” She looks at me to make sure the news registers.

“You’re getting married. That’s wonderful.”  There’s an awful surging of bitter saliva at the back of my throat. Tony’s looking at his shoes.

“In June. You’ll be getting something in the mail.” Meryl’s eyes squint again to a glare, her pupils hard and shiny and piercing.

I think of the night I came out of Tony’s shower and there was Meryl waiting for me in the bathroom, calling me all sorts of names I probably deserved. Then, she hit me over and over again with a sharp, spiky brush. The doctor on the ward, Dr. Graham, said I wasn’t to blame, but I’m not sure I’m convinced of that. There is a tiny moon-shaped scar over my left eye from the brush which I hide under my hair.

“I don’t know if we’ll be back by then,” Erik says and I look at him in amazement. He turns to me, then continues, “In June, won’t we still be in London?”

What a brilliant save! I nearly hug him. “Yes, I think so. We’ll have to check the dates.  Study abroad program,” I gleefully lie to Tony and Meryl.

Erik takes my hand and squeezes hard. Meryl looks at our entwined hands and then reaches for Tony’s own.

“Well, we have to get going. We have a reservation at Ellie’s for lunch,” Meryl tells us. Tony looks at me, opens his mouth as if he wants to say something, but he shuts it again.

“Oh, are you sure you want to eat there?” Erik asks Meryl. “It’s really over-rated.”

“No, we’re fine,” Meryl sniffs. “Goodbye.”

Suddenly, Tony gives me a quick hug. I wasn’t expecting it and for some reason I flash back to the other man, the faceless man they never caught, on top of me, hitting my already bruised face, telling me to shut up, to keep quiet and no one would get hurt. I push Tony away from me and don’t care if I’ve bruised his feelings.

“Goodbye, Tony,” I mutter, turning too quickly toward the Caillebotte.

Miniature lines of brown paint make up the man’s mustache. I concentrate on the black netting on the woman’s hat. I stand still and strong and straight, not looking behind me. My breathing is all off-kilter so I try this trick of Dr. Graham’s. I think of a safe, comfortable place. I concentrate on the rain in the picture and imagine I’m submerged in a downpour, suspended in water and soft color. Everything is fine. I close my eyes. Breathe in. Breathe out. There is no bathroom and there is no hairbrush. There are no shadows hiding strange men. There are no pills in my throat. It’s over. All over. I’m safe.

Erik comes up next to me—I can smell his cologne—and puts his hand flat on my back, softly, so as not to startle me. His hand is warm; I can feel it through my jacket. If I open my eyes, I might cry.

“What was that all about?” he asks. I shake my head. I can’t talk about this. Not yet, not now, not here.

“Can we go look at the Monets, please?” I choke out in a whisper.

“Sure. Anything,” he says and follows me down the hall.

There are several small uniformed children in the room. A tour day. The kids look up at the guide—their faces all bright and eager—as she tells them about the painting. The guide’s hands are moving out and in and around the painting, explaining how Monet was starting to lose his eyesight even as he painted it. The guide has a large hook nose, deep-set eyes, and eyebrows that run together. But she is smiling and laughing with the kids, her hands are moving, and she is full of life, and knowledge, and love of her subject. Her less than perfect face against the backdrop of yellow, blue, and green paint makes me think back to Religions of the World. I realize I haven’t been fair: the woman with the dirndl skirt has this much enthusiasm, she moves her hands in the same way. It was me who wasn’t listening.

* * *

Two years ago—that day his hair smelled like almonds—we stood here with the Impressionists and I knew he’d been lying to me.

Tony never intended to leave Meryl, certainly not for me. I was a pal, a sex partner; but not his soulmate. The objects of real adoration lined the walls of the room. I remember looking at all those images painted in love—dancers, children, women in hats, flowers, fields, and oceans—and I knew, even as Tony analyzed each brush stroke, as he critiqued each composition, that his feelings for me weren’t even close to the passion of any of them. I might as well have been a Mondrian—all blocks and lines.

Tony might have used the word “love” that day, but I knew that he had no idea what it meant.

That doesn’t mean I hesitated to go home with him. That night, I denied all that stuff I realized here in this room. But things have a way of sinking in. I woke up crying, later, from some unremembered nightmare, and he did no more than turn over in a restless sleep. I should have seen the truth; I should have spared myself the confrontation with Meryl just a few days later. I should have been smart enough to save myself. God knows, I’d been warned.

“Too good-looking,” my father said. He hated Tony the instant they met. “Too full of himself. A punk. A parody of Marlon Brando.”

I’d never seen a Brando film, but after my father’s comment, I watched A Streetcar Named Desire four times. Marlon Brando was twenty-one when he starred on Broadway as Stanley. Tony Valente was the same age but hid his rage under smiles and polo shirts. He was my safe version of the angry young man. I thought I could play the 1950’s heroine and everything would be black and white. At the end, the lights would come up, and everyone would laugh and walk away.

I’d never seen a Brando film, but after my father’s comment, I watched A Streetcar Named Desire four times. Marlon Brando was twenty-one when he starred on Broadway as Stanley. Tony Valente was the same age but hid his rage under smiles and polo shirts. He was my safe version of the angry young man. I thought I could play the 1950’s heroine and everything would be black and white. At the end, the lights would come up, and everyone would laugh and walk away.

But, of course, that’s not what happened. Before today, my last image of Tony involved him crumpled at the kitchen table, weeping, saying, “I’m sorry, Meryl,” between his sobs.

