Love Love (40 page)

25

J
udy watched Roger choose pastries from the buffet table as she sat on one of the many leather couches in the first-class lounge of the San Francisco Airport. She didn't know whether she was mad or disappointed at him or her brother or Claudia, or maybe it was just everything and everybody, all at once. She felt she possessed the right to be pissed at anything.

From the end table, she picked up a discarded copy of
SF Weekly
and was surprised to find a story about the Hive opening, and even more surprised that the piece was more about her than the show itself. It was an essay in the entertainment section, and the headline captured her thoughts perfectly: “Claudia X: Genius or Bitch—or Both?” Judy's name was mentioned several times, and a photograph of her first sketch was prominently displayed with the article. “What egregious offenses did Claudia X find in the works of Judy Yoon Lee? Take a look for yourself, dear reader, and see if you can discover anything beyond what I witnessed: the quirky, beautiful, bold work of a professional. Once again, a budding artist is caught in the crossfire of Ms. X's runaway ego.” The writer was an art professor at San Francisco State, and it was obvious that he was no fan of Claudia and, maybe for that reason, was a fan of Judy.

“Pick what you like.” Roger sat down next to her and held up the dish like an offering, a smorgasbord of baked goods: a croissant, powdered donut, blueberry muffin, and cheese Danish. Back on the East Coast, it was two in the afternoon, so she really should've been hungry, but she wasn't.

“You have to eat something,” he said, nudging the plate.

Judy grabbed the croissant so he'd leave her alone. She had trouble looking him in the eye, a sign of her remaining anger. Like a record
on repeat, her mind kept returning to the moment last night when she'd held her tennis planet sketch close to her heart and waited for him to say something, anything, to save her from the horrible creature who told her she wasn't good enough.
Desperation
was the word Claudia had used, and the worst of it was that Judy knew she'd been right. Only with her first sketch had she left it raw, unrefined, the strokes catering to no one, not even to herself, the work existing for the sake of existing. The women breastfeeding their tennis ball babies, the racquet caught in the web of the netting, the tennis planet—with each successive sketch, she'd become less certain of her intent, more generic in her overall effect.

But her shortcomings as an amateur artist did not justify Claudia's actions at the gallery. Late last night, Kevin had called Judy to apologize and to let her know why Claudia was the way she was, some cockamamie story about how close she'd come to killing herself. As far as Judy was concerned, the only unfortunate part of the tale was that she hadn't succeeded.

“I'm coming home, for real, on Tuesday,” he said.

“What, you've gotten your fill of your new family?”

He had, and when Judy heard the insane story, with the porn and the girl and the house and the lies, she laughed.

“It's not funny,” he said. “You know, you laughed when I told you I was adopted, too. What is it with you?”

“I think it's hilarious,” she said, “that your blood family is just as fucked-up as your adoptive family.”

“Possibly more,” Kevin said.

At least her brother had tried to stick up for her in front of Claudia, but Roger, he'd just stood there. Judy bit into the crusty croissant and watched the buttery flakes rain onto her plate. What could Roger have done, call Claudia names, punch her out, threaten to set the place on fire? The woman's mind had been made up, and she was the queen of her gallery. But still.

“You just stood there,” Judy said.

Roger took a sip from his orange juice, then held on to the glass with both hands like a talisman, as if it could explain the unexplainable. “Last night, you mean. At the gallery.”

Judy nodded.

“I should've defended your honor,” he said.

“When you put it like that, it sounds stupid.”

“That's not what I meant,” he said, and he placed the glass on the table.

“With you, with your anhedonia, I just don't know what I am to you.”

“It's possible that I'm just a coward, and that I didn't want to feel the wrath of that unstable woman.”

“But I know you're not. It looked like you were observing—not in the situation but outside it, unaffected.”

“And maybe this is how you feel about me, that I see you objectively. Simply put, that I don't love you. That I can't love you.”

They were just talking, but the words still stung her.

One of the reps at the front desk came over to inform Roger and Judy that their flight would start boarding in ten minutes. Everyone was so kind here, so ready to help. First class was a side of travel that Judy had never seen, all of it now available to her thanks to Roger. Considering how much he'd done for her, she felt terrible for bringing any of this up, but at this point in her life, she knew herself enough to know that the longer she kept something bottled up, the worse its eventual aftereffects would be.

“I'm never going to be like everybody else,” he said.

“Don't say that.”

“It's true, though. This is who I am, and I can't blame you for the doubt you have about my feelings for you.”

“Love,” Judy said. “I don't even know what it's supposed to feel like, if I ever did.”

He kissed her then, his lips on her lips, his warmth becoming her warmth. She reached out for him, and he took her in. He was here, and so was she.

The rep came back and cleared her throat to warn them once again.

Judy opened her eyes and took in his unwavering gaze.

“I don't know what happiness is—I'll never know—but I know I want you to be happy,” he said.

“Okay,” Judy said.

They rose from the couch, held hands, and walked through the automatic frosted glass doors of the executive lounge and out into the fray. Judy looked forward to getting back on the plane, to fly high above the clouds and head back East.

•
  
•
  
•

R
oger's mansion on the Cape didn't feel like home for either of them, since he used it for only a month in a given year and Judy had been there only for a couple of weeks, but there was one thing that made it seem more homelike: Snaps, whose ears perked up into a pair of pyramids when she heard their return. No matter how comfortable she seemed in her plush circular dog bed, she got up to greet them at the door. Her steps weren't as sure as they used to be, but still she came, her scruffy muzzle, her eyes cloudy with cataracts. The pet sitter who took care of Momo and Snaps told them that all the dog did was watch the door and wait for them.

