Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You: A Novel Read online

  “This is embarrassing because they’re very sentimental, hokey, kind of stupid paintings. They depict the four ages of man: childhood, youth, manhood, and old age. In each one a figure in a boat is floating down a river and is guided by an angel. In the first one, there’s a little baby in the boat, and the boat is emerging from a dark cave. The womb. It’s early morning and the stream flows calmly through an idyllic valley full of flowers. The angel is in the boat, standing up behind the baby, and they both have their arms stretched out to embrace the world before them. In the Youth painting it’s noon and the boat has moved farther into the beautiful valley. The baby has morphed into a young lad and he’s standing up, reaching out toward the future. The angel is hovering on the bank, pointing the way like a traffic guard. The clouds have formed themselves into a fantastic castle in the air, surrounded by blue sky. In the Manhood painting the stream has turned into a raging river, and the landscape is rocky and barren. It’s dusk and the sky is full of storm clouds. The youth is now a man and he’s still standing up in the boat, but now his hands are clasped in prayer as the boat heads toward the rapids. The angel is far away, looking down through a hole in the clouds, watching the boat as it plunges forward. It’s very creepy. In the final painting the boat enters from the opposite side of the canvas. It’s hard to say what time it is, because the sky is full of dark clouds except for far in the distance, where there are shafts of light falling. It’s some twilit time outside of time. The river is about to flow calmly into a huge dark sea. An old man sits in the boat and the angel floats right above him, pointing toward the dark sea and sky. In the distance another angel looks down from the clouds. The old man’s hands are still clasped, but it is hard to know if he’s praying, or beseeching the angel to save him before he floats off into the huge creepy darkness.”

  I paused.

  “You know those paintings very well,” said Dr. Adler.

  “When I first saw them, when I was in eighth grade, I thought they were wonderful. They seemed very profound. I bought prints of them, one of each, in the gift shop. Not postcards, but actual prints. I used the money my mother had given me to buy souvenirs, and I brought them home and put them in cheap frames and hung them over my desk. Childhood and Youth on top and Manhood and Old Age beneath. And I liked to look at them. They’re very formulaic, but I liked that, I liked to see how the elements changed from one to another. How the clouds were castles in one and thunderheads in the next. How the fertile valley became a rocky wasteland. And then one day this kid named Andrew Mooney came over after school and he saw the paintings and told me they were stupid and faggy, so I took them down. I think I threw them away. Anyway, I forgot about them.” I paused.

  “Yes …” Dr. Adler murmured.

  “I was shocked when I saw them again, exactly as they had been, in the same little room. I couldn’t believe that such hokey paintings would be on permanent view at the National Gallery. And then I had the irrational feeling that they had not been, that somehow someone knew I was coming back and had just rehung them. That it was some sort of trap or something. But I knew that wasn’t true. I knew that they had hung there—I guess it was only five years, but it seemed like a very long time. You can’t go backward in time, I know that. But that’s what I felt I had done. Everything else sort of dropped away, those five years and the entire world, and I felt like I was two people. Seriously. I could feel what I felt when I was thirteen looking at the paintings, and I could feel what I felt then. I stayed in the room for a very long time. I kept thinking, I should go now, but I didn’t. A guard kept coming in and looking at me. And then I got upset because I realized I wanted to be in the last painting, Old Age. I wanted to be in the boat floating into darkness. I wanted to skip the Manhood boat. The man in that boat looked terrified, and I couldn’t understand what the point was: why crash through those treacherous rapids along a river that only flowed into darkness, death? I wanted to be in the boat with the old man, with all the danger behind, with the angel near me, guiding me toward death. I wanted to die.”

  “I don’t really remember, but I think I started to cry, because the guard came over and made me sit down and people gathered around me as if I were a painting and looked at me and then another guard came over and tried to take me away and I got belligerent and I tried to run away and I kicked a hole in the wall and the guard chased me and a man in the next gallery tackled me. I think he thought I had stolen or defaced a painting. And the guard took me away, downstairs into an awful little office with no windows, only a fat woman guard eating her disgusting Taco Bell lunch. And somehow they figured out I was the Missing Misfit. And then the cops came and took me to the police station and I stayed there until my father came to get me and we took a train back to New York that night.”

  “On the train my father asked me what had happened. And I told him I wasn’t happy, so I had run away, and he said Blah blah blah you can’t always run away from things you don’t like. That’s not how life works. And I told him that he didn’t know me or understand me, that I wasn’t unhappy like that, I was unhappy like I wanted to die. He didn’t say anything else after that, he just patted my leg and went to the bar car and bought three of those little bottles of Johnnie Walker.”

  I paused. Dr. Adler didn’t say anything. She looked a little spacey. I waited for her to say something but she just sat there.

  “I had to write a letter to The American Classroom apologizing for the trouble I caused and I had to pay $213.78 to the National Gallery to repair the hole in the wall. Nareem Jabbar wrote me a note apologizing for calling me a misfit. She said she meant it in the best possible way, that she meant I didn’t fit in because I was an individual, not a misfit.”

