Too much white

Morgan walked into the restaurant and past the hostess who was trying to figure out how to seat a party of six in a booth designed for four. Ryder was already seated, her back to Morgan and the front door. It wasn’t a seating choice Morgan would have made, but Ryder didn’t worry about being surprised from behind. With four children under the age of 12, she was used to surprises from all directions.

“Hey. I ordered fries; truffle and regular. I'm also drinking, even if you won't join me,” Ryder smiled as Morgan slid into the booth.

“Great, thanks. Sorry I’m late.” 

 “I haven’t been waiting long. So, what's her name?” Ryder asked.

“Who?” 

“Look, we've never had a judgy kind of relationship. You don't have to be coy with me,” Ryder took a sip of her rosé.

“I'm not being coy,” Morgan insisted.

“I hope it’s not that awful Daria Drakestein. She was on Style Files talking about her son’s fashion line for gender nonconforming tweens. The idea is pretty genius, but she's so odious. It’s hard to root for a kid with a mom like that.”

“We don’t choose our parents,” Morgan said mildly.

 “Don’t I know it. You’ve met my mother. Anyway, it’ll be my luck that the agency snags little Drakestein’s account and I’ll have to come up with an award winning campaign. You were smart getting out while the getting was good enough. Waiting for the perfect exit is like waiting for Rosencrantz and Stern.” 

“Godot. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is about something else entirely,” Morgan speared a forkful of fries onto her plate.

“Don't deflect. It’s your fight club leader, isn’t it? All that pent up rage has to go somewhere.”

“That's what fight club’s for. Why are you convinced that I’m having an affair?”

“Look at how you're dressing. You look great in that jumpsuit, by the way. But it’s not just that. You're more evasive than usual.”

“Evasive? What am I, a fugitive?”

 “You tell me. Last week at Tess and Pim’s, Tess asked how your writing was going. You just said fine, ate a piece of that amazing Stilton and spent the rest of the evening whispering with Jeff about something or more likely, someone. You two can never resist a send-up. That cheese, though. Wasn't it to die for? I bet they’ve got a cheesemonger on retainer. My god, what a life.”

“Hate to disappoint you, but I'm not having an affair. Something’s different about these fries,” Morgan said.

“They’re using duck fat. I wondered if you’d notice. Do you want to order something else?”

“No, they’re fine. Just different.”

“So things are good with you and Devon?”

Morgan leaned back in the booth and surveyed the crowd as she thought about how to answer the question. Even though her jumpsuit was designer, she was the least dressed up person in the room. She realized that she hadn’t been out to lunch in months. A year ago, that would have meant something ominous about her career trajectory. Now, it didn’t mean much of anything except that she spent a lot less on dry cleaning. 

Ryder, on the other hand, was wearing an intricate ensemble involving a tunic top, a skirt and a sash with patches that resembled the ones they gave out to kids in scouting programs but instead of campfires, sewing kits and first-aid symbols, there were vintage wines, rare books and a pair of moccasins dotted with diamonds. 

It looked like something Chloe Von Blounstein, a close friend of Morgan’s 10-yr old daughter, Vabeh would have designed. Chloe had the parental resources - financial and otherwise - to turn her scribbles into trunk shows on the Hamptons and distribution in a few boutiques in Brooklyn and the Upper East Side. It was possible she actually had designed Ryder’s outfit.

“Devon’s going through a few things. The Residency was helpful, but they’re not miracle workers. Is that Henrietta over there?” Morgan gestured toward a table near the front of the restaurant.

“No, didn’t I tell you? She left the agency last month. Something about moving in with her boyfriend and helping him with his fish market. It’s called Fresh Catch or some other godawful name. With a name that stinky, I bet he fishes in the Gowanus.”

“I’m pretty sure he doesn’t since it’s illegal,” Morgan grinned.

“I know. There’s actually no boyfriend or fish market. She’s just another lonely spinster who chucked the big city life to open a pencil shop in Hudson,” Ryder sighed and picked at the fries. 

“Something wrong?” Morgan asked.

“It’s just so boring at work without you. Are you sure you don’t want to come back?”

