Sunflowers (Tournesols) II 8 страница

At a lull in our conversation, I began to put dishes away and package up leftovers, when he appeared behind me and said with a sudden excitement, "When you are done, let's go for a walk - but we won't get lost and this won't be time wasted. The city is darker than before and there will be less people. I want to be reacquainted with streets and structures, not strangers. Get your jacket, and I will meet you downstairs!"

Before I could turn around and kiss him, let alone agree to his offer, he was gone. It was surprising, the twists and turns of his emotions, but I figured it was another effect of getting older. To prevent the regret from swelling and the memories from playing back the time lost, you had to make it worthwhile, even if it meant going from one extreme to the other. I was already getting tired, but knew there would be time for sleep much later.

When I got downstairs, he was smoking, and having a somewhat difficult time with it as he was facing the wind. He squinted a lot and periodically switched the cigarette between his two hands to keep one warm while the other fed his habit. I wished desperately that I had brought down a scarf, and looking at how both of us were dressed, I knew it would only be a matter of time before we needed to actually go out and buy real winter jackets. It was a lot colder than it had been the night before, simply because of the wind. As soon as we turned a street corner and buildings blocked us, everything was fine. We linked arms, not afraid of anything, and faced the rest of the city together.

Not much had changed in the four months since I had been gone, but we walked slowly, because several things had in the seven years. Some things were torn down and other businesses had to close, only to be opened up again by something else. Each place that Gerard slowed down, I realized had been affected by change in a small way, and I began to remember myself the story of New Jersey that had gone on around me while I failed to notice.

It was really amazing, once I stopped to think about it, how often something home-owned or family run was closed and taken over by a chain. The amount of Starbucks' was insurmountable, and Gerard nearly wept when he realized his favourite coffee place was no longer there. He never said anything more than, "I hope Mr. Barclay is doing something better with his life," but I could hear the visible sadness in his voice and I knew he was not merely squinting because of the wind. We talked a bit about jobs, and how now even home businesses were having the creativity sucked out of them, and he said some stuff about the economy and Marx that I still wasn't able to grasp. We may have been speaking on egalitarian terms when it came to art, but all else was above me.

"I know I said before, Frank, that I don't like talking politics. But now I can tangibly see why there were all those protests and fires while I was there. This is ridiculous," he mentioned quickly as we turned a corner. There was nothing more he said, and I was left with the biggest hole in his narrative so far.

Fires? I thought. How come he had never mentioned fires to me before? All we had done was talk about art, and while I was there, I didn't see any signs of a political uprising. Maybe that had gone on before I was there, or maybe Gerard had wilfully kept me out of those places. He knew his way around the city like the back of his hand, in spite of his claims about being lost. He could always be showing me what he wanted me to see - and simultaneously, he could only be remembering what he wanted to. Fires and politics happened while he was there, and they would always be happening at some place or another. It wasn't that he denied their existence as reality, but he wanted them to not be a part of his collective memory that would come at any moment. I didn't push the issue or ask about what he had seen, because I knew better than that now. I just gripped his hand and tried to show him the good that still remained here, the good that I hadn't always seen myself.

There were a few people on the streets as we walked, but not too many. We were in a mostly business distinct, and then an area heavily populated by students, but since it was a weekday and part of December where classes were out for finals, there was barely a soul visible. It was nice. Until I saw people emerging from buildings and driving in cars, I pretended that we owned the city, like I had owned the night before.

We had no real plan of where we were headed, but I realized that with Gerard barely leading us, we ended up where he, whether he was aware of it or not, wanted us to go: the park. It was the park that he always came to when he wanted to draw, and the same park that we had had one of our first candid conversations at. It was the park where we had first had sex publicly, and where we had also been kicked out for being too close to a gaggle of little children. It was as we entered the stretch of green where the bench and statues lay, that I understood what Proust was talking about. It wasn't smell that brought this on - but all at once, I saw our history played before my eyes. I looked at the statues, part of some memorial for a war or some civil liberty, some politics that didn't matter to us, and watched as their bodies twisted and turned towards one another, and I imagined ours underneath them. It was beautiful, then, the twisted steel and cement in the middle of the Jersey lawn.

