Aftermath of Dreaming(60)

“I don’t even know why you still talk to me,” I told Andrew on our predetermined-by-me expiratory call.

“What?” I could tell he was outraged and shocked.

“Why do you still talk to me?” I derived a strength from saying it twice. “You’re just going to drop me. Raul did, Tory did, and you only have people in your life who are famous or are going to be any minute.”

“What are you talking about?” His voice had stepped aside as if his body were getting out of the way of a blow.

“You know exactly what I’m talking about, do I have to spell it out to you? I’m not a…” I almost said “big f*cking art star,” but knew I’d lose it if I did, and I had a feeling he knew what I hadn’t said. “I f*cked up, and all that matters to you is huge, phenomenal success, so let’s just end this—whatever the f*ck it is—and you can go on with your life and we can forget we ever met because I can’t take this anymore.” I was free-falling in a descent that had started months ago, and even if it was going to be a crash landing, I wanted it to happen already—I’d been previewing it for too long.

“Yvette, calm down.”

“No.” I jumped up off my bed. I didn’t want any suggestions from him.

“All right, don’t calm down. But what you’re saying is ridiculous. I’m not going anywhere—I’ve told you that before and it’s true—and neither are you, so just settle down and let’s talk about what you need to do.”

“About what? You?”

“No, I told you, I don’t know what all this stuff about us is that you’re going on about. I’m not leaving your life, so you can forget about that. About your art, what you need to do about your art. You’re extremely talented.”

I was annoyed and comforted by his calm pragmatism, but I suddenly couldn’t hear him anymore. I was still in such high gear, all prepared with my big grand “This is over” stand that I wasn’t able to suddenly shift and have a “Where I’m going now” father/daughter talk. I said I had to go. He made me promise three times before I got off the phone that I would call him back that night. But I didn’t. And when my phone kept ringing, I didn’t answer it.

I called Andrew a few days later and told him I was starting School of Visual Arts in the fall, thank you, bossy Suzanne, for making me apply. He was thrilled to hear it and acted like it had been the plan all along, and neither of us brought up that other phone call ever again.



I quit smoking, quit my hostess job at the restaurant, and got a waitressing job at a place in the Village that was closer to SVA and only open at night so it worked with my class schedule. And I made lots of money in tips that the owners didn’t think they should be getting. So much that I was finally able to rent part of a loft space down on Elizabeth Street in the Bowery to do my work.

School of Visual Arts was an all-consuming feast. It was heaven being completely saturated—other than on my waiting shifts—with color and shape and technique and history, and I dove into my studies. So much that most of the time I was able to forget about the Tory/Raul episodes. But occasionally, they would come up. I was shocked at how many people had read the review, though maybe I shouldn’t have been since I was in art school—but it was weird that so many remembered it. Not everyone obviously, I wasn’t paranoid thinking my name was household news, but out of the blue I’d hear, “Weren’t you in Tory Sexton’s show…” And the pit would open up inside me and I’d feel myself falling down, out of sight, my head barely reaching the other person’s knees.

I started dating. Guys from class, men from the restaurant or the bars I went to with Lydia, and then I met Tim one day when he came to SVA at the beginning of my sophomore year to speak to a film class about set design, though he was mostly renowned for his work on Broadway. He couldn’t find the building that the class he was lecturing was in, so I showed him, then we met for coffee afterward and talked for four hours. That turned into a relationship of three years. And I loved Tim, though still held my heart for Andrew.

Andrew and I talked regularly on the phone the whole time I was in school and seeing Tim. Once I moved in with Tim, I had to call Andrew from pay phones away from the apartment, but since he always came to the phone whenever I called, we talked pretty regularly. He asked about everything, except my art, and was very interested in things about Tim, then always before we hung up, “Do you love me more than him?”

“Yes,” I’d tell him. “I do.” I loved Tim, but I never had the sense that he’d be around for years to come like Andrew, who was still in my life even though I’d crashed and burned in front of him.

Although what happened with Tory and Raul was never mentioned between Andrew and me, as if it had vanished. I had an odd persistent sense that he had completely forgotten it, as if he were amnesiac about a large part of me, the part that had been the springboard for our relationship. I believed he would have been confounded if I asked him how Tory was, or mentioned those sculptures. Beguilingly confused. No memory of them. Everything else he remembered accurately and questioned extensively, but this large piece was missing, as if it had been a dream we once shared.



Things ended with Tim a few months after I graduated from SVA. He wanted to stay in New York, and I needed to get out. Living there had started to feel as if all the big tall buildings had moved straight into my head and there wasn’t any room for my thoughts anymore, as if they were being routed down crowded one-way streets that barely moved, my thinking stuck, unable to get anywhere. And Suzanne, besides being thrilled and probably secretly shocked that I graduated, was dying for me to move to L.A. “We’re sisters. We should at least live in the same city,” she said, though I had a feeling she wanted to keep a closer eye on me. I guess she had forgotten that big, bad Andrew lived there. But she thought it was over between us since I never mentioned him. And there’d be space in L.A., I thought, and there was the art. David Hockney and Ed Ruscha; Richard Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park. I could make a fresh start without having to deal with the New York galleries again. Suzanne lived with her music agent boyfriend in a big house in Beverly Hills with a guest room I could stay in until I got on my feet. So, Tim and I broke up, and I moved to L.A.