IT WAS THE LAST week of September, still hot and muggy, the city sour with humidity, when the magazine piece came out. Simon sat in the apartment, stunned, unable to open the issue of Time Out magazine he held in his hands. Stella had told him the interview was going to be in it, but he hadn’t quite believed it, even when she had excitedly shown him the proofs. How had it happened that Stella got famous so fast? Simon knew that in the hospital she was the notorious coma woman who had awakened scribbling circles. But real artistry and fame—that was something different.
Stella no longer had time for anything other than painting. She didn’t have to go to the park anymore, because she now had so many commission requests that she was forced to turn some down. She traveled all over the city, to the Upper East and West Sides, to NoHo, to Tribeca; sometimes she found work in her own neighborhood in Chelsea. A few times people came to her, and then Simon, in the other room, would hear them talking: I heard you were the one who noticed that my best friend’s little girl was depressed. She’s better now, on medication. Or: I heard you painted my friend and then told her that she should leave her relationship. And she did and she’s so much happier. How did you know?
“I just feel what’s going on in a person while I’m painting them,” Stella said. “There’s no magic about it.”
How could Simon begrudge her this sudden success? She was so excited about art. She jumped out of bed every morning, anxious to start working. She painted people and tortoises and houses and anything someone wanted. It was a talent, as startling to Stella as it was to everybody else. “Sometimes I’m terrified it’s going to go away,” Stella told him, and while Simon assured her it wouldn’t, a part of him hoped that it would. But he could never tell her that.
Next the New York Times did a full-page story on her, including a photograph of her looking beautiful and shy, dressed in black jeans and a black sweatshirt, a pad of paper in her hands, her hair a bright squiggle of gold with a big sable paintbrush stuck in her curls like a hair clip. In the photo, Stella seemed full of doubt and wonder, as if she couldn’t see why a newspaper would be interested in her. “All that happened is my brain rewired,” she was quoted as saying. “The temporal lobe has to do with inhibitions, with freeing up creativity. Maybe that was what happened when I was in a coma. And suddenly I could draw.” The word about her spread further. She was photographed by the “Humans of New York” guy, who told her he had been looking for her, something he didn’t usually do. He spoke to her for a half hour. She told him she didn’t know why she did what she did, only that she had to, and she was sure there was a scientific explanation for it. “Mystery brain,” she said, tapping her head. “For now, anyway.” The interview made her sound sort of profound, and her entry on the Humans Facebook page had received over twenty thousand likes, and many more comments, including more than a few requests to buy her dinner or have sex with her. Stella didn’t answer any of these messages but not because she was rude or overwhelmed. She simply didn’t know what would be the right thing to say.
If it had happened to Simon, he would have been bursting with joy. He would have bought twenty copies of every interview, every article, and spread them all over the apartment. But Stella just seemed embarrassed by the attention. She was happy to talk about her art but not about fame. She wouldn’t even say the word. Maybe he was a little jealous, too, because when was the last time anyone had clamored for his talent? He knew what fame could do. He had almost tasted it.
Simon wondered if Stella actually needed him anymore. She seemed to. She slept with one arm across his body, practically pinning him down. She lit up when she saw him, but she still seemed to be whirling in a place where he couldn’t reach her, circling further and further away from him.
The song “Nowhere Man” popped into his head, but he wasn’t going to feel sorry for himself. This wasn’t about him. Good for Stella. He hoped she would win prizes, that she’d have what he never could, that rocket ship of fame. That was what you did when you cared about someone—you wanted the best for them.
He went out, walking against the flow of people. He wasn’t planning it, but then, there he was, at Libby’s building. She buzzed him in and was standing at the door with the Times in her hand. “I know,” she said quietly. He leaned against her, feeling the heat radiating from her into him, like a transfusion.
He told himself it was just a way to cope, to be a fellow survivor of what had happened with Stella. That was why he began to see Libby more and more. And Stella simply wasn’t home as much anymore. She was at other people’s homes, painting them, or at the art store, fired up about a new kind of oil paint, a new shade of ochre she had found. All her clothes had bits of paint on them, her little summer dresses, her jeans, her tops. “I’m a marked woman,” Stella said, laughing.
