This Must Be the Place: A Novel (37 page)

“Like this,” Eugene said, holding Astor’s book like a kindergarten teacher, one hand propping the pages open, the other pointing at the sparkly castle diorama captioned
Untitled (Pink Palace).
Eugene never got that—calling a work
untitled
and then giving it a title anyway. It seemed so pointlessly timid. But then, from what the book said about the lame little life of Joseph Cornell,
pointlessly timid
sounded about right. “Kind of, like, half collage, half . . . stuff in a box.”

Arthur took the book from Eugene and leafed through it. “One of my studio requirements was a mixed-media overview, and the grad student teaching my section was into Cornell. I’d forgotten all about him, honestly.”

Holy shit, it was hard not to laugh maniacally. “Thanks, man,” Eugene said, and sat back down opposite Arthur, rubbing his scar. Eugene had given the performance of a lifetime yesterday. In no more than the thirty seconds it took Arthur to find a bandage, Eugene had assessed his room (
full of collage
), formulated a plan (
Arthur could make the real fake
), and set the scene: he hauled a massive, comatose cat into his lap and began to pet him (
use props, cute props
).

“Are you an artist?” Eugene had called.

“Photographer.” Arthur had reappeared with a gauze pad. “You look like Dr. Evil,” he said.

Eugene’s hand froze mid-stroke. The cat growled or sighed or farted, he couldn’t tell. “Ever hear of Joseph Cornell?” he asked.

It had played perfectly. He made up the specs of the assignment on the spot, asked for Arthur’s help, and Arthur had been intrigued enough to defer to Oneida’s mother rather than refuse outright. And now
Eugene was sitting in the Darby-Jones dining room in the light of day, so excited, so pleased with himself, he thought he might pop.

The dining room table had been covered with brown butcher paper, and someone had set out a plastic basket of markers, poster paint, and glue sticks prior to his arrival. Oneida, at the head of the table, was playing with a shiny pair of scissors, opening and closing and spinning them lazily on their point. He shot a glance in her direction. She didn’t smile and snapped the shears shut.

Still, all things considered, Saturday had been something like the greatest day of his life.

He’d made out with a girl for
hours
; he’d gotten his first offer of a blow job, which, even in the offer stage, was significant; and he’d discovered a solution to his $300 dollar debt. Not to mention stumbling headfirst into his
third
great work, after the Wendy Project (complete) and the Oneida Project (concurrent). Eugene wasn’t one to require constant validation, but every once in a while it
was
gratifying for the universe to remind him how much of a prodigy he was.

“What’s the assignment, exactly?” Arthur asked.

Eugene reached into his backpack and came up with a faked assignment sheet, appropriately bedraggled by his own hand: he’d made a ring on it last night with a glass of orange juice, a touch of genius he was particularly proud of. Arthur smoothed it out on the table and, while he read, Eugene dared another quick glance at Oneida. She held the scissors still, tensed
en pointe
.

What are you doing?
she mouthed.

Art,
he mouthed back, but she still looked confused. He wasn’t sure if she couldn’t figure out what he was trying to say, or could and just didn’t get it.
Art
, he mouthed again, pulling his lips back and punching a silent
t
. Oneida shook her head.

“
Art
,” he whispered.

“What?” Arthur looked up.

“Nothing. What? Nothing.” Eugene wrinkled his nose. “So I brought a bunch of junk we had lying around the house.”

“I’m not going to do this project for you. To be clear.” Arthur pushed the fake assignment across the table and leaned back in his chair. “I
agreed to help out, but it has to be yours. So you guys ought to pick the pieces you want to use, and start working, and I’ll step in if and when you need advice.”

“But it’s a group project, and our group bailed on us.” Oneida put the scissors down with a clunk. “Anyway, group projects aren’t really about everyone pitching in. One person always ends up doing most of the work, and it’s usually me, so it would be kind of nice to get a break.”

“Good point,” Arthur said.

