Coats
Her fascination with coats goes back a long time, so long that piles of yellowed sketching paper serve as the foundation for thicker, whiter sketching paper that stare at the ceiling of her studio. Many of these sheets contain illustrated figures looking out into the distance clad in long, sweeping coats that come to life in a breeze articulated by distorted lines: twisted pockets, contorted coattails, belts that defy gravity. The life that these coats have represent particular pains and searches for answers to these pains. And it’s that searching, mostly, that she’s fascinated with. The coats somehow embody an experience, suggesting and not suggesting the hope that answers and closure might present themselves. How can that be, though? The illustrations only are tiny bursts of thought that attempt to understand an emotion. There’s this intense staring into nothing these characters do and the living, breathing coat that indicates life… Life? Could it be that the action of staring and searching for an answer creates a current of life?
The works are limited in that, upon the scratching of her signature on the corner of the completed illustration they can no longer be altered and, unless she remembers what she was thinking during the previous illustration, the new one can only deal with a new emotion, a new line of thought, forcing her — not that she minds — to start from scratch.
But this idea of “life…”
“I’ve illustrated these figures since Marie was five months pregnant with her daughter. One of the earliest was a sketch of her — stomach swollen — centered in an ankh and I, hunched over, somewhere in the midst of a darkened skyline look on, solemn, confused, interested. The piece doesn’t suggest anything, really. I just wanted to get down some kind of thoughts on the situation: It was winter and cold, colder than anything I felt before. It was a couple months after a disappointing breakup with another soon-to-be mother. Marie and I just got back together, a moment that occurred a month or so before she gathered the strength to tell me she was pregnant.
“The coat in that illustration had no life. Maybe it submitted to the life inside of Marie. It only protected me from the unknown. Her pregnancy frightened me. I reacted as if my life were going to end upon the first breath the child took. Every day featured an update on the pregnancy. It was as if we had suddenly been cast in a bad soap opera that dramatized everything from my waiting for her to break the news to me, to who the father was, and, most surprisingly, minute by minute updates of the delivery on the night she went into labor — all of this happened on Facebook. I had to find a way to compose myself, for it was torture. There were comments from all kinds of people, photos of the growing life inside her, arguments between she, her entire extended family, and the child’s father. Even the guy she had a fling with in London the previous summer chimed in (how I found out about that is another story).
“Our getting back together was supposed to be the moment where the both of us could create the stable relationship we’d dreamed of since the beginning, one where we were one. Accenting the beauty of this desire was that it came during winter’s dying breath, spring was fast approaching, a new life! I instead found myself trapped inside, away from her, watching life grow and feeling life diminish within me. I was fighting when I should have been loving.
“I had nothing to protect myself except a laptop and the darkness, and Alice in Chains. I was in chains. And no, I don’t listen to them primarily because they’re using my name! I loved her and wanted nothing more but to finally be with her, finally with the trivial distractions of high school out of the way, but there was another obstacle — the ones that somehow found their way into our relationship at the most convenient times — ruining the utopia I toiled so long for. Out with it now. There really was no ‘we.’ ‘I toiled.’ I, I, I. She never did anything to strengthen us. She only focused on kissing me, strengthening her ability to turn me on…”
That day, the day we got back together, it couldn’t have been more perfect. I called her out of the blue after softball practice, wanting stop by her place. We hadn’t seen or spoken to each other in months, but she hadn’t left my mind. It was her Yes that reminded me of the love I had for her. While it was a love that hadn’t left or a love that I never forgot about, the butterflies and nervousness that weakened my body upon her consenting my visit reminded me how powerful my love was for her.
I remember how she sounded over the phone: Her side of the line was quiet, and she sounded at peace. As I think about it now, I didn’t know if that peace, that silence, that smoothness that had never been in her voice before was because of what I was to learn, or if she was genuinely happy to see me.
The door opened and she looked the same way she sounded on the phone: Divine, soft, more careful about anything, moving and breathing as if doing so without thought would damage the air around her. After she looked me over, there was a smile on her face. She was at peace with something. Life? And it was unlike her. And I loved it. And I thought it was because of me. She looked at me with those ever-curious eyes, eyes that were always interested in something despite having stared at whatever it was for what seemed like forever.
I could tell that she was cold, not to the touch, but in the house; she wore a hooded sweatshirt, jeans, and a beanie. I wondered if there was anything underneath the sweatshirt, but I thought it away. She was so calm. And glad to see me. And I loved her more.
