The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins (31 page)

— Look, I’m sorry, babe, but I needed the money. I already told you about my financial circumstances.

— Fuck you and your financial circumstances. I silence the cell. Look around to see if any nosy asshole has witnessed my distress. No. A couple of Latin guys are unloading a beer truck, sliding kegs into the basement of the bar across the street. Then another buzz on my ringtone, playing Joan Jett’s “Bad Reputation” as a call from Dad comes up. I let it ring till the phone’s blanded-out tinging of a favorite tune becomes excruciating, before hitting green. I tell him how I am, and to be fair, he commiserates, before inevitably slipping things back to him. — I’m in South Bend, Indiana, at the Notre Dame University campus, but I’ll be in Miami next weekend for the Books & Books event at the Biltmore.

— What’s happening in South Bend?

— Not a whole heap, but the reading was good last night. Went out for a few beers with Charlie Reagan, the Notre Dame quarterback. He was giving me all that “biggest fan” B.S., but he’s a good kid. A football scholarship and bound for the NFL draft, and he wants to write. Go figure. Anyway, we had a fair old drink.

— You can’t play football forever. It shows he’s got a head on his shoulders.

— Yeah, for sure. The kid’s from good stock: Boston old money and Galway and Clare before that. Now he’s stuck in Buttfuck, Indiana.

— Did you know that apart from Ohio, Indiana—at 29.1 percent obesity—is the only northern state in the top fifteen fattest states in the union?

— Still got it with the numbers, kiddo. Love it. Yeah, the town is dullsville, but the campus seems vibrant enough. But I still dunno why they call them “The Fightin Irish” with a name like that. I guess “Le Pussy French” don’t quite have the same ring to it.

— For sure. . . . So how’s the rest of the book tour been going?

— It’s okay, but I keep meeting that dyke tennis player, Veronica Lubartski; she’s on the circuit promoting her biography.

In spite of everything, I’m interested. Always had a thing for Lubartski. I remember sneaking home from school to watch the US Open at Flushing Meadow and enjoy some of the best clandestine frigs I ever had. — I read
Game, Set, and Snatch,
and it’s pretty damn good, I tell him. It was too. There was a great story of how she totally fucked this Dutch chick on the court,
then
did her in the locker room afterward. I sure as hell got all wet and wide reading that bastard!

— I wouldn’t know about that. But she’s made impossible demands on the literary escorts and she’s usually only one city ahead of me on the circuit. So I tend to get them in a grouchy mood.

— Sucks to be you. Call me when you’re in town. Love you, I shout dismissively, then hang up. I’ve got more to worry about than his bullshit. Mom and Lieb are due back in nine days and I’ve got to get Sorenson to her target weight before then.

When I get back into the club, Toby lisps something about people looking for me.

—
Nobody
is looking for
you
, I tell him. — Nobody ever will.

Toby bitches back but all I’m picking up is some vague, impotent hiss, as I’m now focused on Lena Sorenson.

When I get to the downtown apartment, I can hear her footsteps on the treadmill, sounding lighter than I recall, and her chain scratching a clanking rhythm against the side of the machine. I get inside and see her moving well, working up a proper sweat. — Three . . . seven . . . five . . . cal, she wheezes. — And two hundred this morning . . .

— Lookin good, Lena S, I hear my own words slipping out cheerlessly.

Sorenson immediately picks up on my mood. She puts the machine onto cool-down mode, moving from run to jog to walk within thirty seconds. Sweeps the hair out of her eyes with her free hand. — What is it, honey? What’s wrong?

I tell her the story of Miles’s betrayal.

— Assholes are assholes. Sorenson upturns her cuffed palm, walking on. — They’ll always be there. You said it yourself.

I’m not stoked on this bitch’s offhand attitude. — Do you know what it’s like to be betrayed, to be violated like that?

— Yes, I do. Sorenson, still walking on the mill, turns her head and rounds on me. — What the fuck do you think this shit is? She waves her bracelet, shaking the chain against the steel pillar.

