Beer Money: A Memoir of Privilege and Loss(40)
I had thought about Caitlin often since high school. I’d last seen her ten years before, at a Beastie Boys concert at St. Andrew’s Hall in Detroit. She was photographing the band for a magazine spread. The glamorous life I’d envisaged seemed well under way. And then, apparently, it had all come apart. Or had she just realized she didn’t need all the lights? Didn’t I myself have some of the same doubts?
As flamboyant a partygoer as I could be, the truth was, I liked the quiet life of making art, talking about art, and enjoying close friends at dinner parties—the kind of life I’d been having in London for the most part. Those evenings I spent out among the “art stars” at private views and parties, they weren’t the most memorable, the ones I truly cherished.
Elisa weaved through the dancers on her way back from the restroom, making a goofy show of using her handbag as a front fender to ward off collisions.
“I’m still speechless,” I said as she sat down.
“Yeah.” She studied me, her eyes widening in the dim light. “Not to change the subject or anything, but . . .”
“Go ahead,” I told her.
“I’ve been feeling really sorry for your dad. He’s a good man, but . . . you know, he never got any love.” Her voice cracked on the word love.
“You’re right . . .” I said guardedly. I wasn’t sure where she was going with this, but I had the distinct feeling I was being rather purposefully led. “He got shortchanged, I guess, as a kid.”
“See, so did I,” she said, downing the rest of her drink. “I know what it means to basically be an orphan. I’m going to make up all those lost years to your dad, though, you know? Give him everything he never got. You’ll see.”
My stomach tightened into a thorny little ball. She was going to parent him? As much as I wanted to believe this, the age difference between them had already spelled things out pretty clearly: Elisa would be the pampered child. My father had already told me they slept in separate bedrooms and that he gave her a large monthly allowance.
Besides, I had my doubts that anyone could make up the losses of childhood with another person’s affection. I’d been my own lab rat, and the data was not encouraging. “Do you really think it works that way?”
Elisa nodded slowly, considering her next move. “He’s like a lost little kid. He needs someone.”
“He should have been a photographer,” I said.
“It’s funny,” she said, resting her elbows on the bar. “That’s exactly what he always says about you . . .”
Gorgeous people swayed all around us to the heroin beat of Massive Attack. A couple fell against the bar in a cinematic embrace, one of her long earrings coming unhooked as she swatted flirtatiously at his drunk, groping hands. Elisa lit a cigarette and I saw her, eleven years before, huddled in the corner of the smoking exit, laughing at my jokes but perhaps afraid to speak, the snow blowing around us in subzero gusts.
NON-SPECIFIC LOCATION #1, 1996
(by Frances Stroh)
My shared art studio in Southeast London had a large window facing a block of boarded-up storefronts and crumbling prewar brick warehouses. I often paused on the windowsill in the afternoon to absorb some heat from the old radiator beneath it, looking out. There were no trees anywhere, even on the vacant lots. The brown grime covered every surface—of ancient coal dust, or an eternity of exhaust fumes. The very people milling about outside seemed to have absorbed it into their drab clothing, their worn-out shoes.
I was working on a new idea: rudimentary remakes of famous film scenes. So far I had made just one—the scene in Apocalypse Now where the helicopter lands on the beach and blows everyone’s stuff away. I had reconstructed the beach on a large rectangular table using sand and cocktail umbrellas, then simulated the flight of a helicopter by coming down onto the beach with the video camera and a hair dryer blowing from behind it. The effect, with the addition of an audio track of a helicopter in flight, was magnificently absurd, especially as all the umbrellas blew away one by one.
I hadn’t been able to think of any other movie scenes I wanted to re-create. We had an open studio show coming up in early December—only one month away—and were committed to exhibiting at least one installation. All week, while I’d been busy showing my father and Elisa around London, my studio mates had been hard at work on their pieces. My father was so jazzed on Elisa he hadn’t even remembered to suggest a studio visit to see my work. Then my flat was robbed, tying me up for days at the American embassy, where I’d gone to replace my stolen passport. The thief had also taken the Nikon camera and lenses my father had given me in high school, all my personal photos, and some cheap jewelry.
“So you were burgled, were you?” the police officer exclaimed when I’d called to report the break-in. But they never came out to investigate. George Orwell, I figured, had the British attitude down: property itself was theft, which was clearly why I’d been relieved of mine. Case closed.
By my father and Elisa’s last day in London, I was eager for them to board their Concorde if only so I could get my life back. It had been two weeks since I was in the studio. On the very last day, while Elisa had a massage at the hotel, my father and I went to see the Degas exhibit at the National Gallery. Standing before the hundredth painting of ballerinas, I pictured lining them all up on the beach and gunning them down. I knew I could get the soundtrack of a machine gun somewhere, and music box figurines of ballerinas were plentiful. Perhaps my idea needed some evolving. I wouldn’t limit my imagination to scenes from movies. Perhaps anything was fair game.