Page 11 of Love Me

I smiled, straightening up like everything was peachy. “I’m fine,” I said. “Great,” I squeaked. Orinda’s raised an arched eyebrow again. Her lips parted as she shrugged.

We walked into a bright white room with paintings on the wall, spotlights aimed in a traditional fashion. “This is the main gallery,” she said.

“Wasn’t this room painted black—” I started to ask, but had to stop before I finished my sentence. Talking was making my stomach feel worse.

“Katerina wanted the classic gallery,” Orinda said. She sniffed at the paintings on the wall as if they smelled of manure. “She’s an impeccable artist, but she’s too old fashioned. You’d think someone twenty years younger than me would be able to keep up with the times.”

I knew the sniffing was a gesture meant to show Orinda’s distaste, but all I could smell was Orinda’s perfume: flowers in bloom, itching through my nostrils, the petals falling down to my stomach. Orinda kept walking into another room, saying something about the next artist, Jonas, who was sharing the space with Katerina, but I zoned out. I barely inched along. I knew what was coming but I wanted to make it through the meeting, or at least the tour, before I escaped to the bathroom.

“Are you coming?” she asked. She clicked her stilt-like heels on the ground. I hobbled as quickly as I could manage. “Now Jonas—” We turned the corner into a room with jail bars lining the sides of the path, each of the sculptures—potato sacks bodies lying on the ground; wiry limbed figures leaning out between the bars; a tree that looked human, resting on a stool, staring into a mirror—were locked into cages with large metal keys hanging on the outside. “He presented the jail cell theory and I was absolutely taken with it. If I didn’t get bored so easily, I would recycle it.” She paused, turned towards me with a wink. “With permission, of course, my dear.”

I didn’t acknowledge the joke. I could barely move without feeling like my stomach was going to take its revenge on my esophagus. Orinda unlocked the door to the tree sculpture, and the loud clanging interrupted her lecture, but she continued without pausing. I was still trying to figure out how to listen politely and not to do anything stupid.

“It’s a living tree, you see,” she said. I didn’t need to see it; I could smell it. That earthy, muddy smell that snaked into my nostrils and only heightened Orinda’s perfume. I tried looking at the tree to see how Jonas had kept the plant alive and had molded it to do what he wanted, but Orinda had already moved out of the cell. I stayed put, staring at the tree, and not seeing anything.

“Riley?” Orinda asked. The loudness of her voice broke into my thoughts, jerking me out of my concentration, and that movement was the final straw.

All four saltines, six gulps of ginger ale, distorted and half-digested, turned yellow and reeking of bile, covered that poor human tree.

I covered my mouth and ran. I didn’t look at Orinda as I left. I moved as quickly as I could through the entryway. Orinda’s assistant glanced at me but went back to texting on her phone. I saw my portfolio sitting on the desk nearby, but I didn’t stop.

Owen’s driver’s smile disappeared when he saw how frantic I looked. He opened the car door quickly. “Home. Now. Please,” I said. Orinda’s thin figure marched towards the entrance, but by the time she got to the sidewalk, we were gone.

The driver glanced at me in the rearview mirror. I sighed, ignoring his questioning eyes, and turned my frame towards the window. People from all different walks of life wandered the streets, and I watched them, driving past, feeling like a total outsider. It wouldn’t be long before everyone in the local art community would know what I did at Winter Precipice Galleries. My moniker would be That Chick Who Threw Up On A Sculpture. I would be lucky if they remembered my name beyond that humiliating act.

I blinked the tears away, not wanting to cry in front of the driver. At least Owen would be at a business meeting tonight and I could cry on my own. And at least I felt better for the moment; the nausea had subsided until the next wave. There were some positives, weren’t there? But I knew that was a weak truth meant to make me feel less crappy. I wondered if I should go to the doctor or try to wait the bug out. But that was another hassle that I didn’t want to think about. Wait it out, I thought to myself. It’ll go away eventually.

I walked slowly into the condo and hobbled inside the studio. I scanned the room, taking in all of the partially finished projects: molded hands, more like stubs, in jade-colored clay; a blank-faced man in stone, looking down at his feet; a nearly completed shattered glass of a woman in the fetal position, clutching her stomach, as if she could feel the physical emotions growing inside of her. It had been hard to finish a piece since we had moved here. My mind buzzed with ideas, but my hands couldn’t concentrate on one piece long enough for it to take its full form.

I sat on the ground beneath Owen’s painting. It was all I could do not to vomit again. I wrapped my hands around my bent legs, getting into the fetal position myself. As I rested my head on my knees, the tears came, and this time, I didn’t stop them. I was tired of pretending like nothing bothered me. Tired of trying my damn hardest for a dream that escaped me, like sand falling between my fingertips. Tired of dealing with the nagging suspicions Owen’s ex-lovers enjoyed planting in my brain, making me feel like I needed to watch my back. I was tired of being strong, of not letting on that I had doubts about moving to the East Coast with Owen, that I was afraid he’d hurt me. That I wouldn’t be enough for him.

I wanted to crawl under a blanket and forget everything, but I couldn’t move. I stayed in the studio and sobbed until my eyes ran dry.

---