Oneida looked shocked, but Eugene couldn’t tell if she was stunned by adult solidarity or solidarity from Arthur specifically. Assumptions aside, he knew the barest details about Arthur’s presence at the Darby-Jones (gleaned from their conversations yesterday, they amounted to his being
a tenant my mom wants to bone
and
grade-A freak meat
), and he was fascinated. The concept of sharing a living space with people who weren’t related to you, who paid you, was completely alien to Eugene. The practical possibilities were both mesmerizing and terrifying. What would you learn about strangers, and what would they learn about you? How could you possibly keep secrets from each other when you shared the same bathroom, the same cereal bowls and sofas? He knew that the Wendell family, by necessity, was more secretive than most; that his family bubble was designed to be impenetrable, but still—it was thrilling, and a little horrifying, to imagine what life was like for Oneida every day. No wonder she was so high-strung.

“Let’s see what you brought,” Arthur said.

Eugene grinned. Arthur’s circumstances may have been mysterious, but the man himself—as Eugene knew, cold, the second he entered Arthur’s room—was completely naked: he had a peculiarly obsessive talent with random objects, at just the moment in Eugene’s life when a peculiarly obsessive talent with random objects was most useful. Also, Arthur Rook was totally nuts—albeit in a gentle, nonviolent way—and Eugene, quick to identify the more malleable human natures, intended to play him like a Fender Stratocaster.

Eugene opened a paper bag and spilled selections from the Cornell suitcase across Oneida’s dining room table. And just as Eugene knew he would, Arthur Rook went bye-bye.

“
Wow
!
”
Arthur stood. “Where did you get all this—this is old, antique, maybe, not valuable per se, but this is—so cool. Where did you get this?”

“Estate sale,” Eugene said. “My dad goes to estate sales. Like a hobby.”

Oneida stretched her pale arms across the table and snagged a page ripped from a magazine decades ago: a yellowed advertisement for an indoor icebox.

“Does he know you’re using this for a school project?”

Eugene nodded. Of all the lies he was telling today, it was the only one that made him nervous. He wanted to believe Astor would have faith in him, would back the plan two hundred percent, but Eugene couldn’t afford to take the chance; he was going to do this, period. Who was Eugene Wendell to ignore a gigantic glowing message from the jumbotron of the universe? It was too important, and he was too sure of himself, to waffle. Plus, if everything went well (which it would), it would be all the more amazing if Astor never saw it coming.

“I brought a box, here—” He plumbed his backpack for the cereal box he’d carefully cut the front panel out of. “I figured we could build the thing in here and maybe cover it with plastic wrap or something. Tah-dah! Instant Cornell.”

“How’s it going in here?” Mona’s voice yanked Eugene to attention. She’d answered the door when he arrived, and despite a totally normal greeting (“Hello, Eugene”) it was clear she was every bit as thrilled with his existence today as she had been yesterday. “Suffering for your art yet?”

It was not Eugene’s imagination that she looked directly at him when she said
yet
.

“What’s all this?” She crossed behind Arthur and approached the table.

Arthur was too engrossed in a dead guy’s garbage to respond, and Oneida didn’t say anything either; so Eugene said, “I got it from my dad. We’re going to use it for the project.”

Mona picked out the leftover blue velvet Eugene hadn’t been able to resist bringing. He heard Oneida squeak in recognition.

Wrapping the velvet around her fingers, rubbing it with her thumb, Mona read from the assignment sheet. “ ‘The Sincerest Form of Flattery.
For the creative portion of your assignment, your group will produce a piece of art in the style of your assigned artist. You may not copy a famous work. You must create something new while keeping faithful to that artist’s style.’ Whose class is this for?”

“Dreyer’s,” Oneida mumbled. She was doing her best not to look at her mother at all, Eugene noticed.

“That’s weird. I thought she taught history. This seems more like an art project.”

“She does teach history.” Eugene had prepared for this. “It’s one of those interdisciplinary things—you know, history and art. Art history.” He swallowed. Mona was incredibly distracting, which he had noticed last night but had been too terrified to truly process. She was far too young—far too hot—to be his girlfriend’s mother. Where Oneida was harsh and enigmatic, Mona was all curves and cheerful colors: a bright blue shirt, ponytail, faded jeans. Next to her mother, Oneida looked bloodless, transparent: a vampire in dire need of a transfusion, glaring at a mother with blood to spare.

“This isn’t quite . . . this isn’t quite enough,” Arthur muttered, loud enough for the three of them to notice he’d spoken, though they clearly weren’t his intended audience. “There’s no . . . there needs to be an
object
.” He’d made several small piles on the butcher paper: an assortment of one-inch-square mirrors and blue glass tiles. Four tiny jars made of clear glass. Several pages from what must have been an astronomy textbook: moons and planets and constellations, green-haloed where their garish yellow and blue inks bled together. Two bottles, stoppered with black rubber, one filled with small black stones and the other with a kind of white sand.

