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THE NEXT MORNING, Naina woke up thinking about France. She envisioned Jai’s hands fingering a book by Albert Camus or Jean-Paul Sartre in a bookstore in Paris, walking hand in hand with some Gallic beauty in colored tortoise shell glasses and stylishly untidy hair, the woman both aroused and comforted by the unexpected silkiness of his hands. She pictured them sitting in Luxembourg Gardens on a summer afternoon in T-shirts, his arm casually draped over her shoulders, the coils of fine hair on his forearm brushing against her skin. Then the woman, who was becoming less Gallic and more nebulous in Naina’s mind, would kiss his lips, those lean, wide lips with not an extra ounce of flesh of them. Assured like the rest of him.
Now, Naina’s whole body was aroused, electric currents doing a haphazard tango inside her. She lay on her side, hugged a pillow, and thought again about how lucky Amaya was. Amaya knew what those lips really felt like, was familiar with his forearm hair on her arms, and held his hands numerous times. And she would continue to do so . . .
Then, like a startling flash of sunlight cleaving into the night sky in the wee hours of the morning, it dawned on Naina that she was thinking about her own, her very own daughter, having intimate relations with a man. She sat up straight, slapped her right cheek, and shook her head frenetically. What in the world was the matter with her? This was ridiculous. Who in the world had such thoughts about their own children? New York had made her really crazy.
She started to scuttle about her apartment as another idea trickled into her mind. Her imagination was just so vast. She could envision almost anything, regardless of how strange it was. That idea may be odd to most, but not to all. Especially not to many creative New Yorkers who venerated words like “unique,” “unconventional,” “quirky,” and even “freakish.” That was all there was to it. Her oddball mind meandered to bizarre places like—um—her daughter’s private life. While she didn’t really know of anyone whose brain did such things, she felt sure the thoughts of inventive people strayed in all sorts of unspeakable directions.
Plopping down on the edge of her bed with her legs flung apart, Naina giggled to herself. What a wacky, mischievous mind she had.
When she later entered the subway, she pictured a younger Jai, with long, black, wavy hair, immersed in the resplendently impassioned paintings of Eugene Delacroix at the Musee D’ Orsay. A shadowy woman was running her fingers through his hair.
Below a subway poster saying “Poles are for your safety, not your latest routine” stood a young blonde girl wearing a striking ochre-and-black geometric print dress with tan leather boots. The girl’s eyes were a glassy blue, her small lips curled in a bored pout, and she leaned against the subway door. Something about her body language seemed to say she did not belong inside the subway. She looked familiar, but Naina could not put her finger on it. The girl squeezed herself into a narrow space on the seat between two mothers with infants, ignoring the infant on her right, who was trying to get her attention.
Naina realized she was the assistant from Robert Goldsmith Gallery, the girl who had rolled her eyes and stifled a smirk when she had asked her if the gallery had any job openings.
The train reached Bryant Park. A few people got out, and Naina could finally see a seat that no one else seemed to be rushing toward. She sat down diagonally opposite the girl. She obviously did not remember Naina. Naina, however, remembered their meeting very clearly and felt a wave of embarrassment at how ridiculous she must have come across.
The morning of their encounter, Naina had woken up very early and had been in no mood to laze around in bed. The early spring sun had been playing hide-and-seek behind the clouds and she had made herself a cup of strong coffee, a departure from her regular peppermint tea. It had been six or seven weeks since she had moved to New York, and her desire to work felt intense. She felt a pressing urge to pursue something in the arts—something she could only do in New York City; something full time—not like her job at Gyan, the nonprofit in Jersey that helped educate South Asian women about health and nutrition. There, she had to hear all those women with their loud, desperate voices, wanting to know whether male gynecologists might rape them, whether an MRI would snuff them out, whether a mother-in-law’s stage 3 cancer diagnosis might mean the difficult woman was going to die soon. Naina had been sympathetic to all but now felt she had already done her good deeds.
While routinely reading The New York Times, Naina had been thinking, as she often did, how New York was the mecca of the art world and envisaging how exhilarating it must be to be a part of it. Again, she pictured being able to look at paintings and photographs all day, meeting quixotic artists, regularly going to the Guggenheim and the Met, and talking with her colleagues about the world as it should be rather than as it was.
Suddenly another embryonic thought took a more defined form. Could she actually be a part of it? After all, she had taken only six courses on art history. And this was New York where everyone in the art world probably had tons of degrees in the subject, years of experience, and lots of connections. Still, what was the harm in trying? At this point in her life, small rejections could do little damage. That realization emboldened her. Not museums though—museums were too big and grand for her—but galleries, the scores of big and small galleries in Chelsea. Might they be more amenable to considering someone like her?
