IT’S JUST ME and Bartholomeow at five A.M. in Studio A, the earliest I’ve ever voluntarily done anything in my entire life. I was up even earlier, consumed by eagerness to begin a painting that would sum up how I felt about Callum. Free studio time is a privilege, Áine reminded us at the beginning of the session, a privilege given to students in their last week of the program to display the skills they have gained and apply them within their own creative framework. Whatever that means.
Áine talks so much about the link between emotion and art. Thinking about the quadruple backflip my stomach landed when I saw Callum come up the hill by the cliff, I know that he’s my key. The painting is going to be abstract—I know that much—but the details of it aren’t quite perfect. I decide to make the canvas green, like the grass we were lying in, but I try to swirl a dry brush in the paint while it’s still wet on the canvas in order to create texture. It’s something Declan showed us a few days ago.
I look over at Maeve’s canvas; hers already looks close to finished. It’s a self-portrait done all in orange, her features blocked into cubist geometry. It’s not enough that Maeve has to be a gorgeous painter; she’s also plain gorgeous.
I force myself to rip my eyes away from her canvas and instead look at the words Áine painted in curlicue letters on the studio wall: THIS ABOVE ALL: TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE.
You got it, Polonius. I turn back to my own canvas, which, in the previous six and a half seconds, seems to have gotten far worse. But I take a deep breath, get lost in the heavy metal music, and paint.
“Start winding down,” Áine calls a few hours later, turning down the music. Bartholomeow weaves between our feet, rubbing himself against us as if he knows he deserves a reward for not distracting us while we were working.
My painting isn’t perfect, but it’s definitely pretty good. It feels good to break out of my rut and create the kind of art that could actually be in a museum rather than on a Tumblr page. I’ve never painted anything abstract before, but with every heartbeat I’m replaying the words Declan emphasized the other day: structure, using the space on the canvas, creating contrast, having a visual focal point. The words that were once so confusing and vague now seem to make sense. I’m thinking back to how I felt with Callum and putting it on the canvas. Maybe this is what being an artist is. Maybe I actually can do it.
Áine paces behind us, commenting on our work. Tess tore up old newspapers and painted them onto the canvas, creating a really interesting texture.
“That’s wonderful,” Áine says. “I can’t wait to see how this comes along.”
Tess beams. Hers is good, but I’m secretly impatient to hear what Áine says once she gets to me. My improvement is obvious. This is the best thing I’ve done since I’ve been here. It’s like my brush is acting on its own, just swirling colors and patterns in ways I couldn’t have even fathomed before this program.
“Nora,” Áine says, and she swallows once. “Hmm.”
Her beaded necklace jangles ominously. Someone coughs.
“What do you think?” I ask.
“Well. I think you might be able to add some depth.”
Depth? What does that even mean? This is an abstract painting. What kind of depth?
“It’s abstract,” I say.
“Yes, I can see that.”
I don’t say anything, so she continues.
“I’d say that if you’re really serious about making artistic progress in the long haul, you have to sacrifice immediate results for the good of creating something worthwhile that takes a little longer.”
Tess looks over sympathetically, and I want to punch her in the face. I want to punch everyone in the face.
“Oh” is all I can manage to say.
“It’s not bad!” Áine says quickly, reading my face. “I just think you should refocus on exactly what sort of artist you want to be.”
“Oh,” I say again.
“I’m just anticipating you hitting an upper limit to the amount of progress you’ll be able to make if you keep thinking of art as so . . . linear.”
I don’t know what her words mean, or maybe I’ve just tuned them out, shut down my brain against someone actually saying what the tiny voice in the back of my head has been whispering to me my entire life.
I haven’t heard Áine criticize anyone’s work yet. The harshest thing she’s said is when she told Rodger that he should use a warmer color palette on his sunrise. And now she’s practically telling me that I shouldn’t be an artist. I fight the instinct to splatter my palette on the canvas and ruin it completely. Áine gives me a smile, like she did me a favor, and moves on to look at Maeve’s fucking perfect painting.
My eyes and cheeks burn. If I had a magic genie, my first wish would be to sink through the floor and disappear completely. My second and third wishes would be the exact same thing, just to make sure he heard me. I know if I stay in the studio, I’ll cry. I have to get out.
“I don’t feel well,” I mutter, and I grab my canvas and run toward the studio door, getting wet paint all over my T-shirt. I don’t care. All that matters now is getting as much distance from Áine and the studio as physically possible. I’m running from something inevitable. I don’t have what it takes to be an artist.
