Maddie's Tattoo

MADDIE’S TATTOO

a short story

by Katie Kacvinsky

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MADDIE’S TATTOO

My mom and I invented a game we like to play called Switch. It’s where we look at old photo albums and she tells me what the world was like when she was a teenager. I close my eyes while she talks and imagine I’m walking in her world, inside the clothing boutiques that use to exist before 3-D online dressing rooms were designed, and all the real clothing stores closed down. I imagine I’m pressing my hands over stacks of wool sweaters. I’m trying on the soft scarves and hats. I can smell the leather boots and shoes. In my mind, I’m there. But then I open my eyes and I’m here. That’s becoming a problem lately. The more we play Switch, the more I want to be
there.

The last time we played, my
mom told me when she was fourteen years old, her favorite thing to do was visit art museums. All I knew of art museums was they were drafty, ostentatious buildings people visited before tours went virtual.

“
If they were so amazing, why did they all close down?” I asked my mom. Just like real clothing stores, music stores, book stores, movie theaters, and bakeries. Gone.

“
Our idea of amazing has changed,” she told me.

But my mom
claims art has energy. She says it has texture and life. She says when you look at art, it forces you to look inward, and that a painting is a lot like a mirror. She is so good at seeing life, at the way things breath and move and how it can change depending on your mood.

I wanted to do more than hear my mom’s
stories; I wanted to experience them for myself. So, I started to search for online tours.

I never knew that taking one
class would change my life. The most insignificant decisions can have the most significant impacts. That is the scary thing about choice. Choice is a methodical genius hidden behind the face of a child. We think it’s all fun and innocent until we realize the force of our decisions. Choice is our life compass. It guides our every direction.

***

I signed up for an Art History class made up of twenty-five Digital School students from Oregon. It was the only online art tour I could find, and you were only permitted access to the museum one time.

The morning of the tour,
I signed in on my bedroom computer. I was still wearing my pink and gray stripped pajamas, and Baley, my chocolate lab, curled up next to my feet. I pressed my toes underneath her warm fur, like a heated pillow. I was ready to tour a museum.

When I clicked, ENTER, m
y bedroom walls transformed into the front entrance of the Art Institute of Chicago, a historical art museum that closed down after M28. Two bronze lion statues flanked each side of the entrance steps, like royal guards. I gazed up at the building and felt movement. The high, arched windows, and open verandas gave the building a sense of flight, as if it was hovering over the ground. Just as I was admiring the architecture, the sound of rain pelted around me and the wind blew in gusts. An online guide rushed me through the front doors.

Inside
I virtually stumbled into a dozen other students, all cartoon animations, waiting in the lobby. Chat forums immediately cascaded over my wallscreens like a matrix code. I used my finger to move my icon next to the mass of pixilated images. Once we began walking our cartoon bodies dropped off to the bottom of the screen, where they became blinking icons we could message.

I looked
over my shoulder as we passed a virtual international café. All of the entrees on the menu screen were written in languages that I couldn’t understand. It was strange that a virtual café was even part of the museum.

Our guide escorted us
into the first exhibit on the tour, featuring paintings by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Marcel Duchamp, and Salvador Dalí.

When
the paintings filled my bedroom screens, I stood up to get a closer look. I stopped in front of Picasso’s painting, titled
Girl Before Mirror
. The picture showed a young woman, with blond hair, looking in a mirror only to see an old, disjointed, disfigured woman looking back. I stared at the girl and felt some of the disturbing emotions in the piece flood through me. Maybe she was ashamed. Or maybe she didn’t like the person she saw in the reflection. Maybe she was unhappy, strong on the outside but crumbling under the surface.

I shrugged off the unsettling feeling
radiating from the painting and moved on to the next print, Picasso’s famous piece,
The Old Guitarist
. I studied an old man, painted in tones of blue, sunken to the ground and clutching a guitar. It made me think about loss. His body looked broken. His angles were off; his back and neck seemed detached. The only other color in the print was the brown guitar he embraced as if he was holding his exposed heart and the instrument was helping to pump blood through his body.

I looked over at the chat forums
running across the bottom of my screen like flowing traffic. My classmates argued over Picasso’s best style: Modernism, Symbolism, Realism, Surrealism, or the Cuban movement. I was the only student who wasn’t participating in the discussion. I was already an outsider.

I
examined a painting by Dali, called
Scream.
The colors and ghostly portrayal of a nightmare was so loud, I could almost hear a scream wailing out of the canvas. I could feel the heat of the fiery red sky and the unstable ground rolling under my feet.

I backed
my icon away from the haunting prints and headed into the lobby as if I needed fresh air. I roamed toward the front entrance where there was an online souvenir shop. The shop displayed gifts you could order: digital prints for phones and flipsreens, t-shirts, bags, even bedspreads and curtains featuring your favorite paintings. I laughed at the idea of having
Scream
as my window curtains. That would be a pleasant image to wake up to.

I
moved inside the international café, across from the souvenir shop. The white chairs next to the tables were shaped like flat cup saucers and looked about as comfortable to sit on. Everything in the room was straight and angular, as if I was inside a modern painting of different shades of white. I was the only color. Even the French, Spanish and Italian entrees were written in a grayish-white colored font.