"There's one thing that hasn't changed," Gerard commented. He walked up ahead of me, unlinking our arms and leaving me in my reverie. He went all the way to the bench, and sat down happily. I walked over to him slowly and sat down as well. The wood was cold and seemed to go right through my jeans. Gerard had his arms crossed over his chest and was hunched over, keeping his warmth together. I huddled closer, and we stayed there in silence for a while, bearing the cold for nostalgia. No one else was around. It really was all ours.

"There's another thing about perdre," he suddenly mentioned. "Another thing I read that I didn't tell you about."

He waited, and I mistakenly thought it was for me to say something. "Who was it by?"

"It wasn't a book, but I found it in a book. Or something. I can't quite remember now the origins. Shit, merde, I'm sorry," he shuffled forward and then ran his hands through his hair. He looked straight ahead. "There was a French teacher somewhere, and she had this bulletin board of people's French work all over it.There was this phase on it, ' tout ce qui n'est pas donné est perdu. ' A lot of the students, not knowing any French at all, asked her about that one in particular. It was the only thing on there that wasn't a verb conjugation chart or something simplistic. After some pressing, the teacher told them it was from a past student and it was on his suicide note. She kept it around, I don't know, to remind herself of something. It sounds so completely morbid, but whatever I learned the story from, it stuck with me. The kid was so young - maybe sixteen, seventeen, and had a lot of promise, but he just couldn't do it anymore. The phrase was one of his last words. Even the teacher couldn't let that go."

Gerard was really moved. He kept fidgeting with his hands and running them through his hair. His skin was getting pink because of the chill of the wind. I didn't know how to respond or what to do - how did you comfort someone that usually comforted you? And I needed comforting as well. Suicide was something that hit me harder that I liked to admit. The teacher was teaching high school, and if I was in her class, I would have been the same age as when I really considered that option. Before I met Gerard, of course, I tried to tell myself. All of this was before him, and I shivered, not from the cold, but thinking about all those things that I would have missed if I had not hung around in order to meet him. All those things that would have been - lost - wasted.

"What does that mean? That phrase?" I put my hand on his back, to steady him. Even the way he was telling his stories now was coming out jumbled, and not perfectly formed like usual. I rubbed his back, my hand freezing, but it seemed to help. He took a breath in and sat back a little.

" Tout ce qui n'est pas donne est perdu. All that is not given is lost. Wasted." Gerard pulled out a cigarette and started smoking. "Like his life. Just gone."

I rubbed his knee back and forth. I didn't know what to say, but I was upset too. I kept thinking of the weeks before I met Gerard, and how, if I had known French, maybe...

I cut myself off. I shook my head and took a drag of Gerard's cigarette. I tried to focus out on the horizon, on the statues in the middle of the park, and even tried to find some people to look at. I was relieved there weren't really many people out there; I saw a vague shadow in the middle of the park, almost familiar. They were picking up garbage, and wandering from side to side, doing maintenance - voluntary or forced I could not tell from that distance. I felt chills as I watched them, and waited for them to turn the corner and continue down the street, because I didn't want anyone to see what I did next. Overcome with emotion, and regressing a bit, I laid down on the bench, putting my head in Gerard's lap.

"I hope those kids learn from it," I told Gerard after we had finished passing the cigarette back and forth between us. "It's probably the best thing you can learn in French."