Morgan wondered what going back would mean. Being back in the land of weekday expense account dining wasn’t horrible, she decided. Not as bad as she’d imagined it might be after so much time away. She’d have to refresh her wardrobe. Get a haircut. The cosmetic changes she could do. But, deeper changes would still be required. For one, she’d have to put her newly uncorked rage back in the bottle, since she wouldn’t have time for mid day fight club sessions.

“Coming back wouldn’t be good for me for so many reasons. At least not now,” Morgan said. 

“Well, if you won’t come back then I’m going to spend this afternoon living vicariously through you and your new wardrobe. I'm getting a Demi in St. Elmo's mixed with Jennifer in Flashdance vibe.”

“Jeff thinks it's closer to Winona in anything except Little Women.”

“So, I'm not the only one who’s noticed,” Ryder wagged her eyebrows suggestively. 

“They're just clothes. Can’t I try something new?”

“I've hit a nerve of the sartorial sort. If it's not an affair, then it's some sort of cos play. Or maybe you’re going method for that art in the 80s essay you're writing. Are those Chuck Taylors vintage?”

“I fobbed that essay off to Jeff. He’ll do a better job.”

“Bullshit. Jeff Crews is nowhere close to your equal.”

“Right. He’s a writer people have actually heard of.”

“Only because he slept with the right succession of dicks while you were doing the work of going to residencies and actually trying to become a good writer.”

“That's not fair.”

“But it's true. And why are you giving Jeff your hard-earned assignments anyway? Wasn't the point of leaving your wildly successful agency career to spend more time writing?”

“It was.”

“It was. My god, who are you and what have you done with my darling Morgan? We used to spend hours on Altonio’s catnip addiction alone. And now you're monosyllabic wearing a monochromatic jumpsuit and you’re not even glaring at me for eating more than my share of fries.”

“I'm not that hungry. I want to show you something when we're done here.”

“Check!” Ryder drained her drink and summoned the waiter.

Out on the street, Morgan and Ryder walked a few blocks east before Morgan stopped in front of an old warehouse and navigated around a flock of pigeons fighting over a danish.

“That one has the right idea,” Ryder joked as she pointed at a lone pigeon pecking at a coffee cup away from the fray.

They went inside and faced a large stairway. 

“Here we are. Well, almost. As you can see, there's a few flights of stairs unless you want to take the freight elevator.”

Ryder looked at the freight elevator, which was open and overflowing with garbage bags. She wrinkled her nose.

“I’ll take my chances with the stairs.”

The women climbed the stairs, the sound of Ryder’s heels hitting the concrete reverberated throughout the stairwell. At the second landing, Ryder paused - more for effect than from fatigue. Morgan paused as well, turning to give Ryder’s taut figure a noticeably appreciative gaze. There was nothing overtly sexual about the gaze and whatever might have been covert wasn't meant to be picked up or worried over. 

They'd each brought up the other in their respective therapists’ offices. It turned out that it wasn't unusual for women their age and at their stage in life (coupled, parenting precocious pre-tweens, professionally ascendant) to develop intense attachments to work colleagues. It wasn’t the same as having a workplace affair. But the emotional intimacy was no less threatening if one wasn't careful. Ryder and Morgan were each careful in their own ways. But together, they added up to a more reckless unit.

“I haven't told Devon about this,” Morgan confessed as she slid the large metal barn door open and ushered Ryder into a cavernous loft space awash in canvases. Many blank, but enough in progress for Ryder to get an idea of what was happening in this fifth floor walk-up studio in a formerly run down, then fashionable and now run down again neighborhood, with a view of the Holland Tunnel.

There was no indication in Morgan's sentence that yet was implied or that she ever intended to tell Devon anything about this studio, much less what she was doing in said studio. 

“You're really taking this room of one’s own to another level. I know your writing den was getting overrun with Vabeh’s research for her juice box project, but I could have gotten you a nice space at SheSpread.”

“I'm not sure how this happened.”

“One stroke at a time, I’d imagine. Unless you’re paying an army of assistants. Are you?”

“No and you know what I mean.”