She had no plans, and decided to go to Chelsea, restless and brave spirits urging her to act—act, act, act now, they said.
After spending all morning working on her resume—the first resume she had ever created—she ventured down to the converted warehousing district of New York around three in the afternoon. Most of her previous Chelsea gallery visits had been quick—an hour or two before meeting Amaya or in between running errands or trips to museums in the city. But now she found herself thoroughly exploring those streets filled with galleries, cafes, and even auto repair shops from the neighborhood’s less-than-glamorous past, all the while hoping—perhaps foolishly so—to find something or someone who might, just might, help her find a crack in the art world through which she could creep in.
But things didn’t quite turn out that way. She had been on 22nd Street for less than an hour when a kind of jitteriness crept into her skin, making it quiver from the inside. She saw that Chelsea was ruled by chic, aloof girls who sat at the front desks in the galleries, but looked as if they were poised at an altitude of enlightened sophistication; by scores of men who carried themselves in a haughty manner that screamed more rock star than art dealer; by cool, young boys with mussed-up hair and cargo pants who looked like they were ready to rebel against anything and everything, including the paintings they were carrying; and by clusters of people who assuredly talked about how a work reminded them of another that she knew nothing about.
Once, when Naina had entered an enormous gallery, she skulked around in a quiet corner, a few feet behind a gigantic metal sculpture by an artist called David Smith whom she had never heard of. She looked at her own clothes. She felt horribly dumpy. Her Lord & Taylor black trousers seemed shapeless, her Macy’s brown jacket way too bulky, and her sensible black pumps stank of mall-bought. Nobody in this place was ever going to give her—a middle-aged Indian suburbanite with few credentials except for a febrile imagination—a chance. She should just turn around and leave.
But then she noticed the strikingly dynamic sculpture that looked like a giant letter from some unknown script, and she was intrigued. As she eyed the piece made of welded metal, two women in tight pants and boots approached her quiet corner, admired the sculpture from behind, and talked about some person they had just encountered. They did not even appear to acknowledge her presence even though she had just nervously smiled at them.
Naina decided she would stay a little while longer in Chelsea. No one was going to notice her here, chalking it up to the city’s penchant for self-absorption. For the next two hours, she tiptoed through gallery after gallery, staying a few feet away from everyone if she could help it. She found the art intriguing and novel, though mostly inscrutable, just like every previous time. But now its allure was enhanced since it was contemporary art, art that was made now. Something belonging to the present moment, not to some storied past.
A half hour before the galleries were set to close, she walked into an unassuming-looking art gallery called Robert Goldsmith. It was on the fourth floor in the back of a building, with small windows through which ugly brown apartment towers could be seen, blocking any possibility of natural light. The entire space was about the size of an average studio apartment in New York or a huge suburban bathroom, the smallest gallery she had been in so far. But the art—minimalist photographs focusing on the architectural details of ordinary buildings—was so beautiful, she felt momentarily uplifted. She plucked up the courage to talk to the skinny, suede jacket-clad girl busily typing away on a computer. Even then, the glassy blue eyes she just encountered struck her as belonging to a real go-getter, the eyes of someone who never lost sight of her target.
“Hi,” Naina had said, nervously smiling, realizing she was sounding deferential to someone who was probably younger than her daughter.
The girl had lifted her head. “May I help you?” Her brittle tone suggested that was the last thing she wanted to do.
“Please, yes-yes, please. My name is Naina Mehta. I’m wondering if there are any job openings at this gallery. I have done about six art history courses, and . . . I love . . . I just love . . . this photography exhibit.”
“Uhummm.” The girl took a long sip of her coffee. “What kinds of courses have you taken and where?”
Naina could no longer look straight at her. She tilted her head downward. “I’ve taken courses on Expressionism, Impressionism, post-Impressionism, Romanticism, pre-Raphaelite art, and Realism . . . at Rutgers in New Jersey.”
The girl’s silvery salmon-colored lips tilted upward like fins into a smirk.
“This is a contemporary art gallery, I should let you know. Which means art that’s made now, not a hundred years ago.”
Naina heard a roaring silence roiling through gallery.
“Do you have a resume?”
By that point, Naina could no longer stand to be in the same room with the girl. Art that’s made now, not a hundred years ago. The words echoed in her head, making her shrivel with embarrassment. Was she just a trifling wrinkle from the past? She jumped into a taxi and hurriedly left Chelsea, desperate to be alone.
For the rest of that evening, the girl behind the desk at Robert Goldsmith Gallery, and her withering words continued to reverberate in Naina’s head. She had been so envious of the girl’s self-assurance. Not too long before she too had possibly possessed that compacted air of someone who knows—though hers could have never been as pronounced or obnoxious as that girl’s. Any hint of arrogance in Naina had evaporated since she’d concluded she was actually someone who had barely skimmed the surface of life; someone who, even at her age, had yet to put the pieces together.
