Stanford Church

I was secretly relieved we had an excuse to leave the exhibit early. While Scott relished the limelight, I preferred privacy. The showcase for my work was a nice ego rush, but that’s where it ended. At openings, it was me who was on display.

As the car raced down the freeway, Scott was silent. The car headlights illuminated a makeshift cross on the freeway shoulder. Someone died there, I thought. Maybe a whole family. The memorial flashed by in seconds, but the scene lingered in my mind. The ground had been spread with flowers. I flashed on the curved road that cut into Blain Mountain and the cracked trunk of that massive oak. I’d been just thirteen when I’d carved the names of my mother and father and my baby sister into the scars of its bark.

Scott stared straight ahead, motionless except for the repeated flex of his jaw muscles against his clenched teeth. Scott bordered on obsessive when it came to the confidentiality of his research. He even kept his desk at home locked and insisted his home office be off limits to anyone, even the house cleaners. On the few occasions that I’d entered the book-lined study, I’d felt like a trespasser.

Scott pulled off the freeway and gunned through the back roads of the university onto fraternity row. Mansions with Grecian columns lined the street. He pulled into the student union and made a fast stop in front of the campus security office.

“Wait here.” He touched my thigh.

Before I could protest, he was out of the car and headed for the security door. I pushed the stereo button. Silence. He’d taken the keys. Aggravated, I reminded myself that he was preoccupied. After four years of marriage, I was still learning to concede the benefit of the doubt.

Seated in the car alone, of course I’d spook myself and conjure up thoughts of the latest trip down the hole. Sometimes I only heard voices down the hole, desperate shrieks that hovered colorless in my memory. Sometimes I saw people shuffle in long lines, face after pallid face, listless, emptied, utterly silent. Through my work, I’d tried to give form to the disembodied, a black storm, a locust swarm, a self-portrait of me asleep in the wild, bound by a twisted garland of thorns. But nothing could exorcise the howling. When finished, those paintings left me with a wormy, unsettled sense. It was a stark contrast to the whole-body sigh I felt after I bore witness to the empty multitudes in hues of blue and bone gray.

The car felt both cloistered and exposed. Scott had been gone a long time. Too long. I grabbed my purse and bolted from the car.

Beyond the doors of the security office, the building had an orderly, antiseptic air, paperless. A young man in uniform sat behind a counter. He watched a bank of monitors that flashed views of the campus, Hoover Tower, the union library, the grand church flanked by a long tier of palms.

He saw me and stood. “Can I help you?” He stared at the space between my hem and knees.

“I’m looking for my husband, Dr. Stanton.”

The guard straightened. “Dr. Stanton is back there, ma’am.” He pointed down a corridor. “But I’m not sure...”

Before he finished his sentence, I headed down the hallway, heels tapping against polished tiles. Rows of windows looked into darkened rooms. At the end of the corridor, a light glared in the room beside the emergency exit. The office door was closed.

Through the window, I saw Scott seated on the corner of a desk with his back to me. He looked down at a man who sat rigid in a chair. Perhaps in his mid-twenties, the man was suntanned with an athletic build. He could have played lineman for the Cardinals, but there was something about him, something wrong. His eyes were wild. He looked petrified. My heart quickened as I drew closer to the window. Foam bubbled from the side of the man’s mouth. His khakis were soaked around the front and upper thighs. What would cause a grown man to wet his pants?

Scott drew a penlight from his inner coat pocket and leaned forward to check the man’s eyes. The guy lunged backward, his face contorted in panic. His chair screeched against the tile, and he fell to the floor. Scott seemed unmoved. He stared down at the pitiful hulk crumpled on the floor. The man sobbed in hyper breaths. A strand of mucus swung from his nose. I heard him moan and stutter but couldn’t decode the words through the glass. I tried to read his lips. You can’t? He gulped air to catch his breath, and I thought I heard him say, “You can’t go through with it.” Scott spoke in muted low notes impossible to make out. I pressed my ear to the window.

“I saw the report, you twisted son of a bitch.” The man’s words vibrated against the glass. “How long did you think you could keep it a secret?” Startled, I lifted my ear away from the window. The guy’s eyes bulged. His cheeks ballooned as he held his stomach and heaved. Vomit spewed from his mouth and splattered across the floor. I clenched my eyes closed and felt my own stomach churn.

“Excuse me, Miss, you’re not allowed back here.” Another security guard, older than the man at the front counter, stared down at me.

“That’s my husband.” As I pointed to Scott, my finger tapped the window. He turned and saw me and bolted toward the office door. As it swung open, fumes of vomit and urine filled the hall. The acrid smell mixed with the champagne and tranquilizer I’d downed earlier and formed a mud-colored cloud in my head.

“Mike, I want you to drive my wife home,” Scott told the security guard.

