In my midtwenties, I moved to New York and got a job as an assistant to a narcissistic TV actress named Sunday. She was really friendly until she could sense the connection between me and Giles, her sweet architect husband, which was not sexual but was significant nonetheless. Giles and I would pretend we were an old couple trying to find something we lost, or talk about how all our friends were dying. We’d imagine we were technophobic, saying stuff like, “Is Siri in the cloud?” Our repartee was more of a betrayal for Sunday than if I’d been blowing him. I don’t think she made him laugh, other than when he was laughing at her, like when she would ask if Denmark was a country, or if she looked fat in her pants due to the fact that she ate three peanut M&M’S. When she fired me, I wasn’t surprised. I knew I needed to move on. But I did have a hard time saying goodbye to her Great Dane—for me it was always about the dog. He was a big, goofy hunk of love named Larry, and he looked at me with eyes that said, please, don’t leave me with her for the rest of my life, she puts me in kennels half the time, you’re the only one who really cares except Giles and he’s a workaholic. It was as if his soul was pouring out of his eyes. I cried, of course, hugging the dog awkwardly in the entryway. “Bye, buddy,” I said, and his soft whine literally broke my heart.
When I went back to her apartment a few days after to pick up my umbrella and a pair of shoes I’d left there, I let myself in (I hadn’t returned her key, and the doorman knew me) and there she was, midscrew with the handyman on the kitchen table, Larry curled up on the floor, half watching, half sleeping. It was such a cliché that the guy even had his tool belt on. I felt bad for Giles, but I wasn’t going to get involved in that particular mess. I found the umbrella right by the door and sacrificed the shoes, leaving the keys with the doorman on the way out.
After that, I worked at a few art galleries, and eventually I managed one, and that’s when I met Jack. He was the contractor who renovated the place. I kept noticing him out of the corner of my eye, and one day he brought me a flower, just one. It was odd, but I found it delightful. If only I could’ve seen it as a sign.
Managing the Sundaram-Tagore Gallery was not what I had dreamed my life to be, but it wasn’t that bad. I loved being in the space, a giant white room flooded with light cast from high, rectangular windows. I found myself anesthetized by the whole vibe. No one spoke loudly, and there was a general hush continually present—the artwork reflected that, too, large canvases with washes of color, dark wooden sculptures of the female form, slightly out-of-focus portraits of the working class. Most of the people involved with the gallery were interesting, if dripping in ego. Those years were very pleasant—getting to know Jack, finding our cute walk-up above Breaking Bread in Greenpoint. I actually felt like I was on some sort of track. My mother was pleased as well, which always made my life more palatable. She was the one who’d taken me to museums when I was a girl. At first I’d hated it, but then I’d started to understand the spell a painting could put me under. The way that light on canvas could recreate life, the feeling that you could almost step into it. It was the way Brady was with music and food. In photographs of us as children, he always had headphones on, eating a fancy grilled cheese, and I was usually looking through an art book bigger than my head. I loved the vibrant colors of Klimt, the beautiful realism of Hopper, the chaos of Pollock. Standing in front of a painting, I would often feel the magnitude of the world beyond myself. That there was so much life and emotion being depicted, I could only begin to understand. It felt limitless, but also powerful, because I knew I was special. I was young, but I could understand it. I could see years of pain in the eyes of an old woman, or unfettered joy in the swinging arms of a boy on a ship. Even in the abstracts, I could just look at them and a mood would overtake me: melancholy, confusion, hopefulness. Later, when I studied art more closely in college, I was secretly thankful my mother had given me the chance to be one step ahead.
Unlike Sunday the actress, when my boss at the gallery, Liv, fired me, I was completely shocked. She told me that I needed to “find color” in my life. It wasn’t that I was doing a bad job, but she felt I needed to “branch out” and “evolve.” She said the words like they were a taste on her tongue, something she had been longing to describe.
I tried to collect my face, which seemed to have sunk into puddles on the floor. It was strange and sad to feel like you totally knew someone, worked with them for years, only to realize you were utterly disposable, like a gum wrapper or one of those tiny bottles of water. She just threw me away. Of course, this was also the week Jack broke up with me. I excused myself, trying to form a sentence but instead mumbling gibberish, and went into the claustrophobic staff bathroom to ugly-cry. Not because I had lost my job and my boyfriend, but because she was right. At thirty-four, I was a blank canvas.
I immediately called my brother, Brady, and without hesitation he said, “Come to DC. Come here. I have room. I miss you.”
I missed him too. I missed his smile, which could melt a glacier. Every time I think back to our childhood, my memory is mostly muted, but I always remember Brady: he was the clarity, the color. Whenever I fell, his arm was automatically there to catch me. If I was sad, he would do this dumb dance where he’d swivel his hips to make me laugh.
“Okay,” I said, and two days later I arrived. After I put down my bags in his foyer, Brady hugged me and spun me around, saying, “It’s just a bump in the road!”
“More like an endless black hole in the earth,” I said.
He laughed, and for a second my whole body felt light, not bogged down by anything. I loved the sound of his laugh.
“You always were dramatic, Page.”
He showed me to my room, which was spotless and had the clean-line vibe of a gallery. I knew I’d be comfortable there, but I didn’t want to just mooch off him. I’d have to contribute somehow.
“Come on, you must be starving!”
He took me to a Mexican place near U Street, and we ordered jalapeño margaritas. Both the bartender and one of the hostesses seemed to know who Brady was.
“So you’re like, kind of a celeb now?”
“It’s a small world, at least in the Fourteenth Street corridor. A lot of us know each other.”
He looked different. I tried to picture the boy with fear in his eyes after spraining his ankle on the beach. The day I had to carry him even though I was half his size.
“I’m so proud of you,” I said.
He waved away the compliment.
“It was good timing, all of it,” he said. “I’m just lucky.”
He’d always been lucky. In fifth grade, he won a raffle for a private tour of Six Flags. I’ll never forget the look on his best friend Billy’s face when Brady chose me as his plus-one. Venomous. But this wasn’t just luck. Brady had worked hard to get where he was in life, and I was proud of him.
“So have you talked to Mom?” he asked.
“No, but I texted her. Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth calling her. It’s all about Charlie now.”
“Yeah, did you know she asked me last week how the wine bar was? She still thinks I own a wine bar.”
“Jesus.”
During our second margarita, Brady started to complain about his unpredictable line chef who had been arrested, as if that were more important than my entire life falling apart. To be honest, I didn’t mind—it was a much needed distraction. Brady had this way of bringing everything back to him without being rude about it. He was even more strikingly handsome now, with that sunshine smile and a remarkably fit physique despite hardly trying. Naturally, I was the one with love handles having a salad while he filled his six-pack with chips and guacamole. I secretly prayed for the day his metabolism would plummet.