An hour after Janine leaves, I find myself staring over at Oliver’s steps through the kitchen window. I’m supposed to be so thrilled that my show is happening, but there’s an emptiness that can only be filled by Oliver’s soft smile and watery eyes. I miss him, and I don’t understand what happened. With Oliver, with my parents, with all this love business that seems to cause more harm than good.
A black car pulls up and I think it’s going to be him. Then I see a man in a tailored suit get out of the back, unmistakable flakes of gray in his black hair: my uncle Richard.
I run out to the stoop to make sure and there he is, standing in front of me. “How’s my big girl?” I crush him too hard when I hug him and he falls back a little. Ever since I was two, he has called me Big Girl. There was a period from about eight to ten years old when I didn’t like it, but now it’s as charming as ever.
Uncle Richard is the one person I know who presses his pajamas. He also speaks three languages and can make a soufflé from scratch. He has a classically handsome face, with big dark eyes and a disarming smile. His pockets are always filled with mints, and he rarely cusses.
“What are you doing here?”
“I came in for a friend’s wedding in Massachusetts. It will most likely be a bore. It’s odd, I’m a romantic who hates weddings. But guess what? I have something for you.…”
“Really? Okay, come in, come in.”
We chat for a while in the kitchen as he makes coffee. He starts to rearrange the kitchen a little but I divert him upstairs to show him the tribute video Tile and I made. I watch my mother and strangely enough, feel momentarily okay that she’s gone. But then I realize that if she were here I would tell her about how Oliver won, then broke, my heart, and she’d probably say something hard to hear but at the same time reassuring. That’s the way she was.
At the end Richard dabs at his eyes with a handkerchief.
“Tile shot that?”
“Yes. Edgy, huh?”
“Absolutely. Get him a script, he needs to be making features.”
I want to tell Richard everything, but before I can he hands me a box that says Big Girl in red marker on the top.
In the box are three things: a Polaroid camera, a burgundy scarf, and a small shell. “They were your mother’s,” he says, “things she had left behind at our Tuscany house. There’s more, but I thought I’d start with these.”
I hug him and his familiar clean mint smell makes me feel at home.
“Listen, I’m here for a few days and wanted to surprise you for your exhibition opening, but I can’t stay at the loft because they’re shooting a movie there and paying us a fortune to use it. So I’ll be bunking here if that’s okay. I spoke to your father.”
“Sure,” I say jokingly, “as long as you do some dishes or something.”
“How about windows?”
“That works.”
After he naps, Richard comes with me to the meeting with the gallery owner, Les, and Daria. My pictures are all hung in metallic frames. They look amazing. On the door, the sign is already up:
YOU HURT ME, BUT I LOVE YOU
Photographs by Luna
The gallery is perfect. Exposed brick on one side, super-white walls on the other. A view of the Williamsburg Bridge through the fire escape. The only picture that is hung on the brick part is the self-portrait I picked from the collage in my father’s office.
Les has on all black except for the green rims of his vintage glasses. We sit in the back lounge and he serves the adults white wine in small glasses, and me a bottle of fancy water. I feel like this is the last situation I could’ve ever imagined myself in. I try to soak in the moment for all it’s worth. These important people discussing my art! JJ negotiates with a quick and sharp demeanor I didn’t see in his office. There he was calm and smooth; now he is an arrow, his eyes piercing Les. He ends up changing the percentage of sales more in my favor, and getting them to black out a clause about reprints. When everything is set and we shake hands, I walk around and look at the pictures once more.
They are all reflections of who I am. An outsider peering in on the Rachels. The mystery of Daria on the bench, a faceless woman. The arm of a kid trying to draw his own magic into the world. Ms. Gray, with those unflinching eyes of the truth. A boy standing at the window, draped in shadow. And lastly, a little girl clinging to the hem of a pale pink dress.