Nina Auslander-Padgham
I swear to you, I felt flushed the second after she said it. My heart started pounding and my stomach sank. Honestly, I didn’t know if I was going to faint or start crying. Well, probably start crying, given the huge lump in my throat that was constricting my airwaves. How could she say this to me? She knew how long I had been working on this piece, doing my damnedest to get it right. Every waking hour I worked on it, barely sleeping, barely eating, a slave to my driving imagination. I had dreamed of making it forever. I imagined how perfect it would be, how lauded it would be by the critics and laymen alike. But she didn’t care. No, it was worse than that—she cared but she preferred to be cruel. To crush my heart, my soul, into a million little pieces she could vacuum up and throw out with that week’s newspapers (she never recycled). Even now, her expression was removed, detached. She looked at me clinically, like I was a curious specimen in a lab, rather than a person she claimed to love. But, really, I suppose I should have expected this, that not everyone would understand it. I mean, she hadn’t gone to art school. She had not been exposed to the work of the masters the same way I had been. And certainly, that wasn’t a fault of her own. Was I really to blame her for not being as intellectually, artistically, and spiritually curious as I was? Of course not. Expecting that would be cruel in its own way. I felt a huge wave of relief course through me. My breathing began to slow down. I no longer felt faint. My stomach began to unknot itself. It was all going to be alright. My piece would still be lauded by critics and laymen (-1) alike.
“It’s ok.” I said, smiling. “It’s very complex.”