Would that young woman also wake up one day and be hit by the same shock of reality? Naina hoped not, feeling a ripple of compassion. And, if such a thing were to happen to her, Naina wished it would happen for her early—before she became older and was expected to be omniscient.
And now, a year-and-a half later, sitting across from her in the subway car, judging by the same supercilious look on her face, it seemed the girl had clearly not been hit by anything.
As she thought about it, Jai, too, had a knowing air. But it was a pleasant knowing air. Fragrant and supple.
Two stops later, Naina heard two touristy-looking girls, who were swinging around the subway car’s center pole, speaking French. She saw murky images of France again: Jai slowly sipping a Côtes du Rhône as light from Monseiur Renaud’s dining table candle flickered over his scars; Jai, dressed in a trench coat, gazing at the stained-glass windows of the Notre-Dame, hoping to catch a glimpse of the meaning of life; Jai, having his hair stroked by the shadowy figure of a woman.
After she got out of the subway, Naina walked faster than usual to Red Circle Gallery. She constantly looked down at the sidewalk for any unexpected cracks— something she still hadn’t been able to overcome her fear of. She just knew one day she would be hurrying in heels somewhere and fall into one of the countless fissures, which no one in New York seemed to care enough about to fix.
Today she anticipated a nice quiet day since it was sunny and pleasant, and most people would likely be relishing the weather outside. Naina was looking forward to being in the gallery surrounded by the delicate, intricate drawings inspired by Greek myths from the current show. She felt grateful to have a job related to art even though being a gallery assistant was nothing to brag about at her age. And the way it had come about had been so serendipitous, life again reminding her of its capriciousness.
One week after that disconcerting day in Chelsea, Naina had been browsing through a book titled The Hindu Approach to Sorrow at Barnes & Noble when a distinctly middle-aged woman in steel-gray slim-leg pants and a black jacket turned around.
“Is that any good?” the woman had asked.
“Yes, it kind of is, it’s an interesting way of looking at things,” Naina had replied. She was surprised the woman had spoken to her. No one had ever struck up a conversation with her like that in New York. And this woman looked like a busy, professional type, not someone who had time for chatting.
“Unfortunately, I don’t know too much about Hinduism or Eastern religions in general, but I’d like to learn,” the woman said. “What’s the basic idea of the book?”
“How can I sum it up . . . I suppose it’s saying that attachment is the source of unhappiness. That the world we live in is just an illusion. Maya.”
“That’s very interesting . . . Sometimes I think my whole life is an illusion. Just kidding. Or maybe not . . . Are you a Hindu?”
“Most of the time, I think. Not always a good one though, I have to confess.”
Naina and the woman, who introduced herself as Susan Fegel, spoke for a few minutes regarding the concept of maya, about which Naina had tried to sound more well-versed in than she really was. They also spoke about the deaths of family members they had recently endured—Susan had lost her mother about a year before.
Naina liked Susan. She seemed like the sort of person who meant what she said, the sort of person who came face-to-face with the truth rather than pirouetting around it.
At one point, Susan asked Naina what she was doing, and she made some offhand comment about looking for work. Ideally, something related to art although she knew what a fantastical notion that was in this city. Then Susan piped up, saying she was the executive director of a newly opened nonprofit gallery that supported emerging and underrepresented female artists. She had a position open for a gallery assistant, which, to be candid, was an entry-level position with lots of grunt work, but she would be happy to consider Naina if it appealed to her.
A couple of weeks later, she had a twenty-minute interview with Susan and two board members of the gallery, the secretary, and the treasurer. She was asked to comment on two pieces of art and questioned about her experience writing promotional materials and her organizational skills. It had taken three weeks for Susan to get back to Naina, who was on tenterhooks the whole time, but when she finally did, the news was good.
“There’s one thing I feel I should tell you,” Naina had said before saying yes to the job. “I’m excited, literally thrilled, at the thought of working here but quite frankly. . . I have to be frank with you. . . I’m completely intimidated by everyone in this area. Everyone . . . what can I say, everyone is so young and hip here. As you already know, I’m none of those things . . . I’ll probably be the oldest gallery assistant in Chelsea . . . That . . . is quite frightening . . . Also, I don’t have the right clothes.”