Bartholomeow trots behind me, and I resist the urge to kick him. I make it out of the studio and walk down the eerily silent hall until I burst outside.
“I spent twenty years learning to paint like Raphael . . .” I think back to the slides Declan showed us in workshop of Picasso’s early work. By the time he was a teenager, Picasso was sketching photorealistic bodies and painting portraits that looked like they were done by a Renaissance master. I’m seventeen, and I can’t even do an abstract painting. All I’m good for is little cartoons on the Internet. I almost have to stop myself from laughing. Some of my most popular posts on Ophelia in Paradise are cartoonified versions of famous characters and paintings: Mona Lisa, The Scream, Grandpa’s The Reader and the Watcher. That’s all I’ll ever be good for—not creating anything original, just sucking like a parasite on artists with real vision and hoping that my mediocre ability to use a stylus on an iPad can get me a few hundred responses from strangers online.
I see it clearly: If I decide to be an artist, I’m choosing a life in Evanston, commuting to my job making pamphlets and tweeting for the marketing department of some soulless company that makes honey barbecue peanuts or yoga pants for dogs. I will wear a wardrobe from Ann Taylor that I don’t iron often enough, and I’ll join a gym that I’ll never go to, living at most forty minutes from the home I grew up in, able to drive back at a moment’s notice to take care of my mom whenever she gets lonely or wants me to be there for dinner.
I don’t realize how hard I’m crying until I stop running and gasp for breath. I must look like a mess: dripping with tears and snot, covered with paint. And I have nowhere to go.
Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t go back to the cottage to talk with my mom; Evelyn took her on a trip to Galway, and they won’t be back until tonight. Maeve is still in the studio. The only person I want to see now is Callum. He had so much faith in my work, and the painting was supposed to represent something we had together. He’ll understand it, maybe—or even if he doesn’t, he’ll hold my hand and make me forget all about Áine and my nightmare of spending the rest of my life in a cubicle, drinking lukewarm cups of coffee and saving up vacation days to squeeze in a week to see the rest of the world before returning back exactly where I started.
I don’t know where Callum is, but I have a hunch. Even if he’s not there, I want to go back to the spot in the cemetery where we spent the night. I want to sit on that stone bench and look at the painting I made to represent the two of us together.
My heart swells when I see a figure on the bench—Callum is there. He’ll put his arm around me, and I’ll close my eyes in the crook of his soft leather coat, and he’ll tell me that I’m not hopeless.
The cemetery seems empty except for him, facing away from me, his shadow bigger than I would have expected up against the tree. I hear female laughter from somewhere I can’t quite place, which seems odd because I haven’t seen anyone else in the cemetery. And then I get closer, and my throat tightens up, and I forget to swallow. I see the mass of Callum’s dark curls, and I see long, red hair leaning against his shoulder, in the crook of his soft leather coat, where I should be. Their backs are to me, and when I hear the girl—it’s Fiona, it has to be Fiona—laugh again, the sound is like a weapon, hurting my head and tightening my chest.
All I can think of is getting out of the cemetery without them seeing me. The worst thing in the world right now would be them turning to me, Callum with the shadow of his falling smile on his face, trying to pretend everything is okay, that he wasn’t just sitting in our spot with his arm around his ex-girlfriend. And Fiona would have to look mock concerned, maybe put on a condescending, exaggerated frown. Oh boohoo, the little American girl with a mucus-green streak in her hair thought she was something special? Callum likes gorgeous redheads, not mediocre wannabe artists.
The last time I felt this way was when Lena texted me that she and Nick had hooked up, and then an hour later, when Nick texted to tell me he was now going out with Lena. I made him swear not to tell her what happened between us, and he swore, but now every time I think of Lena I imagine her furious at me for keeping this secret, sitting with Nick, them laughing together about how pathetic I am, how I had sex with Nick thinking that he’d be interested in me and how he ignored my texts for the next four days because he thought I was great, really, but he just wasn’t interested in me like that.
And now Callum is back with Fiona. I run away. I’m still holding the painting, I realize—the one I made to represent how I felt with Callum. The corner of it digs into my side. From far away, I think I hear someone call my name, but it’s too late; I’m already running as fast as I can toward the cottage, throwing the painting I made into the dumpster behind the studio with a satisfying clang.
The clang is still ringing in my ears when the crying stops.