“Look, every story has a beginning. For example, once upon a time, there was a corporate badass who enjoyed minor success as a writer. She was married to a world famous artist and was the mother of another world famous artist. Said corporate badass/writer never expressed any interest in making art or even copped to having artistic talent in the five years she was friends with a fabulous corporate dominatrix. One day this corporate badass/writer, who had undergone a mysterious sartorial transformation, lured the dom into a creative dungeon. Your turn.”

Morgan took her time responding. While she cast about for the right starting point, Ryder wandered around the studio looking closer at the paintings than Morgan had expected she would. It made Morgan feel even guiltier about bringing someone else into this space that was supposed to be just hers. If she started letting other people in, then what was she really up to? 

Ryder zeroed in on the painting that Morgan had titled Too Much White. The painting itself contained little hint of the eponymous hue, so Morgan figured the title was safe with her. But she hadn't counted on Ryder. Or had she? Morgan and her therapist were working on opening Morgan up to intuition. It was still a bit woo-woo for her, but not in a way that aroused contempt. More like cautious skepticism.

“It started here, didn't it? With this one?” Ryder asked.

It was then that Morgan knew where to begin. 

Two months ago. The night of the painting party at Simon Von Blounstein’s. 

If Devon hadn’t been away at The Residency, a high performance training center upstate for artists approaching mid-career and wanting to avoid the mid-life crisis that often accompanied that transition, Morgan might not have gone. But ever since quitting her job at the agency to write full-time, Morgan was realizing how much she'd relied on work for readymade companionship. Without it, she was finding herself at loose ends.

She'd grown up playing tennis and had even been the captain of her high school’s varsity team. Tennis represented the type of teamwork Morgan liked best; an assemblage of singular contributions that added up to a collective win. She didn’t like sports like soccer where the choreography of a victory relied on too many people sweating en masse. 

At the agency, it had been more like tennis. Ryder passed Morgan a provocative strategy, which Morgan then crafted into clever words before passing her work along to the creatives who buzzed around on the 15th floor fussing over palettes and personas. From there, the product got passed back to Ryder who also excelled at pitching final results. By that point in the process, Morgan preferred to be off-stage.

Being off-stage was one of the things Morgan had looked forward to when she agreed to leave the agency to pursue the type of writing that Pim Logan, Devon’s first major collector/ex-girlfriend was paying Morgan an obscenely large sum to do; writing that focused on artists like Devon. But, it turned out that being off-stage as a full-time writer didn’t come with the same readymade comraderie as working at the agency. 

The artists, including Devon, liked having a team at their service, but they weren't interested in being part of the team. This left Morgan eating orange slices alone in her writer’s den without anyone to gossip with. She had no one to complain to about the client (who in this case was mainly Pim - the patron, but also partially her wife - the subject) the way she and Ryder had done so easily together for years. 

Morgan appreciated that artists faced different challenges and opponents than the Chief Marketing Officers she’d dealt with previously. The artists were staring down the press; their dealers; their collectors; their spouses (for the dual artist couples); and the voices in their heads. And they faced all of these threats alone; mainly because in their world, it simply wasn’t done any other way. Too risky.

And so, Morgan filled her days as best she could with therapy, fight club, parenting and being a studio widow. Where Morgan used to text Jeff without thinking during a weekday, she'd started rationing herself. She didn't want to seem needy. Her therapist deemed her highly boundaried and challenged her to send twice the number of texts she thought were proper and to sit with the discomfort of wanting those texts to be answered. 

Morgan did that for exactly one day but stopped after getting into an exhilarating extended text string with Jeff about the price of reclaimed hardwood. It had felt too good and she'd known Jeff for long enough not to get too comfortable in his attentions. Jeff could be counted on sometimes, but not all the time.  

So, when she got the text from the young woman who arranged the Von Blounstein's social engagements inviting the family to a paint and sip, she accepted without hesitation even though Devon being away at The Residency would have provided a socially acceptable out.

“Morgan, that’s quite a piece. Kind of surprising subject matter - or lack of,” Poncey Persimmons had said as he walked by Morgan’s easel on his way to get another drink - his sixth in two hours - at the bar at the end of the room. Morgan had counted. It was a habit she’d picked up in college while dating a high-functioning alcoholic.