“If I were looking for someone young and hip, I wouldn’t have made you an offer,” Susan had replied. “I did have a young girl working for me and she took hours to get any damn thing done. I want you here because I think you will be reliable and hardworking. And I’m—did I tell you—I’m a Midwestern girl from Chicago? I’m not crazy about the attitude of this place. It’s all a veneer. They’re all as frightened and as vulnerable . . . if not more so . . . as everybody else. It’s in your head. If you think you’re less than others, you’ll allow the bluster to make you feel inadequate. As for the clothes, that’s an easy fix.”
As Naina now entered Red Circle, which was tucked away in the corner of the fifth floor of a building that housed more than twenty galleries, she saw her big-boned energetic boss, in her usual dark pants and jacket, in front of the computer with that resolute look in her small bluish-gray eyes, the consummate career woman who had impressed her in a bookstore more than a year earlier.
Seeing Naina come into the gallery, Susan, who never gushed about any artist’s work, glowed with praise about some artist called Anastasia Diamant.
“Don’t you think this is amazing work?” Susan said, as she showed Naina images of the artist’s abstract black-and-white paintings on a computer screen.
Naina examined the images. She liked being asked her opinion on new submissions. Susan had recently started asking for her input more and more, and once even for help in writing a press release.
“It looks fascinating,” Naina replied. “And sort of cryptic. What’s it about?”
“She takes fragments of hieroglyphs to create these forms that I just love,” Susan said. “Look at those forms over there—aren’t they great? Don’t they look like writing instruments?”
“They look more like some kind of weapons to me. I do think they are intriguing . . . but don’t they feel a bit scattered?” Naina couldn’t help wondering if the images resembled herself, tiny bits dispersed all over the place—without a shape to give them coherence.
“But that’s what’s so great about the works. There’s no harmony. It’s like she’s saying all human history consists of is scraps of disconnected stories and that we individuals are just a jumble of disjointed, competing influences.”
“Hmmm . . . I see. Fascinating . . . I don’t know. The work just seems . . . what’s the word . . . unfinished to me. But of course, that’s just my humble opinion . . . I’m so new to this . . .”
“I want you to think about it some more. I love it. Anastasia is based in DC and has had a couple of small shows there, but I think we need to show her here. Before someone else offers a solo show.”
Susan stood up and looked at her watch.
“Oh God, it’s ten-thirty already. Forget about Anastasia Diamant for now. There’s still so much work to do for the Mary Di Russo show, I don’t know why I keep forgetting that. I’ve got to run to the Verizon store to pick up my phone . . . they said it would be ready by ten forty-five . . . so I can actually be traceable again. What did we do before cellphones? I should be back within half-an-hour provided it all goes well. I want you to check for any typos on the Di Russo press release by the time I’m back. Also, can you please follow up with the treasurer?”
Twenty minutes later, after she had completed her tasks, Naina sat ensconced in the quiet of the cozy office that felt like a second home, typing a list of potential donors on the computer. She decided to take another look at Anastasia Diamant’s work, and once again, something about the splintered shapes littered across the paintings made her feel uneasy. They were placed randomly, without any design. When she looked closer, the slivered shapes resembled her vision of Jai’s scars under a microscope—thin and sharp. What did his scars feel like? Were they rough? Well, these were things for Amaya to know. She shooed that thought away. Hazily, the shadowy woman emerged in Naina’s head, tracing Jai’s blemishes with her fingers numerous times. Unexamined and unexplained emotions continued to unfold inside Naina like a bale of cloth with a beguiling array of colors and patterns.
The treasurer called with a follow-up question, interrupting her reverie.
After the call, she remembered Jai talking about Monseiur Renaud reading books on hieroglyphs in Paris. Jai had said he had developed an interest in them himself. She wondered what he would make of the paintings.
Then an idea came to Naina, flecking her with eagerness. She would invite Jai and Amaya to the gallery after six, when the gallery was closed and Susan was gone. This way Jai could see the gallery, she could show him Anastasia Diamant’s work on the computer, and, most importantly, he would never know how lowly her job really was.
She was about to write an email to Amaya, asking her if she and Jai would like to visit the gallery next week, when Susan rushed back in, ushering in the real world, a world of logic, practicality, and constraints. Now, hesitation quivered within her, and she wondered again if she was being too familiar with her daughter’s boyfriend. Was it too much? Was she crossing the line? There were plenty of museums and galleries Jai could visit in New York, and Amaya, with her inordinate amount of sensibleness, might find her mother’s behavior batty.
But after lunch, Naina changed her mind again. She was overthinking it. This wasn’t some existential dilemma. It was no big deal. She wrote another email, a meandering note filled with ifs and buts, yet stopped short of sending it. She’d wait until the next morning just to make sure. Re-reading it the following day, she could see the tone of the email was so formal it read as if she were living in Jane Austen’s world. So she shortened it, toned it down, and quickly hit send with trembling fingers.