AS GAUGUIN CARRIED his suitcases out the back door, I bent over the vegetable garden, dropping small round spinach seeds into the line I had made with my finger in the soil. I barely looked up. He carried the suitcases to the garage, opened the garage door, put the suitcases in the trunk of his car, and drove down the alley. I planted two more rows of spinach and one of carrots. When I went to get the hoe, I noticed he had chipped some yellow paint off the garage door frame as he pulled away. I thought of repairing it soon.
After the planting I washed my hands, and the dirt ran dark against the white porcelain sink. I turned on the living-room light, sat down on the couch, and picked at the already peeling white paint on the windowsill. Now that Gauguin was gone, the apartment seemed empty.
When the garden began to sprout a month later, it looked as if a child had planted it—there wasn’t one straight row. Carrots popped up among the spinach, spinach grew in the broccoli, and many of the seeds never came up at all. Empty patches everywhere were eventually taken over by weeds.
For six weeks I was as dry and stiff as a bone. I came home from school and flopped onto the living-room couch. I stared out the window. The sky was gray, and it began to rain. I watched the drops hit the glass and run down to the sill.
I wanted to be out in that rain, to let it refresh me. I got up, put on a pair of worn sneakers and my old yellow slicker, and went out the door. I walked across the overpass to I-94 and onto Seward Avenue. The rain beat furiously on the asphalt and filled the gutter. I was completely alone for the first time in my life.
Let’s see, I said to myself. Rip’s dead, Alice is dead, Gauguin no longer lives with you. Come on, Nell, here’s your chance to become a tragic painter. As I walked, I picked out colors and planned paintings in my head with them. Green, a meadow; blue, a sky; lavender, an iris. Oh, Nell, how conventional. Try again. Pink, a rabbit; lime, an avocado; white, a dead rat. As I stood on the corner, a woman walked by carrying a red umbrella. A whole world rippled through me: The red rose that unfolded before me on that first acid trip so many years ago, the red marble I stole for my sister, Rita, because her favorite color was red. My favorite color had been red, too, but I couldn’t be the same as Rita. I’d told her my favorite was green.
As my legs carried me automatically, I developed a plan. I’d walk all the way up to Hennepin Avenue to Schlamp’s Department Store. Only a town in the Midwest would have a store called Schlamp’s. No one ever seemed to go in it to shop, and no one ever came out. I decided to go in it and see what they sold.
As I passed Portland Avenue, I began to feel an aching in my heart. It was the same old dilemma—Gauguin versus Taos—but now I didn’t have either one. That thought stopped me dead in the middle of the street. Nell, go home, go paint, I told myself. There’s really nothing else to do.
When I arrived home, I stood in front of the canvas for almost five minutes as my breathing became thick. Suddenly, a huge scream came out of me, and I grabbed the big wide paintbrush Gauguin had used to paint houses with in Boulder. I stuck it in black paint and smushed it in the middle of the white. I screamed and grunted as I flew at the black with red, then orange, and then a deep purple. Sight left me. I traveled on waves of grief and longing.
When I was finished, I fell to the floor, my face in my arms, and cried. I didn’t care what the painting looked like. My marriage was over.