There is nothing wrong with UC Berkeley or wherever but there is a lot wrong with living at home. And a lot wrong with having your college money go to a toddler’s preschool. There’s no way I was going to go with Mom to family therapy, and spend my life shopping at strip malls and stuck in endless traffic. There’s nothing aesthetic or bearable about any of it.
You’ll notice he hadn’t asked me to live with him. I wouldn’t, but he was supposed to ask.
I’d first started painting because I liked being in charge of something, some small thing: this square of canvas. I liked being able to make it whatever I think it ought to be. And beautiful-I could make something beautiful. It could hang in a world of chain restaurants and giant parking lots and roads as wide as the Mississippi and clogged to a standstill, but be, itself, beautiful. I did it out of desperation.
Now, across the ocean, I’m feeling for the first time like I’m not gasping for beauty anymore. It’s here. I’ve found my inspiration here, and, instead of rebelling against my surroundings, I’m being fed by them.
He wanted to take that away from me.
Do you know that the British students pay hardly any tuition? Same for the Europeans. But everyone else really has to cough it up.
And do you know how Polly manages being a foreigner here, with her dad in prison? Her whole town has taken up a collection for her tuition and living expenses.
Do you see the difference? I can’t get money out of my dad, and she gets money out of everyone she’s ever known. People like to take care of her. It’s that weak thing she has going on. I’m too strong. I come off that way. People think I don’t need, and when I reveal that I do, like with Nick, when I make myself vulnerable, it freaks people out. It doesn’t fit with what they’ve thought about me.
People want consistency over depth, which is bullshit.
My first plan didn’t have any stealing in it at all. I wasn’t going to be able to continue at Cambridge, that was clear, but I didn’t have to go home. I had already set up with Therese, another Art History major, to spend the Christmas holiday with her family in Switzerland. The colleges rent our rooms to conferences outside of term, so I’d had to find somewhere to go. And I did. It was going to be amazing.
And I thought, Okay, I’ll look for some kind of under-the-table au pair job while I’m there. I’ll set up a real life. I’ll paint. It’ll be even better than Cambridge.
There was time in that plan to make a change, like turning a slow barge.
So that proves that I’m adaptable. I’d already come up with that plan and the letter had only arrived that morning.
Then, after Peter ran after Polly outside of the Sedgwick, and I’d jaywalked across Pembroke Street, I saw Therese turn the corner out of Free School Lane. She was with someone who had to be her older sister. They looked just alike except the sister was a little taller. They had bags from the haremlike custom perfume shop.
“Oh, Liv!” Therese called. We fell into step together toward Emmanuel College. She introduced her sister Annick, and I said something about looking forward to the holidays.
“Yes, I know, but there’s a little problem,” Therese said in her precise, pretty accent. “You see, our cousins have invited us to meet them in the Pyrenees. To ski. I’ve missed them so much since leaving home that I really can’t say no. It wouldn’t be home at Christmas without them.”
“That sounds wonderful!” I said. “Wow!”
I’d never gone skiing before. But I knew it was this amazing rush. It would be like all the good part of falling-the whoosh, the freedom-without a crash at the bottom or the jarring restraint of a bungee. You could, if the mountain was high enough, and you made wide enough S curves, fall for a very, very long time. The only maybe-problem would be equipment rental fees. Were we staying at a lodge or at someone’s house? Would everyone bring their own skis and could I borrow? I had to hammer all this out.
They stopped short of Emmanuel and veered into The Rat and Parrot. I followed them into the pub, because I had to. Details needed sorting. I didn’t have any cash on me, but I figured it was okay to sit with them so long as they ordered something. They each got a glass of white wine; I asked for water. Therese and Annick talked family stories while we waited at the bar for our drinks. I tried to memorize the names they used-Henri, Luc, Paul. All their cousins were boys. Maybe if I flirted the right way they’d pay for my meals. “One pound sixty,” the man behind the bar said, pushing my glass toward me. He’d poured my water from a bottle, not from out of the tap. He’d put a lemon slice in it.
Therese and Annick clinked money onto the bar and took their drinks toward a table. I had exactly one pound in my pocket, just that one thick coin.
Everything froze. Everything in the arrangement of figures in this scene drew the eye to my glass.
I laid my coin on top of theirs. They’d overpaid with a round number, either to tip or just because they didn’t want to waste time getting change.
He gave me 10p change from the whole transaction. I wrapped my fist around the skinny silver disc and held it tight.
“Do your cousins bring their own skis? Will I need a special outfit?” I asked, joining them at the table. I had to get practical. I had to figure out what to borrow. My friend Gina skis…
“No, you don’t understand,” Therese said. Expensive water sloshed over the side of my glass when I lifted it for a sip. “It’s my cousins’ invitation. It’s not my place to extend…”
“I know that,” I said, like they were slow.
They looked at each other.
“I don’t even ski,” I clarified.
She and her sister smiled. “Then you won’t be sad!”
I stayed to finish my water. I had, after all, paid for it. I listened to their stories and brainstormed about Christmas presents.
They walked off with linked arms. That’s a European girl thing. Sometimes you see French girls hold hands. Their small posh shopping bags bounced off their thighs as they walked.
I had to be out of my room in a week.
I wanted to be like Gauguin. I wanted to have an adventure and paint it, paint from some wonderful life. I didn’t need to study for that; I just needed to live it. I couldn’t be satisfied with painting in defiance of banality anymore. I needed to be surrounded by beauty-not luxury, but beauty.
It would be possible to make one great gesture and get away with it. It would be possible to take enough to get somewhere good.
I had to try. What kind of a person would I be if I didn’t try?
I think about Gauguin a lot. He wasn’t nice to his family, but he was important to the world. I think about that for obvious reasons. And when he ran away, it wasn’t cowardly. He was running to something, not just away. That’s a beacon to me.
When we still had the money-we really had had all that money once-we spent a weekend in San Francisco, me and Mom. Dad was working. We ate at crowded restaurants, and stayed in a boutique hotel. We went to an exhibition at the MOMA about the effect of photography on Impressionism. There were examples of how photography became part of how some painters worked, like if they used a live model or a picture of one, and how they came to see discrete moments within action, like the breakdown of the motion of a galloping horse. But the best part, to me, was how they photographed each other, and how they experimented with that. These painters playing with their new toy had a grand time. They created. And they horsed around.
The photo I most remember was of Gauguin, in someone’s house or studio. The label called it “Gauguin playing the harmonium.” And so he was. But the label neglected to note the hilarious: Gauguin wasn’t wearing any pants. I mean that in the American way, not the British way. He had boxer shorts on, but no trousers, and yet he was fully, formally dressed on top. It was hilarious. It was a moment between friends, nothing sexual but simply casual. Maybe he didn’t want his trousers to get wrinkled. Maybe they were itchy. The museum label was disorienting; was I the only one who noticed? Was everyone else, including the curator, thinking, That’s just Gauguin. He’s so often unclothed while playing the harmonium that I don’t even notice anymore. I swear I was the only one who laughed out loud the whole time we were in that gallery. I felt isolated, but superior too; was no one else actually looking?