was anointed, how could I get some of that holy oil, hm?
Then one of my professors sent me a link to a teaching job at St. Catherine’s, a small Catholic elementary school in the Bronx. I applied, and the rather terrifying nun, Sister Mary, seemed to like me. I was good with kids for the same reason I didn’t seem to burn for them—to me, they were entertaining little aliens. Wanting kids never felt as real to me as painting did. I knew what I wanted there. Kids? They were . . . nice. Fun. Kinda cute.
At any rate, I took the job. I had a solid education, appreciated health care and didn’t mind the tiny paycheck, since waitressing was pretty lucrative.
Carter, who taught third grade, took me under his wing, and suddenly, I had new friends, not in the art world. Normal people, many of whom had been at St. Cath’s for decades and had children older than I was. There was a handful of us in our twenties and thirties.
The job was nice. The art room was bright and cheery, and I got hugged a lot.
Noah was furious. If I could teach in the Bronx, why not Stoningham? He saw it as a betrayal, and we stopped speaking for a while. Fine. The way he seemed to be watching and waiting for me to give up made me want to kick him, anyway. Then he sent me a card with a bluebird on the front. Inside, he’d written, “I still love you.” Nothing else.
I made him a pastel, one of those easy skyscapes that virtually anyone could draw, and wrote on the back, “I still love you, too.”
So we weren’t quite apart, even if we weren’t together.
When we saw each other the next time I went to Stoningham, we were practically strangers.
“How’s teaching?” he asked as we sat in his mother’s kitchen.
“It’s really nice.” It was so strange to feel awkward around him, of all people on earth. We seemed to be having trouble making eye contact.
“Painting going okay?” he asked.
“Yep.” I didn’t tell him about the galleries and rejections and meh feedback, not wanting to give him ammo in his argument for me to come back home. “How’s carpentry going?”
“Good.”
“Great.”
We’d never been like this before. He drove me to New London to get the train, and when I got my ticket, he kissed me, hard and fierce and beautiful, and if we’d kissed like that when we first saw each other, maybe things would’ve been different.
I still waitressed downtown. I grew to hate Mala, who never even tried to be nice. I cleaned up after Sarah, who was a pig but pleasant. I painted and critiqued my own work and painted more, still not able to pinpoint what I was trying to accomplish with my work, other than make somebody see its value.
But something started to happen. Two years out of college, no longer shielded by my student status, I was becoming a New Yorker. I knew which subways to take, which street would be clogged with tourists, how to avoid the Yankees fans swarming to the stadium for a day game. I didn’t worry about what to wear and knew which boutiques were cool and cheap. I painted all summer, and my work was getting better. I even sold a few pieces at those studio open houses where you paid to play.
Then one of the moms at St. Catherine’s approached me. She was an interior decorator and wondered if I’d do pieces on commission to match the rooms she was doing. It was too hard, she said, to find art that matched exactly right. Maybe she could give me some paint colors and fabric swatches, and I could make something that would fit on the wall she had in mind?
I didn’t hesitate in saying yes. Why the hell not? Would Aneni? Never.
My first piece for Janice, the decorator mom, was a ten-by-five-foot painting for over a couch. “Here’s the couch fabric, and the throw pillows,” she said, handing me swatches of fabric. “Make it with some texture in it, swirly, you know? Like that one with the stars in it by the dude who cut off his ear? Super! Oh, and sign it. My client will love having an original piece.”
So I made it—an oil painting in sage, apricot and lavender with swirly brushstrokes (like Van Gogh, you betcha). Was it a complete sellout? Yes, it was. Did I earn five hundred bucks? Yes, I did.
Janice