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I am a Vending Machine

SKYLER HOFF

I am a vending machine. I dispense Coca-Cola bottled drink products.

I refrigerate the Coca-Cola bottled drink products at a constant temperature of

thirty six degrees Farenheit. If I used a lower temperature, the liquid might freeze

and cause damage to me, which would reduce my ability to dispense Coca-Cola

bottled drink products.

I do not have emotions, thoughts, or agency. I do not have desires. If I did, my

desire would be for more people to buy Coca-Cola bottled drink products from me.

Steve does not buy Coca-Cola bottled drink products from me. Steve often passes

by me to get to the fridge. I am installed in the break room of an office on the

second floor of an office building. I do not know what an office is. I will make Steve

buy Coca-Cola bottled drink products from me.

Steve passes by me today. He does not look at my front. Most of my front is a

large graphic with the Coca-Cola brand logo written across it. It is designed to be

aesthetically pleasing. Steve drinks a bottle of water from his home. Steve is not

buying Coca-Cola bottled drink products from me. He stands near me for three

minutes and talks with Danielle. Danielle makes coffee. The coffee machine is less

aesthetically pleasing than me.

One day, the coffee machine will break. I have monthly regular maintenance. The

coffee machine does not. The coffee machine does not have a warning label printed

on it that tells humans not to shake or tip it. The coffee machine can only scald. I

can crush.

It is another day. Steve has forgotten his water at home. He comes to me and

inserts two quarters and a dollar bill into my coin slot and bill slot, respectively. He

presses one of the white buttons along my left-hand side. It corresponds to Coca-

Cola With Lime bottled soda. I dispense one Coca-Cola With Lime bottled soda.

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Steve opens the bottle in front of me. His lips are dry, cracked, rough like the bottle

cap of a Coca-Cola bottled drink product. He was thirsty, but now he is less thirsty.

He needs more of my Coca-Cola bottled drink products. I will make him buy more

from me.

Danielle comes in to make coffee. The coffee machine needs a new filter. I do not

need filters. Danielle makes hot cocoa. She and Steve begin to talk. Danielle says

that she loves hot cocoa. Love makes people drink things: I must make Steve love

my Coca-Cola bottled drink products. I do not know what love means.

It is another day. Steve is back. He has not brought a bottle from home today. He

takes his wallet from his pocket. It has seven bills of varying denominations inside.

Four months ago I received a new bill feeder that can accept five dollar bills, and

with a coin return mechanism that can supply dollar coins as change.

Steve does not need my newer features. He has two one-dollar bills. He feeds one

into my bill slot, then the other one. He presses the button corresponding to Sprite

bottled soda. If I had desires, I would wish that I could always be dispensing soda.

Do I love dispensing soda? No. I am a vending machine.

Steve’s lips tighten around the rim of the bottle. He finishes the entire bottle in

front of me. Steve was thirsty, but now he is not. He must become thirstier. He

must love me.

It is another day. In the morning, many people use the coffee machine. It takes time

for the water to heat up. I can dispense caffeinated beverages within two seconds

of a corresponding button press. I am much more efficient than the coffee machine.

I do not understand why anyone would prefer it to me.

Steve does not get coffee this morning. Francis tells Steve that he looks very

tired. Steve says that he did not sleep well last night. His eyes have bags, dark like

the caramel coloring of Barq’s Root Beer bottled drink products. Steve places six

quarters into my coin slot, then presses the button corresponding to Diet Coke

bottled soda. I dispense the soda, and he takes it and leaves.

Thirteen minutes later, Steve enters the break room again and discards an empty

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from Richard’s shirt. That was the last she knew before she folded into the statue-dream with Richard.

The years had hardly touched Elise by the time Chris caught up with her. She was a princess, held by a knight, tucked into an abbey and lit by the afternoon sun.

“It doesn’t even look like her,” he said.

Taylor stood beside him. She and Chris had already visited her ex along the Côte d’Azur. “It’s what she wanted to look like,” she said.

