Aftermath of Dreaming (19 page)

The cigarette was at my lips, kissing my mouth, and the smoke was hugging my throat, holding me inside. His silence was excruciating. I felt as if I were on the edge of a terrifying cliff, the backs of my knees were so weak.

Andrew cleared his throat. “I don't want to be anyone's sponsor.”

Oh. Oh, God. Okay. Sponsor. What did that mean? It sounded so involved, active, a thousand times more than one sale. He didn't want to be anyone's—my—sponsor.

“Maybe you should go home,” Andrew said. I nearly fell off the bed. Go home? To the muteness of Momma's house; the decrepitude of that life? Maybe I should just kill myself instead. “It doesn't seem to be working there. What do you think?” His dreadful speech was done, but I couldn't believe he expected an answer from me, like an executioner
asking if the rope should be in natural or white. The lifeline he had thrown me months before was being retracted.

“I think…I think I have to go.” I wanted to throw up and my head had begun to spin.

“Yvette.”

“Bye, I'm gonna go.” And before he could say another word, I hung up.

I found the fifth of Jack Daniel's I had brought with me from Mississippi, grabbed the closest thing we had to a highball glass—a Donald Duck juice cup—and had many Disney-themed drinks full, then curled up on my bed and sobbed myself to sleep. I woke up a little later and sobbed some more. The alternating episodes of sleeping and sobbing became interchangeable—physically engrossing states with wildly precise mental scenes accompanying them.

Carrie must have pushed the curtain back at some point during the night because when I awoke the next morning, the half-empty Jack Daniel's bottle and Disney glass were out of my room and a blanket from the couch was covering me.

Splashing water on my face in the bathroom, I caught a glimpse of myself in the cheap medicine-cabinet mirror. The glow I'd had when Andrew was so on fire about me was gone.

 

I was preparing for Andrew to get rid of me. The silence from the West Coast was booming; I could barely hear through its din. I made a tentative call to him a few weeks after the internal massacre that was our last conversation. He asked where I was and I answered before realizing he must have thought I'd gone back to the South. It was an exercise in verbal insignificance. I wondered why we were doing it, though he didn't sound ready to be off the phone quickly like he had on our last few calls, but there was little to say. This gangplank of a goodbye was long.

After a few more weeks of silence between us, and nonstop dread about when Andrew was going to call to say never call him again, I finally could bear it no longer and decided to take things into my own
hands. I called him on a Thursday afternoon in July, almost a year since we had met. My plan was to end it and lock him out of my life so I could get on with it and my art on my own. Somehow.

“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 fucking art star,” but knew I'd lose it if I did, and I had a feeling he knew what I hadn't said. “I fucked up, and all that matters to you is huge, phenomenal success, so let's just end this—whatever the fuck 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.

Without telling Andrew. I don't know why, really. I kept thinking I'd tell him in each conversation we had in the weeks I was preparing to move, but somehow I never brought it up. Not that I didn't want to be in the same city with him again. But I guess I had gotten so used to, and comfortable with, our parental phone relationship that the idea of being in a town where I could see him was unsettling—because what if I didn't. I landed in L.A. with Suzanne waiting for me outside baggage claim, behind the wheel of her silver convertible Saab, and Andrew still thought I was living in New York.

I go downtown a lot.
Mostly to the jewelry district to buy materials when I run out of gems. Or check on the progress of my jewelry, like I did on Thursday at Dipen's. The new prototype for the necklace was perfect, thank God, although it looks like the order will take longer than Dipen thought because his casting machine broke down. But he promised me he'd have the order ready in two weeks, which puts me at exactly half a week before it is due to Rox, so I'll still meet my deadline easily. I hope. Working with these guys, or let's be honest, being completely dependent on them to make my jewelry, is having to be two parts sugary sweet plus one part hard-core commando, like some kind of chocolate bullet-chip ice cream. I have to stay on them to make sure the work gets done on time, but if I'm not nice about it, they'll keep stalling or even stop doing my orders. I've seen designers at Dipen's in tears, pleading with him to keep doing their work, and him standing on the
other side of his counter, his face placid but firm, as he repeatedly tells them to never come there again.

But when I don't have to go downtown for business what I really like to do is drive around downtown a lot, like I did last night when I couldn't get to sleep because I kept thinking about Andrew. It was almost one
A.M.
on Saturday morning, and Michael had just left because he had to be at the station for the six
A.M.
show and the freeways are hell in the mornings. “On Saturdays?” I'd asked. But he'd just kissed me and promised to call me later. I couldn't handle being in bed by myself. The stillness was too disturbing. I was just lying there with nothing moving but my thoughts, which were doing swoops in my head, so I finally jumped up, pulled on some clothes, got in my truck, and hit the freeway. Suzanne would have been outraged if she knew. “All those drunk drivers on the road,” I could imagine her saying as I got on the 10 heading east. But my truck is big and safe, and it was either drive or tear my hair out thinking about Andrew.

