After all I do only want to advise you to keep growing quietly and seriously throughout your whole development; you cannot disturb it more rudely than by looking outward and expecting from the outside replies to questions that only your inmost feeling in your most hushed hour perhaps can answer.
—Rainer Maria Rilke to Franz Kappus, February 17, 1903
Something I did, on the formerly rare occasions when I needed a moment at work to clear my thoughts, was to get up and walk into the galleries. I didn’t have a favorite place to go, since most of our exhibits were only transitory, so I tended to let my feet wander where they would.
That morning, I found myself in the Alex Lim gallery. The exhibit I had developed with Alex featured a series of works he had done using antique books: He had, with a meticulousness that even I could hardly comprehend, programmed a laser cutter to pierce delicate and impossibly small holes at selected intervals, and varying depths, throughout the thickness of the book. The result was that, when the books were opened to the intended page, the words behind the pierced sections showed through, fitting into and yet altering the meaning of the text on the pages displayed.
I had assembled the exhibit, and written the copy for it, to discuss Alex’s concept of creating a physical narrative within a narrative. The artist using his hands to impose a new iteration of the story that had originally been breathed into life by the writer. But that morning, as I stood motionless in front of one of Alex’s tiny, perfect, beautiful books, I thought about layers.
Alex had deliberately picked the spots he had lasered out. Having chosen them, he’d known what the finished, altered text would say. But the truth was, he could have chosen any of these hundreds of pages to start with, any others of the pages to drill to, any others of these words to eliminate and reveal. Every page was a layer, and every layer had its own words. They weren’t all revealed at once, and each page, each layer, said different things, but they were all part of the same story.
I’d thought I’d read the book of Adam from cover to cover—reread it till it was soft and tattered. Hell, I’d thought I was practically a co-author. But he had only ever let me read certain pages. There were some never revealed, and others where only a few selected words were permitted to show.
And I myself was not much different. There were layers I’d hidden from myself, even in the midst of the decision that was supposed to be the greatest reckoning of my life. I hadn’t called a lawyer because I hadn’t been ready to say goodbye to my husband. It was, at the end of it, exactly as simple as that. Months ago, I should have looked in the right places, for the right information, and moved forward with what I had told myself, as well as everyone who mattered, that I wanted to do. And yet, I hadn’t. I’d been grateful for New York’s waiting period, because it had let me procrastinate. And the procrastinating had let me hide. It had taken finally passing through to the other side, where I was truly ready for the marriage to end, before I could set my feet upon the path to do it.
My divorce attorney turned out to be exactly no more, and exactly no less, than I needed. I had selected him because he had the highest Yelp rating for family lawyers in the western Massachusetts region, which was proof that, despite my initial thought of, Wait, there are Yelp pages for lawyers?, people like me were exactly why such things existed. It took us one afternoon meeting to set up all the paperwork, including the statement enumerating the financial arrangements I was requesting: the share I’d paid into our savings and retirement accounts, and a payment plan for the house. It was fair, and reasonable, and I had every hope that Adam would agree to it. The house in particular, I thought he would; his parents had put both our names on the deed, but he’d never wanted to live there in the first place. Letting me gradually buy out a property he didn’t want and hadn’t spent a dime on seemed to me the least he could do.
As I sat with my pen poised over the complaint form, the strangeness of it gripped me. I was really doing it; there it all was, all the proper information with the proper dates and the proper names. Including the one I was going back to: Caroline Fairley. It beckoned to me, like a long-missed loved one. Miss Fairley felt like a lighter me, a freer me; I was looking forward to being her again.
Four days later, Len the lawyer sent me confirmation that Adam had been served. And the oddest thing was that I didn’t hear from him. Even if he had accepted that we had to end this—after all, he’d finally admitted to being, albeit reluctantly, in love with someone else—I’d thought he would at least acknowledge what I had done. Given past precedent, I was expecting a letter. But there was nothing, not even a text.