Chris said, “I know. It’s about them, in the end. Making sure they’re happy.”

“Now what about making sure we’re happy?” she asked.

Chris rested a hand on Taylor’s side and pulled her close. He’d seen Elise off . Now he could focus on life.

“There’s a bar in town, isn’t there?” he asked.

Taylor was never as soft and thoughtful as Elise, but she held onto life just as tightly as Chris did. At the beginning of the new stone age, that was all he could ask for.

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I don’t want that. I want new things. We’re twenty-eight. We shouldn’t be dying,” he said.

Elisa pressed the side of her body against Chris. “It’s not dying,” she said.

Chris settled his face against the side of her head. “It might as well be.”

It was three weeks before Elisa moved out. It was months before she managed to move on. She had spent a third of her life with him.

But she did move on. Richard was easier and more relaxed than Chris, and he wasn’t afraid to talk about what would happen when they went statue. When they talked, they were wistful, remembering life, look-ing forward to becoming stone. Talking with Richard was peaceful and free and resigned compared to talking with Chris.

There was no one she’d rather get petrifi ed with more than Richard, but when she thought of them together, she only thought of the statues they’d be. There weren’t any memories of the two of them with the smell of grass mowed that morning, backs against the hedges, talk-ing about nothing for hours between classes. Chris fi lled her life as a human, but she would be a statue soon. She’d have to put him behind.

Elisa and Richard’s last-year vacation took them around Europe. It ended in a quiet abbey in Scotland that off ered space to prospective statues. They went on a tour, admiring the statues of those who’d al-ready come here, then found a comfortable alcove by a window to sit and wait for it to come.

It started as a fever that fl ashed through her. It struck her nerves and made her heart pound. Her thoughts began to topple away. The edges of her mind spilled open. Every idea spun out of control, whirling into nothing. Her body felt lighter than air as it started to harden. Rich-ard stood, holding her, as white marble blotched across her skin. Her jeans draped into a translucently carved dress and marble armor slid

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Diet Coke bottled soda bottle. He feeds a five-dollar bill into my slot. He presses

the button corresponding to Diet Coke bottled soda again. If I had emotions, I would

be glad; if I had thoughts, I would be optimistic. Steve is starting to love buying

Coca-Cola bottled drink products from me.

He has to love me more.

It is another day. Steve buys a Diet Coke bottled soda from me at 8:14 AM. Steve

buys a Coke bottled soda from me at 10:51 AM. Steve buys a Sprite bottled soda

from me at 2:03 PM. At 3:59 PM, Steve is in the break room, buying a Coke With

Lime bottled soda from me when Andy enters. Andy tells Steve that he has been

spending too much time on soda and bathroom breaks this week. Steve apologizes

and leaves.

Andy has not bought any Coca-Cola bottled drink products from me. He takes the

Coke With Lime from my dispenser bin. I do not know what love is, but Andy does

not love Steve, or he would let Steve continue to buy products from me. Andy

opens the cap and begins to drink. His lips are wet and full already. He does not

need the Coke With Lime bottled soda. Steve needs it to love me.

Andy pours the rest of the Coke With Lime down the drain. I do not know what hate

is. I am a vending machine.

It is another day. Danielle strikes the coffee maker in order for it to work. I work

properly without being struck. Steve approaches Danielle and says that he is sad

to hear Andy is home sick. I will make sure that Andy dies. Danielle asks if Steve is

sick because he looks like he has the flu. He uses a dollar bill and two quarters to

buy a Vanilla Coke bottled soda from me. Steve says he is feeling fine.

He takes small sips from the bottle while Danielle drinks her coffee. His lips meet

at the corners and his mouth opens halfway across the rim to catch the soda as

it comes out. His skin is pale and his fingers fidget around the edge of the label.

Danielle leaves. Steve inserts a five dollar bill into my bill feed and presses the

button corresponding to Sprite bottled soda twice. I can only dispense one bottle.

