Aftermath of Dreaming(56)

I was dreaming of being at a sanitarium. A blue stream was in the distance with sunlight flitting on its surface; there was a soft wind and rolling hills. Tory was in a wheelchair being pushed by exquisite pale man. He kept ramming the hard footrests into people’s shins while she shrieked, “Off with their heads!” Decapitated sculptures appeared, the heads floating in space like paintings midair. I was running toward the stream, which had become the muddy Mississippi, trying desperately to get there, when a bell began to ring, the alarm that I had escaped! My pace quickened going up the hill, I was panting hard, unable to breathe, a stone appeared in my path tripping me, I fell and hit the ground, and that jarred me awake. I realized that the ringing bell was my phone.

“Hello?” I was still shrugging out of the dream, trying to get back to the real day despite my delirium.

“Hi.”

I had a horrible feeling it was exquisite pale man with rotten news. “Who is this?”

“Andrew.”

I immediately started to cry. Not audibly, thank God, because I sounded dreadful enough, but tears were streaming down. I wished they would cool my blazing face. “Are you here?”

“No, I’m still—are you okay?”

I wanted to throw myself on him and never let go. “I’m sick.”

“With what? For how long?”

He wasn’t happy that I hadn’t seen a doctor, even more displeased when I finally revealed I didn’t have health insurance, never had, so couldn’t afford to go to one, plus all the work I was missing, and—

“Just hang on, Yvette, I’ll call you right back.”

“Promise, soon? Really right back?” I was terrified it’d be weeks or months before I heard his voice again.

“Yes, really, right back. Just hang on.”

The long-distance clicking stopped, and the line went dead. I had to rest a minute before reaching down to hang up.

Andrew called ten minutes later, and told me that his assistant in L.A., Patrick, was finding a doctor in New York for me, and when Patrick called, to give him my checking account information for him to wire-transfer into. I cried through Andrew telling me this, it was like feeling his strong, safe arms wrapped around me from so far away. My thanks was a small arrow making an arc to reach him.

“You just get better. I’ll call you when I’m back.”

I kept myself from asking how long that would be. “How’s it going?”

“It’s…good. It’s going well. I have to go now, sweet-y-vette. I’ll talk to you soon, you just get better.”

His voice was a blanket lying gently on top of me, swaddling me, and nudging sleep to come. I hung up the phone. Maybe he hadn’t heard about the gallery opening. Or maybe he had and didn’t care. Didn’t care that I hadn’t been turned into a big f*cking art star. Loved me anyway and that was all that mattered. God, I hoped so.



Patrick was the epitome of polite solicitousness when he called an hour later waking me up. He spoke with an authority tinged with a disposition to please. The doctor he found arrived at my apartment that night, gave me a shot and left large capsules of antibiotics. The next day, a thousand dollars appeared in my checking account. It had never known a balance that high. For weeks, the wire-transfer slip stayed in my purse, and I’d pull it out on late bus rides home from the restaurant like a picture of a loved one.



Tory’s imperative was that I needed new work. She made it sound like an item I could run across at a store for a really good price. The question that had concerned me for months—where to create this?—was answered during her spiel. One of her painters needed an additional assistant—I could have a small stipend or partial use of the studio that his ex-boyfriend had vacated when he moved to Rome. Tory made it clear what my choice would be.

Thank God she wasn’t dropping me. Maybe a bad review wasn’t the end of the world. Here was a chance for me to sculpt, to let my life in New York cut into my work. And maybe Andrew did know about the opening, and it wasn’t as horrible as I thought it was. Tory wasn’t dropping me—that meant something. As I went for a run in the park, difficult as hell from the cigarettes I had returned to after the bronchitis, I framed questions in my mind that I wanted to address in my new sculptures, and mostly, I felt relieved.



Suzanne pretended to be happy for me about the apprenticeship, but made me promise I would apply to the School of Visual Arts to start next fall.

“You need to go to college; this is absolutely ridiculous. You’re already a year behind—what are you going to do, start when you’re thirty? And don’t think you’ll get that money for anything else. At least Mother isn’t in control of that, thank God. This man is ruining your life.”

I didn’t have to ask her who she meant.





17




The painter I would be apprenticed to was well-known to me from articles in ArtForum that I had read in Mississippi, the magazine an emissary from the world I longed to join. He was so renowned that I had even seen a feature about him in Momma’s Vogue, heralding a MOMA exhibition. Most of my interview for the position was with his chief assistant, or C.A. as he referred to himself in the third person while describing the duties required of me. The painter, Raul, appeared midway through and sat down close to C.A., who massaged his massive hands, while I recited again for him where I was from and how I had gotten there, all information I figured Tory had already given them.