The exhibition was sparsely attended. I felt relieved I’d made it and ashamed that, when Dee had asked me to come a few hours earlier, I’d considered skipping. The Milwaukee Art Museum had selected student work from five different colleges in southeastern Wisconsin. Dee was ecstatic that they’d chosen two of her onion paintings to represent Mount Mary’s student artists. I didn’t particularly want to go because we were in the midst of a demoralizingly late-spring storm—heavy, slushy sleet blew from the lake and turned the streets and the sidewalks into slick death traps. It was cold, wet, and dark; winter was making one last desperate fight for its life. I was just as content to stay in my apartment, drinking day-old red wine and reading until I had to pick Leif up. But Dee worked her magic on me, as usual. She called me an hour before doors opened. I need this. I need you, Pegasus, please. Please without the question. That was one of her signatures.
All the student artists wandered around awkwardly holding sparkling water and complimenting one another’s pieces; it was painfully obvious to me who they were. A few parents and friends milled around; most of them affected interested, engaged expressions.
The gallery itself had the feel of a great open mouth. Sleet thrashed the windows, creating a loud, frantic atmosphere despite the relative silence of the attendees. I felt my pulse with my thumb, but the beats were too quick to count. I scanned the place for Dee. Even from a distance, I could tell there was an energy suck in the room, that there was a leader or two toward whom everyone had trained their attention. I knew one of these people would be Dee.
As I got closer, I saw the other one was Erik. They had their arms around each other’s waists so tightly they looked like conjoined twins. I was surprised by their closeness, embarrassed by it. They were aware of how closely the rest of the group was watching them. Throwing their beautiful heads back and laughing with their throats shining up to the ceiling, dramatic flourishes of their wrists, hands cupped to each other’s ears. A performance. I almost didn’t want to say hi, because I sensed that my presence would alter this dynamic, change it, and something would be lost. But Dee caught me watching from a distance. She broke away from Erik and rushed to me. He followed. She hugged me and her body was warm against mine, cozy from the heat of Erik’s body pressed against hers.
“I didn’t know you invited Erik,” I said when she pulled away.
Dee blushed. “You said you weren’t sure you could make it.”
“I said I’d be here.” She frowned. It wasn’t what I meant to say. I added, “Hey—congratulations, babe.” I tried to shake the edge in my voice, but I could tell it had already affected Dee. “I’m so proud of you.” She nodded at me and let herself get led away by some fellow students who wanted to talk technique. Erik patted my arm. I shirked his touch, but he stayed close nonetheless.
“How’s Leif?” he asked me. I glanced at him. His expression seemed genuine. I scanned the gallery for Dee’s paintings and began to make my way toward them. Erik followed. He had a skittery energy—he moved like Leif but more concentrated and frantic, like he felt he had no time at all.
“He’s okay,” I told him. “He’s fine.”
“He’s crazy about you,” he said. I didn’t take my eyes off Dee’s paintings. They hung side by side, two purple onions, which in the stores they call red onions, though ever since Dee started painting them, I’ve thought of them as purple. In one piece, the onion was fully intact and floating against a dark green background; in the other, the onion was splayed in half on a green countertop.
I noticed Erik watching me. He was waiting for a reply. I nodded.
He went on, “Like, really crazy. I’ve never seen him like this before.”
“What do you mean? Like what?” I said.
“Like . . . in love.”
“Oh, stop. I’m sure he’s been in love before.”
“No,” he said. He leaned in to me. I didn’t want to turn to him, so I kept staring at Dee’s paintings. “This time is the real deal. Don’t you think I can tell? I know him. It’s like you with Dee. I’m sure you’d be able to tell if she was in love.”
I thought on that. Would I? My mother always said when you’re on the outside, you can never know what goes on between two people in a relationship. I very much agreed with that sentiment, and I also wondered if we could ever truly know what goes on in our own relationships. Given that the bonds with even our most beloved contain such unknowns, such gaps, such vast spaces of inaccessibility, what can we ever truly know about those smallest of spaces where we overlap and come together?
“Do you think Dee’s in love?” I asked him.
His face took on a pained expression. I felt awkward for asking.
“With . . . with this Frank guy?” He said the name like it tasted bad. “As I’m sure you’ve guessed, he’s a phase. I think she’s trying to impress you. And between you and me . . .” He hesitated, and I made a gesture like, go on. “Don’t tell her I said so, but he’s an absolute fucking nightmare.” This was the most pointed Erik had ever been to me. I wanted to know what he knew, but just then two guys brushed by us. One of them checked Erik with his shoulder and muttered something I couldn’t hear.
Erik’s body took on a charged energy. He made himself bigger, which was a considerable feat given that he was already a tall man. Though he was quite thin, he had the ability, under certain circumstances, to grow and to loom. I felt myself shrink in comparison.
“What did you just say?” Erik shouted into the back of the kid’s head.
The kid had a baseball cap on backward and a stiff polo with large Tommy Hilfiger logos on the sleeves. He turned around to look at Erik. He drove his eyes up and down Erik like a steamroller flattening a massive mound of dirt. He smirked. “I didn’t say anything.”
“I heard you.” Erik’s voice echoed through the gallery. People began to turn their attention to us. My cheeks were hot. I checked my pulse again. “I heard you say something about my friend’s painting.” He was shouting. Some people began to leave through the wide-open doors—out into the disgusting Milwaukee night. I wished I could go too.
“Come on, man,” the kid said. His smirk was fading. “I didn’t say anything. You heard wrong.”
“You better apologize to my friend,” Erik said. “Dee! Dee!” he shouted across the gallery. More people started leaving. The kid’s friend took a step away from him. “You better fucking apologize,” Erik said again.
“Or what?” The kid laughed in dry spurts. “Are you going to fight me, you fucking fairy?” The kid’s friend took a second step back. A big betrayal that he’d hear about later. Dee rushed forward, and I watched the kid become a different person once she was in his purview. I felt sick. His eyes took on a dumb glaze.
“What’s this?” Dee said. She looked at me desperately, trying to take stock of the situation. I looked away. Erik took a step toward the kid, but Dee moved in front of him.
“Apologize,” Erik said again.
The kid was ignoring Erik now and staring at Dee, who’d planted herself firmly between the two men. He shrugged heavily, like they’d only been arguing about what the Brewers’ chances were that year. “Sorry,” the kid said. He walked away.
“What the hell. Come on,” Dee said. Her face was flushed and shining. She shoved Erik playfully. “Let’s get a drink.”
She tugged on Erik, who had turned back to her paintings and who didn’t seem ready to stop looking.
I don’t remember anything else from that night. What bar did we go to? How late did we stay up? Did we talk about Frank? Did we talk about the city whose seams had been, or were always, unraveling rapidly? What songs did Erik and Dee sing together while we walked back to my apartment in Riverwest? Did our fingers get numb from the cold? Were Erik and Dee there with me, laughing and laughing, when Leif came home from work?
Are you ever afraid of how much you’ve forgotten? Entire days slip by—the contents of which could just as easily have been a dumb drama or a sitcom or an inane advertisement—with not a single discernible moment to hold on to. You don’t even know what you’ve lost unless you’re like me, and then every day you think about how much might be gone, how much you wish you still had, how difficult it is to mourn memories that don’t even exist.