Still Life with Tornado

by A.S. King

Ten-year-old Sarah says, “Picasso had original ideas.” I say, “Maybe.” She says, “Not maybe. This is original. No one did it before him.” “I guess.” As we wander around the area, there are similar paintings. Braque, Gris, all of Picasso’s contemporaries. I see the style in those, too. It was a movement. Picasso wasn’t the only cubist. (Nobody was the only anything-ist.)

Then they fake smile at each other, but I’m starting to understand that smiling is really just another way of baring one’s teeth.

I wonder how the world showed Alleged Earl his place was in the alcove. I don’t think anybody should have to sleep on the street. I don’t think anybody should have to dig in the trash for food. It seems wrong in every possible situation. If he’s poor, someone should help him. If he’s mentally ill, someone should help him. What kind of place do we live in where so many people have to live on the street? Doesn’t make any sense except that people have to show other people their place. And Alleged Earl’s place is in the alcove. And my place is not-in-school.

I wish I could levitate. I wish I could be Spain or Macedonia.

I decide not to think about art for a week. I decide art is futile. I decide there are better things than art. I decide not to take any buses for a week. I decide that if I want to go somewhere, I will walk. On Tuesday, I decide to walk to the Liberty Bell.

Did you know that no one living today has actually heard the Liberty Bell ring? I think that’s a metaphor for something, but I’m not sure what. I have to stop my brain from thinking about it because metaphor is art.

I walk to the corner of South and 4th and I watch the tourists try to figure out which cheesesteak place to go to. Pat’s or Jim’s? That’s the question. That’s always the question. Truth is, the difference between these two cheesesteaks is so large that you should try them both. Everyone has an opinion about which one is the most authentic but what does authentic have to do with anything anymore? Cheesesteaks are art. Some art is Rembrandt. Some art is Rothko.

I ask the girl, “What is art?” and she says, “Art is what you believe no matter what other people think.”

That’s because I tell the truth slowly. I think that’s how the truth shows up sometimes. Slowly.

I like museums. I love museums. But I can’t find the answers in a museum. My answers are somewhere else. Maybe in Bruce. Maybe in ten-year-old Sarah. Maybe just inside myself because I’m the only one who knows all the details of me. But there’s a thin membrane between me and myself, too. It’s like I’m a little me inside the big me and I’m holding an umbrella and the rain is bullshit and I am the rain and I am the bullshit.

He’d tease me about something too much. His favorite subject was how I’d run off with a doctor one day. “Only reason girls become nurses is to marry a doctor,” he said. A lot. He said it a lot. I have no idea why I didn’t see he was going to be a problem right then. Instead, I figured it was his way of showing insecurity. It was my job to prove to him that I loved him, not some unknown doctor.

He wasn’t drunk the first time. I’d made dinner for just the two of us. He came home from class and though he didn’t seem like he was in a good mood, when he saw the candles lit and smelled the beef roast I’d overcooked, he was pretty nice. It was something I said. It’s never really something you say. Remember that. But at the time I thought it was something I’d said. At the time, it’s always the fault of the person who isn’t swinging. But it really isn’t.

Anyway, Dad drank all day. He snapped at Mom a few times. When we all ate together he kept telling Bruce to stop eating so fast. He kept telling me I would turn into a tortilla chip. He kept looking at Mom like she’d caused him these problems—a son who ate too fast and a girl who was a tortilla chip.

The piano is electronic. The house was always too small for an upright. The house was always too small for a lot of things. Maybe that’s why Bruce moved out and never came back. Maybe the house is too small for any of us to be who we are. Mom can only listen to metal on headphones. Bruce had to practice his lines for drama club in the garage. When I think of this, I realize Dad watches his baseball games with the volume way up. He is the only one allowed volume in a house with thin walls. I don’t know what this means, but I want to play the piano.

The older people get, the less they can do about things. They seem to be stuck. They seem to be glue.

I don’t want to tell him it’s a mental health break because even though I know that breaking your brain is the same as breaking your arm, I’m still ashamed that my brain is broken.

Mütter Museum

When you learn things late, you put everything you ever knew through a completely different meat grinder and you end up with totally different meat. The sliver of tissue was a test. This is what abuse looks like. It looks like weeks of waiting for your wife to say Why can’t you vacuum up that sliver of tissue? so you can tell her she’s a bitch. It’s a trap. Everything Dad does is a trap. Every shrug, every night he sat and watched TV when there were dishes in the sink—everything was a trap. And Mom knows because after twenty-six years, how could she not know?

I’m still putting my entire life through a meat grinder. The meat that comes out makes no sense. I just sit there, grinding meat.

Here’s why I like making things. I like making things because when I was born, everything I was born into was already made for me. Art let me surround myself with something different. Something new. Something real. Something that was mine.

“I still don’t hit you!” he says. Mom says, “You don’t get it.” I get it. The absence of violence is not love.

Dad sighs and says, “Shoot me now.” “Don’t say that, sir.” “Why not? I want to die.” “Sir, really. You shouldn’t say that.” “My whole life was wasted on this family. On her,” he says, glaring at Mom. “Just shoot me now. You can say I tried to take your gun or any of that other shit. I’d be out of my misery.” This is art.

Nineteen years old. At nineteen years old I knew what he was. I stayed with him anyway. Make a note: You can’t change people with love. It doesn’t work that way.

I open the plastic overlap a little and peek in and it’s just blank walls. Whiter than white. Blanker than blank. Just like me. But this is a fresh start. In a week or two, this room will house something new—something I’ve never seen before. Just like me. I stand there until the security guard from the adjacent armor room taps me lightly on the shoulder. I say, “Sorry,” but I don’t really mean it. I’ve been to this museum so many times and I’ve never been as moved as this—by something so ordinary. A blank room. A man with a ladder. The smell of fresh paint. Construction.

Maybe if you take off all that armor, you won’t feel so heavy.