Three Chinese vases, each as big as a toddler. I wrapped my fingers around the iron bars of the fence to hold myself up.
None of it had happened. None.
It was Christmas. It was presents and snowflakes and cards with prints of Victorian skaters. I hadn’t fucked it up with Nick; he wasn’t gone. Maybe I hadn’t even met him yet. If the vases hadn’t been shattered, I hadn’t even met Polly yet. I was still nineteen. I was young. I was happy. I was still a kid.
What a fucked-up dream. What the fuck did I eat last night? I had curry or something or a street vendor sausage with hot sauce. Right? What a fucked-up…
I’d wait till they opened. I had to go in. Maybe I could put my hands on the vases, just like a stroke or a pet, and no one would notice. They wouldn’t have motion detectors, right? It’s not like paintings, right? Because there isn’t a guard on those stairs. And the vases aren’t that old. They’re not even that valuable. Just to me. I just wanted to touch them, like, to say “thank you.” I wanted to draw them. I didn’t have my sketchbook, but the front desk gives out these packets to kids who ask for them. They have paper and colored pencils and even a little sharpener. I needed to draw those vases.
I’ve been waiting, like, my whole teenaged life for this. For something to draw. For something that’s mine. For something that means something to me so much that when I draw it it’s more than a stupid still-life or landscape or portrait that everyone says is amazing just because it’s recognizable. Everything I’ve done up to now has been praised for looking like real life, but what good is it to just draw what everyone can see anyway? The whole point of art is that it shows the looker something that they wouldn’t have seen otherwise. But you can’t make that happen. You can’t make yourself have something to say.
There are pictures that I drew when I was little, in the margins of books. It took forever for the library to get complaints about them, because they looked really good. They looked like stuff that was supposed to be there. Finally the librarian turned into fucking Nancy Drew and figured out that it was me. She just looked at who had checked out all those books. And she arranged a conference with my parents and told them that I’m an artist. I’m a fucking artist. Because my faces look like faces. It’s such a fucking low standard. Are they good faces? Are they interesting faces? Do they tell you anything or make you feel something? Do they do something?
This librarian told my parents that I’m an artist because why? Because I draw hands with five fingers each, and I know the difference between an eye in front view and an eye in profile? Big fucking deal. An artist draws a face that stops you. Fuck, an artist doesn’t even need a face. There’s a Degas in the Fitz that’s just a hand, a sculpture of a hand. How would you feel if you held your hand like that, cocked back with crooked fingers? If you put your hand like that, everything else follows: You’re angry. All he needed was a hand to fully depict anger. That’s what an artist does. He takes something completely inadequate-like a single body part if you’re Degas. And you make-what? You make something that stops people. Something that has more in it than can fit. Art is a fucking clown car. Right? It’s something with more in it than anyone else would be able to fit.
So this librarian called me an artist. And people shouldn’t be allowed to throw words like that around. Because she didn’t know. She didn’t know what that was supposed to mean. She just meant that I don’t suck, that I’d drawn physically recognizable humans. She didn’t have any standard higher than that. People like that shouldn’t be teachers. Because people like me get told things and get the really wrong idea.
Up until this moment, I didn’t really know if I was an artist. I had all these skills, but no vision. And now, right in front of me through that window, I had vision. It was this physical scene, just a stupid still life, right? But it was relief. It was profound fucking relief. And youth. And future. And Christmas. It’s fucking Christmas on that shelf. Shit, I had tears on my face. They landed on the front of my jacket, and melted away in an instant like snow in England. Snow in beautiful fucking England. I was really here, and nothing bad had happened yet.
I didn’t know if I could wait. If I’d had chalk I would have happily drawn on the sidewalk.
When I looked up again, there she was: Polly. What was she doing here? She doesn’t start until next fall. She must be looking at the colleges.
She passed me by, without acknowledgment. I let out my breath. See? She didn’t know me. She didn’t know me yet.
I turned and watched her keep going, toward St. Peter’s Terrace. She must be checking out Peterhouse accommodation. That would make sense for a prospective student. It all made sense.
A poster farther down the fence reared up into view. It was hanging there, but not just hanging: It intruded and don’t ask me how that works. I’m just telling you what was in front of me. It was a kind of panel where they announce new exhibits. I thought, Someone beat me to it. Someone else is excited about these vases besides me, because there they are.
It wasn’t a drawing. It was a photograph. The Fitz was advertising the vases’ restoration.
The image was a close-up, bigger than life-sized. I put my hand on it. I looked as close as I could, and I found them: the cracks. The picture was so real you could even find the cracks.
I think I stood there forever. I don’t think my blood even moved around my body. Everything just stopped. Even Polly must have stopped because when I looked away like a million hours later she was still just half a block from me.
If the vases had been smashed and repaired, if I did know her, if everything had happened just like I’d dreamed it or nightmared it or just plain fucked it up, then who does she think she is that she can walk by me like we don’t know each other? Who does she think she is?
I caught up with her in just a few stretched-out strides because I was mad. Anger makes people bigger, faster, longer-legged. My huge hand and long arm pulled her back by her collar. Her coat had a fur collar on it, fake and feathery. My hand plunged into the tickly mass to get hold of the wool neckline underneath. I pulled hard, to make her back up and choke. The coat was buttoned up around her neck and I pulled.
Then I let go so she could turn around. She looked indignant and I had on this innocent face. Her expression backed down, like she must have been mistaken. Like I hadn’t choked her for a second. Ha ha. It’s like-it’s like, who wouldn’t want to play with that? I wanted to smack her on the face and then say I hadn’t, just to see if she’d take it. Maybe she’d even apologize for the misunderstanding.
“What the hell?” she demanded, rubbing her neck. “What’s wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with you, walking right past me? I’m here, you know? I’m right here!” I waved my hands in her face. “I didn’t think Gretchen’s blindness was catching…”
The skin around her eyes was dark, like she’d slept in mascara. But she doesn’t usually wear makeup. “Liv, don’t you know? Gretchen’s dead. She’s dead,” she said.
“I know,” I said. I know. I know. I know. I know. The vases are cracked, Polly is here, Gretchen is dead. But what about Nick? If everything’s happened, then why isn’t Nick gone? Why did I see him in a car on Chesterton Road?
“I saw Nick,” I said.
And, just like that, there was this tapping sound behind me. It sounded like Gretchen’s cane, tapping on the steps of the Fitzwilliam. I ignored it.
“Oh my God, what? Where?” Polly said. Her face didn’t know how to look. It waited to hear whether I saw him dead on the road or on the news or buying a cup of coffee or in my own fucking head.