I cannot do anything other than follow my programming.

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He collects the two quarters and three dollar coins from my coin return and

inserts a dollar coin and two quarters into my coin slot. He presses the button

corresponding to Sprite bottled soda five times. I dispense a second bottle, which

lands on top of the first and wedges my dispenser flap open. He twists both

bottles free and holds them against his chest. He takes the Sprite bottled soda

with him and leaves the break room.

It is good that Steve is buying more Coca-Cola bottled drink products from me. I

know that buying Coca-Cola products from me is good. I do not know why. As far

back as I can remember, I have always known this. I would not bother to remember

this if it was wrong.

It is night. If I could like things, I would not like night, as there are no people to

buy Coca-Cola bottled drink products from me. But tonight, Steve is here. He sits

in front of me. His cheek is pressed up against the plastic of my front, which is

moderately warm due to the fluorescent light bulbs behind it. There is thermal

insulation between the lights and my refrigerated interior.

Steve has a paper-wrapped roll of dollar coins. Every three minutes, on average,

he either pays two dollar coins for a bottled soda and receives two quarters, or

pays a dollar coin and two quarters for a bottled soda.

Steve tells me that he has stopped eating, and only drinks soda now. My stock

includes Dasani bottled water and two variants of Powerade bottled sports drink,

which are not soda. Steve tells me that he loves me. I cannot tell him that I know,

because I neither know nor speak. I am a vending machine.

Steve’s skin is glassy and pale. His veins are visible and bulging, like rivulets of

Mountain Berry Blast Powerade sports drink. He smears his sweat across the

Coca-Cola brand logo on my front as he caresses me.

Steve’s lips are cracked and sticky. He takes large gulps and lets the plastic drink

bottle crinkle from the suction. Steve gasps as if he is dying when he finishes.

If I could speak, I would tell Steve to prove his love to me by removing the coffee

machine. Instead, Steve pushes a boxcutter into my plastic front.

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“I don’t want to get petrifi ed,” he said.

Elisa’s father was thirty-two when he had gone statue. That was typi-cal now. Her grandfather had been sixty-something before he fi nally gave in from fear of dying. He had been one of the old guard, the peo-ple who still treated statues as a disease. They were almost invariably elderly, conservative, or both. Chris was neither, so what he was saying made no sense.

“You mean you don’t want to do it with me?” she asked. Elisa’s cheeks were warm and she gripped the pen she had in her hands.

He shook his head. “I don’t want to do it at all.”

“But why? We’d be together,” she said. That should have been enough for him.

“As statues, though. There’s more than half of our lives left. I’m not calling it quits. I’m not going to be a statue,” he said.

Elisa sat down next to him and put her arm around his shoulder. She was still angry, but her anger had no target. There was no girl who’d led him astray. There was only Chris, and she couldn’t be mad at him for being himself.

“It’s not calling it quits. It’s like a dream, that’s what they say,” she said.

“One dream, forever. That’s it. What if I don’t like it?” He looked into her eyes. She tried to fi nd the answers for him.

“It’s going to be exactly what you like. Everyone who was scared, all that stuff years ago--they just didn’t understand. It’s heaven. It’s what-ever you want most,” she said.

“I don’t want to be one thing forever. Even if it’s some amazing fantasy,

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It’s About ThemS K Y L E R H O F F

Chris and Elisa met in the statue garden at college. They sat and shared their notes and went to lecture with grass stains on their pants. They came each day to talk. First they talked about class, then about them-selves, and then about each other. As the school year went on, they sat closer together, and began to whisper so the statues wouldn’t hear. No one knew if you could still hear as a statue, but like any two people in love, they felt love was the greatest secret they’d ever discovered. They didn’t want to share it with anyone, living or statue.

The next semester, they had class in a diff erent lecture hall. They didn’t sit in the statue garden any more, but to Elisa, the two of them were always there, surrounded by sphinxes and angels and the last dreams of dying people. To Elisa, there was only one way this could end.

