Fearless (4 page)

Chapter Five

Dalilah

The bartender came around, wiping the bar area in front of me. He noticed that I was dry. “You need another one, Dalilah?”

I looked at my now empty glass, and brought it to my lips. I crunched on the ice, and pushed the glass to him. “Sure, bring it on,” I said. I looked at my watch, thinking that I was going to have to blow off Seth again. Why he put up with my crap, I really didn’t know. It was so obvious to myself that I really didn’t care about him, any more than I did in high school, when he was all about getting me to go out with him just once.
Sometimes I wondered why I had even started dating him, if you could call it that. It was just something that I had fallen into when I just happened to run into him when I was at the Met one day.

Looking back, I realized that it was a particularly lonely time for me. I had just moved out of Nick and Scotty’s home, which they allowed me to do when I turned 18, and Alaina was not yet in the city. She hadn’t started school at that time. So, I kinda knew nobody, and running into Seth was somewhat comforting. He and I ended up having lunch, and then ended up in bed about two hours later, and it was all very…nice. That was really all that I could say about that. It was nice.
After all, he really was a handsome guy, with his full lips, hazel eyes, long dark eyelashes, thick sandy hair and rock-hard body. He was the kind who made every girl swoon, always. Every girl but myself.

Of course, it meant much more to him than it did to me. He told me as much as I laid around in his bed that day, not really wanting to return back to my empty apartment. “I knew that you would come around, Dalilah,” he had said. “I thought it would have happened a lot sooner than this, though.”

I said nothing, not really wanting to tell him that I hadn’t, in fact, come around. I didn’t want to burst his bubble. Which was probably much of the reason why I continued to see him. That, and the fact that he sometimes supplied me with groceries when I got low. I never could hide my ennui, though, with him, and I felt a little bit badly because of this.

I went outside the bar, nodding to Tom, the bartender, “watch my drink for me, okay?” I said. “I have to make a phone call.”

“Sure thing,” he said. “Hurry back.”

I got outside the building, and dialed Seth’s number. He picked up on the second ring. “Dalilah,” he said.

“Hi,” I said. “Hey, I need a rain check for tonight.”

He was silent on the other end. “Okay. Whatever.” He was obviously annoyed, for he didn’t bother to ask me why I needed said rain check.

“Yes,” I said. “Well, I guess I’ll be seeing you.”

“I wouldn’t count on it.”

“Okay,” I said, simply. Then I hung up the phone. I couldn’t be bothered to care about poor Seth. All I knew was that there was a glass of whiskey that was waiting for me at the bar.

∞

I got home that night and was greeted by a most unpleasant surprise, considering my inebriated state. My father was sitting in my living room, waiting for me to come home.

Oh, crap.
He was the last person that I wanted to see right at that moment. He had his arms crossed. He obviously wasn’t pleased with me.

“Dad,” I said. He was blurry, not in focus. My stomach started rumbling, and I, once again, had to stop myself from vomiting.

“Dalilah,” he said, his voice stern. “You need to have a seat.”

It suddenly occurred to me that perhaps there was something wrong. Maybe something had happened to my mom. But, no, it wasn’t that, because my mom soon appeared in the living room as well. She, too, looked like she wanted to kick my ass.

“Mom,” I said, my heart sinking. This wasn’t looking good. “How are you?”

“Dalilah
Rose Gallagher,” she said, and I knew I was in serious trouble. Whenever mom used all three of my names, it meant that shit was about to go down. “You-“

My dad made a motion to her to be quiet. Then he turned to lo
ok at me. “Dalilah,” he said. “We’ve been hearing disturbing reports about your lifestyle out here.”

“Reports?” I said, feeling a bit panicked. “From who?”

“Nick,” he said.

“Nick. How the hell does he know anything about my lifestyle? I haven’t
been living with him for two years now.”

He was quiet. Then it occurred to me that Nick probably had some kind of plant in the bar that I frequented. It would be just like my dad and Nick to be sneaky like that. God knew that they both were involved in any number of sneaky things over the years. Not to mention the fact that my father was a serious drug addict when he was my age. As far as I was concerned, he, especially, had zero moral authority to tell me anything. Nick, too. Before he met Scotty, he slept around way more than I could have ever dreamed of doing.

Finally, he spoke. “Listen. Your mom and I agreed to let you come out here because we both wanted you to be immersed in the art culture. Art is your passion, and it always has been. That was the main reason why we agreed not to push you to go to college. Well, that and the fact that nobody has ever been able to push you into anything that you don’t want to do. Which is besides the point. But Nick has gotten a report that you have been spotted getting drunk at a bar here in town several times, and that you have left with a stranger each of those times.”

“Oh my god. And what are you going to do? I’m a legal adult. You can’t very well force me to come home with you while I straighten out and learn to fly right.”

“No,” he agreed. “I can’t. But Dalilah, I want you to know that your mom and I have decided that we need to be closer to you. So, I just purchased a house in the Montauk. That will be our new home base.”

Montauk? Of course, my dad would choose to live in the Hamptons. God forbid he would live among the unwashed. “Montauk. And what about
Dalilah’s Friends
? What about your foundation?”

“
Dalilah’s Friends
is in excellent hands. I’m going to do something similar here. I’m going to start a new sanctuary just outside of town. Which is why I am choosing to live in Montauk. That will be closer to where my new sanctuary will be. As for the foundation, I’m much closer to power brokers in New York City than in Kansas City.”

In my drunken state, my feelings were a bit dulled, but the horror was there, all the same. Suddenly, I had to deal with my parents being a little over two hours away.
“Okay, so you’re virtually moving into this city. And this will change my life how?”