I felt him nod. With his now free hand, he rubbed his fingers through my hair. We sat in silence for a long time, and I wondered if this walk had been a mistake. Would we want to remember this years from now? Is it a regret, this feeling of sorrow and despair? Or should we be happy to feel this sorrow because it means we have made the right decisions, when imagining other outcomes? We have not wasted our lives, because when faced with the alternatives - death and suicide - we were afraid. To actually love someone, you need to face the possibility of loss. To actually truly love them, you need that absence, that time lost. I realized that there on the bench, and how, Gerard and I had lost one another. For those seven years, we were gone. Wasted? I wasn't sure, but I didn't think so. What was more important? Saving our relationship and having seven years together, or him pursuing his dream? It is the hardest decision ever to make. Do you go and risk death for a chance of freedom, or do you live for the people you love? Do you stay or do you go? What was really wasted in the end? By taking one option, you leave the other astray and unfulfilled. One choice was always wasted, no matter what it was.

But even that didn't seem right. Dreams were what mattered. I knew that. He had taught me that, and even through the sadness, our own remembrance of things past, I knew. No, I decided adamantly about those seven years. It was not wasted, because right then, on that bench, I realized how much I loved him, knowing what it felt like to have lost. Maybe our case was different, because he got to come back to me, so we got live the other option as well, so nothing was wasted. Maybe it was different, but it still hurt the same. We never had to do those seven years again, and I never wanted to. I wanted to stay with him until I died, until that last replay of my life happened and my memories surrounded me. And he would be in every one.

Maybe as he was stroking my hair, he was thinking the same thing. That we had not wasted time, because now we knew how much we loved each other now. At least I hoped that was what he was thinking. I had a feeling though, from the way his fingers moved around me, and the way he suddenly kissed me that my hunch was true.

"Never again," he whispered. "I will never again lose or waste you, Frank."

"I know," I told him.

"Oh look," he said suddenly, breaking the silence that had started to pass between us. He pointed up and my eyes followed his finger. I adjusted myself on the bench. The gray clouds were moving, swirling, and then I realized what it was.

"It's snowing."

We went home after that. The snow fell in thick sheets between us, all around us, and made me feel like I was captured in a snow globe. We got home and shook ourselves off, and then sat down to another cup of coffee. After that, the rest of the day was quiet. Gerard went back to his labelling and I busied myself either reading what he had done, or moving through his bookshelf to see what he had there. Nothing in French, except for the old Rimbaud poetry, so I picked that up and began. I felt like a bit of a cheater, however, because it had the English on the other side and though I wanted to learn how to speak French, I found my eyes diverging. As the darkness neared, and the snow piled up, and my tiredness got the better of me, I relinquished the fight of language and became comfortable with my own limitations. Gerard slowed down as well, and eventually, we ate some cake for dinner, marvelling at the colours.

"I need to start painting again, soon," Gerard commented and I nodded.

"And I need to take pictures."

We made promises for art and for the rest of our time here together, since we could only talk about other people's creations for so long before we started to yearn for our own. But for the rest of the night, we did nothing but sit together and watch the snowfall on the city. We were together; that seemed to be the only thing that mattered now, and, limited by time, I was okay with this.

Chapter Three

The first real thing I learned about Vivian for myself, and not something that Gerard had previously stated, was to never underestimate her. Yes, she was in her forties and was succumbing to age like any other person as years went by, but there had always been this strong defiance in her. Like Gerard's artistic capabilities, her need to rebel and to show people how wrong they were was something that stood the test of time. It did not regress; if anything, it got stronger with more age and practice. She was a single mother, supervising graduate students, and teaching classes at a college, but she was not tired, or even really that busy. She used to tell me that being 'busy' was a state of the mind, and like any form of consciousness, you could reverse it. It was one of her rare Gerard-like moments where she was spouting her own theories, though she would never admit it. She had much better things to spend her time on - like supervising us now in order to make sure we were doing what we needed to do.

Knowing Vivian's attitude, I should not have been surprised when she showed up at our place with not only a casserole, but an itinerary for what we were doing the next day. The quietude that we had experienced previously was a grace period; that was now over, according to her and her best intentions.

