Lakewood(69)

Tanya, the reason you don’t have these letters already is because I don’t want you to think I’m crazy or a liar. I don’t know. Maybe you would say something like at least you got paid for this. It’s not fair to you, but I hear every argument, every way to make this much smaller coming out of your mouth.

I did make copies of all these letters. My mom and I sat with your dad and did our wills. If something ever happens to the two of us, you’ll get the copies then. I hope I’ll be able to at least try to say something someday. And if I don’t, I’m sorry.

Sometimes, I look around—drinking coffee in my kitchen, sitting in traffic, holding a package of chicken in the grocery store—and I say, “Is this real?” I rarely feel alone; there’s always a chance someone is watching. I have to stop myself from rating how I’m feeling on a scale.

Since coming home, I’ve been going to the art museum a lot. The one my grandma took me to when I was a child; it’s one of the few places I feel safe now. On a whim, I signed up to do a training course on how to be a docent. There are cameras everywhere. The times when I go, I see the same people who have been working there for years now. They say hi to me, ask me about my mom, my day.

There’s a painting here that’s part of a traveling exhibition that I keep coming back to. On one side is a mid-century-style bedroom. The room is bright, its furniture gray, the carpet and curtains June-grass green, and there’s yellow lampshades. A black-and-white image is small and superimposed over the room. Honestly, this side of the painting means very little to me. If I was in a classroom or writing a response paper, I would have to talk about postmodernism, something about emptiness, and the many ways it tries to communicate absence and distance. I’m already tired thinking about it.

But the other side. It is painted in purples and blacks. Four people are looking decidedly at you. They force you to react. Two are perpetually laughing, two are judging. There is nothing you can do to stop them. I should hate it, but I can’t stop getting sucked in. I dream about this one, Tanya. I think it is pushing toward ugly and there is definitely some meanness in it, but I love it. It’s the first new thing that I have loved in a while. I refuse to learn anything about the painter. I will myself to live only in the painting itself, to love how it makes me react.

I decided that I will go there every day. Drink from the same fountain I remember my grandmother’s hands lifting me up toward. Have a cup of coffee in the coffeeshop and watch the water spill up and out of the fountain. I will look at the brushstrokes, the sculptures gleaming under the light like well-tempered chocolates, the golden frames, black and white images of the long dead. I will force myself to remember, despite everything I know now, people are capable of making something wonderful.





Acknowledgments


This book wouldn’t have been possible without Dan Conaway, Andrea Vedder, and Lauren Carsley. You kept me creative, thoughtful, and organized during this process. A special thank-you to Taylor Templeton, who helped me feel my way through several almost-there drafts.

Thank you to the excellent staff at Amistad—especially Patrik Henry Bass (you gave this book a home and you understood exactly what it needed), Amina Iro, and Paul Olsewski.

Thank you to Dr. Reed and Dr. Meyer, and their excellent staff at CORL. You modeled for me how a research study should work, answered all my questions, and always gave me more to think about and more things to read.

Lakewood in a much different form began in a novel-writing workshop. Thank you, Samrat Upadhyay, for starting me on this path. And thank you to that entire class, but especially Bix Gabriel, Scott Fenton, Cherae Clark, and Tia Clark. You all pointed me in the direction that brought me here.

Thank you to Indiana University’s MFA program for the time and money to start this book. Thank you, Romayne Rubinas Dorsey, Ross Gay, Jacinda Townsend, Cathy Bowman, and Liz Eslami, for making me a better writer.

Thank you for all the support I’ve gotten from Miami University—especially from Eric Goodman and Margaret Luongo.

Thank you to the excellent staff at The Offing past and present—Allison, Jax, Kosiso, Mary, Penelope, Reem, Shristi, Di, and Mimi—for expanding my ideas about good writing.

Thank you to the Barbara Deming Memorial Foundation. Your support helped give me the time to write, and the confidence to think I was writing something worth reading.

Thank you to all the literary magazine editors who published my work before this. You helped me stay on this path. Helped me find readers (Hello you-knew-me-when readers! Thank you for reading me in the past, thank you for reading me now!).

Hello, Audra, Scott, Paul, Laura, Aaron, and Bix. You all let me vent, made me think, made me laugh about all this when I felt discouraged. I love you all. You, too, Jennifer, Jeff, Katie, Mom, and Dad. And H, D, and N. And Grandma, too.

Jon, thank you for the dinners, the listening, the love, the conversation, the books, the wine, our life. Even when I couldn’t say it, you have always made me feel like a writer.