— I do it with your best interests at heart, not my own. Try it when somebody does it with
their
best interests at heart. When you know something about that, then come back to me! And as I’m talking, I realize I want her to tell the story of her own betrayal, by this Jerry asshole. I’m thinking of that package she got sent, which I couldn’t help opening. But to reveal its contents to her now would bring her down and set her back. And I’m still her trainer. — That Jerry guy, he sure messed you up, didn’t he?

— Yes, but we’ve been through that. She turns to the control panel.

— I know there’s more, Lena.

— I’ve told you everything, she says, then lets out a tired exhalation of breath, and she kills the belt, stepping off the machine. She sucks in her lower lip, unaware that when she does this she’s so visibly adjusting the gears in her brain. No wonder that Jerry creep ran rings around her. — Look, Lucy, I can help you, she says. — Let’s stop all this. She shakes her shackled hand, starting her old shit again. — Let me get rid of this, and we’ll spend proper time together. We should be supporting each other. I’m on the right track now. She pats her slimmed stomach. — And I’m certainly not going back. There’s no need for all this anymore, and she shakes the chain once more. — I want to work in my studio again!

And for a split second I’m almost ready to oblige. But I see that duplicitous spark in her eyes. — I see what you’re doing. Get back on that treadmill!

— I wasn’t—

— Not acceptable! The fucking treadmill!

— This is just torture for torture’s sake! You’re a sadist!

— TREADMILL!

— I wanna do Chuck Norris, she says petulantly, looking at the Total Gym. — I’ve done enough cardio!

— Get the fuck outta here. How many times do I have to tell you? We keep our cardio and our weights days separate. A twenty-minute warm-up or warm-down is acceptable cardio if you’re doing weights, but no more. One builds up the lactic acids, the other depletes them.

Lena looks at me and nods reluctantly, but climbs back onto the treadmill.

— Good, I nod at her, and head off.

Fucking scheming bitch.

To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]

Subject: A Parting of the Ways

Dear Lucy,

It’s with great regret that I have to take cognisance of what you said at our meeting in Soho House yesterday, and accept that your heart is no longer in this project. So I’m sorry that I officially end our business relationship.

I wish you every success in the future.

Yours sincerely,

Valerie Mercando

To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]

Subject: God Can See What You Are Doing

Lena,

Daddy and I are brokenhearted. We sat down last night and prayed for you. Then we had a heart-to-heart about where we’d gone wrong. I look back, and I can see that we were mistaken to try and stop you moving to Chicago, and yes, also to follow your vocation as an artist. But we were worried for you, going to that city, with its drugs and gangsters and ghettos, full of people who will try and take advantage of a young girl on her own. We wanted you to study in Minnesota, but accepted Chicago because the business crowd would keep you out of trouble. Is caring for your child such a crime? Is wanting to protect her such a sin? If you are ever blessed with a child of your own—and you are still, in spite of everything, our blessing—then hopefully you’ll be spared from feeling what we are now!

May God be with you.

Yours in love,

Mom

To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]

Subject: God Can See What You Are Doing

Blah fucking blah fucking blah

THE SCULPTOR AND
personal trainer are both in the molding business. I’m Lucy’s very own piece of clay. Why, then, does she need to see the fat burn from under my skin, replacing it with the definition of toned muscle and sinew? Can I understand her motivations through my own? One thing I certainly know: enduring this shit has made my previous trials seem less hard and any future ones less daunting.

Fortunately, I’ve grown unconcerned about whether I feel infinitesimally thinner than I had the day before. This is because my journey seems fraught with paradox; while I can feel my muscles growing stronger by the day, at the same time I’m aware of my tendons and joints breaking down. My calves and knees ache, while my knotted shoulder, back, and arm muscles burn hard and hot. Most torturous of all, my inflamed, itching feet: covered in blisters, rashes, and darkly scabbed where my skin has broken open from being chafed by my sneakers. Thank God for that bear kiddie pool! To doctor my blistered, tired feet and rest them on that happy, grinning face!