"Get up sleepyheads," she knocked on our door. It was 9:30am. "I need breakfast just as much as you, and at least I've brought lunch!" She paused, waiting for us to respond. We were still rolling around in bed, trying to orient ourselves. We had slept-in together this time around, waking up occasionally in the morning light and then using whoever was not awake yet as a pillow. I was on Gerard's chest and his arm was loosely draped around me. Vivian waited, heard vocal noises and mumblings, but when no feet came thudding across the apartment floor, she knocked again. "You get one day of recovery from jetlag. It's not my fault if you spent that doing other things. " Though she was chastising us and didn't want us to get away with laziness, I could sense the excitement in her voice. She was just as thrilled for anyone else in love and the possibility of more between us - but in a purely pragmatic way. Love was another state of consciousness, she had told me, and if you use it wisely, you can create the best art.

Gerard got the door first, just after he threw some pants and a shirt at me as a heads up. I had awhile to wake myself up and dress as Vivian walked around the apartment and marvelled at the meticulous labelling.

"Ah, volia!" I heard her giggle with Gerard as he took her around. "Good work. I'm glad you're putting an effort into knowledge preservation."

The two of them had coffee and the last of the cake while I showered to continue the waking process. I was already reverting to nocturnal tendencies and my bones and hands seemed to ache with the morning sun.

"He's still a teenager, huh," I heard Viv comment just as I entered the shower. I paid no attention to it, at least, at first. As I came around in the shower, I began to wonder if I was supposed to be taking offense at this remark. I was in my mid-twenties at this point. Although that age scared me a lot of the time (didn't this mean I was a quarter way through my life now? But that was only if I lived until one hundred, and how many people did that?), I wasn't too sure if I wanted to be "still a teenager" according to Vivian. She didn't see me as the same seventeen that Gerard saw me as. I felt delicate and special with him, younger by comparison and by virtue. But younger to Vivian, who was equal parts passion and practicality, what did that really mean? That I was still young because I needed a shower to wake me up? Because I couldn't get up at 8am anymore since high school let out? What did it matter what time I got up at, so long as I still did something during the time I was conscious? So far as I was concerned, the daylight hours had always been completely overrated. There were too many people outside, and not enough creativity. I would often wait until it was dark all around, without any distractions, before I began any type of art, and it had been working for me for this long. Why did I suddenly need to change because there was another person in my bed?

I shook my head to get the water out of my ear, and to shake off Viv's possible condescending tone. I didn't want to think about it. If it really bothered me after our breakfast, I would make an effort to interrogate her later. I got out of the shower and dressed quickly, feeling my stomach grumble.

The two of them were casually talking over coffee, and I bee-lined it to the machine, got myself a cup, and practically inhaled the last slice of the cake before I began looking for more.

"Still eats like a teenager, too," Vivian teased. She tugged on the bottom of my shirt to get my attention, and then pointed me towards the fridge. "There's some more food in there. A rice-and-beans casserole with garlic sauce for lunch, and then I also brought over some breakfast cereals that Cassandra has suddenly decided she does not like anymore or is too mature for, or something like that. There. On the counter."

I was relieved. There was still very little food in Gerard's apartment since we had not been there for four months, and had not yet gone grocery shopping. When Viv had made dinner the first night, she left a loaf of bread that had been an appetizer and most of her other ingredients, but there was no ready-made food. We had eaten all the leftovers, and I had no attention span to make the lost bread again. It probably would have made me sad, thinking too much about the symbolism of lost and wasted, anyway.

I grabbed the first box of cereal, which was Count Chocula and poured myself a large bowl. Viv had also left milk, and my eyes smiled gleefully as it all turned to a chocolate-y mess in the bottom of my bowl. I sat down and looked up at my two older friends, who were smiling and shaking their heads.

"What?" I said as I ate a huge mouthful. They continued to roll their eyes, and in between bites, I got defensive. "You're the ones who just ate cake. For breakfast. Rainbow cake. Let me remind you of that. Besides, this is free. Who doesn't want free food? I am saving the environment and preventing waste."