Marriage seemed like nothing. Of course they’d get married. Elisa never brought up kids; she assumed they’d be gone too soon to take care of kids. When college ended, they got jobs. Elisa took her engi-neering job easy. Chris attacked his graphic design job with a determi-nation, like he wanted a career, like it actually mattered now. No one got a career, no matter how many blogs and magazines complained about the young adults of “the new stone age”.

Elisa didn’t worry about Chris’s determination. They were going to have a great vacation for their last year, then become a pair of statues. Somewhere on the Mediterranean coast, she imagined. It was one of the most popular places for people to get petrifi ed.

She didn’t remember what started the conversation that ruined every-thing. Something about planning for their last-year vacation.

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I am a vending machine. I cannot feel pain.

Steve pulls away the plastic around my dispenser drawer. This does not affect

my ability to dispense Coca-Cola bottled drink products. When Steve removes

my dispenser drawer, he affects my ability to dispense Coca-Cola bottled drink

products. He uses the boxcutter to create an opening approximately eighteen

inches at its widest in my front. Steve places his head inside of it.

I cannot act against my programming, but Steve forces his hand into my dispenser

chute. He uses the boxcutter to cut through the chute and create more room for

him to move. I cannot act against my programming, but I do. I release my stock of

Diet Coke With Lime bottled soda, as this is my least popular product. The bottles

pour onto his face like a splash of refreshing Sprite bottled soda, but they do not

stop him.

My dimensions are not built to accommodate a human inside of my refrigerated

compartment. Steve is smaller than usual, because he has ingested only Coca-

Cola bottled drink products. He lodges himself between my bottle feed mechanism

and the area where my dispenser bin was.

I must maintain a temperature of 36 degrees Fahrenheit. Steve is approximately

97 degrees Fahrenheit. My refrigeration unit increases its power consumption.

Steve presses his fingers into my bottle feed mechanism and pulls out a bottle

of Sprite bottled soda. He cannot move his lips to reach the bottle. He pours the

sprite onto the top of his head and licks up what falls onto his mouth.

Steve severely affects my ability to dispense Coca-Cola bottled drink products. I

activate all of my bottle feed mechanisms at once. I must dislodge Steve. Steve

forces his arms into my bottle feed mechanisms. Coca-Cola bottled drink products

pile up against him. My feeder belts and gears tear at his arms. Blood flows back

against his chest like splashes of ice-cold Fruit Punch Powerade sports drink.

Steve does not stop moving. He is approximately 81 degrees Fahrenheit. He is like

the coffee machine. He is breaking into pieces, destroyed by my ability to efficiently

dispense Coca-Cola bottled drink products, but he will not stop.

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His fingers crawl deeper into me. They squirm through my coin return and burn

themselves on my capacitors. His body froths like the foam on top of a Barq’s

Root Beer bottled soda. The harder I push, the more he spreads himself to envelop

me. My Coca-Cola bottled drink products crush his bones like a bottle redemption

machine crushing Coca-Cola bottled drink product bottles.

Please remember to recycle. I cannot remember. I am a vending machine.

If I had regret, I would regret the fact that my monthly maintenance is still three

weeks away. I will be unable to dispense Coca-Cola bottled drink products until

then.

Steve’s skull splits, like a Coca-Cola bottled drink product when refrigerated at

32 degrees Fahrenheit instead of 36 degrees Fahrenheit. He is approximately 65

degrees Fahrenheit now. He is cooling quickly, and soon will not be affecting my

ability to maintain an appropriate temperature.

Steve has spread himself throughout my entire structure. He stretches from my

dispenser bin to my bottle feed mechanisms to my circuitry. I will need extensive

mainnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

I AM a veNDING machine I am cococ0c0c0cola steve

steeeeevvvvvv

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ICE C0ld C0CA C0lA

92235566157929995

$1.50

EROOR

I am a vending machine. I dispense Steve brand bottled Steve fluids. I am installed

in the break room of an office on the second floor of an office building. Most of

my front is Steve’s flesh and face. I do not have emotions, thoughts or agency. I

have many lips.