The second run on the treadmill, an hour at 7.5 mph, has scorched me to my core. I sit back on the mattress, stretching out legs too sore to lock into the lotus position, and I’m too exhausted to concentrate on anything other than regulating my heaving breaths. I realize I’ve probably let myself get dehydrated; so easy to do indoors under the air conditioning. I take a bottle of water from the cooler by the mattress. Why am I here? You look at causation, but nothing in life is linear. We pretend on our psychotic social networks that we can be reduced to a timeline, but we are a stew, a constantly cooking, bubbling casserole. And I’m thinking about one of my main ingredients.

The sculptures of Germaine Richier (1902–1959) evoke the destruction and atmosphere of violence in Europe following World War II. The pitted and scarred surfaces of her figures, as well as their mutilated facial features, speak eloquently of human suffering. At the same time, the solidity of these personages and their strong expressive presence asserts the ultimate survival of humanity despite the legacy of war. A model for her sculpture was an old man who, fifty years before, had posed for Rodin’s representation of Balzac—an archetypal figure of male potency and creativity that Richier now represented as scarred and decaying. When I saw the exhibition of Richier’s work at the Institute, I was taken right back to that day in Potters Prairie, watching the terrible images of the attack on the World Trade Center.

Germaine Richier, born in Grans, southern France, was a true original. She was neither academic nor modernist but followed her own unique path, heading for Paris, working with Bourdelle in his last years. The devastating impact of the war had a profound effect on her imaginative landscape. Her previously large female figures became increasingly insectlike, yet determinedly remaining women, while other large, intimidating forms (both male and female) such as
The Storm
and
The Hurricane
seemed to represent the brutal, indifferent forces of nature.

One might speculate that the unequivocal artistic choices of this vibrant, strong-willed woman, who bore no children other than her sculptures, were a means of expressing her own femininity. Indeed, Richier’s personal silhouette evokes the robust figures she chose to limn.

Esthetically, Richier shuns the baroque mannerism of the surrealists. While clearly grasping their idiom, she deploys it bluntly, without an excess of affectation or ritual circumlocution. The paradox of Richier’s work is that it is both extensively acclaimed yet generally overlooked, principally due to its lack of congruence with any established conservative or progressive artistic movement. In both form and subject matter, the work of Richier displays an unaffected authenticity, which merits value above all else.

Authenticity.

What a strange fucking word for an artist to use.

What was “authentic” about my life?

Merits value above all else
; I wrote that. I said that. I remember Nick Vassiliev, my tutor, flushing almost sexually when he read back that sentence. Lena Sorenson, pompous and arrogant, a soon-to-be art-world superstar. They smelled it off me. Nobody on this entire planet was more designed for the School of the Art Institute. And the Art Institute was made for me to shine.

Authenticity.

I wanted a social life. I wanted a sex life, as much as any freshman student at the Art Institute. But I wasn’t there to hang out, party, get laid, and be cool. I was there to learn as much as I could and to become an artist. I was driven by a hunger for success more voracious than any business-school student could have displayed. And I was far,
far
more determined than any other student at the Institute. I felt I had greatness in me. I wanted to learn how to be good enough to be great.

There were two principal requirements of being a freshman student at the School of the Art Institute. You needed to buy an Apple Mac and you were required to live in the residencies on State Street. They were housed in an interesting building by the Borders bookstore, and near the Gene Siskel film center, which made it wonderful for me, in spite of the possible embarrassment of running into Mikey.

The white, bright rooms, with large windows and track lighting, were shared with another student, and I was fortunate to split the space with a lovely Korean girl called Kim. Along with Amanda, she became my closest friend. But I had to pay for the dorm rental upfront: almost $20,000. That shared box turned out to be the most expensive rental I and a lot of other people would ever have in Chicago. The huge turnover of students meant big money for the school. Each of the rooms had a bathroom and kitchen. Students had their own drafting table, chair, and closet, but the beds were in loft areas, offering minimal privacy. There was a communal laundry room, and recreational facilities, like a TV lounge and gym, and we all had safety deposit boxes. The best feature of the rooms was that they were a short walk from the school.