Cool, Calm & Contentious - Merrill Markoe [82]
My favorite part of the grisly tale, in addition to meeting my neighbors, was the little boy in the waiting room. “If you ain’t Medusa, you is Medusa’s sister,” I would repeat to everyone, laughing, never fully appreciating how stunned the people on whom I sprung this story were to hear me tell it.
Oddly enough, in addition to the flabbergasted expressions that greeted every telling, an alarmingly high percentage of the girls who heard my story responded with “Something like that happened to me, too.” Then they’d fish out their stories as a way to make me feel better about mine. On the bright side, I stopped feeling so alone.
It was early August and summer quarter was creeping to a close. I still hadn’t told my parents what had happened because I didn’t want to suffer the predictable consequences of having my newfound independence shut down: Goodbye, apartment living; hello, Mrs. Bissonette!
Despite my display of bravado, I was on shaky emotional ground. Tired of growing weepy at unpredictable times but unable to will normalcy back into my routine, I started cutting classes and stopped turning in assignments.
So I made an appointment to talk to a university-affiliated therapist, knowing in advance what I wanted her to say. I wanted her to tell me that I was acting like a baby. “Get over it,” I thought she’d tell me. “It’s been two weeks already. Move on.”
“I just keep walking around feeling sorry for myself,” I said to her, trying to bait her into delivering the message I thought I needed. “Boo-hoo. Poor me. I start to cry for no reason.”
“Of course you do,” she said. “But it’s not for no reason. You have every right to feel sorry for yourself.”
I never went back.
When school ended a couple of weeks later, I had no choice but to go home for the rest of the month. The lease on my new apartment didn’t start until September. A guy from my life drawing class came with me and stood guard outside the door of the crime scene while I packed everything I owned into the trunk of my car.
I arrived in the driveway of my parents’ house near Palo Alto the day after my nineteenth birthday.
At a belated birthday dinner that night, my parents wanted to hear all about school. They had a million questions about how it had gone with Mr. IFAP. They were proud I had studied with such a world-famous man.
“What did he think of your work?” my mother asked.
“Um … I think he liked it,” I said.
“What sort of things did he have to say?” my father asked.
“Well, you know … this and that. I don’t really remember,” I mumbled.
“Do you think he might put you on a list for a scholarship or something?” my father asked.
“Or maybe invite you to exhibit at the gallery where he shows?” said my mother.
“I don’t know,” I said, rushing past the uncomfortable. “Maybe. Who knows.”
Then, after dinner, of course they both wanted to see what I’d been working on.
I had no explanation for why I had so few pieces of work. So I kind of hemmed and hawed and then showed them the only painting I’d finished: a watercolor self-portrait with snakes coming out of my hair. Beneath it I had written the words “Medusa’s Sister.”
My mother looked at me and shook her head.
“That’s it?” she said. “This is why you had to go to school all summer? Anything else?”
“Well,” I said, “wait till you see my new power tools.”
Roiling on a River
SOME PEOPLE ARE SURPRISED TO LEARN THAT I WENT CAMPING A lot when I was in my twenties. I’m not sure why this surprises them. Maybe the endless excuses I have used over the years to avoid attending parties have added up to the impression that I have had the flu for two decades, thus creating a portrait of someone who is fragile and consumptive. Of course, it could also be the detail that I haven’t done any additional camping in the last twenty