Eugene’s heart thrummed. Holy shit, this was going to work. This was really going to work.

“Cornell was a worshipper.” Arthur stepped back from the table. “He worshipped film stars, like Lauren Bacall. There was some ballerina that he loved. He loved—from a distance. . . . I’ll be right back,”Arthur told no one in particular, and bolted from the dining room.

Mona turned to Eugene. “He does that,” she said. “It’s nothing personal.”

Eugene licked his lips, which were cracked and dry. He was thirsty.
If only Mona would stop looking at him, or standing there and smelling—God, so good, she smelled like icing, like a cake. He coughed and hoped it didn’t sound as fake as it was.

“How’d you get that black eye?” Mona asked, and then she actually took a step closer. He twitched and hoped she didn’t notice, because it wasn’t fake in the least. “Yesterday?”

He shook his head.

“He got beat up at school,” Oneida sniped. “For me.”

Mona tilted her head. Her mouth pulled into a slight frown, but her eyes flashed as if she was about to laugh. A lock of hair, shiny as a ribbon, swung away from her temple, and she tucked it behind her ear.

“At first I didn’t know how to feel about it, but I’ve decided it was awesome.” Oneida was still talking, and what she was saying, Eugene’s brain dimly realized, was pertinent. But he couldn’t break Mona’s gaze, couldn’t pull himself out of the depth of her eyes, couldn’t stop imagining her prowling the hallway at school, a graduating senior, the Prom Queen–Head Cheerleader–Lead in the Play whose wake was littered with the stunned bodies of easily aroused underclassmen. He felt a familiar, terrifying warmth in his lower gut. In approximately thirty seconds, this was going to be a severe problem.

“What’s for dinner?” Oneida’s voice was high and thin and far away.

“I don’t know if Oneida has told you, Eugene, but you’re welcome to stay for dinner. We’re having roast beef and mashed potatoes.” Was it his imagination, or had Mona not broken eye contact with him this whole time? Had she even blinked? “Carrots. You know the drill.”

Carrots
, Eugene thought desperately.
Drills.
Thank God he was sitting down, but still. This . . . was . . . a problem. He leaned forward, elbows on the table, and drummed his fingers.

“Thanks,” he said. “But I think my parents are expecting me. Sunday dinner is always, like, a thing. At my house.”
Lie.

“That’s nice,” Mona said. “What do your parents do?”

“My dad’s a security guard and my mom stays home. She does some freelance design stuff, like brochures. Letterheads. Business cards.”
Keep listing office supplies. No one gets hot for office supplies. Post-its. Paper clips.

Scissors.

Mona sat in Arthur’s recently vacated chair and focused on the
Cornell pile. The only sounds in the room were the light thudding of Eugene’s fingertips on the table, Cornell’s trinkets clinking and papers shuffling, and the cold metallic grind of metal on metal as Oneida opened and closed her shears with a methodical rhythm that Eugene, even in his current state, realized was some sort of message. He was too far gone to understand precisely what that message was, but it had a quality about it—threatening, promissory—that was its own kind of messed-up hot. He was certain of one thing: the Jones women were going to be the end of him, and he was going to love it.

“Got it!” Arthur barged back in, startling Eugene into squawking like a strangled chipmunk. Arthur was holding a giant pink box under one arm and a photograph in the other. When he set both down, Mona recoiled. Violently.

Oneida didn’t see it. She was leaning forward to look at the picture, and asking “Who is she?”

The photograph was black-and-white and showed a woman, her face turned away from the camera, lying naked on a beach at the edge of the water. Her body, like her face, was twisted away, hips turned, one leg thrown over the other. She didn’t look dead, even though you couldn’t see her eyes to tell if they were open or closed; every line of her was alive, Eugene thought, like a mermaid washed up and resting for a moment before she regrew her tail and headed for home. The angle of her jaw. The bend of her elbow, lying across her chest. The long curving muscles of her thighs. A foot curled over her calf, toes like tiny pearls. Her hair trailed above her as the water lapped it out to sea.