Don Lee - The Collective

Barboza filed a counter-complaint against Jessica, Chapter 272, Section 29, for public dissemination of obscene and pornographic materials, which was punishable by a maximum of five years or a fine of $10,000. Both the malicious destruction and obscenity complaints would be heard in ten days by the clerk magistrate of the Third District Court of Middlesex County, who would determine if criminal charges should go forward against either party.

“This is scandalous,” Barboza told the Globe . “I can’t believe she and her misfit cronies want to waste taxpayer money on this. But if they want a fight, I’ll give them one.”

This time, in addition to newspaper reporters, local TV crews showed up at the house, and Margolies and Joshua were all too happy to grant interviews.

“Freedom is about tolerating what you might despise,” Margolies said. “If you can’t do that, you’re un-American.”

“It’s clear with the councilman’s recent remarks,” Joshua said, “that he’s a bigot. We’re demanding his resignation. We will not condone this kind of racist conduct. Asian Americans will not be anyone’s patsies.”

Some City Council members began to backpedal from their initial decision not to cancel the show. “It’s possible that the exhibit constitutes a form of artistic recklessness,” the vice mayor said. One of the Arts Council members alleged that she did not know the exhibit would contain sexually explicit material when they had approved the project — a barefaced lie, since Jessica’s application had described exactly what she planned to do, her only alteration using casts of real genitalia instead of sex toys.

With increased ardor, the story was rehashed on talk radio stations, and the head columnist for the Boston Herald , Joe Quinney, addressed the subject with particular zeal. “Over in the People’s Republic of Cambridge,” he wrote, “where the diversity-university PC police run amok and City Hall is banned from displaying Christmas trees, it’s apparently permissible to display your private parts in public, as long as you call it ‘art.’ ” (“P-p-please. Is it possible to alliterate any more than that?” Joshua said.) “This is yet another example of the sordidness polluting our society, where this cheap, imitation Mapplethorpe with penis envy is being allowed to parade her perversions in a public place.” (“Yes, it’s possible!” Joshua cackled.)

Paviromo, in one of his rare visits to the Palaver office, asked me, very amused, “What in the world is going on in that house of yours? I didn’t think you had it in you, my boy.”

There followed, as Margolies predicted, protests and rallies. Demonstrators gathered in front of the City Hall Annex with signs that read THE FIRST AMENDMENT DOES NOT PROTECT FILTH, STOP PORNOGRAPHY NOW, GOD HATES SINNERS.

Anonymous hate mail was sent to the house, and anonymous hate phone messages were left on the machine: “You gooks are pervs” and “Fucking chink whore, go back to China.”

We unlisted the number and stopped answering the telephone. “Still think this was such a great idea?” I said to Joshua.

“Give me the damn code so I can erase this shit.”

“No. We might need the tape later for evidence.”

The story was picked up by the wires, the AP writing “City Councilor Charged in Stolen Porn Case,” and presumably the article was reprinted in the Saratogian , the local paper in Saratoga Springs, for one evening I came home to find that Jessica’s father had called the house. They had had no communication in seven years, although, surreptitiously, her mother and younger sisters had been in occasional touch with Jessica.

Her father had left a two-sentence message on the answering machine. “You shame me,” he said. “You are not my daughter.”

I knocked on her door. “Jessica?” She was lying on her bed in the dark, turned toward the wall.

“You heard it,” she said.

“I heard it,” I said, squatting down on the futon.

She sat up and leaned her back against the wall to face me. “I should have listened to you,” she said. “I never thought it’d get so crazy.”

I don’t think any of us really had. At Mac, with Kathryn Newey, everything had gone so peaceably, so easily for us, we had been lulled into believing that we would be sheltered from true adversity. “It’ll die down soon,” I said. “It can’t get any worse, right?”

In the last two days, she had been told by Martinique College of Art that her contract as a teacher would not be renewed, and she had been fired from Gaston & Snow.

“I’m finished as an artist,” Jessica said.

“You’d be surprised how quickly people forget things. In a year, maybe even less, I bet no one will remember any of this.”

“I went to Mount Auburn Hospital this morning,” she told me.

“You did?” Reflexively I thought about Mirielle, wondered if she was still a medical secretary there, if she had heard from any MFA programs, if she was still seeing the temp. “Was it another panic attack?” I asked.

Jessica picked up her wrist braces. “My hands have been killing me. I couldn’t stand it anymore, so last week I went in to find out about the surgery, and they did a bunch of tests. I got the results today. After all these years, now they tell me I might not have carpal tunnel at all. They think I might have rheumatoid arthritis.”

I didn’t know anything about the condition. “Is it treatable?”

“It’s chronic and progressive.” She flexed her hand, opening and closing her fingers, the tattoo of the green peacock quill on her forearm pulsing. “They don’t know, it might be a different kind of arthritis altogether. I’m supposed to see a rheumatologist next month. But I went over to Longwood”—where she proofread part-time for the New England Journal of Medicine —“and did some research. It all fits, all the symptoms. My bones could start fusing. My fingers could twist up and become permanently deformed. It might get so I can’t grip a paintbrush or craft knife anymore.”

The image of Jessica crippled, no longer being able to do what she loved most, was heartbreaking. “Try not to dwell on it right now,” I said. “Wait till you hear from the rheumatologist.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jessica said. “I don’t think I was ever cracked up to be an artist in the first place.”

“How can you say that?”

“The mannequins,” she said, “they were just a device. The Globe critic saw right through me. You did, too. All the stuff with the 3AC, everything we’ve been spouting off about since Mac, they’ve been a crutch. It’s been a way of adding agency to my work when there hasn’t been any. I’m just a technician with nothing to say, really. Maybe I should have just gone to med school.”

“You couldn’t be more wrong, Jessica.”

“Am I? What’s it mean, then? What’s the point? Why can’t I do something of substance, like you said, something real, something from here”—she jabbed her fist against her gut—“and not from here?”—she knocked her fist against the side of her head. “From here ”—she hit her stomach again, harder—“not from here ”—she punched her head. “From here— ”

I grabbed her wrists. “Stop it, Jessica.”

She was crying now. “All the hoopla, even before it all turned to shit, I ask myself, Did I really want this? Any of it? Because the truth is, if I could take it all back, I would.”