The Artist stood on the edge of Bennett Avenue, a parade of ice statues covering the street, studied by people of all varieties. She was wan, delirious with fever but couldn't resist the throngs of visitors, the veritable collective of subjects from which to choose. Were they aware of her sickly presence as she held a sketchbook in quivering hands, they might have taken a second, more concerned glance. But the Artist was not permitted such attention. She could expose herself in front a crowd of people, and within seconds, no one would remember seeing her. It was one of the conditions they gave.
She looked up at the December sun, high above the town. She loved cold and clear days, even when sickness reared its ugly head and reminded her of that vague sense of mortality she'd once had. Delirium or not, she knew she couldn't just wait in her house for the sentence to be over. She couldn't just pass away the days and years without trying to see with different eyes, even if she wasn't quite sure she understood what that meant. It was only in the past few months that there appeared to be a task to complete: she had a book of sketches full of people, of things they couldn't know of themselves. If she could finish it, maybe they would release her. Had she not spent so much of her purgatory focused on trying to do what they said?
Remember, wait and see. That was the dictum.
She'd certainly waited long enough. It had been twenty-two years since her husband and son died because of the mistakes she made. It had been twenty-two years since they came and gave her the chance to understand, to apologize, to move on.
Twenty-two years, and the memory never waned.
The Artist always knew why she was given this sentence. She had been so wrapped up in herself—even after throwing off the pains of addiction and curses of alcohol—that she refused to see anyone else around her. Her marriage to a man twice her age—a man who selflessly gave his time to others—was a gift to herself, she said. His money, his power and stature in the town felt like something she deserved, something owed her after so hard a life before. Why shouldn't she be treated to a life that wasn't hers to have, wasn't what her father tried to keep from her? As she had said at her wedding, her new husband locked in her gaze on the dance floor: "Thank you for the gift you've given me."
She had to wonder if it was at that moment her life changed. Words that tumbled from her lips day after day, week after week, were focused on what she could get out the marriage, not what she could give it. "What about my feelings?" she would say, a convenient and tricky way to win an argument. When her husband was sick and in bed, she would often get frustrated because her needs weren't being met. When her child would cry, she was quick to let her husband deal with it. The world was supposed to give to her, not the other way around. People were supposed to look at her, the clothes she wore, the jewelry she owned, the sophisticated way she held herself. Any attention given her husband was viewed as a threat, an affront.
Why had she been like that? What building blocks of life made a woman care so much about herself that she completely neglected anyone else around her? Why did she focus so much on what she could get out of life that the idea someone else needed help was foreign to her?
She knew why they came in her hour of death, and she knew why they gave her an ultimatum. She knew why she was left alone to look through eyes that previously couldn't see anything but the woman in the mirror. But damn it, when was this purgatory supposed to end? When could she move on? Could it really last forever?
The Artist sat on a bench with her sketchbook and cried. Her body quivered in the December of her life, and yet time was as frozen as the ice sculptures that lined the street in front of her. People walked by without giving her a second glance. To them, she was just another person on the street, an aging vagrant to avoid and forget within seconds. To them, the Artist didn't exist.
After a moment of sadness—one of thousands since the day the others died—she sat up straight and tried to focus on finding someone to sketch. A woman in her fifties, lean with long hair to her shoulders, sat down on the bench beside the Artist. She chewed on a healthy chunk of funnel cake covered in powdered sugar and looked out blankly at the street and the people.
"Too many of them," the woman said, swallowing her fried dough. She wiped her mouth and chin with a crumpled napkin. "I never liked these festivals."
The Artist didn't say anything at first. Other than children, most people didn't hold a conversation with her. They were quick to say "here's your coffee" or "would you like that in a bag?" but never to really talk to her. They didn't say she would be shunned over the years, but it was apparent that loneliness was a strong link in the chain that bound her to Earth.
The woman tore another piece of funnel cake off and shook away some of the powdered sugar. "It's almost like an invasion of strangers."
"We're all strangers to someone," the Artist finally said. She felt uncomfortable, aloof. She really hadn't talked to anyone in what seemed like months, maybe years. People didn't want anything to do with her, if they noticed her at all. Yet here was this woman, white sugar smeared on her high cheekbones, trying to hold a conversation. Could it be that someone really did see her?
"True," the woman said. She looked out at the ice sculptures and licked her lips. "I used to think this town was a perfect place to hide away from the world. Seems the longer I stay here, the more festivals the place adds."
The Artist smiled. That was very true. "How long have you been here?"
"Almost two years, I think."
"Like it?"
"There's no place I'd rather be."
They sat in silence for a moment, each woman lost in their own thoughts. The Artist felt—perhaps for the first time in many years—like she existed. It was a feeling that would be hard to explain, especially to anyone who hadn't been through the purgatory she'd put herself in since that day twenty-two years ago. So much of her life before that had been devoted to getting people to see her. So much of her life afterward had been devoted to seeing other people, the focus on herself blurring more and more each year.
Eventually, she thought, they had to let her go. Hadn't she learned her lesson by now?
Tangentially, her thoughts suddenly morphed into memory, a dig into the past that pulled forth images of fire, of blood, of twisted metal and faint, dying cries carried on the wind. Her fever must have been working on her, and it was in these moments that she was glad she wasn't in bed and alone. Being alone brought more memories, more terrors, and every hour she asked to die, she was forced to live another day.
"Looks like someone drank too much," the woman said.
The Artist tore her gaze from the past and looked to the right, following the woman's eyes. A crowd had gathered around the entrance to the Spanish Mustang, worried looks plastered on their faces, cell phones out in more than one hand. From their position on the bench, the two women couldn't see what the commotion was about, but an approaching paramedic alarm made the point clear: someone was having a bad day. Perhaps it was alcohol, perhaps not.
As the woman rose from the bench, a single bite of funnel cake left in the wax paper she held, the Artist's hands began to tremble. With her fever still raging, her mind torn between that moment of death so many years ago and the scene on the street, she didn't hear the last words the woman said before walking away into the crowd of people.
And just like that, the Artist was alone with her sketchbook once more.