The Animators(13)

I can feel myself circling some untouchable, hidden part of myself in this; the danger is part of the allure. God knows what’s hidden in there, what I might find if I dig hard enough.

For a while, I told myself that the List was a maybe-sort-of project instead of a compulsion. Something Mel and I might turn into a cartoon, if I ever got the guts to show it to her. But I knew what the List was; or, at least, how it felt. In a word: predatory. Upending these men, placing them into a story that was not theirs but mine, and a murky, troubling story at that. It has never been seen by anyone else; it is not meant to be seen.

In her weird, exhibitionist’s way, Mel likes the intimacy of what we do, of placing herself at the center of what we make. I love the work for the opposite reason: for the ability it gives me to abandon myself, to escape the husk of my body and fly off into the ether. I know a day of work has been really good when I have to look up from the board and recall who I am and what I’m doing.

That very few of these guys actually made it into my life beyond the pages of this book constitutes a failure, something I wasn’t able to do like normal people. If hope is desire with expectation, then the List is a hopeless thing. I desire blindly, with wild, flinging abandon, but no aims, no goals.

It has—at least—a form.

I sketch Beardsley quick, as I saw him tonight in the streetlights. I have plans for him. Rising up from the center of a lake, in robes, humped fish surrounding him like coyotes. There, I think. Now you really are mine, Beardsley. You stupid shit.

There’s a thin, clear light coming through the room’s dirty window. It’s dawn. I’m still looking at the sketch when my phone rings. I pick it up without looking. “Yeah.”

“Is this Sharon?”

“Yes.”

“We were given this number by Dana at Independent Artists Agency? We’re looking for Melody Vaught.”

My watch reads seven-thirty A.M. I look up. Mel’s iPhone lies cracked side up on the table. “Her phone’s busted.”

The voice hesitates. “We haven’t been able to get ahold of her, and we really need to.” I hear the twang now. Shit. A collections agency. “I’m calling from the Central Florida Women’s Correctional Facility clinic regarding Kelly Kay Vaught?”

I stare at the wall, totally useless, until it hits me: Mel’s mom.

“Ma’am? Are you still there?”

“I’m sorry. Yes, I’m still here. What about Kelly Kay?”

“Ms. Vaught passed away yesterday evening. Melody is listed as her next of kin.”

The woman gives me a phone number, an address, stresses Mel’s need to be there to identify the body. I feel like my ears are stuffed with cotton. We hang up before I realize I did not ask how she died.

I wonder if Kelly Kay had seen Nashville Combat. I wonder if she died knowing that her daughter made a movie about her. I wonder if she died while her daughter was on a stage, accepting an award, blinking blindly into the bright lights.





FLORIDA


I tell Mel in the darkness of a car service sedan that her mother is dead. I can’t see her face, only the pinched white shape of it in the passing streetlights. The inability to see her, more than anything, makes me afraid.

“What?” she says.

I scrabble. “I’m so sorry.”

I see her mouth open, her chest rise and fall a few times, hands opened long and pale on her lap. She lets out a sharp sound, something close to a laugh, but she’s not smiling. “You’re kidding,” she says. “Right?”

“No.”

Chest goes up, down, up. “You’re sure.”

“Someone at the agency gave them my number. I think they tried you. Your phone.”

She runs a hand through her hair and exhales hard. I smell a combination of rum and Robitussin. “Shit. I forgot about my fucking phone.”

“Yeah.”

She blinks, facing the road. “What happened?”

“You know, I feel really stupid. I didn’t ask. They said something about complications before surgery?”

“She was going to have surgery?”

“Apparently?” How long had it been, exactly, since Mel had last spoken to her mom?

I go to hug her, but I get as far as grabbing her hand and stop. I use my other hand to fish out smokes. We both light up when the driver says, “No smoking in the car.”

“Just let us out,” Mel tells him.

We start walking down Knickerbocker, Mel a few yards ahead. “Mel,” I call. It’s early morning. Everything has a gray unreal quality, usual boundaries knocked aside. I grab her hand again.

She repeats, “Are you sure.”

“Yes.”

One corner of her mouth jerks. She puts her hands through her hair again. Mutters, “Jesus Christ.”

We get to the studio and we’re hit with the smell of our home—mildew, coffee grounds, ink. It’s a mess. Clothes strewn everywhere, non-photo blue pencils rolling off the table onto the floor, cigarette butts at the bottom of High Life bottles. Mel pulls out her duffel bag. I watch her bang around the room for a moment, throwing things—underpants, socks, a bottle of Teacher’s I didn’t know she had—into it. This is Mel’s way: not mood swings but peaks and valleys, control and then controlled fury and then uncontrolled fury. But the air this morning is different, precarious and swollen with blood. We’re coming up over the mountain now. She can’t find something she’s looking for. She bangs around, muttering, “Son of a whore,” and I ask her, “Can I help? What are you looking for?” And she just shakes her head and mutters, “It’s fine, it’s goddamn fine.” And there’s more thuds and a tennis shoe is thrown at the wall, then a sketchpad, then a bottle of contact solution, then she kicks the wall and screams, “Fuck,” and then she ducks into the bathroom and stays in there for twenty minutes.