Fine, Art
by Cori Spillane
I knew I couldn't afford the painting. Even with the power (strong word) of all my bank accounts combined, plus next month’s rent (that’s next month’s problem), plus the emergency twenty in my glove box, plus a doe-eyed request through blinking sweetness (such a false mask on me, how do I ever get away with it) for my husband to chip in a couple hundred, I’d just be scraping together that sticker price. Even if I cobbled together enough, the next steps loomed large. How could I ever shove this $3500 masterpiece into the dog hair-ridden trunk of a Subaru worth half as much? A thin sheen of sweat arrived to discourage any comfort I’d been enjoying in my own skin as I envisioned the possibility that someone from the gallery might offer to help carry it out and I’d have to play that part where I rush ahead of them to begin battle with the trunk latch and announce over my shoulder that it’ll open any second, it almost always works eventually. Even if I got past all these obstacles, there was still the threat that someone from Navient Student Loans would be waiting at my front door, arms crossed, head cocked slightly to the side, not exactly mad but definitely disappointed. No, me and this painting, we could never be. We were from two different sides of the tracks.
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The moment I met that apocalyptic beauty was my first experience with love at first sight. In an instant I went from knowing absolutely nothing about painting and aesthetic judgements to, well, still absolutely nothing about these things. What I did know was that this painting took me in, swallowed me whole and never spit me back out. This was an “Enter Only” door, no gravity type situation. The instant I saw it I was locked, sold, irrevocably connected. The ringing buzz of gallery-goers dropped away; I could only hear its soft story whispered. I knew that the beauty before me was inexhaustible. Every color was exactly right to pull me into the ether, it was endless. I navigated the shapeless splendor with ease, I understood all the joyous parts and the tender parts, sweet and nebulous, somewhere between pastel and bright but always right. I spent a while in the dark part- I know that part, too, painting. I remember every moment and measure of this painting, the only thing I can’t remember is walking away from it.
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I knew someone else would buy it. Someone rich. Someone who didn’t love it the way I do, or see it eye to eye and know this is the only perfect thing they’d ever come across or ever will again. Someone who belonged at this gallery and didn’t just stumble in for the free wine. Someone who wasn’t wondering if they’d need to pull down their glow-in-the-dark plastic skeleton and some of the bird’s nests they’d hung with nails left by the previous tenant in order to make room for it. Sure, they’d treat it alright, and hang it in the foyer where other rich people can ignore it and not understand it the way I do. They probably wouldn’t even need to consider transporting it in their own car, perfectly functioning Range Rover door handles be damned, they’d just scrape down their address without concern and expect delivery, no severed umbilical cord involved as they leave the gallery, no eyes darting around in the car on the way home as they wonder what have I done.
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I snapped a picture of it with my phone and enjoyed it to the extent that I could afford to, but so much was lost in that pixelated translation. On that tiny screen I couldn’t be absorbed and transported into that endless galaxy. It just served to remind me how far apart we were. For a few days after the gallery, I looked around to see if the artist had any online presence and was maybe offering up the painting for $85 so long as the buyer could prove their love through a series of tests or something. I could never find the artist or any sign-ups to participate in a duel, and the gallery was reachable only by phone with hours that were, if I recall correctly, 10 am to 10:17 am every Tuesday that the moon is right. It never mattered anyway, I never had $3500 for a painting. Anytime I get close to that kind of flex my car or one of my stupid teeth decides to break and I am reminded that the free wine was in fact the only thing in that gallery meant for me.
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The feeling never went away, I can still close my eyes and jump off the edge of the rock into the reservoir and on the way down we’re together again. I’ve seen other paintings since, I even bought a piece of patchwork fabric art I saw hanging for sale at a diner that suits me. It is called “Solar Bunny” and it has glow-in-the-dark stitching that fits perfectly next to the skeleton and bird’s nests. It doesn’t fill the hollow aching that runs from my throat to the bottom of my ribs when I think about it, but I love it in its own way. What we have is easy, simple, logical. The Navient guy doesn’t even know about it.
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Maybe it's good I can't have it. The hope lives on that one day after my poetry makes me a millionaire, I come across it again at some estate sale (do millionaires go to estate sales? I'll figure it out) where no one else bothers to move aside the ridiculous family portrait painting to see what hides behind it, but I know it in a lightning bolt instant from the half inch peeking out, I know we're reunited.