Simon and Libby didn’t talk about Stella when they were together. He knew Libby and Stella had lunch every week, but Stella didn’t really mention those lunches to him either. When Simon went over to Libby’s, they sat curled on her couch and talked about movies they were watching or books they were both reading. They talked a little about their childhoods, about growing up, and sometimes, they talked about nothing at all but just held hands. They kissed and then got up and tumbled into bed, and when Simon left, the door quietly shutting behind him, everything felt recharged again.
Stella was in her own private world now, Simon thought, but he and Libby were, too, and it was saving all of them.
At least for now.
USUALLY STELLA WELCOMED the change of seasons, but here it was October and still so relentlessly muggy. Coming home from Chelsea Market (where she had intended only to browse, not buy), she found herself balancing two paper bags, one of them stealthily ripping on the bottom and making her wish she had brought the little red cart she sometimes used for groceries, which was both adorable to look at and a pain to maneuver. She hoisted the bag up higher, cradling it underneath with her sweaty forearm. She caught the scent of the ripe pears she’d bought, and it made her feel better.
She had taken on a new commission that morning, a woman in her seventies who said she had fallen in love for the first time. A radio show recording had followed that. And now that shopping was done, she’d go home to celebrate the day. She’d get out of this sulky heat and into the air-conditioning.
The radio show was going to air at the end of the month. The interviewer had called to tell her, his voice bright with excitement, but Stella had just shrugged. She didn’t really think about fame, though no one really believed her. “Oh, come on,” the radio guy had said. “You don’t find this exciting? It doesn’t make you feel like you’ve been bumped up the ladder of life or something?”
“What ladder?” Stella said. “I just love painting. People knowing about what I do helps me be able to do what I love.”
The radio guy had laughed. “Sure,” he said. He didn’t believe her, but she knew it was the truth.
Libby and her other friends were happy for her, though most of them didn’t want her to paint them. “I don’t want to know anything deep about me!” Debra said. “Let me stay the happy idiot that I am!” Stella laughed. She wouldn’t push, no more than she had pushed Libby or Simon. She knew that it wouldn’t work if the person was resistant. They’d just hide whatever was deep inside of them. Simon didn’t even like looking at the paintings she did, and at first she didn’t know why. “They aren’t good?” she said.
“They’re brilliant,” he said quietly, and then she knew what the answer was for him.
Fame. It was always fame. She knew how much he wanted—no, needed—it. But fame for Simon was something different than it was for her. For Simon, it was a way of telling his father “I matter” and showing him how everyone else thought so, too. For her, it just meant she could do more of what she loved without worrying about money. It meant she could make people happy and be happier herself.
“Does this publicity make you feel funny?” she asked Simon, because she didn’t want to use the word jealous.
“I’m proud of you,” he said.
“It’s really just noise. Flavor-of-the-moment stuff. It doesn’t mean anything,” she told him.
“Yes, it does,” he said.
She began to feel more and more lonely around him, because now there were things she couldn’t talk about, things she had to shield him from. At dinner out one night, a man came up to the table, and she saw Simon’s face when the man gushed about Stella and her artwork. Stella cut him off as gently as she could. “Thank you, we’re eating now,” she said, and the man apologized and left, but Simon stayed quiet for the rest of the meal.
Keep up with me. That’s what she thought when they had their argument before she went into coma and changed. She thought it now, too. She urged him to write more songs, to drive for Lyft less, but he seemed unmoored. Sometimes she tried to hold him tightly, but she always felt him tensing up, and she let him go.
Walking home with the groceries, she thought about seeing Simon later. Tonight she would light candles. She’d put on music and the blue satin slip dress Simon loved, and this time she’d really, really try to make everything beautiful. She thought of a magazine her mom used to read, because there was a series in it, Can This Marriage Be Saved? A marriage counselor would weigh in, and 98 percent of the time the marriage could survive, with just a few minor adjustments.