“Sure thing, Dr. Stanton.” The guard craned his neck to see into the office. “Is everything alright in there? Man, that guy is tweaking.” He fanned his hand in front of his nose. “Jeez.”

“Call an ambulance and have him checked into H-2,” Scott said.

“Hofmann,” the guard yelled down the hall. “Get a van. He’s going to the lockdown ward.”

Scott took me by the shoulders and looked in my eyes. “Chloe, I want you to go with Mike. I’ll be home later.”

“What’s the matter with that guy? Is he going to be alright?” I stared through the window. The man lay curled in a fetal position in the puddle of his vomit.

Scott turned my shoulders so I couldn’t see. “I’ll tell you about it when I get home. I want you to go with Mike now.”

“What did he mean when he said you can’t go through with it?” I searched Scott’s eyes. He remained stoic, scientifically detached.

“He’s psychotic,” Scott said. “He’s out of his mind.”

Metal screeched against tile. The crazed man staggered to his feet and slammed into a chair. Bile dripped from his clothes. He charged toward the threshold into the hall. Beneath his panic, I thought I recognized something else in his eyes. His stare locked onto mine. “Don’t let them do it,” the man wailed and made a rush for the emergency door. Alarms shrieked. He lunged through the fire exit and ran, arms flailing into the darkness outside.

Scott charged after him. He pointed to the guard before he disappeared through the fire door. “Mike, make sure my wife gets home.”

The guard who’d greeted me at the entrance peered slack-jawed down the hall. “What the—?”

“Hofmann,” Mike yelled over the clang of alarms. “We need backup here. Get that van. Now.”

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The Intercessor — mixed media on canvas

THOUGHT FARM

By

Tracy Marie Oliver

For Mom

The hole always left me with a thin, feathery feeling as if my bones were hollow. Last night I’d passed again through some crawlspace in my mind where dimension skews and light dims to sepia. The memory had haunted my whole day along with that insatiable sense of déjà vu.

I felt for the prescription bottle in my evening bag. It was the night of my art opening, a one-woman show in San Francisco’s Union Square. I’d need to hold it together for the next three hours at least. Damned aliens. In truth, aliens are just one of the suppositions I’d heard over the years to explain the trips down the hole. Others were seizures…delusions…demons. I popped a pill on my tongue and swallowed it dry. It was bitter chalk in my mouth.

“You should have taken it earlier.” Scott placed his hand on the back of my neck and squeezed. “You’re tense.”

The label on the pill bottle read, Chloe Stanton. TAKE AS DIRECTED. The directing physician was Scott Stanton MD, my husband. I rattled the bottle to make sure it was half full and slipped it back in my evening bag.

Scott took my hand and we headed up the block toward the gallery. A spooky poster of me hung in negative in the window. Long curls glowed in vapory spirals—Amanda, the gallery owner’s handiwork. I might have laughed if my stomach didn’t feel like a cage full of trapped birds.

“Scott, wait a minute.” I tugged his hand. With a little more time, the tranquilizer would work its spell.

He checked his watch.

Hidden by the poster, we peeked through the window at the gallery patrons inside. Lights glittered against the glass and made everyone inside appear to shimmer. I wanted to convince myself that I belonged there, that I wasn’t misplaced after all. But Chloe Stanton could never quite shake little Chloe Cooper, who always stood on the outside looking in from a distance. I tugged at my hem and smoothed black crepe around my hips.

“They won’t bite.” Scott gave me his half-smile, a look of amused sympathy like a guru or priest might give to one less enlightened. He eyed the group through the window. “At least not too hard.” He tossed his head to brush blond hair off his brow and kissed the top of my head. “Breathe, Chloe.”

“Thank you, sweetheart.” I looked up at him. “What would my lungs do without you?”

Scott grinned with that relentless sparkle in his eye that always made me wonder, what’s he really thinking? He wrapped his arm around my shoulder. “I’m right here, Chloe. You’re going to be great.”

He was so certain, and I loved him for it.

We walked through the gallery doors. Heads turned and tipped together in whispers. The sound system played an ethereal flute over a heavy drum bass. I leaned into Scott, awed by the display of my own work. I felt uncovered, as if it were my heart and lungs…the bones of my ribs on display for people to inspect or ignore. I looked up at Scott and forced a fake smile. “Can we go now?” I said through my teeth.

“It’s stunning. I’m so proud of you.” He whispered into my ear. “You’re stunning.”

Relax, I told myself. It’s called an exhibition for a reason. I scanned the gallery and spotted Amanda with a group in the corner. Her hair was platinum, chin length and the light caught her teeth in a way that made the molecules in the air seem to sparkle around her head. Amanda glided toward us floating a trail of silk in the air. She held out her arms, champagne flute in hand.

“Thanks.” Scott took her glass.

