Page 60 of Alone With You in the Ether

Regan wandered over to the file cabinets, opening them and skimming the tops of her fingers over the tabs. Madeline, the good daughter. Charlotte, the problem. Somewhere in here he had probably actually filed them. There probably existed a folder to represent her, or at least the version of her that the paperwork could prove. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we have here an over-privileged child, a child with too much imagination, a child who never learned to submit herself to the authority of reality, a child who became a woman who still hadn’t learned, and who would never learn, which gambles were worth it to take.

“This again,” Helen had said that evening, dark eyes flicking to Aldo.

“This again,” as if Rinaldo Damiani were simply a familiar antic. Just the latest piece of evidence in the file of what Regan was.

I tried to fuck him and he said no, Mom. He’s different, he doesn’t want me.

Of course he doesn’t want you, Charlotte. Look at your behavior, it’s reprehensible.

No, Regan thought, interrupting her own imagined conversation. No, you have it wrong, that’s not what Helen would say. She would say it about Marc, maybe. Helen thought of Marc as elevated somehow, an impressive file, his value recognizable even with her dislike of its contents. But no, Regan’s flaws were where Helen and Regan had always privately agreed, so what was more important was where they disagreed. “He’s worthless, he’s going nowhere, a bad influence on you”—as if Regan were still a child who could be influenced, a half-formed personality still vulnerable to change.

So no, Regan would say to her mother, I tried to fuck him and he said no, and Helen would say: Good, you’re better off, don’t ruin things with Marc, you’re only getting older and soon men will be looking for someone who isn’t you. Someone who’s maybe you, but younger, because wildness doesn’t age with grace.

Time, Regan thought suddenly,you-and-mestill somewhere in the fumble of her pulse. Time had haunted Helen the same way it had bewitched Aldo. Time had made a mockery of them both, in different ways.

Amid the warps and stammers of her thoughts, Regan turned to find a painting beside her on the wall. It was a rare decorative item that John Regan had chosen for himself, having purchased it from a friend. He’d been attracted to the austerity of it, he said. Regan had been six or seven at the time, listening to her father praise the painting the same way he praised Madeline, with pride and conviction and surety. His voice had said: This painting is good, this is an excellent painting, and in response, Regan had thought: Then I will be like that painting.

Now, as an adult with a degree in art history, Regan could see that the painting wasn’t anything especially impressive. It was by an artist who was quite famous now, which had been its appeal to begin with, who probably now earned a tidy sum for every commissioned work. This one, an early piece, would have only increased in value; John Regan, a master of investments, had somehow known enough to project what it could be worth.

Regan stepped towards it, eyeing the brush strokes. They weren’t elementary, exactly, but neither were they particularly emotional. There was no frantic passion, no compulsive need. This wasn’t a painting made to satisfy the heart, but rather to buy the groceries. It occurred to her that this was what her father had meant when he’d saidaustere.Regan, with her art historian eye, understood upon viewing the painting that he had meantsevere, distant, emotionless.Devoid of meaning, in her eyes.

Austere. It’s a cold word, Aldo had said once, the memory of it igniting her with a chill.

The subject matter was an architectural landscape. All hard lines, soulless verticality. This was beauty? Of course it was, she knew that. She should take her pills. Lines like that would be incredibly easy to recreate. Replication, redundancy, recidivism. The whole painting was nothing special, take your pills, Regan, (Are you happy with the space I took in your life?), it was nothing particularly impressive. How had her father loved that painting so much? How had he mistaken something so trite for brilliance? Take your pills, just take them, you’ve done it a million times, it means nothing and nothing will ache if you don’t want it to. This was nothing. This painting was nothing. His approval was nothing. Take your pills. He would miss genius if it slapped him across the face, if it backhanded him with malice, if it tore free from its constraints to defenestrate itself from the window, if it lay awake in his guest room for the entirety of the night. Are you taking your pills, Charlotte? Of course, Mother, fucking of course I am, and if I weren’t I would lie to you, because you already stole my capacity for truth. Because you needed me to be a lie, like you are. Of course you want everything to look tidy, you want everything in its place, you’re a forgery, a fake. Your name isn’t Helen. This painting isn’t beautiful. You have never understood beauty and all the worse for you, you never will.

Regan turned and walked out, moving intently now, her footsteps less a kiss this time than a clap of thunder as she went. She dug through the drawers of her bedroom, furiously searching until she found her acrylics, her canvases, every scrap that still remained of her prior self. She hurried to grab it all, guessing at color values and tucking things under her arms. She raced back to her father’s study, positioning herself across from the painting until Aldo’s face had finally eased from her mind.

God, this probably wasn’t even Europe; just a painting of a painting. A painting of a Google search, even, meant for nothing but to land in some rich white broker’s house in a room that no one ever saw. The artist had probably tested paint swatches on the margins of a past due notice for his rent.

Good, Regan determined. Better that way. Better that the work was empty to begin with, better for it to stay hollowed out and vacant. The less there was of it, the better. Easier to cure its ills.

She glanced down at the canvas, taking hold of the brush, and for half a second, held her breath.

Then, for the first time in three years, four months, and fifteen days, Charlotte Regan began to paint.

“Do me a favor,” she said,and Aldo looked up, surprised to find Regan in the doorway once again. This time, though, the sun was beginning to come in through the window, and he could see her clearly.

Could see clearly, too, that she hadn’t slept.

“Yes,” he said, “sure.”

“Can you drive?” she asked him, swiping the back of her wrist against her forehead. Her hair was pulled back in a graceless ponytail, wisps escaping from her temples. “Like, you know how, right?”

“Yes,” he said. Of course he did, he was from California where everyone drove, but she looked distracted. He didn’t blame her for letting that escape her attention.

“Can we leave now?”

“You don’t want to say goodbye?”

She shook her head. “I want to go back.”

“Okay,” he said.

They walked out to the garage, not saying another word. He got in the car. So did she. He glanced in the rearview mirror to notice the corner of something oversized and white poking up from where it had been placed inside a box, nestled in the backseat. He said nothing, and neither did she. She curled up in the passenger seat, resting her head against the window, and closed her eyes. Aldo started the ignition, pulling out of the drive and into the street, the little voice of her GPS instructing him. The sound of the turn signal was like a swinging pendulum, the silence emphatic and punctuated. He turned, she breathed. He thought about the cars on the road, the lines, and the precise moment he would go back to if he could.

She opened his door. He rose to his feet, took her in his arms, Don’t say a word Regan, kissed her, she shoved him away, You’re a pig, men are trash, it’s over.

She opened his door. He waited, she slid into bed with him, Aldo, Regan, they kissed, he slid his hand under the exquisite softness of her matching pajama shorts to find the exquisite softness of her skin, he parted her legs and she sighed, I want this, Do you want this?, Yes, I do, I really fucking do, she was gone in the morning, Can you drive me back?, back to her apartment, back to her boyfriend, back to her life, It was fun for a minute, Aldo, but now it’s over.

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