<\/p>\n
You barely remember the day you lost yourself. You know it was Sunday because the rampant letters about your mom\u2019s old estate aren\u2019t spilling out the flag-down mailbox. You know it was sunny, because your shoulders itched under your overambitious sweater. Must\u2019ve been noon, the way you squinted through the window at Lenny standing all tall, beer-in-hand, straight-faced like <\/span>American Gothic<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n You forgot to velcro the trash shut after rolling it to the curb Friday. Two whole days it was out there, and there are scratch marks all around. Lenny\u2019s neighborhood has these crazy rituals you\u2019re still learning. An old couple at the farmer\u2019s markets makes a whole living out of designing velcro harnesses for the trash cans so the Bandits can\u2019t get in. Lenny is not happy. You haven\u2019t been sculpting lately, so he\u2019s incessant that you do more around the house.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cDo you get it now?\u201d He gestures with his leg to a scratch beneath the whirring fridge. \u201cDo you see it now?\u201d He points with his nose to a gash through the bottom of the drip-dripping dishwasher. \u201cWhat happens when you don\u2019t pay attention?\u201d He swings around, pointing hysterically, rotating like he\u2019s chasing himself.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Lenny\u2019s strong and fast and tall and fit. He\u2019s the man of men, and he yells like one too. But everything\u2019s so clear in every boom, and you\u2019re so focused on the misshapen forms his rough lips mimic that you don\u2019t see how close his hands are waving to your MFA project.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Like it was regular\u2013like the waterfall of all waterfalls\u2013the tourist\u2019s haven beneath Niagra\u2013the spouts cascade to the ground\u2013like ritual or routine\u2013like they fall every passing day. The ceramic crashes against cheap, faux hardwood, and Lenny walks away. He says he doesn\u2019t want to lose his cool. He says that he\u2019ll stop at cheap vases.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWhat a mess,\u201d he says, looking straight at you. It\u2019s nothing to him. He never saw the sketches and prompts and critiques and rejection and rejection and rejection and rejection and rejection. It\u2019s nothing to him but a vase in a room of vases. Even then, you\u2019re surrounded by vases\u2013vases that took you more time\u2013vases that you tell him were more labor.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cOh, that was one of yours?\u201d he asks, as if any of the others aren\u2019t. The earnestness in his voice weighs heavier than any pointedness could have.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Flower-Holder was special. It was your degree, and it held a pride. That was the most responsible vase there was, and that responsibility came with fragility.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll buy you a new one to replace it,\u201d he continues.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Lenny looks eye-to-eye with the grossly realistic ceramic pig-head with glazed eyes. That vase is large and ornamental, boring a dark shadow beneath it. It stares out at each side like prey. Its mouth is devoid of flowers, instead overflowing with makeshift ceramic pearls. That, still, is more beautiful to him. No matter how grotesque or misshapen, it has weight. It means something to him. Lenny is obsessed with meaning.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t realize,\u201d he prods, hoping you\u2019ll offer him something in return. \u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d he says. He regains his composure by slicking back the hair behind his left ear. \u201cIt\u2019s nothing,\u201d you reply, and he\u2019s satisfied enough with that.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Exit stage, dim the blood lights, and you\u2019ve a spotlight with no audience to soliloquy. Lenny walks away because he knows you\u2019ll stoop down to clean the pieces. He\u2019ll apologize again later, and that\u2019s the routine of things. That house clicked those routines into place, day after day, like the gears of a watch. <\/span>Business is business, even at home. <\/span><\/i>That\u2019s what he\u2019d say. You\u2019d never met a businessman more self-proclaimed.<\/span><\/p>\n Bending to a kneel, you plant yourself on the kitchen floor and begin to set things back to their proper place. You scratch your fingers along the rough shards, and there\u2019s a bitter complacency in the ritual. There\u2019s a satisfaction to the monotony of things that droops down and hangs low like the heavy pendulum of a grandfather clock.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Lenny\u2019s the kind of guy that wants a world of guarantees. He lines up his tchotchkes like they\u2019re Oscars and talks about your future children like heirs. He talks about the ways he\u2019ll outlive your marriage, and he talks about you like you won\u2019t. He talks about going to Heaven like going to the grocery store, but you\u2019d be surprised to see him in either place.