If I Forget You(53)
Margot walks until her legs ache and then she returns home and paints. She paints with something approaching fury, her hand dancing over the canvas, the brushstrokes coming easily to her, as if it is not her hand and her mind guiding them, but something else. She doesn’t know if it is any good and she doesn’t care. She just loves the blank physicality of it, of taking the white space and filling it with color and shape and form until it is something that not even she understands.
She paints until she feels the siren song of the bottle of chilled white wine in the fridge, the glass or two in the late afternoon, which feels both like a complete indulgence and a necessity, for it is then that she finally begins to let go and makes her daily call to Henry, hoping that for once it will not go unanswered. Her calls are bordering on harassment now, since she has not talked to him since the drive home from Vermont. It has been two weeks.
Her heart sinks as once again it goes directly to voice mail.
The following morning, she wakes to driving rain, so instead of taking her walk, she finds herself in the small downtown and then in the independent bookstore on the main street. She has a vague idea of wanting something new to read, a rainy-day book to make her forget what she cannot stop thinking about, which is Henry, whom she is suddenly worried about—what if he stepped off a curb and got struck by a speeding taxi and is in a hospital or, worse, dead? Would anyone have any reason to reach out to tell her?
And while thinking this, Margot finds herself browsing the magazine rack and her eye is drawn to a copy of Art in New England.
Margot opens it and is leafing through when a full-page ad catches her eye. The image is of a woman painting in front of an easel, but the words say “The National Association of Schools of Art and Design is pleased to offer portfolio day, August 4, New York University, New York City. Meet with over thirty graduates of fine arts programs.”
That afternoon she returns home, and with a driving rain smashing against the windows, she lines up all the paintings she has done over the past two years against the white wall in her dining room.
Oh God, Margot thinks, looking them over, they all suck, don’t they? Then she remembers something Henry used to say about not self-editing and that the real courage lies in taking what you have created and spinning it out into the world, letting it speak for itself and knowing that no matter how good you think it is, some will hate it even if others love it. And that none of that matters, when you get right down to it, for you have to learn to separate yourself from the work, even if your soon-to-be ex-husband thinks you are painting vaginas, which you are certainly not.
Margot gets her camera. Methodically she takes photos of every one of her paintings. Later, after she receives the prints, she chooses twenty of them, the ones she admires the most, the paintings that she believes speak most to what she is trying to do, which even for her is hard to try to explain. It is almost as if the paintings represent particular emotions she felt at a specific time, and their abstractness contributes to this idea. Margot goes with her gut and then mounts them carefully on black-matted paper, loving this part of it, the labor of the installation.
On a sunny and mild August morning, Margot takes the train into the city. As the train rocks back and forth on the tracks, she sits looking placidly out the window, clutching her carefully crafted portfolio tightly in her hands, as if someone might try to steal it from her. It is late morning and the train is half empty, most of the commuters having already arrived at Grand Central hours before. Nevertheless, there is a mix of men in suits going into work late and women ten years younger than she with bored children. Across from her is an old woman with a run in her stockings, gripping the metal pole in front of her with her small hands. Margot moves her eyes from the woman’s legs up to her face and is startled to see the woman staring back at her, grimacing, as if she is in pain. Margot quickly looks away and wonders if she wears a similar look.
Is she a fool? Oh, maybe she should just get off at Harrison, the next stop, and turn around and go home. But then Margot steels herself. No, she must do this.
Soon she is out in the city and walking with the portfolio under her arm, and it feels good to walk, the sense of purpose. She stops once to check her phone to make sure she has the address right. The event is at NYU, some art auditorium, and it is not lost on her that the university is where Henry works, though she also knows it is a huge place.
As she enters the auditorium, the sea of people threatens to overwhelm her and she suddenly feels dizzy, and it takes all of her focus to move over to the registration table on her left and stand in line. Looking around at the other artists also holding similar portfolios, Margot thinks she has made a huge mistake. They are all half her age at least, and she looks like someone’s mother. A boy in front of her with giant tribal hoops exploding through his earlobes turns around to look at her, and on his shoulder is a rat. At first she thinks it must be fake, but then it turns its narrow face toward Margot and she takes a quick step backward, causing people behind her to laugh.
Margot takes a deep breath, and in a moment the line deposits her at the registration table.
“Margot Baldwin,” she says, and then corrects herself, remembering that now she is using her maiden name. “Fuller. Margot Fuller.”
Soon she is drifting through the crowd to the tables with the big numbers above them, young people all around her moving like sheep through the large, well-lit room. Minutes later, she is sitting across from two men, one bald, with a huge gray beard, and the other slender and clean-shaven, with blocky black glasses.