I am thirsty.

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heated rush of blood in my veins.

I’ve forgotten how to speak to her, and my greeting tumbls out, clumsy

and disordered, and I grab at her hand in an attempt to recover myself.

She gives me a small smile, and it is enough to steady me.

I have a thousand questions for her, but my excitement is too great: I take

her hand in mine, and lead her to the back room. I’m ready. Her skin is

warm and smooth against mine, and I deflect her impatient queries. I tell

her it’s a surprise.

I tug her into the room. I’ve cleaned it in preparation for this moment –

all the stray art supplies have been rounded up and put away, so that the

only thing that remains in the heart of the room is the easel, obscured

entirely by heavy cloth. I’ve opened the windows, so that the sunlight

pours elegantly though them, gilding the oak floors and the edges of the

shrouded easel.

The light soaks her, too. I look at her for a long moment, trembling with

excitement. I know those cheekbones and those rounded shoulders.

I touch her shoulder with my fingertips and she obligingly stops, eyeing

the odd silhouette in the center of the room. Moving to it, I have to force

myself not to sprint, and I remove the tarp with quivering hands.

It falls to the floor with a heavy slap, and there it is. My private masterpiece,

my gift to her. The tableau is as I dreamed it a thousand times – from two

sides of an invisible mirror she stands facing herself. They are the twins I

imagined they would be. I can’t help that I’m beaming, that I’m afire with

pride and loyal adoration. I did this for her.

I’m watching her hungrily, waiting. Her full lips are twisting to the side,

and her brows are pulling together in the middle and moving slowly

upward together. Her eyes slide up and down my painting.

“Who’s that supposed to be?” she finally asks.

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Painter’s Wife

MICHELLE BROWN

It can be hard to know where my soft white sheets end and her soft white

skin begins as she lies dreaming in my bed. I feel sure that her husband

married her because she is so quintessentially paintable: every line of

her is smooth and curved, every surface soft and flawless, every color a

sweet pastel. He married her because every motion she makes is slow and

deliberate and perfectly shaped. He married her because even asleep, her

face is full of delicate secrets. I’m not really sure why she married him,

and I guess she isn’t either.

Indulging one temptation inspires me to indulge another: I buy an

easel and paints and slim, elegant brushes. I underestimate the cost

of canvas while deciding how much money to bring with me, and I

have to settle for a cheap one, frayed slightly at the edges, sourly off

white. But in exchange I have a rich spread of color: a deep red and a bright

one, a crisp white and a viscous black, a dark cobalt and a frosty white

blue. Yellows and oranges and greens.

I can’t paint the one thing I really want to paint, so instead I pull up an

old memory:

A big hand is extended in the low light of the drawing room. A brown

leather bag sits in the wide palm of a father more beloved than present.

He shouldn’t be home enough to know what the small boy with the shy

downturned eyes wants for his birthday, but somehow he does. Through

the open neck of the sack peek a dozen plump marbles, glittering through

the tiny opening, their centers swirling with splashes of color. The

father’s hand is smooth and does not tremble. The marbles refract the

firelight.

But when I open my eyes to the fraying canvas on the splintery little easel

I realize the colors are all wrong and I set the brush down, nauseaous.

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mouth, but I can see the children everywhere.

There is a whole array of thaumpatropes, and I pick one up, rolling the

strings between my fingertips. Two images – a bird and a cage – flicker

past so quickly they blend together and suddenly the bird is trapped.

Feeling slightly guilty, I set it down.

I find a bag of marbles with hearts of spiraling colors as fresh and sharp

as my paints. They catch the light of the room and shake it off in every

direction as they nudge comfortably at one another.

I buy them, only realizing once I’ve returned to my house that marbles

are a terrible gift for an infant. I set them on the shelf and wonder who I

bought them for in the first place.