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Flower-Holder\u2019s shards find their way into your scrap bin, clanking as they fall through the ceramic pile of could-be art.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Then, as natural as any other ritual, you make your way across the hazy threshold between the kitchen and your replica-size studio. You sit yourself down before a blank canvas and mechanically reach for your brush and pigment.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n You paint when you\u2019re mad. That\u2019s how Lenny jokes about it with his friends. That\u2019s mostly true. You paint after every fight, so you paint almost every day. You paint to know more than just vases. You paint because you like to feel the tension at the ridge where the factory-strung horsehair meets the canvas. You paint to feel the rough wood your college roommate embellished with a pocket-knife. You paint because you can hear the echo of a soft clap from your mother and the hum of approval from the gallery owners in the back. You paint portrait after portrait to make the face before you more familiar. You paint mirrors.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n With every stroke, you can sense the small impossible smudges of paint on your knuckles. They\u2019re too light for you to feel\u2013and you\u2019ll never block your focus to check\u2013but you know they\u2019re there as proof of your labor. You\u2019re as certain of them as you were of the finger-paint casting your hands when you found your first love. You were grounded from the stains you left in the cheap sink and the crayon-portraits you crafted after school. One gifted portrait was enough to reduce your sentence to the past. From there, you learned to speak for yourself. Your art is the only way you know the world and the mode through which you choose to be known. Art is your condition.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n You settle in your sculpted stool and feel a sunbeam caress your left side. The studio half of your kitchen is silent aside from distant hums, a harmony of ventilation units and faraway car tires. Your hand itches toward reds so subtle and grays so bold that the unreading eye would find your portrait monochromatic. Your brush dives down and swatches fine color, as precise as a surgeon selecting the tools for the operation. Your mind drops back to make room for your heart, and you feel a bloom of uncanny warmth in your chest. There is nothing more natural than this moment.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In a series of entangled-dove paintings and kissing vases, you used to say love is the most natural part of the human condition\u2013but Lenny proved you wrong for once. He would say that you can love anything. He said, for example, he loves the rain, but that\u2019s hardly human. You dislike rain, and you\u2019re as human as him, or even less, he joked. He says <\/span>loves <\/span><\/i>rain, but you know he\u2019s lying. Love is in the heart. It\u2019s in the chest that can only be unlocked from the outside and locked from the inside. He doesn\u2019t love rain. He loves staring at his collection or reading to the cicada chorus of excuses not to leave the house. Lenny therefore can\u2019t love the rain. He loves the proof of it.<\/span><\/p>\n But at the same time, you loved Lenny, and that humanity was something you wanted to deny. You deny it as you push your grievances through your gentle fingertip and into each brushstroke\u2013each brushstroke\u2013each brushstroke.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Yet, as you paint, you can\u2019t make the shape of your face. Your eyebrows are much too thick and pale, and your nose is too low and dark. Your ears are too small, and every effort to remedy that proportion edges them higher and higher until they seem to be on top of your head. Your neck is too thick, and the edges blur into a fuzzy light. The red that you craved appears as a muted brown beneath the grays. The more you try to correct the painting, the more distorted the portrait becomes, until it\u2019s impossible to recognize any semblance of yourself within the figure. The more you press on, the more it loses its familiarity as even a human\u2013but you remain steady. You trust in the reflection, even as the backlight distorts into fur and the highlights morph into whiskers. Your brush drops down to its bed on the palette, and you see an unmistakable Bandit locking eyes with you.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n You don\u2019t know what else to do. Your painting is done and you\u2019re still clenching the brush, firm as a fist but as delicate as an IV drip. You move out and up to the bedroom floor, and every step up the stairs spills the drip-drip-drip over and into a hollow, heavy well in your chest.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Lenny\u2019s sitting with an old showy newspaper and his ankles crossed along the bed. The lights are dimmed to set the room a dull beige.