  Dr. Adler didn’t say anything. She was wearing a charm bracelet with lots of little trinkets hanging off it and she was slowly twirling it around her wrist like a Ferris wheel. After a moment she saw me watching and stopped. She gave the bracelet a little shake and folded her hands in her lap.

  I said, “So is my time up?”

  This time she looked at her watch. “Yes,” she said. “I suppose it is.”

  I stood up and went to the door.

  “Are you okay?” she asked me.

  “Of course,” I said. “Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

  “There are lots of reasons why you might not be okay.”

  “There are lots of reasons why anyone might not be okay,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean that you’re okay.”

  I was still standing by the door. She did a strange thing. She stood and walked over to me, and reached around me and opened the door. With her other hand she touched me, very lightly, on the center of my back, and kept her hand there until I passed through the door. To an observer it would have appeared as if she was pushing me out the door, but she wasn’t pushing me. I could tell by the lightness of her touch that she was not.

  11

  Monday, July 28, 2003

  SINCE THE GALLERY WAS CLOSED ON SATURDAYS AND SUNDAYS during the summer, my mother insisted on keeping it open on Mondays, because she thought galleries that were only open four days a week weren’t “serious.” On the Monday after her premature return from her honeymoon, both John and my mother had spent most of the day lurking in their offices behind closed doors. No one had set foot in the gallery, and at about two o’clock the sky went dark in a weird green swampy way that gave me a creepy end-of-the-world feeling. Suddenly it began to pour. The water lashed against the large windows like badly faked movie rain, and I went over and looked down at the people in the street scurrying for shelter. After a moment the street was empty. When I sat back down I saw that a little window had opened on my computer screen, with a message in it: Hello.

  I returned the salutation. A moment later the following message appeared: Just wanted to say I like your profile.

  I wrote, What profile?

  On Gent4Gent: Hot and Bothered. I’m Black Narcissus. Check out my profile?


  Okay. I realized it was John. He had apparently found the profile I had created last week. For a moment I considered typing, John, it’s me, James : ) , but before I could John had written, Do you really work at Sotheby’s?

  Yes.

  Wow, that’s cool. I direct a gallery. Chelsea.

  Which one?

  I can’t say. Have to be discreet. : )

  That’s cool. I understand.

  Did you check my profile?

  Yes. Very nice.

  Thanks. Like yours too. Do you have a pic?

  No. Sorry.

  It’s okay. Your stats are nice.

  Thanks. Yours too.

  You at work?

  Yes.

  Me too.

  Busy?

  No. Very slow. You?

  Same here. It’s pretty dead this time of year.

  Tell me about it.

  There was a pause and then I heard John get up and close his door.

  Sorry. Just closed the door.

  So we’re alone now?

  LOL. In a manner of speaking. I’m surprised I don’t know you. The art world is so small.

  Maybe you do.

  I don’t think so. The only person I know in Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s is Kendra Katrovicht.

  Well, I’m not Kendra Katrovicht.

  Good. Do you know who I am?

  What do you mean?

  Thought you might know me, or of me. There are so few black guys in the art world.

  I don’t know any. Is it raining downtown?

  Yes. Hard.

  Same here.

  You’re not so far away.

  I know. Listen I should get back to work.

  Okay. Me too.

  Nice chatting with you.

  You too. Hope we can stay in touch.

  Sure. I’ll add you to my favorites.

  Same here. Great.

  Later, then.

  Great. Bye for now.

  Bye.

  After a few minutes John emerged from his office. I could feel him standing behind me. And smell him, too: he always smelled nice—a warm, clean scent that made me aware of his skin. “Are you busy?” he asked me.

  “Yes,” I said. “Very. If you take a number and have a seat I’ll be with you shortly.”

  “Very funny, James. I actually have something for you to do. I’d like you to call Sotheby’s and get the names of all the people who work in the Contemporary Art Department. But don’t tell them where you’re calling from. Don’t mention the gallery. Okay?”

  “You want me to lie?”

  “No,” said John. “Just don’t tell them.”

  “What if they ask?”

  “Then make something up.”

  “You mean lie?”

  “Yes,” said John.

  I called Sotheby’s and told them I was a fact checker from The New Yorker updating our resource database and got the names of all the people who worked in the Contemporary Art Department. I added a few fake names to the list and e-mailed it to John. A few minutes later a message window appeared on my screen.

  Hey, it read.

  I typed Hey back.

  Don’t mean to stalk you or anything, but I’m going to a party at the Frick this evening and wondered if you maybe wanted to join me?

  It hadn’t occurred to me that John would actually be interested in meeting—it seemed too weird, that somebody would actually want to meet a person who could, for all intents and purposes, not even be a person.

  Sorry, wrote John, I just thought it might be a good opportunity to meet. But you’re probably busy.

  No, I wrote.

  I’d just love to meet you. You sound very interesting. I mean apart from all the Gent4Gent nonsense. It’s so hard to meet smart, interesting guys.

  What makes you think I’m smart and interesting?

  Well, I don’t know too many stupid, boring men who work at Sotheby’s and have studied at the Sorbonne.