And in the meantime, I couldn’t seem to get away from missing Neil. It was a full, 360-degree sort of missing. Not just for what I’d thought would be the most obvious loss—the pleasure we’d found together—but every single thread he’d woven through my days. His texts; his emails; the thrill of hearing his voice in the hallway at work and thinking, That’s my man, and nobody knows; his affectionate kisses; his music; his pancakes; his stubborn intellect; his deliberate, thoughtful approach to parenting; his devotion to his daughters; even his daughters themselves.
All of it added up to the fact that I missed his warm, steady presence in my life. Even when I hadn’t seen him in a few days, the knowledge that I was about to, or that I could pick up the phone and call him anytime I felt like hearing his voice, had done far more to fill up my loneliness than I had realized. And so had the fact that there was somebody who wanted me and cared about me, who I wanted and cared about, too.
The one thing that made it hurt a little less was knowing that that fact hadn’t changed; I was the one who’d thrown the brakes here. But I knew I had to, for his sake as much as my own. And the desolation that roared into the void created when I pushed him away—it told me I’d been right. I needed to feel it. I needed to let the loneliness in.
One afternoon toward the end of January, I was marking up a loan agreement for a piece I wanted to borrow from a collector when the museum’s receptionist beeped me to answer a call.
“I have a Diana Ramirez for you, do you want to take her?”
“Oh my god!” I yelped, dropping my pen. “Yes! Yes, I want to take her.” God help me, I’d all but forgotten about her.
A moment later, we were connected. “Hi, Diana,” I gushed, aware I sounded like the teenage fangirl of a pop star, yet completely unable to stop myself. “So nice to hear from you! How were your holidays?”
“Oh, you know…family,” she said, with her easy laugh. “This is where I give you the obligatory ‘Sorry I haven’t called, work work work, blah blah work’ routine, so let’s just skip over that this time, okay?”
“Sure,” I laughed. “Consider yourself excused. What can I do for you?”
“I got the little menu that you sent—that was super cool.”
Are you going to pay for any of it? my brain yelled, but all I said was, “Great, I’m so glad you enjoyed it. My sister designed it, actually.” Something inside me pinched at the thought of Ruby, whom I hadn’t spoken to since the disastrous revelation in Vegas.
“Did she? She did a nice job. I was calling about something you had on there—the residency for that artist, Farren Walker. Is that the woman you were telling me about when I visited? Who used to work at the print shop and then started doing her own art?”
“That’s her,” I said, gratified that I’d been right: Diana had been paying attention to Farren’s work.
“Do you really think she’d be up for hosting me at her studio? I’m thinking about donating some money for her, but I’d love to see how she works. It sounds interesting.”
Diana Ramirez, tech darling and noted corporate raider, sounded…self-conscious.
“Oh my gosh, Farren would love to have you. And I’d love to take you. I’m overdue for a visit to her anyway, so this is perfect. When would you like to come up?”
“This Saturday, maybe? Is that nuts?”
Yes, it is, I thought, but I dug my cellphone out of my purse with my free hand so I could text Farren: Nice, cool rich lady wants to come to the studio this weekend and maybe donate some money for a residency. Please tell me you’re free?
“Well,” I stalled, “I’ll need to check with Farren of course, but—”
Good thing I just whipped myself up a fresh Rich Lady pie, Farren replied. Got some stuff in the works I think you’re going to dig. Bring the dame on down!
I grinned. Farren was a loose cannon, but I was pretty sure she’d behave herself around someone who might decide to give her a job. The woman was crazier than a bag of cats, but she was sure as hell no fool.
“All right, Diana, you’re on. Farren wrote me back that she’s been working on some great stuff and she’d love to host you this weekend.”
“Oh, that’s awesome,” said Diana, sounding genuinely excited for the first time since I’d been in touch with her.
I reminded myself that just because Diana was interested, that didn’t mean she would ever actually part with the dough. Neil had told me about a donor he’d courted for two years before the guy finally coughed up a check—for a whopping $5,000. But still, when I hung up the phone, I was smiling for the first time in a week.