I remember leaving, backing out of the apartment, closing the door behind me. Wondering where certain things had disappeared to—the long phone conversations about art and poetry and music, the kisses in his bedroom—as I passed framed pictures of him and Meryl at the Sorority Dance. I was going, going, gone into nothingness with every step I took away from Tony’s door. Then the guy was there, his arms around me, throwing me to the ground. Tearing off my jewelry, my bag, punching my face, kicking me in the side. I lay there after, on the cold hard cement, and wondered why I wasn’t dead. I lay there for at least a half an hour, until an officer came to help me. Kneeling over me, his lips formed the sentence, “Everything will be okay.” I stared into the red-blue flash of his car’s lights, telling him my name and where to reach my father. I might have been crying.

After the mugging, Tony refused to see me and Meryl called me a “bitch who got what she deserved.” For months, every time I closed my eyes, I saw Tony, then the mugger, then Tony. Finally, I took all the sleeping pills my father had in the medicine cabinet.

When he found me, groggy and sick, he took my shoulders in his hands and shook me. “Don’t you do this to me, baby. Not over him, not over that punk.”  I wasn’t sure if he was talking about Tony or the mugger but it didn’t matter because he held me close to him and for the first time since everything had happened, I felt safe.

When I told Dr. Graham, he said this meant I would heal. He said I would learn from my father and the officer, who was kind enough to call and check up on me, and from future boyfriends, that not all men were like shadows or Stanley Kowalski.  But I still had a hard time imagining that.

* * *

“Monet was sixty-six when he painted this,” the guide says, smiling. The colors of Water Lilies swim before my eyes, the blues and greens flecked with yellow and pink. Monet saw all that beauty, he kept all that beauty alive, even as it was growing dark around him. I am amazed.

“It doesn’t look much like water,” Erik says, standing next to me.

“It doesn’t look like water?” I repeat and turn back to the Monet again. Can’t he see it’s all about impression? It’s all about perspective? The water moves green and blue before it settles into its precise series of brushstrokes. How can he not see? It’s so obvious.

“You’re wrong,” I snap before I think. I am so disappointed. I want so much more—for Erik to be thrilled by the painting, to analyze its worth, to make points about color and light. I want him to…do what Tony used to do.

I look at Erik, who has pushed his hands into his pockets. He taps his foot and flips back his hair. He looks at me, then at Monet, then down at the floor. I have hurt him for no good reason. I feel horrible.

“That was rotten,” I say and put my hand on his arm. “I’m really sorry.”

“It’s okay. You’ve had a really bad day,” he says quietly as if he understands. “Besides,” he adds, “like I said, I really don’t get the art thing.”

He smiles tentatively at me and I realize that he is probably one of the nicest, most honest people I have ever met. He did admit art baffled him. I try to remember where that was.  Oh, at the restaurant, when I wasn’t listening. I remember his offer to send back the soup and I smile.

I look at him again and he looks different than anyone I have ever known. His eyes are clear, and his lips are chapped, and he isn’t pretending to be anything he isn’t. Looking at Erik makes me want to get away from the square rooms of the museum, away from the still statues and beautiful but frozen moments. Perhaps for the first time in my life.

“Hey,” I say. “Do you want to walk around the lake?”

* * *

We browse the gift shop, where Erik buys a book for his mom, then walk out through the revolving doors, leaving Monet and Tony Valente behind. The April air is cold off the lake, but the wind feels good and blows the hair away from my face.

“Now, that’s water,” Erik says, pointing at the lake as we walk down the avenue. “It’s incredible, isn’t it?”

Lake Michigan looks dark and cold, flat and gray, with no spots of yellow, or pink, or turquoise. I can’t see what he’s talking about. Out there, it’s just a big expanse of dull water.

We walk down the shoreline, silently. For some reason, I can’t think of a topic to start a conversation. Erik stops abruptly and I nearly run into him. I look down at the ground.

“Hey, have you ever been sailing?”

“What’d you trip over?” I ask at the same time, searching the sand. Then I wonder if he means sailing on the lake, out there.

He doesn’t answer. I look up and he is staring carefully into my eyes. “That Tony guy really hurt you, didn’t he?”

I nod because it’s easier than trying to explain. Tears blur my vision as the gulls over the lake seem to call my name, “Kara! Kara!”

“Want to talk about it?” he asks, but I shake my head. How could I possibly even try?  What I really want to do is turn and run into that awful water, dissolve into it, disappear. This is all too hard. I stare at the lake and bite my lip; I am determined not to waste tears on Tony Valente ever again.

There is a rustling of paper. From his jacket, Erik has pulled out a small, flat bag from the gift shop. He thrusts it at me.

“Here,” he says, “I got you something.”

Two postcards are inside: one of the Caillebotte, one of Water Lilies.  I look at him; his eyes are wide and anxious—-do I like them? I can’t believe he cares enough to want me to.

“They seemed to mean a lot to you—those two,” he says. “I thought you should have copies. I know they’re not the real thing.”

Erik’s face comes into focus: his eyes, his slightly crooked nose, his too prominent chin. I think how wonderful he was with Meryl and Tony, the soft weight of his hand on my shoulder, his open laugh. What is the real thing? Everything real is distant—Tony, that night in October, Meryl’s sneer, the way my knees knocked together as I hid behind the Rodin, asking Erik to like me. Those are real events that in the long run don’t mean anything. I look again at the postcards in my hand.

“They’re real enough,” I say. “Thank you.”

I reach out and take his hand. I like the way his fingers wrap around my palm. We turn back to the lake, the wind, the gray sky. Sailing out there might be nice.

I imagine that on that day the sun will be shining. Its light will make the water glitter and the movement from the boat will cause the water to rush around its sides. The little ripples of the waves will look exactly like small strokes of blue-gray paint. Except I’ll be watching closely, and this time, they’ll move.