  I almost wrote: But I don’t work at Sotheby’s and I haven’t studied at the Sorbonne, but then I remembered that I had. And then I thought that if smart, interesting people studied at the Sorbonne and worked at Sotheby’s and I had done neither of those things, did that mean I was boring and stupid? I often think in this ridiculously reductive way, which I blame on higher mathematics (not that I got very high), where I was always so eager to pounce upon any solution that arose from the murk of an equation.

  You still there? John typed.

  Yes.

  Good. Thought I scared you away. We can meet some other time if you’d like. Or never. Whatever.

  No, I typed. Tonight is good. I’d like to meet tonight.

  Great. It’s a reception for some new Fragonard book. I’ll call now and get your name on the list, and then I’ll meet you there at 6:30. Is that okay?

  Sure. That would be fine. See you then.

  Wait, John wrote. I need to know your name. For the list.

  Oh, right. Philip Braque. This was one of the invented names I had added to the list.

  Cool. I’m John Webster. I’ll see you there at 6:30. Let’s meet in the courtyard. Near the fountain. I’ll be easy to spot.

  How?

  I’ll be the only black man there.

  You never know, I wrote.

  Believe me, I know. So see you at 6:30.

  Great. See you there.

  Really looking forward to meeting you. See you soon. Bye for now.

  Bye for now, I wrote.

  On my way uptown to the Frick I realized I wasn’t really dressed properly for an arts-world reception, but it was too late to go home and change. I untucked my shirt, hoping that made me look a bit more sophisticated, in an elegantly casual, GQ sort of way.

  A girl about Gillian’s age sat behind the check-in table in the entrance hall of the Frick. I could tell she had probably just graduated from Vassar or Sarah Lawrence and was thrilled with her new job as publicity assistant for some artsy publisher. This is another reason why I don’t want to go to college: because I don’t want to be someone who’s just gotten out of college, smugly ensconced in their first “real job,” wielding their nonexistent power and thinking they’re going to be the editor of Vogue or Vanity Fair in a year or two. The Anna Wintour wannabe behind the table clearly had visions of corner offices, lunches at The Four Seasons, and photo shoots in Tangier dancing in her head.

  “The museum is closed this evening,” she said, smiling meanly at me. “This is a private reception.”

  “I know,” I said. “That’s what I am here for.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Your name?”

  I almost said James Sveck, but then remembered I wasn’t and said, “Julian Braque.”

  She scanned her list down and up and then down again. She looked at me. “Did you say Julian Braque?”

  “Yes,” I said. “With a B. B-R-A-Q-U-E.”

  “I know how to spell Braque,” she said, “and there’s no Julian Braque here. There’s a Philip Braque.”

  “That’s me,” I said. “Julian Philip Braque. The Third. I don’t usually use my first name for business reasons. I get confused with my father, Julian Braque the Second.”

  “Wouldn’t it be Junior?”

  “What?”

  “Your father’s name. The second is a Junior, and the third is a Third, but there’s no second.”

  “Of course,” I said. “But my father has an aversion to being called Junior. He’s a very large man.”

  “I’m sure he is,” the girl said. “Well, Mr. Braque, you’re down here as a guest of John Webster.”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  “Enjoy the reception,” she said.

  As soon as I entered the courtyard I saw John. He was standing next to the fountain at its center, talking to a woman I thought was my mother, but then I realized that practically all the women in the room resembled my mother—or, more accurately, she resembled them. They all wore sleeveless dresses exposing their tanned skin and big clunky necklaces made from c
oins and trinkets plundered from various ancient civilizations. The woman John was talking to had long maroon hennaed hair which she had pinned up in a deliberately messy way atop her head, and as she spoke with John she kept patting it and shoving the pins in and out. John was leaning slightly away from her as if she was perhaps spitting as she talked. He was sneaking peeks at his watch and glancing around the room, but the woman didn’t seem to mind (or even sense) his obvious inattention. I stood against the wall beneath one of the arcades. A waiter passed by with a tray of champagne and I took a glass. When I looked back at John he was staring right at me. He looked startled and perplexed. I raised my glass, as if toasting him, and took a sip. He excused himself from the red-haired woman and approached me.

  “James, what are you doing here?” he asked.

  I was bothered by the demanding, almost censorious way he asked the question, as if I were a little boy who had invaded the grownups’ party in my pajamas. “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t play games with me, James. What are you doing here? I know you weren’t invited.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Were you invited?”

  “Yes. In a manner of speaking.”

  “In what manner of speaking was that?”

  “I was invited by a guest,” I said.

  “Who do you know here?”

  I looked around the room hoping to spot someone I knew, or could possibly pretend to know, but except for the red-haired lady, who I felt I had a tenuous two-degrees-of-separation almost-connection with, there was no one. I looked back at John and said, “You.”

  “I know you know me, James. But who invited you?”

  “You did,” I said.

  “I did not,” said John.

  “Yes you did,” I said. I was aware of how childish I sounded.

  He looked at me strangely for a moment, as if he had never seen me before. “I didn’t invite you, James, I invited someone else, and if you’ll excuse me I’ll go see if he’s here.”

  As he turned away from me I said, “He isn’t here.”

  He turned back to me. “How do you know?”