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n You take a careful step forward to not disrupt him, careful not to stare too close or move too suddenly. You hunch and crouch more and more as you make your assigned side of the bed, until you\u2019re crawling to the edge of the sheet, pulling it clean and rolling over to the end.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re here,\u201d he says. That\u2019s his way of proving his cleverness\u2013his observational tact. You turn your head over and see that he\u2019s propped his old coin binder against the newspaper, tucked into the edges. He\u2019s staring at his coins\u2013quickly flipping through them\u2013glazing over them like summer reading.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Beneath you, your MFA is rattling around in the scrap bin with the proof of your barely-scratched, transparently paint-stained hands\u2013and he\u2019s up here, staring at quarters. He\u2019s calm, counting coins like wishes. He\u2019s paying both you and the memory no mind. \u201cYou shouldn\u2019t have done that. You should have paid attention,\u201d you say.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cHmmm?\u201d he says, still not breaking eye contact with his quarter reflections. \u201cYou broke my MFA project. You broke Flower-Holder.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI already apologized.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cNot well enough.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just a vase,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd not even a good one. It only had room for two flowers.\u201d \u201cFlower-Holder,\u201d you repeat. You don\u2019t say any more\u2013correcting him was already overstepping his comfort.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cNot important business, to say the least.\u201d He grins an unevenly bleach-stripped smile. Lenny looks up at you, his eyes spinning shades of brown around and around like a pottery wheel. His mouth is wrinkled inward, his lips pursed like an angry cartoon\u2013but his eyes slow down and droop downwards with unmistakable pity.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Your mind clouds with frustration. \u201cSure,\u201d you resign. You forget what\u2019s supposed to come next.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n You sit beside him, feeling his unmistakably lurching body lean into you. He\u2019s warm like a hot cigar or an old car engine or a rustic fireplace. You give him a smile and flutter your eyes like<\/span><\/p>\n the movies, enjoying how he falls back. You whisper: \u201cMaybe you could teach me a thing or two.\u201d There\u2019s a pool in your chest sinking your lungs, but you persist. He meets your eyes for once and sees your face nearly pressed to his. He\u2019s shaking slightly, with a weakness so palpable it flicks the scales like a child. The metal now swings in and out of balance. You should feel better. This is how these things should end, but the paint on your hands suddenly feels so, so present\u2013as if it\u2019s spreading up and out above your arms. The pressure persists with a twisted itch, like old vines crawling up an old building.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n You shoot back into a slouch against the headboard, the beige wood slamming hard against your back. The force snaps you back beside him, releasing your bind. He settles back into his quarters.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n He\u2019s happy now, and he fiddles through his anecdotes, his thick fingers pressed to the plastic shielding his quarters. He tells you the story about how his favorite quarter is the one his mom found on the subway the day he watched his first baseball game. He tells you about this other quarter that he bought on auction at the last second. He\u2019s very proud and says you should be too\u2013he really negotiated well. He tells you about how this other quarter\u2019s a little too smoothed than he\u2019d like, but it\u2019s so old it\u2019s worth over ten times what it usually should be. All the while, the paint keeps spreading.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The next one, that one\u2019s really special. He tells you all about how old and mint it is and how special\u2013how truly, truly special he is for having this quarter. This quarter is the quarter of quarters, so he must be the man of men; further, he has the most important quarter of all the quarters, so he must be the greatest man of all the men. He attempts cheekiness, but his hollow head rattles around louder than any of his words. You hands grow more and more saturated until the paint drips straight from the fingers, and he begins talking about how he got into the quarter community and how respected\u2013no, <\/span>renowned<\/span><\/i>\u2013he is for the beauty and significance of this quarter, and you feel your hand lurch toward the page and leave a huge, dark, futile hand-print on his plastic sleeve.