She didn’t say anything at first. Instead, she just kept painting, happy that Vabeh and the other children were doing their art-making away from the boozy arena in which she found herself. Poncey wasn’t a bad guy, but she didn’t like him. Her dislike had idled in neutral for so long that she didn’t expect it to go anywhere. 

But then he came back, with his seventh drink and Simon Von Blounstein in tow.

“See what I mean?” Poncey gestured toward Morgan’s easel and brushed up against her roughly in the process - more drunk than perverted. Simon, more restrained in social settings ever since an unflattering photograph had made its way through the group’s social media feeds featuring him, a young woman who wasn’t his wife, and a bottle of cheap champagne, was sipping on a glass of wine with an ice cube that kept bumping up against his lip.

“Morgan, didn’t you grow up in South Carolina?” Simon asked as he finally took the ice cube in his mouth and began chewing it with his mouth open.

“Connecticut,” she replied as she kept painting with her left hand and pushing Poncey away ever so gently with her right hand.

“But your family has a summer place down in Kiawah, right?” Simon persisted.

“A family friend bought an old plantation outside of Charleston. I was in her wedding. There’s a picture on social. Maybe that’s what you’re thinking of,” she kept her tone neutral as her blood pressure began to steadily climb. She took a deep breath and focused on the grid she was painting. Blue lines crossing over a white background. 

Up and down, left and right. Up and down, left and right. Too much white. Dab the brush. Breathe.

“I was sure she’d paint something different,” Poncey said loudly as if Morgan wasn’t there. Morgan turned ever so slightly to face the men. Simon looked pained and bent down to tie his sneaker even though it was perfectly tied. Daria Drakestein, never one to miss a social meltdown, ambled over.

“Look at Morgan, drawing all the flies over with her hard abstraction,” Daria cooed.

“But come on, let's be honest. Who wants to buy abstract art by a black person?” Poncey drunkenly pushed past the point of political correctness.

“No one’s buying anything tonight. It’s just a friendly party to let off some steam, right?” Simon stood back up and tried to regain his footing. He was wobbly when asked to be woke, but he certainly wasn’t Poncey.

“Black art should tell a story. It should tell America’s story,” Poncey’s affected Aussie accent turned natural and the southern drawl was unmistakable.

“Poncey Persimmons, you’ve spent the better part of your life in New York pretending to be from somewhere else and now you want to claim your southern roots at Morgan’s expense?” Daria folded her arms.

“It’s not at her expense. I’m ready to pay my reparations, but I can’t pay them to a canvas that could’ve been painted by a white guy. I want to feel something when it’s painted by someone black.”

“I can’t believe you’re saying this shit out loud,” Daria’s voice got louder and Simon finally found his footing.

“We’ve all had a lot to drink. Maybe it’s time to see what the kids are up to. Wouldn’t it be nice to see if Vabeh, Mayhew, Chloe and Fiennes are still doing those exquisite corpses they like to draw when they’re together?”

“At least Vabeh paints her cat’s clipped ear. That’s more authentic than anything I’m seeing out of Morgan tonight,” Poncey grumbled as Simon led him out of the room. Daria stayed behind, her hand on Morgan’s shoulder as though they were sisters in a struggle. 

Morgan had nothing to say. To Daria or anyone else. She had a painting to finish, a daughter to collect and a semi-feral cat to feed when they got home.

Daria finally removed her hand and walked away without saying anything more. Morgan returned to her painting.

More blue lines crossing over a white background. 

Up and down, left and right. Up and down, left and right. Still too much white. Dab the brush. Breathe.

“Poncey Persimmons is the reason you’re holed up in this warehouse risking your marriage?” Ryder asked as Morgan finished the story.

“Risking my marriage?”

“Oh, come on. You know this is worse than having an affair with your fight club instructor. Hell, this is worse than having an affair with me,” Ryder’s voice trailed off.

Morgan stared straight ahead at the painting in front of them, not quite trusting herself to look at Ryder as she replied, “I already quit my job. It’s not like we need the money.”

“But you need your lanes. Devon’s the painter. You’re the writer. That was the deal.”

“The deal changed when Vabeh showed up.”

“It’s not the same. Kids get whatever lane they want. You know that. If you didn’t, you’d be standing here with Devon and not me.”