The rain, the wind, the depressing images, a
nd a café we couldn’t use. It didn’t make sense. It was as if Digital School didn’t want us to enjoy this experience. They wanted this history lesson to be one more reason why the world we lived in today was so superior to the past.

I hear the
Soupe à l'Oignon is good
, an icon bounced up to me.
You know, if you like eating air.

I
glanced at the yellow icon, an image shaped like a chameleon’s head. It stood next to my icon, a green, smudged handprint as if someone dipped their hand in bowl of paint and pressed it on the screen.

“
Thanks, I’ll try it
,
” I mocked, and my words were translated into a digital message that showed up in the chat space. “What’s the point of this cafe?” I asked.

I
t’s part of the art history lesson
, the icon answered.

The café that surrounded me summed up
DS. I was there, but I wasn’t it. You could see anything but you experienced nothing. You could order anything, but you never tasted it. A critical sensory was blocked. I didn’t share this opinion in the open chat space.

Did Picasso scare you off?
the chameleon asked. A warning censor turned on inside of me. This person had been watching me during the tour. I clicked on the icon and it gave me a brief description: Male, DS-4 student, two grades higher than me. He lived in Corvallis, Oregon, the same town as me. Usually students offered main courses of interest, social groups or additional profile links, but his information was scarce.

“
Do you like Picasso?” I asked, and threw the question back to him, like passing a ball.

Yeah, I do,
he said.
Not that I want to order his prints as my bedspread anytime soon.

I smiled.
“He’s messed up,”
I said.

He makes you think,
he said.
You haven’t even seen his crazy pieces yet.

             
“
I don’t think I want to,” I said. My mind was still swollen with feelings after the prints I just observed.

Picasso’s a heavy artist to jump into
, he said.
That’s one thing I don’t like about this tour. It’s like they want to scare you away from liking art without giving it a chance.

I narrowe
d my eyes at his statement and felt my censor kick in again.

             
“This soup really is delicious,” I said. Keep the conversation light. Always keep it light. Turn everything into a joke. After all, this is all entertainment, no reason to let it bring me down.

You should start with
something lighter
, he offered.
Come on
, he said.
Did you look at the Impressionists yet?

I
moved my icon into the hallway and followed him into the Impressionist exhibit. His icon drifted away and gave me space.

I
walked around a few Monet’s and it wasn’t the color that stopped me, or the way the artist played with lighting and movement. It was the people that caught my attention. The outdoor scenes showed people together, enjoying each other’s company. They were laughing and touching—they weren’t guarded or suspicious.

I
stood in front of a painting of two girls outside, picking flowers together in a meadow. Their cheeks were rosy from the fresh air and exercise. Sunlight reflected off of their glowing eyes. I smirked at the unrealistic setting, as fictional to my world as a fairytale.

I
walked over to Monet’s painting
Bathers at La Grenouillère
. It featured a dozen paddle boats resting in a lake harbor and blurry images of people dotted the beach. The more I tried to peel my eyes away, the harder my eyes caught images: the color of the water, the energy, the people, the light. The details were blurry, so I couldn’t quite see any of the people. It was like looking at a dream.

I frowned at the fictitious world on the canvas.
These paintings were almost more depressing than Picasso’s because they showed me a world I wanted to jump into. Something inside of me broke open in that moment and I felt my mind stretching, pulling, and standing on its tip toes to peer over the edge.

They yellow
chameleon ventured over to me.

Bored?

“Not exactly,” I said.

Moved beyond expression?

I smiled at the screen.

It’s a lot to take in,
he said.
It can make you feel like you’re sinking.

I shook my head. It was
more like coming up for air. But I hesitated to think out loud.

“
This wasn’t what I was expecting,” I finally said.

What did you come here to see?
he asked, and I thought about his question.

“
Something real,” I said. “I just wanted to see something real.”

I looked at the
other student’s feedback.
Beautiful comparison, so lifelike, impressive depth and color, excellent representation.
But it was all subjective. None of the reactions were personal. Was I the only one personally affected by these paintings? What was wrong with me?

You don’t think any of this can exist?
he asked.

“
I don’t know,” I said, and he caught me trying to play it safe.

Don’t say what you think you should say. Say what you want to say
, the yellow icon dared me. His dare was like a push.

“
It’s so fake,”
I confessed and my voice was angrier than I intended. I was relieved he couldn’t hear me. Our voices give too much away. “It’s all a lie. This place is all One. Big. Lie.”

Picasso said that art is a lie that makes us realize truth,
he said.

I looked at
the words he wrote and reread them and reread them again.

“
You believe that?” I asked.

It’s why I’m here.

I looked back at Monet’s boat painting and shook my head. I didn’t see any truth. “There might as well be fairies flying through the scene.”

I
smiled at the thought and it gave me an idea. I copied the painting into one of my design programs and used my finger and a paint software to draw three unicorns prancing over the scene. They leaped over the boats, and their horns molted with glitter dust. I added some dramatic golden sun rays shooting down from the sky to finish off the fantasy world.

I saved the photo and pasted it into the virtual tour. The system blocked my entry, but I overrode it by adding an advertisement function, which
sites always accept. They won’t turn down a chance to make money. I accepted the fee, terms and use, and there, plastered over the original Monet, was my unique interpretation.