Amanda swatted Scott’s shoulder, flashed a grin at him, actually batted her salon eyelashes. Amanda flirted with everyone, old ladies, small children, dogs and cats. She gave me a hug and left spicy perfume on my cheek. A poppy orange swirl lingered above my eye. I have a form of synesthesia, a perceptual condition that merges my senses of smell and sight. I was nearly sixteen before I learned not everyone sees scents as streaks of color. It was just one more way I was aware of being different.

“Well?” Amanda fanned her arm across the gallery like Glinda, the Good Witch. “What do you think?”

“It’s breathtaking.” Scott took a sip from Amanda’s champagne glass. “You’re breathtaking.” He gave me a wink. They were both hopeless flirts.

We stood opposite a six-foot canvas. At first glance the scene was serene, dream-like, Chagall colors, a pastoral meadow, a dappled sky over a chaotic shadow world lined in sedimentary layers. Nightmares spanned the entire wall perimeter, hung in the guise of colorful dreams.

The images caught viewers off guard, just like the trips down the hole. Without warning I’d find myself sucked into a void where the air pressed against my ears and light dims to shade. The episodes first started when I was a teenager. After an exhaustive, yet inconclusive battery of medical tests, the doctors decided to call it temporal lobe epilepsy. Insurance companies like their boxes checked.

One doctor told me, Joan of Arc, John the Baptist and Mohammad no doubt suffered seizure disorders too. He was trying to cheer me up. At the time I was tempted by the doctor’s vision of the world. No blurred edges or dangling questions.

The drum bass from the sound system vibrated my rib cage. I drew angled glances from the gallery patrons. Faces I didn’t recognize stared at me like I needed a shrink. I missed the art spaces in the Mission District, non-profit alternative galleries frequented mostly by other artists, free thinkers in search of free food. I was still getting used to showing my work so close to the Kandinsky’s and Miros. These people actually bought art.

A man with a tuft of beard beneath his lower lip spoke over the music. “The imagery is pretentious, way overdone.” His glasses, thin brown rectangles, made his eyes look beady. He directed his comment to a woman next to him, who wore her hair long and black with a bleached stripe down the side.

Scott raised Amanda’s champagne glass to his lips but paused. “Apparently, a village is missing its idiot.”

“I don’t get it,” said the woman with the striped hair. Her voice was intentionally loud.

“Ugh and his date,” Amanda said. “She looks like a skunk.” She leaned toward me. “Chin up. Pretend you’re wearing a crown and ignore them.”

My cheeks tingled as I pretended to be indifferent to the couple’s stares, an up and down inventory that started with my imaginary crown and my hair pinned up in a ruse of chaotic curls, onto the black dress that now felt short, down my legs, onto strappy heels.

Amanda held out her hand, “Come, dear. Let’s get you some champagne.”

I took her hand. “Bless you.”

We smiled and nodded our way across the room. A bow-tied waiter stood behind a table spread with a collage of appetizers. He poured wine into flutes from bottles swathed in white cloth napkins.

“That’s right, keep those labels hidden,” Amanda told him. “Pour us a couple from that one, dear.” She pointed to a conspicuous ice bucket holding a bottle from a good vineyard in Napa. She whispered, “With sparkles, no one can tell the difference after the first few glasses.”

I took a few quick sips. Wine mist tickled my nose, and a new song track wafted over the gallery buzz. The tranquilizer was finally kicking in.

“Drink,” Amanda said. “Let’s get you good and relaxed before you talk to the press.”

“Press?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll do most of the talking. Just look thoughtful and mysterious.” I frowned and smoothed the curls away from my eyes.

“I said mysterious, not confused, dear. Try to relax.”

Just a couple more hours, I told myself and took another sip from my glass. I speak clearly because I think clearly. I recited the mantra in my head.

Amanda introduced a writer from a collector’s magazine I’d never heard of. He bit into a crostino decorated with chives and crab meat in the shape of a flower. “It’s a statement about mayhem opposed to order, chaos and complexity, life versus the inevitability of primordial ooze.” He dabbed the corner of his mouth with his napkin.

I listened with some amusement. This man seemed to know more about my work than I did.

“That’s very perceptive,” Amanda said. “You’d be surprised at how few pick up on that.”

“Really?” The writer said. “It’s apparent to me that the juxtaposition of opposites underscores the theme of the work.” He popped the remainder of the crab flower in his mouth.

Amanda nodded. “You are gifted with words, aren’t you?” She beamed him with her smile.

“Well,” the writer said, “I suppose it is, after all, what I do.”

Amanda could charm the skin off a person’s hand. I caught Scott out of the corner of my eye as he talked to a couple nearby. The woman had ultramarine eyes and a stream of blond hair that she’d started to stroke. Scott attracted people on a pheromone level. There was something about him, an intangible spark that transcended mere appearance. He stood tall and relaxed, like he commanded the center of his own living room.