I can do this. I can do this.
Stella’s steps bounced as she turned the corner.
She passed the little Clement Clarke Moore Park, the whole area already dimming into twilight, and there, by a bench, she saw a couple kissing, their bodies pressed together. There it was, love, solving everything. She came closer, because they seemed like a fire she could warm herself by. But then the couple pulled gently apart, and suddenly she saw who the lovers were. It was Simon taking Libby’s face in his hands. Libby leaning into him. Libby’s eyes were closed, her mouth half open, and then Simon kissed her again.
They didn’t see her and instead kept kissing and kissing, practically devouring each other.
Stella couldn’t unlock her eyes from them. Now she knew what she had sensed in the drawing she had made of Libby, the thing she couldn’t quite articulate. Libby was in love. Stella just didn’t know with whom then. And now she did. And now it made sense to her why Simon had never asked her to draw him. Why she had never wanted to. Somehow, somewhere, she must have known.
Stella was suddenly sweating and dizzy, and the groceries fell from her hands, the lamb chops, the dried cranberries dotting the sidewalk like punctuation marks, the pears tumbling, and the glass of the bubble bath breaking. All sound was gone from the world except for her heavy breathing. All color was missing except the red of Libby’s mouth, the gray of Simon’s eyes. She pivoted and started to run.
BY THE TIME Stella got back into the apartment, she was crying. What could she do? What was even here for her now? She couldn’t be a nurse anymore, even if she wanted to. And worse, she couldn’t be a partner to Simon or a loving friend to Libby. All that was gone with a kiss.
Why hadn’t she seen this before now? Why hadn’t her drawing of Libby told her?
Because, she thought, she hadn’t wanted to see.
Panting, she began to stuff clothes in a suitcase, along with her drawing pens, the oil paints, the canvas and the pads of thick-cut watercolor paper she liked to use. She would stop at the bank and take the money she had been hoarding, five grand, enough to at least buy her a month before she had to figure out what to do. She’d go to the Port Authority. She’d find a town where no one knew her, and then she’d figure it out because this—all this life with Simon—was over.
She grabbed at the pad of paper by the phone, reaching for a pen beside it. She stood writing, bearing down so hard the tip of the pen broke. She reached for another pen. A million words crowded up inside of her, but all she wrote was:
Dear Simon,
Fuck you. You liar. I know you love Libby.
Stella
She put down the pen and left the note on the table where Simon would see it. She walked to the little dish that had the good-luck stone Libby had given her. She had loved that stone, had sometimes sat at night just running it from one palm to another, stroking it because it was so soothing. She grabbed an envelope and stuffed the stone in it. The note she wrote to Libby said only Fuck you. I know about you and Simon. She sealed the envelope and wrote Libby’s name on the outside. She would drop it off at the hospital mailroom, and then she would be done with both of them.
Suddenly she felt calm settling over her like a coat thrown over her shoulder. That rage, that sorrow—it all felt like it belonged to a woman she was never going to be again. She got her things, and she opened the door, giving her apartment one last look, and then she left, letting the door slam shut behind her.
She knew that she didn’t have much time. Even when he was working, Simon never came home past 10 p.m. He would be expecting her to be there for him, and when he saw the note, he’d be frantic. He’d look for her. Maybe Libby would look for her, too, and they’d both try to explain themselves to her, or maybe they’d lie, but Stella didn’t have the energy to listen.
She wasn’t really sure where she was going. She just knew that she had to go, that she couldn’t take any more of this feeling of being so disconnected. She needed someplace quiet, where she could regroup and think.
She flagged the first yellow cab she saw and went to Grand Central Station and looked up at the board. Boston. Washington, DC. She didn’t want to go to either place. There were trains for Chicago—that might be far enough, but did she want to go there? How nuts was it to come here and have no idea where you wanted to be or how long you might stay? Well, whatever train was leaving next, that’s what she’d take. But an announcer proclaimed that the train to Hartford was leaving in five minutes, and she didn’t want to go there. Then she looked up at the board again and saw it, her destination, and she went to buy her ticket.