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n He looks at you\u2013his face empty of the satisfaction of anger\u2013and provides you the smile he regifts to you from every other child who drew with crayons on the wall. \u201cAh, well\u2026 that\u2019s immature,\u201d he settles on, and closes his quarters. For some reason, the shut of that newspaper-wrapped binder feels like the cold latch of a cuff around your wrist. You can\u2019t stand it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n You push forward for the binder and barely manage to knock the quarters from his hand. He lunges down, shoves you out of the way, and you grab for the binder again, barely latching onto a plastic sleeve. Lenny lurches forward, his face too close for comfort. He clenches the edges with his geometrical teeth, gnawing the binder from your grip\u2013but not without a small victory: the plastic rips from the binder rings, warped and twisted from the force, and you\u2019re stuck with 9 quarter-sleeves carefully nestled in a sheet between your slippery, paint-soaked hands. Lenny\u2019s stuck with hundreds of quarters nested in mangled rings.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n He won\u2019t look away, but neither will you. You stare with a rage that slowly morphs into a curiosity of what he\u2019ll do next. At the softening, he resigns.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n He lowers his head in consignment, but his voice is clear: \u201cIt\u2019s time for you to strap down the trash cans.\u201d He motions to the window, dark aside from the light moonlight drifting in and dripping through the windowledge, flooding a light pool against the ground.<\/span><\/p>\n You punch your hand to the mattress, feeling nothing but its soft comfort against your force, then turn so your legs hang over the bed. You pull your inherited dress-pants up above the ankles and wade in the moonlight until your socks are soaked through, and you\u2019re free of that dark room.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The hallway\u2019s angled, so the moonlight echoes light down the stairs. Your socks are wet enough you can hardly feel the small pools on the floor. You follow the light down to the front door and emerge. You then take careful steps down the driveway, each step softer than the last. The trees are sparse but seem to interlock, forming an aisle down the pavement.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Every move away from Lenny feels like an undoing, even as you march toward his order. You can feel the veil of moonlight rest on your head and slick your hair down like oil. You feel the sleekness of the light hitting the sharp darkness of the pavement. You feel short strands of hair shoot out like sharp shards of glass jutting from a dropped mirror. You feel the desperation of wet denim clutching your legs. You feel a soft relief pressed against your calf, a gentle tap on your leg.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n You lock eyes with a Bandit, staring up with large, deep black eyes, enveloped in a tight mask, soft in the wet moonlight. Your march begins to tremble as you walk slightly faster, away from the Bandit\u2013but you hear the soft <\/span>pit-pat <\/span><\/i>of the Bandit\u2019s rough shoes tapping on the pooling pavement behind you.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Then, the sound doubles to a <\/span>pit-pat pit-pat <\/span><\/i>that grows louder and more rhythmic, growing like a duet\u2013then a quartet\u2013 then a symphony. You can\u2019t help but let out a nervous, embarrassingly high-pitched laugh that layers above their rhythm like a soprano verse. Your singing grows louder as you give an Orpheus turn and stare at the blurred horde following behind you.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n You feel the tap against your leg again, then a pressure, and you sharply wring your head around to see a Bandit clawing for your sheet of quarters. You raise the sheet high in the air to put it out of reach\u2013then whip your head back around, anticipating needing to run, but the Bandit sits still. In your peripheral, you see the crowd follow suit. They\u2019re all silent and waiting.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n You can feel your nervous chest heave the weight of the moonlight with every labored breath. In your stillness, the light drips from you and falls on the sitting Bandit, tilting its head curiously. In the light, the dark fur around its eyes blur and melt down, dripping softly off its chin and flicking against the ground. You stare as the mask grows wider and lighter as the moonlight grows brighter and heavier\u2013until your hair is heavy and soaked through. The pool is up to your ankles by now, but the Bandit remains sitting, head tilted, eyes affixed to either you or the quarters at any moment. By now, its mask has faded. By now, it hardly looks like a bandit at all.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n You look back into the crowd, and the light has pooled enough now that you can see the shimmer on each individual face staring back at you. They\u2019re all sitting, waiting, eyes-wide, begging for the quarters\u2013now wide and spinning like stars, splitting the sky with their reflected light.