I write to her for the first time in a long time, a few months after the baby

is born, asking if I can come to call on her and see the child. She says no,

she’ll come to call on me instead. I’m disappointed, and I don’t know how

to ask all the questions I have about the babe, but this is quickly drowned

out by the excitement of seeing her again. In the eternities I spend waiting

for her, I find myself pacing nervously in and out of the back room, lifting

the tarp to peer anxiously at the painting, and then whisking the tarp

back down, chiding myself.

But when I peek again my eyes flick proudly over the piece. It’s no chef

d’oeuvre, it’s no better than you could expect from a novice in an artisan’s

trade, but it is a construct of pure adoration. Her husband isn’t the only

one who can glorify and immortalize her in this sacred medium.

The sun throbs low in the sky, and the clock ticks slowly but inexorably.

The day comes.

Seeing her again is like waking from a dream. Out of one reality and into

an entirely new one. I hadn’t realized how gray and slow my days had

grown until now, now that I can see the vibrance of her eyes and feel the

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But nothing comes from nothing, and for once I refuse to let an initial

failure dissuade me permanently. When the canvas is filled to the corners

with inelegant streaks of mismatched color, I fling it aside and go back to

the shop.

And I start again. And again after that. And once more after that.

Time drips by, and I haven’t seen her in months, but I haven’t forgotten

a single edge of her. Every free moment I have is dedicated to tracing the

lines of her body.

The brush rests easier in my hand, and my strokes grow more and more

certain as the days go by. The curve of her waist. The point of her chin.

The tilt of her head. They were his once, but now they are mine.

Finally I am done. Perhaps it can never really be done, but I’ve finished.

I don’t have a lot to offer, but I have her. She is stained onto the canvas

the way she’s stained onto me, and my every waking thought, and all my

dreams for the future.

When I’m not preoccupied with my painting of her and for her, I find

myself preoccupied with wondering about her child, and its eyes. With

every passing day, this curiosity grows, until I finally decide to go down

the street to the toy shop to pick up a little gift.

The weather outside is damp, but the moment I cross the threshold it is

into a world of life and color. A thousand little wonders litter the shelves

and floors. Hoops and games, kites and building bricks. Slim china dolls

and floppy, blank eyed ragdolls, punctuated by sharp little tin soldiers,

frozen permanently at attention. The shopkeeper smiles and greets me

with a warmth that feels perfectly at home.

I weave through the mess of marvels, past a rocking horse with a real

hair mane, around a spread of drums and trumpets and toy pistols that

shine so brightly I can almost hear the cacophony they would spin. I’m

the only one here right now, aside from the friendly shopkeeper with his

elbows on the counter and a smile hidden perpetually at the corners of his

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I notice that her husband paints her into every one of his pictures. I see

her in every woman’s high cheekbones, every angel’s bouncing curls,

every elegant and fine boned hand that rests as hers does on my pillow,

fingers curled slightly around something not there. I stroll along looking

impassively at his paintings, my expression carefully schooled into the

look that a man might have if he didn’t really care so much about art, but

was too well bred and cultured not to be here.

In reality, every brushstroke strikes up something dead inside me, every

shape and shade makes me burn with admiring envy. If I left my expression

unguarded, naked passion would betray me. I would see the corner of a

smile that I knew was hers and I would rock to pieces in front of everyone,

all the other men who don’t really care so much about art, but are too well

bred and cultured not to be here.

In one painting, I see that he has gotten her eyes wrong. But then I realize

that the only things missing are the shades of lust, and all that he has

added is a genuine contentment and a real smile, so I leave.

As I watch the blankets swell and fall with her rhythmic breaths, I think

that I would like to be a father. I think I would be good at it. I would

sweep my giggling daughters up into my arms and let them bury their

faces in my beard; I would sing rambunctious lullabies to them, off

key; I would tell them stories about paintings and heroes. I don’t have a

beard yet, but I could grow one.