Vivian shook her head. Gerard lit a cigarette and then touched my knee under the table. This gave me hope; a sign of support he hadn't displayed yet. Vivian stretched out her arms, showing no sign of letting up with her teasing.

"It's just funny, that's all, Frank. Cassandra, barely in her teen years has decided she has outgrown the lovely characters of Count Chocula, Frankenberry, and Boo Berry, while you, well past your teen years, are still engaged in a meaningful relationship. It's true what they say - girls do mature faster than boys."

My first response was - "There's Boo Berry here, too ?" but I held my tongue. It would only prove Viv's point further, and I didn't want to give her that thrill. "It's just food, Vivian. I need food. You brought me food. And I'm eating it. So what if it's meant for kids? Can't I enjoy it? You shouldn't read too much into it. Food does not have that much meaning. It's a waste of time."

I smiled at Gerard, but he wasn't meeting my gaze. He was focused on Vivian.

"On the contrary, Frank. Food has a lot of significance and is not a waste of time. Especially not when you consider hunger problems all over the world, and the strange things we do with our food. Like introduce a Chocolate Vampire as a spokesperson," she laughed and took a gulp of coffee. "Just think of Jasmine and her intention with food now. That is hugely symbolic and meaningful. You shouldn't write off food right away, because it's there and the one piece of art that we keep coming back to, because you simply must."

I didn't know what to say. I didn't disagree with what she was saying, necessarily. Food was a big deal, especially when you didn't have it, and Gerard and I knew that first hand from our Paris experience. I felt my stomach twist, almost sympathetically, remembering the dinner we had replaced with flowers. We had replaced that food with art, trying to replicate Van Gogh's love of the sunflower, thinking we were doing something better with our funds. But could food itself be the actual art form? A consistent piece of art that one interacted with daily? I looked at the box I ate from, and it seemed more commercial ad gimmicky than anything else. I looked to Gerard for some reassurance, and he followed his eyes from the box to me as well. He held the cardboard in his hand and laughed.

"Okay, Viv," he stated. "I'll buy what you say. But I'm going to need some more examples than this."

She smiled, and easily, off the top of her head stated: "The cake we just ate. If that's not an example of a piece of art, then I don't know what is. Mikey's time and effort went into that, it took time and patience, and then, when it was done, the visual display was spectacular. How is that any different than what you two create?"

"....I don't eat Polaroids?" was all I could muster between bites of soggy cereal. I looked down at the brown mess, and felt like I couldn't even enjoy my breakfast anymore.

Gerard nodded. "I get the art of cooking. I'll buy into it and appreciate it, but always from afar. I never bothered with most of that because it seemed like so much effort for something that was going to be gone in the next moment. And then I would have dishes to deal with. People, as well, are not always amazed by what you make. You're so limited by constant exposure. Now that I've seen that cake idea once, there is very little alterations you can make with it, and I won't be as dazzled as I was the first time around."

I nodded vigorously and simultaneously cursed the fact that I could not be as articulate as either of them.

"I disagree, and I think you're missing a large point with your restriction argument, or inabilities to experiment. You leave out taste as a factor! Some meals I make look hideous, but are fantastic, while some meals that look fantastic taste like a foot. There's also smell. With factors like this to take into consideration, the variety is endless. Yes, you are right about the dishes situation and the pain it is to clean up afterwards, but don't you have to clean your paintbrushes? Or is Frank still doing that?" She looked at us both with a large smiling, and then winked so slightly before she continued. "You're also right that the meal is consumed and is then 'gone forever,' but what makes us think that the art we do is so permanent? What makes us think that we're permanent?"

I wanted to have something to say back to her. I wanted to fight and give some long lengthy speech about immortality and the artist's lesson or even something from Camus' A Happy Death that we had discussed yesterday. Anything, really, but I found myself stuck. I wanted her weight of the word permanence to mean something more than what it was a euphemism for: death. I didn't want to think about death anymore. We were only two days back and already diving into two weighty discussions. Why couldn't I eat my cereal meant for seven-year-olds in peace?

