How to Be Brave(43)

“You can do that, yes? Then you will not get in trouble, he says.”

“Yes, Dad. I can do that.” I say this, but it’s the last thing I want. To spend my lame vacation obsessing over a dead artist who my dead mother obsessed about.

“Good, then.” He nods to himself and then looks at the bags of food. “Let’s eat now.” He stands up, unloads the Styrofoam containers onto the table, and then shuts off the lights.

The Christmas lights twinkle again, but it just doesn’t look the same.

My dad leans over and kisses me on the forehead. We eat in silence with the TV on while the candles burn down to nothing.

*

When I was fifteen, I chipped my front tooth while eating an apple. The dentist, Dr. Crespo, said that I was most likely grinding my teeth at night, and he prescribed a $350 night guard that was supposed to relax my muscles and clear up the terrible headaches I’d been having for over a year. His assistant put some plastic goop in my mouth, had me bite down, and created a mold that was used to shape the night guard, which I was supposed to wear every night. When I went in a week later to try it on, Dr. Crespo had me put the guard inside my mouth and sit for a few minutes. Drool poured out the corners of my mouth. “Your brain thinks that there’s food there, right?” he said. It felt more like someone’s knuckles were digging into my jawbone. “But after a little while, a few minutes, even, that sensation will fade away. Your brain will stop registering the awkwardness and your body will ease into the discomfort.” I drooled for another couple of minutes and then it stopped. He was right. I hardly even felt it in my mouth.

I spent two months trying to wear the damn thing. Every night, like clockwork, I put the plasticized sentinel into my mouth and fell asleep. And every morning, like clockwork, I woke up to find the damn thing on my pillow or lost in the covers or sometimes even on the other side of the room—on the floor by the door or somewhere on my desk. I’d chucked it in the middle of the night. Even while unconscious, my body didn’t want to experience the sensation of someone digging a fist into my face.

Go figure.

Life without Mom is a little like that. At first, it was all pain and tears. Every day was hard. I’d wake up, and the sun was there, still shining in the sky, but the world didn’t make sense anymore. Then, little by little, especially with the list, that pain faded even more. I cried only once a week instead of every day. And then I even stopped crying. I moved forward.

Christmas feels like someone stuffed that night guard back into my mouth and stitched my lips closed. On the outside, I’m keeping it together for my dad, but inside—inside—there are no words to describe how deep the hole goes.

We do it, though—Dad feigns surprise with his undershirts and socks, and I actually am happy to receive the art supplies, though now they’re a bit tainted with the errors of my ways.

At the end of the day, after the presents and the leftover chicken and eight hours of Christmas reruns on TBS, I pack up the garlands and lights and candles, and Dad puts the box by the door so I can bring it back downstairs tomorrow. We survived. Another holiday without Mom.

*

I take the box down to the basement and dig out a few of Mom’s boxes to carry back upstairs. It takes a few trips, and I’m out of breath after the first actual exertion of energy that I’ve had since the tribal dance class. I throw the boxes on the floor of my room and collapse beside them. I went online and found plenty of basic info on Lee Mullican, but I have this feeling that I need to find something else. I don’t care what Marquez said. This isn’t about losing myself. It’s about finding her. It’s about understanding her. There are just so many questions I didn’t get to ask: Why didn’t you follow your own advice? Why didn’t you do everything? Why weren’t you the one who lived a life without fear?

I feel like her obsession with this Mullican guy might give me some answers. And if I’m going to paint something meaningful, I have to understand why this guy mattered so much to my mom. This is as much about me—and my unanswered questions—as it is about her.

First I read her thesis. It’s seventy-three pages and titled “Unifying Forms: Male and Female Energy Bodies in Lee Mullican’s Work.” It’s long, well written, and overly academic. I learn about Eastern meditation practices (which my mom never did), receive more verification that she adored his work to no end, and am ultimately convinced by my mom that despite the fact that he was a male artist working in a male world, Lee Mullican was a feminist at his core.

But it’s not what I want to find. I dig through the boxes. They’re filled with photocopied papers from the LACMA and Smithsonian libraries, copies of other people’s essays, and old photos and Lee Mullican’s sketches. I was too young to understand what she was doing, but I remember these same papers piled on the dining room table. We ate in the living room for a few years until she completed her final thesis and show, and then, except for the paintings, she finally moved everything downstairs.

I keep digging until I find my mom’s copy of An Abundant Harvest of Sun, the book that accompanied the LACMA exhibit. I remember when she bought it. I remember when it was brand-new. Now it’s worn and tattered and musty from being in the basement for so long.

I also remember her obsessively poring over this book. This was before you could find a lot of stuff on the Internet about him, and she liked it because it had good reproductions of his most famous paintings. I flip through the pages, through the accompanying pictures of his paintings and sculptures. Mullican loved the abstract just as much as my mom, but his paintings were more ethereal than hers. They look like cave paintings or crop circles or postmodern stained glass for a church where the attendants are all stoned.