Tara Ison - Rockaway

“David. Did my saying ‘vaginal walls of steel’ make you think of him?”

“I did vicariously enjoy those stories of yours.”

“That’s all over, sorry. We ended it when I left.”

“Well, maybe the timing was off.”

“Nah. It was just a fling.”

“So, the big question, now.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“You ready?”

“Go ahead.”

“Are you painting?”

“Yes, of course. I mean, I started a painting,” Sarah said. She glanced at the barely-begun canvas on her easel, at all the other canvases leaning against the walls of her room, still empty and inscrutable. “I started,” she repeated. She lifted her new Isabey brush, inspected to see if it was fully clean, fully dry. “But it’s just sitting there. It’s barely a start, really. Maybe it’s nothing.”

This is flat, Sarah , her professor used to say. Look at the flaw in your composition. The lack of perspective. You need to work on the illusion of depth!

“Well, you just turned your life completely upside down for this. That can be pretty paralyzing. And there’s a lot at stake. But look, you’ve started! That’s the hardest part. Diving in.”

“I know.” She set her brush down. “I have hope. I’m keeping the faith.”

“I can’t wait to see it. I’m so really really glad you’re doing this, finally.”

“Me, too.”

“It’s what you’re supposed to be doing.”

“Well, thanks.”

“It doesn’t have to be perfect, you know. You always do that to yourself.

“I know.”

“Just keep going.”

“I will. I am. Okay?” She hears the edge in her voice, adds a casual chuckle.

“I don’t mean to lecture you, I swear. I know I’ve got zero credibility. I haven’t written a poem in six years.”

“You’ve been busy. You’re busy doing the most important thing in the world.”

“Yeah, right.”

“And you do it so well,” Sarah said. “Really.” Because everything you do, she thought, you do so well. Everything Emily does is important. Is interesting. She published two books of poetry before she was twenty-eight, she won prizes, scholarships, grants, she traveled, she married a rich and handsome man who gave her those exquisite, obnoxious children with her perfect curls and his solemn, Dutch master face. She makes fennel soup and knows what to do with monkfish, knows how to make chunks of tofu taste like heavy cream. At Halloween she carves Picasso and Modigliani pumpkins. She has done so much, already, effortlessly and perfectly and ahead of schedule. Her life is in Golden Section proportion. Sarah could hear Elijah sucking, gulping, pictured him draped across Emily’s lap, and suddenly thought of that crazed guy taking a sledgehammer to the Pietà in Rome, the lunatic who’d gotten past Vatican security and smashed away at Mary’s serene marble head, at Jesus’s death-limp face.

“Rachel’s been painting a lot,” Emily was saying. “Of course, I think she’s a genius. Maybe she takes after you.”

“Ah. You mean she isn’t painting a lot.”

“Oh, Sarah. Maybe that’s really what you’re doing with that Marty guy.”

“What?”

“Not painting.”

“What if I just really don’t want to paint?”

“Come on.”

“Maybe that’s what this summer is really about. Maybe painting isn’t what I’m supposed to be doing. Maybe there’s some whole other thing I just haven’t figured out yet.” She sat on the edge of her bed, feeling a little breathless.

“Like what?”

“Oh, I don’t know. .” She flopped back on the bed, considered the ceiling. She reached, brushed away the annoying grains of sand tucked between her toes. “Never mind. I’m just cranky. I’m just tired. Hey, maybe I can hire a surrogate painter.”

“It’s just. .”

“What?”

“You always find something, you know? Some excuse.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, like grad school. Chicago.”

She sat up. “That wasn’t a choice, Em. My dad had to have the bypass. I had to go home.”

“Exactly. Go home. That’s what it sounded like then, when you told me. Not move home. Not stay home. Then he got through it just completely fine and next thing you’re telling me you got an apartment there, about the art store job, you’re all settled in. And I’m thinking, ‘Wait, what about Chicago?’”

“Because then my mom rear-ended that guy, and my dad still couldn’t drive for months afterward. They needed help.”

“They could have hired someone.”

“They couldn’t afford that. Not everybody can afford that, Em.” She hears her edge again, tries to soften her tone. “They aren’t hire-help people.”

“You could’ve gone the next year. You could have. The Institute was going to hold your scholarship.”

She climbed off the bed. She paced.

“Sarah?”

She approached her easel, studied her shell painting.

“They really wanted you,” Emily continued. “You chose not to go.”

A tiny sable hair was stuck in a stroke of black paint, like a wandering eyelash.

“I just worry about you. You’ve been doing this forever. Being so responsible for them. Trying to make up for Aaron. I get worried, I worry you’ve allowed them to—”

“You know, Emily,” and she was aware of the brusque tone again, the hard-hitting Em , but didn’t care, “I’ve been sort of busy, too, you know? I have a lot of stuff to deal with.”

“I know. I didn’t—”

“Maybe it’s not like having a bunch of kids and sheep running around and a big Martha Stewart estate to look after and which organic herbs to grow. But they’re my parents , you know? I’m their daughter. And you’re right, I’m all they have left. So, what do you want me to do, abandon them in some old age home? Warehouse them, so I can go play?”

“That’s not what I’m saying. I’m not talking about logistics.”

“This is real life stuff. Real life problems. It’s probably hard for you to understand, when you get total freedom to make all these great choices .”

There was silence, then a faint, milky baby gasp, then silence again.

“I’m sorry, Em. Really. That was obnoxious. That was my envious evil twin inner-demon talking.”

“It’s okay.”

“I get your point, really. They make me crazy. And I let them. I’m three thousand miles away, and I still totally buy into it.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“It’s like. .” She started pacing again. “It’s like, I called them the other day, and they really have been supportive, you know, they actually haven’t called even once I’ve been here, and so each day they don’t call I feel even more incredibly guilty. So I call to see how they are, and they ask how much work I’m getting done. Which sounds nice, but what they really mean is, I’m supposed to be getting all this interesting recent work done, because that’s why I’m here and not there, right? This big exhibit, this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. This very legitimate reason for abandoning them. And I don’t even answer, because then they’re telling me my dad can’t program the VCR or the sprinkler system and he can’t find his pills and where do I get those low-fat muffins he can eat, and my mom can’t drive at all after the last DUI, and the doctor’s threatening to take her off the transplant list if she doesn’t quit drinking, and then they bicker and my mom gets weepy and my dad gets pissed off and they say how much they miss me and love me, how proud they are, and how I am the most wonderful daughter in the world. And when am I coming home? And then we all hang up and I feel crazy. Just totally crazy.” She took a breath, forced another little chuckle.