"Believe me," she said after some silence. "I've seen enough pieces of art fed to a compactor with the leftovers from undergrads and summer students that it's depressing. You begin to become very aware of your own impermanence, even with what you create that you're told is made to stand the test of time. Even the artwork that's displayed in museums could easily be obsolete in no time."

"Oh Viv," Gerard said, clutching his chest in a half mocking, half serious type of way. "Don't talk about such sadness. To make me think that I'd never be able to see Dali or Pollock or Goya again physically hurts."

She sat straight in her chair and held her hands up, in a small resignation. "All right, all right. I just wanted to emphasize the more practical and earthly arts, I suppose. Food is important. And so is clothing, which was my real reason for stopping by here." She tsk-tsked under her breath and then moved her eyes to Gerard's outfit and mine. Although I had changed my shirt, I realized Gerard was wearing the same thing he had been the past few days. When Vivian told him to stand up, she lifted up his collared shirt that he never tucked in and realised he had a cord for a belt. Gerard moved his body away from her grasp as soon as she found that out.

"What?" he stated. "I didn't know where my belt was since it's been years since I needed one. It was all I had. It works, doesn't it? And people only notice it when they go nosing around."

Vivian shook her head. She glanced towards me. "Are you wearing a cord too?"

I shook my head no. I had not lost as much weight as Gerard had in Paris, and my pants were still holding on. We both now looked ragged in our old stuff, however, a few sizes too large now. We had also worn what we had so much because it was all we owned, that although I left with new or decent clothes, constant use made me look equally shabby. Vivian got up and began to look through my suitcase, with my permission, and also lamented on the fact that I had no formal wear.

"All t-shirts and jeans! And hoodies!" She turned around and grabbed her purse, and then began to head for the door. She held it, waiting for us to follow. "That's it, we're going shopping. We've wasted much too much time already."

The idea of shopping for clothing made me panic internally almost as soon as the words left her mouth. The entire reason I had nothing but short sleeved t-shirts and hoodies was because of the stress that shopping gave me. I just didn't know what to wear. I didn't know if shoes matched the belt, or how to even buy proper shoes, and what type of belt was okay with a dressy shirt (although I did know that a cord was a bad idea). I didn't know sizes of shirts or what they meant and I certainly didn't know how to tie a tie. Most dress pants I found I absolutely despised because I would have to get them hemmed, even if I found the smallest pair. It seemed like an unreal combination - my waist size and my leg size - that they just didn't exist. Or when I did find them, they were super expensive. I tried to explain this problem to Viv, to somewhat redeem myself, and she nodded.

"Don't worry about a thing. First of all, we're not going to an expensive place - and second, anything you do get that's too long, I promise to you I will take care of the sewing. You just need clothing, both of you. Especially if you want to get a job."

I expected her to launch into another lecture and tirade about how clothing was another important art form, just like food, if we wanted to be experts in the Real World. I already had my arguments lined up for why clothing was just so damn useless. It was so impermanent since you only wore it for a certain period of time and then it just ended up falling apart. It was even more fake than food. Food was good for practicality, since we all needed to eat, but the same logic of 'so long as we're dressed' didn't seem to apply. Gerard's cord belt was shunned; it was something he was not supposed to do. But why? It held up his pants, right? Its utility was fine, and no one saw what it really was. Why did he need to change it? Why did I need to get better pants and a dress shirt so I could get a job? Shouldn't it be more about my credentials (even though those were kind of non-existent as well) and not how I looked? Wasn't that kind of like discrimination, and hiring men over women, or thin people over fat people, just based on the way they looked and not actually if they were suited for the job or not? Clothing was superficial at best, and practical only in the winter months, it seemed, and though it was winter and I needed a coat desperately, I would have forsaken that jacket just to make my point.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14