An hour later, the heavy door has shut after his departure and I’m rinsing out the mugs we drank our coffee from. He takes it black like I do. The faint scent of his cologne—or body spray or soap or hair product or something—still hangs in the air and torments me. My bed smells like him too.
And so do my own clothes, from the hours he snuggled me in the night and snored softly by my ear.
Later when I’m looking at my submission for the Showcase, I realize I’m growing increasingly concerned about how awful it feels whenever he leaves. Even if I know I’m going to see him again on campus in a few hours. Even if I know he’ll be back tonight. Even if I know I’ll be going away with him for a whole weekend.
No matter what, I feel a piece of me collapse inside every time he leaves the room. I feel like I’m missing something after his departure.
I feel wounded.
I’m very alarmed by this emotion and I have nowhere to put it. I can’t even turn it into anything artistic. It just … exists.
I stare at my submission piece. It exists, too. I knew from the start what I wanted to show, and it’s the only piece I can. The enormous canine stares straight at me with his big, well-meaning eyes. His head is beastly big and his teeth shimmer with saliva, bared in a way that could inspire nightmares in children.
But he never inspired them in me. He was my hero. He kept me safe.
He growled and barked when my dad had one too many and raised his voice. He snapped his teeth when my dad punched the wall instead of me or Mom.
It’s so odd, that my dad never laid a finger on either of us, even in his drunken fits. It was always the nearest available object, or wall, or pillow. It’s really difficult to look at that and see the redirected anger as an act of compassion.
“You know I love you, sweetheart,” he’d tell me every morning, even when he couldn’t remember what he’d done or said the night before. “You’re my little Penny.”
It’s so hard to see that as love.
I can still hear Dog growling if I close my eyes tight enough and listen for my dad’s furious shouting.
And here I am, yet again, submitting my childhood canine for judgment. Dog will once more be studied by a bunch of snobby higher-ups in the art department, including some grad students, the joint heads (or should I say Queens?) of the department, and even Minnie. The longer I stare at my work, the more naked I start to feel … more and more naked, until it’s me cuffed to that platform in the gallery instead of Brant—with a gag in my mouth, having become my own Object—and I feel the people staring at me and marveling over what I represent, over what I am, over who I am.
You don’t know what I represent.
You don’t know what I am …
Or who I am.
I hear my dad’s shouting the longer I stare at the dog and his big, bright eyes as he waits for me to rub his ears and throw the ball across the room. Those big, wet, beastly eyes …
And who am I?
The feeling of abandon when Brant leaves eats at me from within. And this submission piece eats at me from the outside.
One of them has got to go.
I swipe the hammer from off my workbench, lift it up high, and club my piece over the head. I do it over and over as my dad’s shouts ring through my ears. I don’t stop swinging until the whole head falls off intact, slamming into the floor with a heavy, resolute thud.
My dad’s shouts have died away.
I breathe slowly until I’m calm again.
Now, my submission piece is ready.
NELL
One week turns into two, and then Brant is waiting for me outside my complex in his small blue pickup. He leans against the side with his arms crossed, sporting a form-fitting plaid shirt and jeans that are all distressed at the thighs. He looks so clean and dirty at the same time. When he lifts his head, his eyes shimmer and glow in the afternoon sunlight.
“That all you got?” he asks when I approach, opening the door for me as I slip into the cab.
“I pack lightly,” I answer.
He gives me a crooked smile, then shuts the door and comes around to the driver’s side. “You look really pretty,” he tells me before shutting his own door, his eyes going down to my breasts.
I picked a simple black top that hugs me, paired with the only pair of blue jeans I own. I figured if I was going to meet Brant’s parents, I should probably not go with my whole all-black thing I normally do in front of people I’ve never met before. I imagine Brant’s roommate Dmitri and I would have a lot of chromatic overlap amidst our wardrobes, considering how much black and grey he wears.
Brant twists a knob, flipping through the radio stations as he eyes me. “So, like … you still wanna do this, yeah?”