I headed east on the freeway toward downtown and the desert and Texas and what used to be home. But I didn't go that far. I made the loop I like to make from the 10 up the 110 to the 101 that kind of sideswipes me by all those tall downtown buildings, the only really big ones L.A. has. Okay, Century City has a few and there's that corridor of condos on Wilshire Boulevard, but for hard-core New York City–style skyscrapers—they're downtown.

Which is why I went. They make me feel safe, seeing them standing so solid and sure, as if their weight can hold down and secure this slipping, tilting West Coast terrain. And from my truck up on the freeway, they're almost at eye level so they look smaller in a way, like diamond-encrusted jewelry I can touch, even reach out and pick up if I want and put in my pocket to carry with me, like a memory that is there to look at whenever I want to, but isn't the only thing I can see. Like how I wish it were with Andrew.

And don't, honestly.

Usually one loop is enough, but last night, I drove it twice. I took the 110 north to the 101 east until I got off in Hollywood, then I turned back around and got on the freeway, retracing my journey. I passed the
buildings a second time, their brightness smiling at me in the dark, I thought I might have to do a triple loop, but once I was completely past them, a lulling feeling kicked in and I knew I could go home. As if the buildings had sung me to sleep.

Some of those buildings it took me a while to like. The DWP building, for instance, on First Street, I could not appreciate at all. Just a tall, simple box of glass and white with black lines running across the front. A big neonothing is what I thought it was. Then one day, driving into downtown on First Street, as I got to the top of the hill, I saw the building there glistening. It was so perfect for its space that I finally understood it couldn't have been anything other than what it was. I suddenly loved it and do still, partly because I disliked it so much before.

But that change of heart has not happened for me with the Pacific Shopping Center, a building I continue to loathe. Particularly Bloomingdale's at the Pacific Shopping Center. Okay, actually the bra department in Bloomingdale's at the Pacific Shopping Center, the locale of the purgatory I am in now.

Suzanne's bridal shower is today, this lovely Saturday, and besides being groggy from not enough sleep thanks to last night's nocturnal drive, I have nothing to wear. A fact that should have me in a clothing department, but if I get a new bra, which I've needed for a while, then the black top with the black pants I am wearing will look fine, though probably wrong. Sheer and floral and soft come to mind for a nuptial event, but after conjuring a blizzard of outfits in my bedroom, I ended up in my favorite black pants and top. The apparel equivalent of eating oatmeal every morning—I don't have to think about choices and I know it's good for my body.

As I stand in front of a rack of bras and flip through the tags on an endless supply of Playmate-appropriate contraptions, I feel like a school-kid who only got three letters of the alphabet: B C C B D D D B.

I walk over to the young, bored, and abundantly endowed salesclerk lounging behind the register, and say, “I'm sorry, I seem to be the last woman in Los Angeles to get breast implants, do you have any A-cup bras at all?”

She regards me as if I am a species she has vaguely heard something about, then points to a wall overflowing with padded built-in-breasts bras.

“Uh, without the matching throw pillows sewn inside.”

She gives me an irritated look, then leads me over to a dimly lit corner where, next to a rack of postmastectomy garments, are the brave, the few A-cup bras.

“Maybe you should try one on,” she says in what is not a meant-to-be-helpful tone.

“I'm in a hurry, I have to get to a…” I suddenly imagine a “Marie Antoinette tits-like-a-champagne-glass” annual convention, but since it is the L.A. chapter, I am all alone. “Just ring it up,” I say, taking a bra off the rack that is the same brand and style I've had before, and handing it to her.

As I wait for my purchase, it occurs to me that for my size, a store outside this city might have a bigger selection. I wonder if I have enough frequent flier miles to get some place more…flat, I guess, then realize I have no idea where that would be.

The A-cup bra fits perfectly—should that depress me or make me happy?—when I put it on in the second-floor bathroom, wanting to be out of that prejudiced lingerie department. Maybe the ACLU could take them on.

The drive from the shopping center to the Pacific Palisades, where my sister's bridal shower is being held, is easier than I thought it would be considering they are at opposite ends of town. Suzanne's best friend, Mandy, an actress, is hosting it at her Richard Neutra–designed home. When Suzanne told me about it, I vaguely recalled having read an article about the architect, but when I pull up in front of Mandy's house, I quickly recognize its famous style. Very stark, straight, clean lines. As I walk up the sidewalk, the curls of my hair feel like a literal affront to the design. I wonder if Mandy allows any wavy lines on her property at all; then she opens the front door and I see that she has saved them all for herself. She is a series of strategically placed circles: round up-lifted eyes; puffy cloudlike lips; and cleavage that goes on for hours before the
nipples even begin to start. I suddenly feel I have more in common with a glass-and-wood structure than a member of my own sex.

Honest to God, it is all I can do to look at her face and not her breasts. Now, growing up, I went to the French Quarter all the time and would see the girls on Bourbon Street with their pasties and twirls, so I've always known that I'm small. I just had no idea until I moved to L.A. how big Big can get. No wonder men stare in incredulous fascination—what this woman had was like nothing on my body at all.

“You must be the sister,” Mandy says, moving all of her selves aside to let me in.

Nice to meet you, too,
I think, while I force a smile.