Morgan finally looked at Ryder and tried to imagine what sort of conversation would be happening if Devon was in Ryder’s place. She sighed.

“What should I do?”

“What does your therapist think?”

“She thinks I’m leveraging my insomnia to write the book about raising Vabeh.”

“Are you?”

“I was.”

“Until you weren’t.”

“Right.”

“I’m going to need a bit more than that to go on. It’s not like you just got to Simon’s party and discovered you were an abstract artist. When did this start? Mind if I sit on your couch or did it come with the studio and a blacklight?”

“No, it’s new,” Morgan and Ryder sat down together, Morgan’s jumpsuited knee touching Ryder’s bare one as she began to share the real beginning that had gotten her to this problematic middle.

It had actually started before Devon went away to The Residency and after Vabeh’s dust-up with her friend Gus over the Walk-In Art Gallery that they ran together in Poncey’s son Mayhew’s walk-in closet. Morgan’s sleep patterns began to resemble their cat Altonio’s. Altonio would yelp herself out of a deep sleep and stand at attention almost as if being called for duty by an imagined quarry outside the window before settling back into sleep a few moments later. Morgan would similarly lurch awake, first searching for her laptop and then later to make her way into Devon’s studio.

Sleeping soundly had never been a problem before. 

That’s what Morgan told her therapist once the lurching episodes went from intermittent to insistent. And when, her therapist asked, did it become a problem? 

Morgan sat on her therapist’s couch, staring out the window and trying to locate the truth instead of letting an acceptable answer push to the front of the line. Telling the truth was something she was working on, if only in the safe confines of the small room on the Upper East Side, far away from her life in Brooklyn. 

She thought about how her earliest sleep disturbances had nothing to do with writing or painting and everything to do with Vabeh, the adopted tween sleeping in the room that used to be spare and was now devoted to all things sparkly and slightly eccentric; if they were being honest about what a birdcage filled with capes said about Vabeh. 

In those early months after Vabeh’s arrival, Morgan and Devon took turns being anxious according to their natural circadian rhythms. This meant Morgan took the early morning shift. She would launch herself out of bed and across the apartment to Vabeh’s bedroom. Vabeh snored soundly most nights with Altonio at the foot of the bed, waking cheerfully when her alarm went off. 

A casual observer would decide that nothing was going to go wrong and that both new mothers would do better to take a break from worry. But, Devon and Morgan, were religious observers who realized that while Vabeh was okay most nights, Wednesday nights were different. Wednesday nights she resisted sleep and cycled through tears and laughter and even anger at an alarming speed. She was unrecognizable to them on Wednesday nights.

Dr. Caching, Vabeh’s therapist, was stumped as to why, but he acknowledged that a little girl who spent her waking hours writing notes about potential playground art trades and scanning every magazine archive she could find online for traces of her first mothers, who had died suddenly and tragically while at an art fair, might need some extra care and attention.

And so, Devon and Morgan got even more intentional about their worry on Wednesdays. Devon took the first half of the evening trying to coax Vabeh to sleep and when she failed, Morgan picked up the early morning and off to school part of the day, since it coincided with her own off to work early morning. 

Vabeh appeared no worse for the wear on Thursday mornings. It was as though daybreak mended whatever short circuit that got tripped the night before. But Morgan wasn’t so young or resilient. She got in the habit of canceling morning meetings and eventually started working from home so that she could nap after dropping Vabeh off at school.  

They went along like this for three months and then, one early Thursday morning when Morgan lurched awake for her shift, stretching and knocking Devon in the boob - a boob she realized she hadn’t considered more than by accident in months, she was disoriented. 

What was Devon doing sleeping? Had she slept through her shift? Was Vabeh going to be alone in the living room in her nightgown illuminated by her iPad, tears streaming down her face as she found nothing about her dead first mothers that could comfort her? 

Morgan tore off the covers and raced into the living room without checking Vabeh’s bedroom. Nothing in the living room, except the remote control on the floor in the space where Vabeh liked to sit when they all watched Extreme Cat Makeovers together. The kitchen was still and Antonio’s food bowl empty. 

Morgan took a deep breath and quieted her steps as she went down the hall to Vabeh’s room. The door was ajar, not wide open like it usually was after Devon’s shift. Vabeh was snoring peacefully and Altonio was at the foot of her bed, tail twitching, but otherwise down for the count. 

