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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Intriguing first chapter. Your setting and sensory details gave it a bit of a surreal feeling. I'm looking forward to what happens next.