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n You look back at your bleak old home, sinking under the weight of the light. The roof is bending under the weight into a sad warp, though not enough to worry about anything happening to Lenny. And somehow, like every high-school essay intro and inspirational baseball story in the world, you get struck by some great pressure that churns and turns down from your mind to your heart and, somewhere\u2013whether by course of gravity or that great assembly line\u2013that pressure forms inspiration. You flick a quarter from the sleeve with the awkward suavity<\/span><\/p>\n of an amateur magician, and you pitch like a businessman with the arm of a sailor, shooting the quarter through the air. It shoots down the three-quarters of your driveway you\u2019ve walked and through the window of your bedroom\u2013where you swear you could hear the faintest swirl as it spins around and inevitably falls flat with a <\/span>clink <\/span><\/i>on the floor.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Swiftly, the Bandits run. The whole pack of them, one big moving machine, splashes toward the house, and the wind in their tails forces you with them. You run with a gaiety and speed you hadn\u2019t felt since you were 10. The puddle splashes up to your thighs, but you can hardly feel it because you\u2019re already soaked with moonlight. The house is heavy and creaks under the weight of you and the Bandits, flowing fast and strong, brushing gently against each corner and old pieces of furniture like they\u2019re rocks in a current.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n You run with them. You run up and through the house\u2013through the stairs\u2013through the doors\u2013through the rooms\u2013through the winding and impossible hallways\u2013through and around each vase and sculpture and nameless furniture all indiscriminate in the chaos\u2013each tumbling but still\u2013each brushed but untouched.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n You reach the room with your art and your pig, and you hardly see Lenny in the haze, swinging at the Bandits with a tall vase. The kitchen and the studio have blended into one beneath the crowd. The Bandits begin to dance around Lenny like children playing tag.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n You laugh and you run alongside them, spreading your arms wide behind you and sprinting with no direction in mind. As far as each eye can see, the Bandits run from every corner of and crevice, every spout, every should-have-been flower boxed window to tear and scratch and bite at every crumbling piece of that lonely house. They pay Lenny no mind\u2013that monolith of a man\u2013and run over and around him as they chipped and tore from each rotten painting and spoiled statue.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong with you?\u201d he snaps.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Lenny\u2019s eyes are wide and sharp with anger.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYou come into my house and make a mess day after day,\u201d he continues. He looks at you like a dog off a leash, so you oblige.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re not even going to say anything?\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n You look at him like a dog.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In your defiance, you can finally feel the home beneath your feet and the cracking moonlight drying off your skin. You begin to ache and see the soft beauty in Lenny\u2019s eyes, and your stomach knots and kneads and twists like a dishcloth until the moonlight begins drip-drip-dripping once again to its pit. You twirl the quarter between your fingers like the dancing ballerina on your childhood jewelry box.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re a dog,\u201d he says, but you knew it was coming. You smile at the catharsis of it all\u2013the relief of the wet smile and the aching eyes. The inner light feels oppressive now, and the walls feel heavy, as though your roots, grounded in the floorboards, are all that\u2019s holding that room up.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cGoodbye, Lenny,\u201d you say, but he\u2019s too angry to hear you or to continue to ask to fight. He\u2019s too busy swatting at the Bandits\u2013now calmer in your periphery\u2013to notice you grab your packed suitcase\u2013his least favorite performance piece\u2013from the sculpture garden.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n He could never believe that you\u2019d leave. He unbelieves and unbelieves with such urgency that he doesn\u2019t even see you go.<\/span><\/p>\n Dogs come with the condition of missing\u2013they\u2019re the acceptance of outliving. They are the bind of being held close when they leave you behind.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n You stop for a second in the doorway. Pinching that perfectly polished quarter sheet between your nails, you take a reckless, blurry, poorly-framed squint to force a memory in its reflection. You drag your suitcase from your studio, and stoop down to balance your scrap-box in your other hand. With a nod goodbye to your hundred mirrors, you leave Lenny and the Bandits to their business.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\n