Morgan leaned heavily against the doorframe. She wasn’t sure she trusted herself to actually sleep, but everyone else in the household seemed to think it was a good idea. Her first meeting was at 11.  There were enough hours until then for her to get enough sleep to attend in person. It was a delicious temptation. But then who would get Vabeh ready for school? Certainly not Devon, who if she slept through the accidental boob assault was certainly under the influence of her sleep meds and wouldn’t be reliably awake until well after Vabeh would be late for school. 

If she couldn’t sleep, then maybe she’d go into her writer’s den and dust off the manuscript she’d been working on before Vabeh arrived. The one about the time traveling mulatto who’d landed on a Red State ranch on the eve of the 2016 election. The one that now, months after the actual election was hard to consider. 

Jeff and Devon both thought Morgan still had a bestseller on her hands, but Morgan wasn’t so sure she had the stamina to keep at it when reality felt even bleaker than her fictional imaginings. But what else was there to do at 4am? She hated the way watching television felt as the sun started its slow progress toward sunrise. It reminded her of college and all-nighters fueled by pizza and bad guitar playing.

Thinking of college, she realized she could call Stoddard who was so many time zones away that it was probably closer to lunchtime. But what would they talk about? Kids? The price of imported cheese? Morgan didn’t have the energy for much more than that. Certainly not enough to hear about Stoddard’s latest argument with Joan, her long-suffering wife. Morgan liked Joan and loved Stoddard. But when it came to the two of them and their domestic differences, Morgan consistently came down on the side of their 9 year old daughter, Worthy. 

Even before Vabeh had arrived, Morgan always sided with the kids. They didn’t ask for their parents and no matter how much money or other privilege they got in return, it didn’t make up for the shit that came with it. Devon and Morgan were agreed on that and kept the few bits of domestic difference that crept up every now and then behind their bedroom door. 

Morgan didn’t call Stoddard. Instead, she went into what Vabeh called her “writer’s den” and turned on the computer. She grimaced as she read the last section she’d written about the mulatto’s bewilderment after her first fly fishing lesson, courtesy of her new paramour, the rebel daughter of a conservative television host. It was too absurd, even for present day. Or maybe it wasn’t absurd enough. 

Morgan hadn’t turned on the light and so she was bathed in the light from the screen and the streetlights outside. In the artificial light, Morgan felt brave. Or maybe the exhaustion was giving way to something else. In either event, she decided against the manuscript in progress and instead chose a blank piece of screen. 

Too much white, she could almost hear Vabeh say as the cursor blinked, waiting for direction. Too much white was one of Vabeh’s favorite studio sayings according to Devon. There wasn’t a surface on Vabeh’s paintings that allowed any bit of white to play a part. Dr. Caching was interested in what that meant. Devon dismissed it as an artistic choice and nothing more. Morgan was somewhere in the middle. How could whiteness be neutral to bi-racial Vabeh when her first white mother had been such a terror? 

How indeed? Morgan attempted an answer and then another came to her. She typed both. She didn’t stop typing until she heard Vabeh heading toward the bathroom. Time for school. Time for work. So used to the fire fighter’s life of writing - where she could get interrupted at any moment for something more important - she saved her work and left the room. She moved swiftly into her day, and then day gave way to dusk and then to sleep. Thursday nights they all slept soundly.

Morgan sat up on the therapist’s couch. Would she give the true answer or the easy answer? 

What would happen if she confessed that she only allowed herself to work through what it meant to her to be a mother, and the mother of Vabeh in particular, in the hours of the night/morning when she was supposed to be sleeping? 

What would happen if she confessed that she didn’t think about the words that came rushing out at those hours except when she lurched awake and reached for her laptop, which she now kept between herself and Devon in bed because she was afraid that if she didn’t, she’d lose the urgent message her brain was connecting to her fingers to get onto a screen that always started with an unforgiving whiteness that gave way to text-filled absolution?

She was secretly invigorated, but couldn’t share that with anyone since she’d so publicly and stubbornly refused any attempts at getting her to write about what she was actually writing about. And then, as those evenings progressed she realized that the words weren’t the end she sought; that the words were merely a means to a larger and more dangerous painterly end.