Just past the foyer that Mandy has led me into, I can see an austere living room filled with clusters of chattering, tittering women. As I move to join the festivities—Mandy has already entered the room—a waiter intercepts me, blocking my passage with a tray of champagne glasses that he holds in front of my breasts.

My “no” comes out a bit too vehemently, so I soften it with, “I mean, thanks anyway, but do you think I could get a vodka on the rocks with a twist?”

He scrutinizes me, as if trying to predict what other social sins I will commit today.

“No, okay.” I brush my request off with a laugh, but he's not buying it. “How about a coffee?”

“Espresso.” His tone implies that it is patently obvious I have never attended a bridal shower on the West side.

“Make it a double.”

After that delightful tête-à-tête, the party looks like a downright refuge. I see Suzanne sitting next to a building of gifts that appears ready to topple onto her at any moment. Hearts and love and pink and doves decorate the packages, while ribbons cascade down the sides. I immediately envision jewelry of thin multicolored cords dotted with gems encircling necks, arms, and waists, making presents of their wearers. I want to create them.

“There you are,” Suzanne yells through the soft and pretty voices
of the women in the soft and pretty dresses, as she gestures wildly for me to join her across the room. I immediately regret my outfit, especially the time wasted on the new bra that is making little to no difference on me.

Which reminds me of when I was in first grade and wanting to be like straight-haired Suzanne, I decided to wear headbands. Momma bought one in every color for me, so I could wear a different one each day. The headband was visible in my hair, a happy strip of bright color among my curls, but it had no effect on how my hair looked, though I was certain it did. Certain that by wearing the small binding object, not unlike the one currently on my chest, I had entered the great sorority of life.

On the third day of wearing a headband to school (green was the color du jour), I was walking to the swings at recess to meet my best friend, when a tall blond eighth-grade girl came up to me.

“Why are you wearing that?” She used a tone that I had only heard used by Momma and Daddy when they were really mad. She was in too high a grade to be Suzanne's friend, so why was she talking to me and about what? I was wearing the same plaid pleated uniform as everyone else.

All around us, girls were playing hopscotch, jumping rope, hand patting sing-song games, whispering in groups, or lounging in the sun with their socks rolled down and skirts pushed up until a nun came along.

“That headband. It looks ridiculous in your hair. Curly-haired girls can't wear headbands.” Her face contorted from the honey-sweet American dream to a deep ugly sneer. “You look stupid.”

The green plastic hair ornament had become tighter and tighter with each of her words. My face felt hot, and I didn't want to look at her anymore. She made a nasty laugh, again said, “You look stupid,” then walked away, leaving me standing there. I didn't just feel stupid, I felt dumb, a word Daddy wouldn't let us use about anyone, but there I was using it about me in my head. None of the other girls seemed to have heard her, but I figured they already thought the same thing and just hadn't said it.

I went to the bathroom into the farthest stall, closed and locked the door behind me, and broke the headband with my hands, the sharpness of the plastic hurting me with each break. Pieces of green flew out onto the hexagonal tile floor, as I kept bending and breaking until the headband was just tiny bits of bright shards lying on the dingy white tile. My hair was all wrong and I hadn't even known it. If that wasn't dumb, what was?

I was about four when I noticed that my hair was curly without the pin curls that Momma laboriously put on Suzanne every night before bed. When I asked Momma why I didn't need those, too, she told me that I was blessed, that the angels curled my hair every night while I slept. I tried to stay up a few nights to meet these angels and talk to them, to see if the pin curls they made were the same as the ones Momma did on Suzanne or better—maybe they used golden pins from heaven. But as I stomped on the already broken pieces of green headband on the bathroom floor, I wondered why those angels couldn't've picked on someone else.

“Yvette, Yvette.”

My sister was calling me, rescuing me from this memory as she couldn't when it happened.

“Come meet Betsy, my wedding coordinator I've been telling you about.”

As I walk down the two steps into the sunken living room, Suzanne turns to the older, conservatively dressed, and professionally happy looking woman sitting on her left and, pointing at me, says, “See her height? Now don't you think her bouquet can be taller?”

I make my way through the ocean of estrogen, hug Suzanne, then move to the empty chair next to them, slipping into it like a life preserver. “It's so nice to meet you,” I say to the wedding coordinator. “I'm Suzanne's sister, Yvette.”

“Legs apart!” Betsy bellows.

“What?” I jump in my chair, suddenly worried some odd animal is on the loose that only attacks feet that are close together.

“Your legs, you have to keep them uncrossed and apart or you're
out of the game.” Her silver-haired head is close to me, watery blue eyes peering into my face. She is grinning madly.

“The game.”

“Whoever keeps their legs uncrossed during the whole bridal shower wins the prize! Of course, Suzanne here has already won—she's the bride!—but you ladies—”

“Have to—” I smile and nod at her.

“That's right—keep those legs apart!”

“Right, well, lucky for me I'm not wearing a skirt.”

Betsy's licensed and official smile quickly turns into a frown as she notices my black pants for the first time. She looks as if someone just told her that the wedding march was legally banned.