Judy had lived with Snaps for more than a month now, and she'd almost forgotten how much Snaps used to annoy her. Like most German shepherds, she was overly territorial, scaring the hell out of Judy every time anyone came near Kevin's house. There was no greater threat than the UPS truck, a sound the dog could hear well before the brown vehicle rolled into the driveway. Every time she'd gone over to her brother's, Judy had to brace herself against Snaps's piercing onslaught of barking, which was so sudden and harsh that it felt like a stab.

But the years had mellowed Snaps out, and now she was the perfect dog. Judy crouched down and gave her a full-bodied hug, sank her face into the dog's neck and came up covered with fur.

“Always a mistake,” she said, picking out hairs from her mouth.

On the return flight, she and Roger agreed to spend one more night at the Cape, then drive back to Jersey on Monday morning. It had been a good time, a productive time for her. Even if it all went to hell in San Francisco, she'd worked well here, and she didn't want to forget that. In the end, that's all that mattered, what she'd put down on paper.

She helped Roger close up the house for the coming winter. They drew the curtains and lowered the blinds and cinched the cover around the gas grill on the deck. Judy felt a vibration in her pocket, and for a moment she thought back to the snakebite, when she thought she might die, and now here she was, able to laugh about it.

On her phone was a man named Cody who sounded so effete that he seemed like a gay character from a
Saturday Night Live
skit. He called her sweetheart, he said he saw the
SF Weekly
piece and thought it was fierce, just fierce, what she was doing, and told her that it would be an honor if she would bring her works to his gallery in the Lower
East Side, because nothing would make him happier than to showcase sketches that didn't live up to Claudia X's “standards.”

“You know she's
loco
, right? Well, of course you do. You just dealt with her ass-crazy bullshit. The number of artists who have felt the sting of her insanity as you have and gone on to do great things? Dozens, love, dozens. Claudia X has her share of admirers, but there's a tribe of people she's pissed off for no good reason.”

Judy took the cell off her ear, swallowed a long lungful of air, then expelled it. Cody was still talking, his munchkin voice blaring off the phone's earpiece.

“. . . which is why I think she's as double-edged as a sword can get. I mean I'm not gonna lie to you, the woman is supremely talented, a giant in the art world. But she should stick to what she's good at, is all I'm saying.”

“Thank you, Cody,” Judy said. “Is it okay if I think about it?”

“Think on it, sleep on it, fuck on it. I'm here for you, Judy. Ring me and we'll get it going, and it's worth it, you know? Art that isn't shared is cry-worthy. People should see what you're doing, because there's nothing else like it. Remember that.”

Roger was emptying the dishwasher when she walked in to tell him about the phone call.

“That's great news,” he said. “Isn't it?”

While he placed the cups back in the cupboard, she sorted the utensils into their appropriate nooks in the drawer.

“I suppose. It's funny—Kevin told me that before he left, Claudia told him that though this might feel like the end, it's just the beginning.”

“Of your career as an artist.”

“If you're being positive. If you're being negative, it's the beginning of the bullshit that goes along with being one. I still can't make myself say that, by the way. Artist.”

“But that's what you are, like it or not.”

“It just sounds pretentious, vacuous. Like I should be wearing a beret and speaking with dramatic hand gestures.”

“I think it's good to be good at something,” he said. “It's a gift, to have a designation for yourself. Not everyone gets to have one in their lives.”

He was no doubt referring to himself, his rudderless existence. She pushed the drawer closed and went to him.

“All of this is because of you,” she said. “You saved my life in more ways than one.”

“Thank you,” he said, and she could see he meant it, and yet the disappointment remained on him like a stain, and she couldn't exactly say that she felt any better after the phone call, either. In the end, she'd still wake up each day in the same tired body she'd occupied her whole life, and it all just seemed so meaningless. Maybe she'd contracted Roger's anhedonia, or maybe it was her own proclivity to favor the darker side of things.

“I'm not suicidal or anything,” she said, “but sometimes I do wish it all to be over.”

Roger put the last dish in the cupboard and slid the rolling racks back into the dishwasher.

“That's a curious thing to say after receiving such good news.”

“What is the point, when we're all doomed? Every one of us, all heading toward our eventual, singular demise. And yet we all go on.”

“Because this is all we know of, this brief life of ours.”

As if to demonstrate her agreement, Snaps walked over and lay down by Roger's feet, on top of the rug by the sink, one of her favorite spots. Roger sat down on the floor and rubbed her belly, and Judy leaned back against the oak cabinets and stroked the back of the dog's neck.

“Maybe crazy Claudia is the only sane one,” Judy said. “Do whatever you want, fuck the consequences.”

“There are downsides to every philosophy,” Roger said. “I can't imagine the woman has many friends. Mostly I feel sorry for her, for being a slave to her every whim. It almost feels like she's living out a curse.”

“Either that or a bad movie. Like that one Jim Carrey was in, where he was always forced to tell the truth and got into a whole lot of trouble.”

“
Liar Liar.
I actually found it sort of funny.”

Judy stopped her petting and looked at him. “I thought because of your anhedonia, you don't . . . you can't . . . ?”

“You've seen and heard me laugh, haven't you?”

“I didn't know if, you know . . .”

“If I was pretending, going through the motions.”