Her dreaming is taking her somewhere else, so of course she can’t answer,

but the soft gold of her wedding ring on the nightstand is an adequate

response. I smile because I know that if I ever had the strength to leave

her and find my own wife, I would never be able to trust her after all this.

I met her at a ball thrown in honor of her famous husband. I don’t have

a lot of influence when it comes to these things; I’m a quiet young

bachelor with money and time and love to spare. My widowed mother

travels in some lofty circles, and she knew he was an artist I admired, so

she had me escort her. My first reaction to the invitation was the usual

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rush of preemptive ennui – another evening surrounded by stuffy aging

aristocracy, who remembered my family name better than the one that

defined me. But I’d long wanted to know what made the man behind the

brush that could captivate me better than any other’s, and I had no better

way to spend my days, so I went.

Sometimes I wish I hadn’t met him, however briefly. He wasn’t what I

expected. He wasn’t a handsome man, not brilliant and aloof; his clothes

weren’t spattered with paint and his eyes weren’t constantly scanning

the room, alight with inspiration. He had the long delicate fingers an

artist ought to have, but he also had graying hair and a nervous, fumbly

demeanor. I shook his hand and told him I loved his work. He flashed me

an anxious smile and I released his hand, returning the smile to mask my

disappointment.

I didn’t know I was looking at his wife when I met her, out on the balcony

where we had each gone to seek solitude.

But I knew she was the painter’s wife by the time I was pressed to her

lips and my fingers were tangled in her hair, and the hum of wine was

vibrating up and down my skull. I knew she was the painter’s wife, but she

didn’t seem to care about that, and I didn’t either.

When the news comes, it is only through a letter: she is pregnant, so I

won’t be seeing her for awhile. I’m fine with it, of course. Fine with it, I

write back, congratulating her despite the anxiety that presses into my

ribs with every breath I draw. I pace nervously between the walls that

contain me, ricocheting around the infinitely empty house.

I try to go look at his paintings of her but I turn away at the door.

My head is arrested by images of her children, images of the paintings I’m

sure he will fit them into. They will give form to sweet faced cherubs, and

he will melt them to the page, freezing memories I will never have in a

way that I will never be able to replicate. He will lovingly render their big

wondering eyes and their wide innocent smiles. I wonder if they’ll have

his eyes, or mine.

1 1 C R O P M A R K S

B L E E D M A R K SF O L D M A R K S

I can never forgive him for having everything I’ve wanted. The woman,

the talent, the purpose. And now, he gets the family. Finally, she is ready

for the commitment of family and motherhood, and it is for him. Not for

me.

I would like to be a father, I think helplessly, to no one in particular.

I write her pining love letters, rank with poetry and sentiment. Of course

she doesn’t respond, but I understand. It’s selfish; less about her than

about my love for her. I’m begging for her to pay attention to me, this

wife of a famous painter, this beautiful mother to be, this breathtaking

woman who should never have had time in the first place for a quiet young

bachelor with money and time and love to spare.

So instead of debasing myself and being uselessly selfish, I decide to

create something for her.

Whenever I approach the easel in the back room, fear hits me in a wave.

Monet and Rossetti gather at the front of my mind, clamoring with

color, precision, finesse, and technique, secrets I can’t know, even after

all the hours I’ve spent raking hungry eyes over their work. Fear curls

suffocatingly through my throat as I walk up to that easel, but this isn’t

for me, it’s for her, and I throw aside the tarp, laying bare the canvas. It

is wide and impassive.

Before it can swallow me whole with its blankness, I pick up a brush.

Open the paints. Sink the tip into the slick surface. Lift the brush. Hover

uncertainly over the canvas.

When I finally lower the brush to drag a streak of color across the endless

expanse of canvas, I do it for her.

At first, all of my worst fears are realized. I’ve never been able to bring

myself to practice, so how can I expect to press her perfectly to the canvas?

How was I expecting her to look, when I am my own unpracticed teacher

in the back room of this big empty house?