Finally, my mother spoke. “Dalilah. We would like for you to have dinner with us at l
east once a month. I feel like we’ve been shut out of your life. You never answer the phone when we call. God forbid you would ever call us back. You don’t even answer the phone when Nick calls. I don’t approve of you doing what you’re doing. You’re wasting – “

“My potential. I know. God, don’t I know. Trust me, as disappointed as you are in me, I’m about 1000 times more disappointed in myself. You think that I like myself this way? Do you think that I want to stare at an empty canvas night after night? You have no idea what it’s like to be an artist. To want to eat, drink and breathe creativity and art. But realizing that there really is no air. There’s no air because you’re suffocating. I can’t breathe art, because I can’t get past my mental blocks.”

My father shook his head. “What happened to you, Dalilah? What happened to the fearless little girl who created some of the leading urban expressionistic paintings and sculptures in the world?”

I just stared at him, and then simply said “I guess I’m not fearless anymore. I can’t silence my inner critic, so I’m…paralyzed.”

I looked down at the floor. My dad understood. I knew that he did. He, too, was an artist, and an amazing one at that. But he never went anywhere with it, even though he had some early success, for basically the same reason I quit. And that is the haters. The haters who exist to tear people down. They might be jealous or they might have mental issues. They might merely be trolls. But for somebody with an artistic temperament, they can be devastating to creativity. So, my dad mainly painted for himself and my mother. And he ended up working for The Man. With all of his absolute genius and artistic prodigiousness, he still ended up working as a soulless bank president for many years, before he finally found his passion in working with animals.

Again, my father had zero authority to talk to me about anything. He gave up his own dreams of being an artist. He had a serious drug addiction
when he was my age. Everything that he would be saying to me would ring hollow. It would be a case of “do as I say, not as I do.” And if there was one thing that I couldn’t stand, it was a fucking hypocrite.

As for my mother. Well, I guess she had a little bit more authority to advise me than my father. She had managed to avoid serious substance abuse, except for those two weeks after she was raped all those years ago. But her hands weren’t clean, either. She was a goddamned cutter at my age. As for her career, she pretty much rode the coattails of my father. If it weren’t for him, she would be some kind of two-bit lawyer just scraping by, because that was what she was when she met my dad.

I looked at them, well aware of my defensive posture. If I could read their minds, I would imagine that they were either regretting the fact that they both were such fuck-ups when they were my age, or they were regretting telling me exactly how much they were fuck-ups. They sat me down when I was very young and told me all about their idiot mistakes, mainly because it was all chronicled in a
People
magazine, and they figured that I would come across it sooner or later. My mom’s drug addiction wasn’t in that magazine, though, as it happened later. So her telling me about that was a bonus, I guess.

“Dalilah,” my father said. “You have to get over it. You have to set aside your fear of failure and realize that you have a gift. You have an amazing gift, no matter what that goddamned Henry Jacobs might have said.”

Henry Jacobs. Just hearing that name made my blood pressure shoot. He was the one who destroyed me. And, what’s more, I still believe that it was intention to do so. He didn’t do an honest review of my work. There is no way that what he wrote could have ever been considered to be honest. It was motivated by his daughter, who was pedestrian at best and couldn’t stand the fact that I was only 11 and was already attaining international acclaim. My Parisian showing at the
Magda Danysz
, which is one of the most renowned galleries in the world, was the final straw for the little witch.

But Henry Jacobs was like a Pied Piper. He was one of the most renowned critics on the
New York Times,
and when he wrote something, the sycophants usually followed. Suddenly, they started writing stories about how the Emperor really had no clothes. Me being the Emperor in this analogy. Before that goddamned
New York Times
review of my showing at
Luhring,
I was widely becoming known as the “Mozart of the art world.” Just as Mozart was composing music at the age of five, I began painting seriously at that same age. Early critics also stated that my work would be influential on the art world, much as Mozart’s music had been profoundly influential on the music world. I was hailed as a fearless pioneer, who was blazing a trail with my subject matter and my technique. Of course, any comparison to Mozart would have been overblown at best. Nobody would ever be able to compare to him, in any kind of artistic endeavor. The comparison was mainly drawn because I was such a prodigy.

After Henry Jacobs, though, it all went to hell. Suddenly, the critics decided that my work was stale and lifeless.
Prosaic and derivative. It was as if these other critics really took their cues from Jacobs the big dog, and if Jacobs decided that I was a fraud, then that became the conventional wisdom.

It was the first time that I had started having doubts about myself. I really was fearless before that Jacobs article. I took chances that other artists didn’t. I decided that I would turn the genre of urban expressionism on its head. That was what I was aiming for, and I felt unstoppable. But the cascades of poor reviews that happened after the Jacobs article made me want to crawl into a hole and die. And the word “fearless” was no longer a part of my vocabulary, and it was never again used to describe my work.

I still tried to paint, but I started to look at my own work as being stale and derivative. Prosaic and lifeless. And I would rip up every painting I attempted during this time. I hated every one of them. I believed the critics completely, and decided that I really didn’t have anything meaningful to say. I was still an artist, through and through. It was still the only thing that I had ever wanted. But I couldn’t do it anymore.

I finally just sighed, as my father continued to stare at me, his eyes sympathetic. My mother still looked pissed, I guess because she really couldn’t relate to me on the artistic level, unlike my dad.
As far as she was concerned, I was an impetuous little brat who had won the genetic lottery and still became a waste. That was pretty unforgivable to her, I would imagine. My dad could also relate to my being an intellectual prodigy, because he was, too. He knew that it wasn’t easy for me to truly fit into a world that was clearly stupid in so many ways. He understood how frustrating it was to be able to outthink 99.99% of the population on just about every issue.