I had meant to be an artist. It didn’t much matter what kind of artist, it was just that there was something inside of me that needed to be expressed, some beautiful and true thing that would explain everything, about me, about the world I was making for myself, about my love for my family and my fellows, and I couldn’t find the words or way to get it out, to make it sensible. It was a simple thing. I knew that. Like, “I love you,” but that wasn’t it. It was deeper than love. It was something primal and true and old, yet still fresh as the first slash of alizarin crimson on a newly gessoed canvas. It was near, always near, but always just out of reach. All I had was the requiem for the thing that needed to be said.
I had a recurring nightmare all through my childhood. In the dream, which came to me almost every night, I had something terribly wrong with me, some incurable and painful ailment, but when I opened my mouth, in the dream, to describe the ailment or to cry for help, no words came out. I was mute to my own pain, unable to explain it or make it go away. I would wake up, covered in sweat, gasping for air, making guttural animal sounds in my throat. Sweat would film my face, and I would sit up in my bed and wait for first light, mute and ill and terrified.
After I graduated from college, I went to Europe for two years, on an extremely prestigious fellowship my parents could never remember the name of. Two years abroad, in England, France, Italy, and Greece. In London, I took figure drawing classes day after day. I took acting classes at night. On Wednesdays, I went to an old Polish crone who pounded the floor with her cane and begged me to play Chopin the way the Master would have wanted. Every Wednesday, I could not, and I could feel her disappointment turning into irritation.
One Wednesday, she whacked my knuckles so hard with her cane that she broke one of my fingers, and, at that moment, I knew that the Master and I would never be friends, so, so long Madame Lutevya, and I moved, splinted, to Florence to be closer to the great painters I aspired to be one of.
It was a joke, spending my mornings at the Uffizi, my afternoons banging away at one canvas after another. Views of the Arno at sunset. Street scenes of Florence. Gypsy children, begging. The kind of paintings you might see for sale on the Ponte Vecchio, but not as good. I had, in my head, images of such beauty and truth and, on my easel, one mess after another. I finally ripped the canvases from the stretchers and threw every one in the coal-burning stove that heated my freezing apartment. I never painted or played the piano again. I couldn’t play “Chopsticks” now, if you paid me a million dollars.
My voice stayed mute, the words I meant to say frozen in my throat and in my heart, unknown even to me.
I finally, in a flash, decided that, if I couldn’t be eloquent, could never be any more than mediocre, I could at least be rich. So, the return to the States and Wharton and the poker game and my entry into the fray, and, within months, I was unrecognizable, even to myself.
I was vicious, venal, self-absorbed, and totally lacking in feeling. Mea culpa. And I couldn’t put my finger on how this had happened, and I couldn’t shake the guilt that accompanied it.
I went to church on Sundays, the only one of my friends to do so, and, every Sunday morning, in my high-gloss shoes and my Armani suit, kneeling in my pew on the side of the church, always alone, always far enough from my nearest neighbor that I couldn’t be touched or engaged, the tears welled up in my eyes as I sat among the righteous and the chosen, knowing that I was forever shut out from their companionship. I would pray that I would somehow find my way out of this gilded hell I was living in, that I was creating day by day, every day more and more incarcerated in a life I never meant to happen.
But The Street was the ultimate seduction, the beautiful woman who slid into bed with you, naked and perfumed and ravenous. Like the woman, The Street crawled under your skin, and never let you go until it had what it wanted, which was everything you had of a heart and a soul, and no amount of church-going was going to stop that tidal wave of mutual greed. Because I, to my shame, I wanted what The Street offered, the ultimate clusterfuck, the big prize, the endless orgasm.
It’s useless to say I didn’t know any better. My skin crawled every day, and my nights were haunted by booze and raucous chicaneries, but there was never enough booze or drugs for me to forget that I was being unfaithful to the man I had meant to be, the man I had hoped to become.
Some nights, the elusive thing that so needed to be said was like a fishbone caught in my throat, and I took a Valium and a Scotch until the feeling passed. I would be forever mute.
It’s almost never done in the Episcopal Church, but I went to confession. It took place in the priest’s office. He put on his stole, we prayed for a while, and then he asked me what my sin was that I had come to confess.
“Despair,” I said. “I have put money before kindness or conscience, and it’s eating me alive.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m a trader downtown. I’m not a good person, not anymore. I have done illegal things. Immoral. That’s not even what bothers me. What bothers me is the person it’s made me, the person I am. I don’t belong in your congregation.”
“Despair is the one sin that removes you from God’s love.”
“I’m afraid all the time.”
“Of what?”
“I don’t know. Everything. Nothing. My face in the mirror.” I could feel the sweat dripping down the back of my neck. I felt sick with vulnerability. Not a feeling I was used to, and not one I liked.
“You must find hope in your heart.”
“What heart?”
“You have to look for it.” He smiled. “It’s there. Trust me.”
“I’ve become everything I despise. Where would I look for hope?”
“God does not abandon you. Ever. You abandon God, and you must look for him. In the eyes of the poor. In the lost, the less fortunate. Even in the eyes of people who are happy, content with their lot.”
He put his hands on my head, a feeling I have loved since childhood, and prayed over me for a long time. He said, reading from the sweet old Book of Common Prayer, “ ‘O Lord, we beseech thee, mercifully hear our prayers, and spare all those who confess their sins unto thee; that they, whose consciences by sin are accused, by thy merciful pardon may be absolved; through Christ our Lord. Amen.
“ ‘O most mighty God, and merciful Father, who hast compassion upon all men, and who wouldest not the death of a sinner, but rather that he should turn from his sin, and be saved; Mercifully forgive us our trespasses; receive and comfort us, who are grieved and wearied with the burden of our sins. Thy property is always to have mercy; to thee only it appertaineth to forgive sins. Spare us therefore, good Lord, spare thy people, whom thou hast redeemed; enter not into judgment with thy servants; but so turn thine anger from us, who meekly acknowledge our transgressions, and truly repent us of our faults, and so make haste to help us in this world, that we may ever live with thee in the world to come; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.’ ”
And then this: “ ‘The Lord bless us, and keep us. The Lord make his face to shine upon us, and be gracious unto us. The Lord lift up his countenance upon us, and give us peace, both now and evermore. Amen.’ ”
The priest took his soft hands from my head, and sat back down again.
“Your penance is very simple, and yet you will find it hard. Pay attention. Pay attention to the beauty of God’s world around you. Pay attention to the striving life in every eye. Your salvation is not in yourself. It’s in other people, and the glory of the world. Pay. Attention. You’ve slumbered too long.”
I waited, tears in my eyes. “That’s all,” he said. “Go now, back into the world, into your life. Never forget this moment.”
On the way out, I stuffed all the cash I had into the poor box, hundreds, and, for the whole rest of the day, I felt better, as though I belonged in the human race again.
It didn’t last. Does it ever? You pay attention, but the mind wanders.
Salvation is not an easy thing, when the sex is so available, and the lines are chopped out on the table, and you know in your heart that whatever happens, you are lost beyond any penance, any redemption.
My fault, you say? Say what you will. I no longer care. I have done my penance. I have paid attention. Believe me, I have paid.