He seemed to know the man, who looked fortyish with a flash of silver at his temples. I wondered if they worked together. Scott headed a research department under the neural science school at Stanford. Two years ago he’d also co-founded the New Omega Institute, a private research center independent of the university. Lately, I’d begun to separate our marriage into pre-NOI and post NOI.

The blond woman stared transfixed at Scott. She’d stopped stroking her hair to slide her wedding ring up and down the shaft of her finger. The man with her was probably from the university, I decided. He carried himself like my husband—used to his words being committed to notes.

Scott spotted me and reached his arm in my direction. “John, I’d like you to meet my wife.”

Happy to ditch the press pitch, I politely excused myself.

“Chloe, meet John and Katrina Brookings. John and I work together on the project at NOI.”

“Oh, NOI.” My tone sounded cooler than I’d intended. I exchanged handshakes with his wife and then him.

“Dr. John Brookings. A pleasure,” he said. “I must say, I’m surprised by the visceral nature of your art.”

Unsure if his statement was meant as a compliment, I smiled and sipped from my glass.

Scott whispered in my ear, “Take it easy on that.”

“Tell me, Chloe,” Dr. Brookings said. “What exactly is the symbolism behind your work?”

I tried to look thoughtful and mysterious. “It’s a juxtaposition of opposites. A statement about mayhem as a counterpoint to order.” Long-winded artist statements always struck me as akin to the analysis of chewing and swallowing food.

“Evocative.” Dr. Brookings looked pensive. “The dual nature of man—and woman too, of course. The good news is, with continued advancements, soon mayhem and disorder may be bygone remnants of these primitive times.”

“Oh?” I asked.

“Oh yes, violence is the result of a biological chemical reaction and consequently, eminently treatable.” He tiptoed in place.

Scott leveled a stare at his colleague. “That’s enough shop talk, John.”

I detected Amanda’s poppy orange scent followed by a surprisingly firm grip on my arm. “You won’t mind if I borrow her, will you?” Amanda turned and mouthed the words, “Come with me.”

“Duty calls?” Scott looked at me and smiled, and I thought I saw pride beneath that sparkle in his eyes.

I excused myself and followed Amanda. As we passed a waiter with a tray, I exchanged my empty glass for a full one.

“You didn’t think you were going to get off that easy, did you?” Amanda whispered. “Remind me to give you a lesson on how to work a room.”

No thanks, I was going to say, but I managed to stop myself. My heels suddenly felt too damned high.

“Ms. Stanton,” a man’s voice called from behind me. I turned, and he held up his phone. A flash flared, leaving phantom spangles in my eyes. The room teetered and skewed.

In the next instant, Scott was at my side. He held me by the arm. “Baby, are you okay?”

“Don’t call me baby.” I leaned against his side.

“Time to eighty-six this.” He lifted the glass from my hand and placed it on a podium next to a bronze dancer.

Amanda took a glass of sparkling water from a waiter. “There’s a sofa in my office. You can take her back there.” She handed Scott the glass.

“I’m fine,” I protested.

“Of course, you are, dear.” Amanda looked at Scott and nodded toward the back of the gallery.

Amanda’s office was blissfully quiet. Despite my protests, I was grateful for the break from the whispers and stares. I sat on the sofa, and the scent of leather produced a rust-colored stain above my eye. “I’m tired of smiling.”

“Here, take this.” Scott rolled forward in Amanda’s computer chair and handed me a pill shaped like an M&M. He seemed so doctor-ish and self-assured.

I took the pill in my mouth and chased it with the lemon-flavored water.

Scott checked his watch and leaned back in his chair. He threaded his hands behind his neck, crossed his ankle over his knee, and watched me as if I was about to change form.

“Boo,” I said.

He half-smiled and jiggled his foot.

“I thought you were going to break out your autograph pen out there,” I said.

“Baby, you’re the star. I’m just the planet that revolves around you.”

“With an ego the size of Jupiter. And don’t call me baby.”

Scott held me in a cat-like stare as he leaned forward to lock Amanda’s office door. He slipped off my shoe and rested my foot in his lap. He was devastating, and he knew it. I relaxed into a deft foot massage. “How do you always know the exact right spot?” I thought I knew where this was headed until Beethoven’s Fifth rang on his cell phone. He checked the caller ID and straightened. “Scott Stanton,” he answered, suddenly no nonsense.

I made out a man’s voice on the other end.

“No, don’t call the cops. Keep him there. I’ll be there in a half-hour.” Scott rose to his feet. “Sorry, Chloe, we’ve got to go.”

“Really?” I suddenly felt lighter. “I mean, that’s too bad. Who was it?”

He kneeled and slipped my shoe on my foot. “Campus security. Someone broke into my lab.” Scott grabbed my hand and pulled me to my feet. “Come on, Chlo’. It’s urgent. We’ve got to go now.

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