think, I don’t think until he says it.
But what was I thinking before? Was there only a blank space in my head until he opened his mouth and filled it? Who was I, what did I believe?
FEBRUARY 24 1987
Jake is working on a new painting. He’s feverish about it, so I’ve been doing Theo’s pickups and dropoffs while he fills the whole house with the crystal smell of turpentine and linseed. He gets upset when I try to see his work before it’s ready, but today when I came up into the studio, he looked happy, calm, so I peeked over his shoulder. Put my hand on his back.
At first I didn’t understand what the painting was. He’s been doing that, experimenting with shapes, lines, so that you could look at something you see every day and you could have a moment of not recognizing. It’s a photographic impulse, actually. The decontextualization. Though don’t tell Jake he’s photographic because he would make it a whole thing. All I saw, when I saw the canvas, was a series of white slabs, gray lines. A spill of shit-colored brown in the corner.
It’s different than your other stuff, I said. Rougher.
It has to be, doesn’t it, he said distantly. To convey the reality of the place.
What place?
Nangussett, he said.
I was confused. Then I looked back at the canvas, and it rearranged itself somehow, some planes slipping up and others slipping down, until I saw that it was a room, a white room, with a bed with a gray blanket. The brown was the color of shit because it was supposed to be shit.
You didn’t recognize it?
I couldn’t tell if he was pleased or displeased.
It doesn’t look anything like it, I said. I mean—that’s not what the rooms look like. You never saw the rooms.
Sure I did. Near the waiting room, there were some open.
Those are day rooms. They aren’t the same. I backed away. My head was spinning. Why are you painting Nangussett?
He swiveled around on his stool. What’s wrong?
I don’t … I don’t want to look at it.
So close your eyes. You’re the one who came over here.
People will see it.
I hope so.
But it’s not …
Not what?
It’s not your story.
Jake frowned.
It is my story, he said. You were in there for two months. I was alone with Theo the whole time. It was hard for me too.
(False. My mom was with them, too. But we’ve had that argument before. We’ve had most of our arguments before.)
Fine, make a painting about that, I said. Not this. This is fake. It’s not what it looks like. It’s a lie.
Like your photos aren’t lies? You make blood with food dye. You stage it all. Then you change everything again when you process it. You lecture college kids all day about how art is fiction!
I don’t lecture them anymore. You told me to stop.
He put his paintbrush down on the palette, then the palette down on the floor. He did it all so slowly I took a step backward. He only moves slow like that when he’s angry.
I knew it was bad for your career, he said. And I wanted to help you. Which is more than I can say for you. I’m finally making a painting that moves you, that produces emotion, and you can’t handle it. You don’t want me to be successful.
This isn’t about success, I said. Unless this is why you left me in there so long, why you let them shock me. So you could have something to paint.
He got up and walked toward me. I backed up and tripped against a frame. I heard a snap, and I knew the glass had broken under my heel, and maybe cut the photo beneath, too.
He reached out to grab my arm and I winced, but he didn’t squeeze as hard as I knew he could.
I let them shock you because I thought it might fix you, he said. But it turns out you’re still fucked up.
I am sitting in the bathtub as I write this. Not taking a bath, just sitting here, I like how cold the ceramic gets. We had sex just now. Afterward, Jake apologized for yelling. He said he’d divide the attic into two sections so I wouldn’t have to look at what he’s working on.
Then he got quiet. Waiting for something.
I’m sorry too, I said.
One of the bathroom lightbulbs overhead has burned out. The other one still works, which is how I saw the bruises on my arm.