was because taking on the guise of a long dead hero was Michael’s only means of coping with reality; i.e., as a teenager he was John Lennon. It occurred to me on more than one occasion that if he dumped the disguise he might actually write something truly profound.
But then who was I to come down on my ex? At least he still worked at his art. I’d all but abandoned any hope I ever had for making it as a world class painter. Given it up for the position of studio director for the Albany Art Center.
Sitting myself on the end of the couch, I took a small drink.
“You want to read me something?” I exhaled.
He shook his head and stood up, his five-feet eight inches staring me in the face.
“Book isn’t ready for tasting. Another week of slow, steady nail biting, then maybe.”
“Tell me again why I allow you to use my place as a writing studio?”
“You already know the answer to that.”
He was right of course. I knew the answer all too well. The unmentionable truth: since our thirty-six month marriage folded, Michael, being perpetually and rather hopelessly unemployed, ‘Hemingway never took a job!’, had moved back in with his parents. As a result, he felt far more comfortable biting the nail in my two bedroom apartment.
Why?
Because no way he could write with his retired mother and father hanging over his shoulder forever asking him, “When are you going to find gainful employment?”
But then, I think there was more to it than that. At the risk of tossing him a compliment, Michael was not a failure as a novelist. His first published novel, The Hounds of Heaven, received rave reviews. It was an auspicious start for the young novelist. Problem was, Michael decided for himself that he was now in line for the Pulitzer, which gave him the right to drink and snort away whatever money he made in advances and royalties.
The ultimate result?
An extended bender landed him unknowingly in Key West passed out on the steps of Hemingway’s house where he was diagnosed with nervous exhaustion. It was then I decided, “Enough is too much.” One month in a Poughkeepsie institution, Four Winds, the dissolution of our marriage and one personal bankruptcy later, Michael went right back to biting the nail as though he’d never skipped a beat. While he still imbibed in a daily beer or two, his drinking was kept very much in check. Usually by yours truly.
Back to my original question: why did Michael insist on working at my place? Despite his setbacks, he was determined to be a bestseller. That meant a return to his roots, going back to what made him a success in the first place-writing in the presence, or proximity anyway, of me. And even though we were no longer husband and wife, if I could act as some sort of human good luck charm for him, then what harm could it possibly do?
Besides, when Michael was happy, so was I.
“Where’d you get the cool painting?” he asked, the Hemingway guise thankfully abandoned.
I turned, locking my eyes onto the two-by-two canvas leaned up against the bookcase.
“Franny gave it to me.”
Michael’s eyes went wide.
“Franny,” he said, like a question. “I thought his stuff sold in the tens of thousands of dollars?”
I nodded. “Strange isn’t it,” I agreed. “He could easily get ten or fifteen thousand for it from some collector down in Chelsea, yet he just gives it to me out of the blue.”
Setting his Pepsi down, Michael got up and walked the few steps to the bookcase. He picked the painting up by the borders and, as if it were a mirror, gazed directly into it, studying it at eye level under the light of the stand up lamp.
“Ten or fifteen grand, huh?” he posed in a scheming voice. “If only writing were that easy. Looks like some kindergartner on a sugar high went to town on somebody’s landscape with a set of Sharpies.”
That’s when it hit me.
Getting up from the couch arm, I set my Pepsi onto the coffee table, taking my place beside my ex. The painting was positioned between us, below the lamp light, in Michael’s hands.
“Can I ask you a question? Get an honest opinion?”
Although we were standing shoulder to shoulder, I could see out the corner of my eyes that Michael was smiling, obviously pleased that I’d chosen to tap into his cultural and artistic expertise.
“When you look into this piece, when you eye it directly in the center, do you notice anything odd?”
He took a moment to gaze at the painting’s center point, alternating between pulling the canvas closer to his face and pushing it away for a more peripheral view.
He bit his bottom lip.
“Like I said, some sugared up, psychotic five year old and a Sharpie.”
My eyes laser beamed on the bright red, green and yellow pastel dashes and the pastoral landscape behind them. I picked out the word ‘Listen’ painted in tan letters.
“You don’t see a word spelled out in the center?” I pressed.
“What word?”
I reached out with index finger extended and spelled out the word.
L-I-S-T-E-N.
He bit his bottom lip again, making a funny light-bulb-shining-over-his-head squint.
“You see ‘Listen,’” he said. “I see ‘S-E-X.’”
There you have one of the essential differences between Michael and me.
He laughed.
I didn’t.
“I’m serious. You don’t see ‘Listen’ at all?”
“It’s not that I don’t see it, Bec. Because when you map it out like that I definitely see the word or at least a word that resembles ‘Listen’.” He paused, chomping down once more on the lip.
“But?” I said, pushing, pressing.
“But I also see the word ‘Sex.’”
“Michael.”
“Hear me out, honey. The point I’m trying to make is that this is the work of an autistic genius who, it pains me to admit, is one-hundred times more successful at his art than you and me combined.”
The ex was making sense. Beginning to make sense, that is.
“Your point?”
“It’s like one of those tests the shrinks gave me night and day down in Poughkeepsie. The Horseshack test. You know, flashcards with splotches of black ink on them. You’re supposed to offer up an immediate interpretation of them; find some meaning, assign some sense to the splotch.”
“Rorschach Test,” I corrected.
“Whatever. I just think that what we have here is the same or at least a similar situation.”
I nodded, even though I wanted to tell him that there was nothing subjective about the word I saw in the center of Franny’s painting. But then maybe Michael had a point. Maybe the word I saw was a simple case of my interpretation and my interpretation alone. It wasn’t like I had been looking or searching for the word when my eyes first glimpsed the image. Franny hadn’t pointed out anything specific to me. I immediately saw the word and since then, I hadn’t been able to put it out of my mind. And what about the artist giving it the title of ‘Listen’? Was that just a coincidence or suggestive reasoning?
I turned and went back to the couch.
Michael set the painting back down, resting it gently back up against the bookcase.
“Ten grand,” he said, a little under his breath-a little too under his breath.
He brought his right hand up to his face, began dropping one finger after other, all the time whispering near silent calculations to himself.
“What if we go on e-Bay-”
“Michael,” I spat, cutting him off. “Don’t even think about it.”
“Just a suggestion,” he smirked, eyes wide.
“Here’s a suggestion,” I said, gripping the empty Pepsi can. “Get a job.”
