Aftermath of Dreaming(94)

“I started going to a meditation group,” Steve said suddenly, as if the thoughts that were in his head were also in mine, so the dive he took into this topic wasn’t a complete surprise. “An Intro into Buddhism thing that this Vietnamese monk is doing at his apartment. It’s small, just about five of us. And it’s free. Why don’t you come? Maybe you could use a new view on things.”

“That’s a nice way of putting it.”

Steve laughed with me, then had a deliciously long drag off his cigarette. “We all need to shake things up every once in a while. If you don’t like it, don’t go back.”

I told him thanks, I’d think about it, then we talked about other things until he finished another cigarette and we locked up the studio and left.

A few weeks later, I was home one night flipping through the channels on the TV. It was just after eleven, so I figured I’d catch the evening news, which I rarely do, preferring a newspaper instead, but I turned it on and five minutes later there it was. A nice annunciation story about Andrew Madden’s newest life role via Holly McRae’s conception. Clearly adding “daddy” to the list of his achievements was a news-making event, particularly at the age of fifty-four when it happened for him. And I guess it was a lot easier for them to have it on the news than to make all those “Guess what?” phone calls to everyone. Sitting on my futon, looking at the grinning photograph of Andrew on the screen while the anchor gave the happy details, felt like getting cut over and over in my gut. As if Holly’s full womb were excavating mine. As if the conception I had felt when I first met Andrew had finally died.



I dove into Buddhism classes with Steve. The first time I went I thought I’d try it once and forget about it, but there was so much peace there, such a sense of another way to live. And it wasn’t about changing all the outside stuff the way those stadium-renting, bestselling gurus say you have to do, this was quiet and internal. Just between you and you. I liked the independence of it.

One night before we meditated, Dr. En Chuan said that a way to get over a resentment toward someone is to pray for them to have everything you want. That sounded dreadful and difficult enough, but why should I pray for Andrew and Holly when they had everything already? Then En Chuan went on. You don’t have to be happy about doing it, he said, in fact, you can still be annoyed at the person, but just pray that they have inner peace and happiness; everyone needs help with that. The prayers will help them, but they will help you the most.

Driving home that night, I thought about what En Chuan had said, but I didn’t think I’d be able to do that. Those two had everything in the goddamn world, and besides, the whole point was for me to stop thinking about him. But maybe I’d try it a little. Especially since I didn’t have to be happy about doing it.



The meditation and the few prayers I said may have helped, because the depression started lifting and the truck-crashing suicide scenarios fell away. I was able to get back to my art and start a new series of sculptures, and began dating a bit. No one I was seriously interested in, every man still seemed second-rate, but I was participating in life in a way I hadn’t for a long time. And the gallery owner who had been interested in my work wanted to put some of my new pieces in her next group show.

So things were going okay when six months later it was announced in the newspapers—and I’m sure on TV, I just didn’t watch—that Andrew and Holly were the proud parents of a baby girl. The real daughter he had never had finally appeared. My long-ago stand-in role was officially done.



I started making jewelry—just for birthdays and Christmas presents—crafted from materials that had seemed too delicate to put in a sculpture, along with semiprecious gems I bought downtown in the jewelry district not far from Steve’s studio. I must have been making my fifth or sixth set of earrings when I remembered something one of my teachers at the School of Visual Arts had said about my work.

“It almost looks like jewelry.”

That sounded small.

“I don’t mean that negatively,” he went on. “Fine jewelry is an art. Your work is so delicate and personal, very much close-up. It’s definitely for the public, but in a personal context which jewelry is—art for a person to wear. An extension of them via you, not work that is left alone in a room. It’s just a thought.”

I had felt extremely seen when he said that, as if he were explaining a part of me to myself. But back then, I still wanted my work to be how I had envisioned it in Mississippi. Big. Important. Appearing in ArtForum. Art that goes into a museum was a powerfully propelling reason to get out of the South, a motivation to pole-vault out of my roots’ clinging grasp.

But the painting and sculpting fell away easily a few months after I remembered that, especially since people were buying up my jewelry. Friends loved the pieces I gave them, told their friends, and commissions rolled in. Lizzie started carrying my jewelry, and an actress wore some in a shoot for Los Angeles Magazine. I gave up my space in Steve’s loft and moved into a nice-sized two-bedroom apartment, so my studio could be at home. And I was happy. The process of creating didn’t feel like such a big question mark anymore because once a piece was finished, I knew there was a market for it.

I’d still see items about Andrew in the media; it was impossible not to. And pictures of Holly would pop up; she was he practically. But the stabbing feeling it had engendered in my gut cut down to a low throb, a dull pain that was an automatic response to his name. But I could live with it. Even ignore it sometimes.