How to Be Brave(44)

I skim his bio. Lee Mullican was a bit of a hippie. At one point, he said that he sought “the opening of a new world, opening the mind into a kind of cosmic thought,” and then it continued into her most favorite line: “ideas that went beyond what one saw, beyond form.” My mom underlined this two times and gave it a big heart. I believed her when she said that she had never done any hard drugs, but I really can’t believe she never, at the very least, smoked up. I mean, she was an art major. I guess I’ll never know. I page through the book. I’m amazed to see so much of his hand in my mom’s hand. He loved pattern and repetition and color, and so did she. Because of him, she used a printer’s ink knife when painting so that the color popped up out of the canvas, the rhythmic lines created a three-dimensional effect. Mom did this with her women’s bodies that now line the walls of our hallway. She liked to make them blur and zigzag. Her women were tribal. They danced.

Except for that last letter to me, she never wrote down anything personal, but she loved to write in all of her books—underlines, stars, reminders to herself in quick scribbles. This one is filled with her notes. I run my finger across her handwriting. Mine is exactly like hers. It’s like I could have written them.

I wish I could talk to her about why she loved this guy so much. I like his work fine, but she loved it. Was somewhat consumed by it. She had other painters she loved, too—the big names of the post-impressionist and modernist periods, as well as lesser-known surrealists such as Yves Tanguy and Man Ray, but she felt a kinship with this man in particular. She said once, “It’s as though he’s painting my soul.” I was too young to ask why. And now it’s too late.

Instead, this is what I have:

She has highlighted: “As you are working through this process of painting, the painting’s there … but you’ve gone through this metaphysical process … more than anything. And it’s a meditative act … the canvas is there before me. And it’s this attitude that makes the painting appear … and you’re not quite sure how it got there.” And beside it, she wrote: “YES. Extension of self/yet not self.”

And this: “I pulled the essence of nature down over my head.” Next to it, her handwriting reads: “Submersion/retreat. How to live fully engaged and still maintain separateness from suffering, from failure?”

She has underlined and starred: “The freedom of abstraction appealed to Mullican, the fact that an abstract painting could ‘be upside down, it can be any way, and it’s still okay.’” And next to it, she’s written, “Like life.”

She wanted more for me even though she couldn’t do more for herself. Even though she felt like she was submersed in her own failures. She wanted me to be the brave one. She wanted me to do everything.

But being brave isn’t about living every minute exhilarated. It’s about waking up and knowing that despite the worry and the sadness and the deep, dark fear, you’re going to go forth anyway. That you’re going to try anyway. That you have a choice, and you’re going to choose to live, today, bravely.

Maybe that’s all any of us can do. Maybe that’s all I can do.

My mom did that, for a long time. She lived bravely through the hospitals and the procedures and the constant fear of death. The reality of the inevitable.

Maybe she didn’t realize it, but I know she tried. I know she moved through each day with the suffering and the fear, as well as the desire for a fully engaged life, as best as she could. She was the one who kept us going.

And she’s gone now.

But it’s okay.

It’s still okay.

Life will turn us upside down, and it will still be okay.

My mom thought so. Lee Mullican thought so. Sitting here on my bedroom floor, surrounded by nothing else but the ghost of my mom’s infatuation with another ghost, I don’t have much choice but to think so, too.

I’m trying, Mom. I’m really, really trying.

*

Dad bought me some cold press illustration boards and a new set of gouache paints, which was what I had asked for. Considering I missed a good fifteen hours of Marquez’s class this semester, I have a lot of catching up to do. Five paintings and a seven-page reflection paper. And now I have to finish it all in a week.

It moves slowly, this act of creation. I try to make it meditative, like Lee Mullican described. I try to just make the canvas appear, but I’m rusty. I put oil on the canvas, but there’s nothing there. I have nothing to say. I don’t know how to make the metaphysical real.

Maybe I should call up Evelyn and enjoy one more round with the brownies. That would get the juices flowing. That would get this project done.

Ugh. I know that’s a very bad idea, for multiple reasons.

Reason #1: Ever since the party, I’ve been blowing Evelyn off. She’s texted at least six times that she wants to get together, but I’ve been lying and telling her I’m sick. Which is kind of true. Technically speaking, I’m afflicted with something bad, like a severely allergic reaction to drugs and other human beings.

Reason #2: Evelyn’s sweet and all, but I can only take so much of her. She’s so far on the edge of not caring about anything—school, college, family, state and federal laws—that she wears me out. Without Liss around to balance her out, I don’t know how much of her I can take.

And then there’s Reason #3: I made a promise to myself not to get high anymore.