When I got to rest my eyes on her, the first thing I noticed was her stomach. “Could it be?” I thought. She was always skinny and always remained ten or so pounds heavier than me, but with the previous experiences she had with pregnancy, it was inconceivable that she would’ve allowed anything near her womb to grow. So, I immediately dismissed it. “What happened!” I blurted, breaking our silence by stating the words rather than asking them. I struggled trying to figure out how her skinny frame managed to finally reflect the diet she unapologetically flaunted, when she defensively tossed a “Don’t ask about it” in my direction. “Well, lay off the chips or something…” I responded. Her head tilted slightly, indicating I said something odd, but I chalked it up as one of her quirks and sat near her. Much more delicate than she was a year ago, but that rude firecracker’s still here, I thought.
The night was an hour old and I was ready to go home, not to leave her but to go home. There in front of me was the love of my life and I could do nothing but look at her, with hands crossed and legs closed. My patience and self-control was at the last of its strength and I either had to leave or…
Our conversation held a steady theme: Were either of us seeing someone. Neither of us asked each other the question directly, but we dropped enough clues for each other to get the hint. I knew about her before she me — as much as I loved her, she hurt me awfully in the past, especially since she was the first woman I’d been with, and I her’s — and all that did was make me think of nothing except endlessly kissing her. Early on, perhaps before I walked in the place, I knew I needed to kiss her before I had to leave.
We’d been talking for so long that we didn’t notice how dark the place got. Suddenly she grabbed my hand and led me to her room, which was also dark save for the television that tinted the box blue. We sat at the edge of her bed now and she was looking at me with an intensity that hadn’t flashed at all the entire day. Her eyes narrowed and her pupils dilated. A smirk was on her face, not of the mocking nature, but of one that suggested she had a surprise for me. I melted. “Be with me again,” I whispered, and with one motion she swept me into her arms and kissed me as if she waited for me to say those words since I walked in the house those many hours ago. My lips quivered underneath her’s, struggling to comprehend the sensation that overwhelmed mine. The rest of my body surrendered and I allowed her to feel how violently I was trembling.
I forgot where I was, only aware that I was in her arms. “I love you,” she whispered, her lips hovering over mine. I summoned what little strength I had left to kiss her once more, then her phone rang. She glanced at it, sighed, and let it ring out. “It’s getting late,” she said. Still trembling, I sat up, adjusted my skirt, and breathed — I was sure I wasn’t before. I stared at the floor and grabbed her hand. “Don’t ever leave me again, stupid,” I said. “Okay,” she assured me.
She walked me to the door and kissed me goodnight. We looked into each other’s eyes for a moment, and I started towards the train. There was no ground underneath me, only air. I was flying. Love is a powerful thing. But as I looked up at the sky, I pictured her, new frame and all, and pined about how long it would take to get used to it. “I love her…it doesn’t matter,” I said out loud.
Half an hour later I was in my bed and felt compelled to open up my laptop. Seconds later I found myself absentmindedly exploring her Facebook page. There were photos of what she’d been up to in the past year: she’d gone clubbing, visited London, and spent all hours of the day in front of her apartment with a scraggly group of people.
I stopped at a photo she’d just posted. In it she wore the striped shirt she bought for our first date three years ago, only the stripes were distorted to a hypnotizing array of curves. It’s what she had on underneath that sweatshirt. The thinness of it made me think she had nothing. I closed my eyes to quash the dizziness and looked again, focusing on the tiny, swollen lump I blamed on chips or something… a few hours ago, now naked to the world absent the thickness of the hoodie she warmed me with in her embrace. The caption read:
“My baby girl, aww”
What drew me to coats? I don’t know. Maybe I wanted something more secure than a jacket, or hoodie. Maybe I wanted there to exist some strange universe in which I wasn’t trembling… I bought one, once, and nothing changed. And dreaming doesn’t help, either. But when I draw them… I’m searching for answers, because, desperately, I need them. Things like the things that happened between me and Marie have got to happen for a reason. There’s got to be a reason why she has been the only thing on my mind for the last seven years! Seven years of my life and she has yet to disappear from it! I cannot ignore this! I refuse! It is not every day that life’s mysteries brazenly ask us to solve them. Some arrive in the form of job opportunities, some are formless, colorless masses of energy that lift us from the airless pits of rock bottom…
But mine…mine has taken the form of the most mysterious thing that life has to offer: the human being. Marie cannot be tamed. Marie is free from the perils of the mind. She is a being that spits in the face of the complexities of life, not aware that life has complexities. Her energy awakens abilities that power-seekers and intellectuals have struggled to awaken for centuries.
It is her carefree nature I’m addicted to, the effortlessness at which she bends life, and the wind that she disturbs with every step I take. That wind, I swear, seems to be the same wind that breathes life into my coats.