Her therapist would wait - at least for the next five minutes they had left in the session. Morgan could talk or not talk. It was up to her. It was always up to her, wasn’t it? Wasn’t she entitled to change her mind about who she was? Did she have to be a writer forever just because that’s how she’d started? Why couldn’t she be a painter? Was this one of her imaginary rules that mocked her as people around her flouted them? Four minutes left. 

Morgan made a choice. 

Maybe I’m just anxious about leaving the corporate world for this opportunity with Pim. 

And off they’d gone, galloping down a garden path; path that was well-trod and they made swift progress in the remaining three minutes. Morgan left her session feeling weakly certain that she’d made the right choice. She’d chosen to give the easy answer in the hopes of preserving the truth. The only way to be sure that she’d done the best thing would be to see what happened tonight. 

She prayed that she would be able to resist sending the email she’d composed in response to an ad for a studio. But Morgan had long given up religion. All the praying in the world wouldn’t save her and she wasn’t sure she’d be willing to ask for forgiveness once she was discovered.

Back in the present with Ryder, Morgan uncrossed her legs and stood up, walking across the studio to her easel as she continued talking. 

“As I wrote, it became clearer that writing about Vabeh was a means to this end. Becoming a mother, quitting my job, spending all my time alone documenting Devon’s dream career, it added up. Fight club wasn’t enough. I was piling up lie after lie in therapy. And so, one night while Devon was at The Residency and Vabeh was at a sleepover, I went into the studio. I saw their easels side by side. Altonio even has a little cardboard easel that Vabeh found online. But me, there’s nothing of me in that space. There’s nothing of me in my writing - not anymore. I can’t find myself in words anymore. It’s like with each word, I was erasing myself. So, I tried a new language. Their language.”

“Well, you’re certainly not absent here. Morgan, the paintings are good. Not better than Devon, but certainly good enough to get a conversation going,” Ryder said as she joined Morgan at the easel.

“Did I bring you here to start that conversation?” Morgan wasn’t playing a game.

“You know that if I start this conversation for you, I can’t promise it won’t get noisy. We’ll need to get Devon onboard.”

“What if she doesn’t - get onboard?”

Morgan finally said the thing out loud that she’d been worried about. They’d made so many silent compromises in their marriage based on so many unspoken boundaries. Morgan didn’t know where she’d be if Devon wasn’t willing to accept this new direction; this new voice she was finding. 

If Poncey’s reaction was any harbinger of things to come from her wife, it wasn’t going to be good. But Devon wasn’t Poncey. Not even close. She didn’t  use her whiteness to dominate or to obfuscate. She didn’t minimize or amplify Morgan’s blackness without letting Morgan take the lead. But Devon still wasn’t a fan of hard abstraction. She thought it was architecture more than art. And she’d said more than once that Morgan’s being a writer was what made them work so well together. The adjacencies kept them out of harm’s way. 

“What’s more important to you - your marriage or your voice?”

Morgan didn’t answer. She was afraid of what would come out if she did.

“Think about it. In the meantime, I’ll take some photos. Work something up. Test it with a few people. Gallerists, curators, maybe an art advisor or two. They won’t know it’s you. Broad strokes, so to speak. Let’s have lunch next week. I’ll come to Brooklyn.”

“No - no. We can’t meet there.”

“It’s a big borough.”

“I said, no.”

“Okay, okay. Anywhere you want. Hell, I’ll go to Yonkers if it makes you feel better. And, hey - you look great, even if you feel like shit.” Ryder leaned in and gave Morgan a hug. A real one, not one of her usual one armed on the go moves. She smelled like citrus and the cigarettes she’d never admit she smoked.

“Thanks,” Morgan said, wriggling out of the embrace. Things were confusing enough. 

Ryder didn’t press her. She took a few photos, blew air kisses and left the studio. Alone, Morgan began to set up for the next painting. She had a few hours left before Devon and Vabeh would be looking for her to start dinner.

Breathe. Too much white. Up, down. Stand back. Wait. The moment will pass. The moment is here. Breathe. Too much white out there. Not enough white in here. 

Breathe.