Becoming His Muse, Complete Set (44 page)

Madeleine looks sad. “It wasn’t that long ago that I was living under a cloud of despair and hopelessness.” She stands up to give me a hug. “The important thing is that you don’t give up. Not on yourself, and not on love.”

I grab my coat and lock up my dorm room.

Madeleine walks me to the elevator. “Rich offered to drive you to the station. He’s downstairs.”

One more gauntlet to run.

The Aston is parked at the curb outside the dorm. I take a deep breath and climb into the passenger side. That physical act brings back a host of memories and I’m on the brink of tears again.

“Hi, Ava.”

His voice is kind and gentle. I force myself to look at him, but it’s hard. I realize then that Dr. T is the only person I want to apologize to.

“I’m so, so sorry for letting you down.” Every word is punctuated with a falling tear. He looks at his hands on the steering wheel.

“You know who really let me down?”

I know he’s going to say Logan, and I know that if I had made a different decision at the beginning of the year their friendship might still be intact.

“Derrick and Casey let me down. They trespassed on everyone’s privacy in the name of art, which was exploitative and sensational and did very little to open anyone’s eyes to the state of the world or the human condition, which is ultimately what I believe art should be about.”

He’s been squeezing the steering wheel and now he relaxes his hands and looks back at me.

“Once I calmed down, what I was finally able see is that they captured our flaws and paradoxes, our lies and secrets. It hurt, it made us mad, it wreaked havoc, but it forced us to look at our lies and see that we are not alone. And this includes Derrick and Casey, who seem harmless and self-absorbed but in the end were spies among us more than eyes.”

He drops his hands into his lap. “What I mean to say in all of this is that you don’t owe me an apology.”

“Oh, but I do! For so many things.” Including sneaking around in his car. “You’ve believed in me right from the beginning. You’ve encouraged and supported me. You’ve been like … like a father to me. And I’ve let you down. I’ve let everyone down.”

Including myself, because now that Logan’s taken off, I feel as if our whole affair was a sham, as if I’d been as exploited by him as I was by DnC. One part of my mind wants to argue with that, wants to remind me of the true, loving moments, but I’m caught up in my own righteous indignation right now. I
regret
my decision. And now I have to live with it, and all the unforeseen consequences.

“Ava,” says Dr. T taking my hand in his firm grip. “Listen to me. We’re all human. We make mistakes, we take risks, we learn and grow from them. Logan is a charming, intelligent, attractive man. I genuinely
liked
him. I thought we’d be good friends.”

“He let you down, too.”

“He’s complicated. I guess we’re all complicated, but he is in particular. And I know he came here to get away from some of his personal complications.”

“You knew about his fiancée?

“I take it you didn’t?” Dr. T sighs. “You’ve been going through so much this year and I had no idea.”

“You couldn’t have known. I couldn’t have told you. I’m sorry I betrayed you. I’m sorry we both did.”

“Forget that. The more important thing, Ava, is did you betray yourself?”

I want to say yes. But I know that’s not true. I did what I wanted in each moment. I let myself be taken, and broken. I said yes. Now it was up to me to put myself back together.

Slowly, I shake my head.

Slowly, Dr. T offers a smile. “Then there’s hope.”

“Hope?”

He nods. “That you’ll take all that you’ve experienced and turn it into something that can be shared with the world. That’s what an artist does.”

“You’re not mad that I broke the rules?”

“Personally, I’m not going to hold that against you. Artists are supposed to break the rules. That’s how they carve new paths for the rest of us to follow. There’s a price though, and you’re paying it now. But in the end that will give you the strength to keep carving new paths.”

“As your teacher, I offered what I could to help you become an artist, but it’s you who really had to do the work of becoming. You chose some unconventional ways to go about it, and it’s led to some uncomfortable consequences, but if you followed your heart and didn’t betray yourself then you have to accept that you’ve been true to your path, and who am I or Dean Ascott or the College Board to get in the way of that? School’s behind you now, Ava. Your life is beginning to unfold before you.”

He starts the engine. “And I believe you have a train to catch.”

When Dr. T dropped me off at the station, my plan was to go home to my parents for a week until I was informed about the board’s decision. But at the last minute I changed my ticket. Instead of going home, I bought a ticket to Boston.

Tess was happy to take me in. Her roommates, with whom she shares a quaint but dilapidated brownstone, had headed off to a career conference in Maine for a week.

Tess confessed she called my parents when I showed up on her doorstep. And they’ve been calling every day since but I haven’t wanted to talk.

On the third day, when I finally get up after a long sleep in, Tess says, “Your father called again. He says he wants to negotiate with you.”

“Ever the lawyer,” I grumble.

“Hey,” says Tess, sitting on a chair in front of me and blocking my view of the TV. “I know our fathers can be asses sometimes. Okay,
most
of the time. But they’re turning into dinosaurs. They’re those middle upper class aging white men who still think they run the show. Just be patient. They’ll all die off eventually.”

I give her a strange look. “You’re advising me to wait until my father ‘dies off’?”

“No, just his kind. With those particular values and standards. Act as if they don’t matter.”

“I have been. Look where it’s gotten me.” I wave my arm to encompass my surroundings.

“Hey! I like my run down brownstone.”

“You know what I mean. Alone, ostracized, and sleeping on the couch in my cousin’s den. This is not how I thought I’d end up.”

“This isn’t the end, Ava. You’ll have your come back.”

I harrumph and turn the TV on.

Toward the end of the week, I still haven’t made much progress on my come back.

Sometime after lunch on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday, I don’t even know which day it is, Tess interrupts my TV marathon. I barely stir from my nest of cushions and pillows.

“Ava, there’s someone who looks a lot like George Clooney downstairs.”

“He doesn’t know I’m here.”

Tess laughs and chucks a pillow at my head. “I’m glad your sense of humour is coming back but I am being serious. Who is that guy?”

“George Clooney? He’s an actor who—

“—Ava!”

I slowly drag myself up from my prone position on the couch. Tess grabs the remote and turns off Storage Wars.

“You might want to brush your hair,” she says.

I don’t even bother to tie up the terry cloth robe I borrowed. It hangs open over my Sponge Bob Square Pants pajamas, also borrowed.

“I don’t need to impress anyone, even if it is George Clooney.” And I know it’s not, but as I head toward the foyer, it occurs to me who it might be.

Outside on the cement landing stands a man in a suit carrying two envelopes. I open the door. He turns.

“Hello, Lowell.”

“Wow. Ava.” He looks me up and down. “I suppose I should have expected something like this.”

I narrow my eyes at him. “Why?”

“Can I come in?”

I push the door open wider and then shuffle toward the tiny living room off to the right. Lowell closes the door behind him.

“Lisle sends her regards.”

“Hmm.”

“And Sukira has been wondering why you haven’t visited her at her studio yet.”

I shrug before plopping down in the overstuffed and very threadbare plush velvet armchair. Lowell sits in the middle of the couch across from me.

I suppose I should be curious about why he’s here — like, why would he bother to come all the way from New York? Surely, not to convey Lisle’s regards or to repeat Sukira’s invitation — but the fog I’ve been in for days is slow to lift.

He sets his two envelopes on the chipped coffee table and looks around the room. “Reminds me of my college days,” he says with a sigh.

“I imagine the
memory
of college days is far more pleasant than the days themselves.”

He stares at me for a minute or two and then folds his hands in his lap. “Do you know how long I’ve known Logan O’Shane?”

I don’t move a muscle but I feel a whole sub-skin reaction throughout my body when I hear his name.

“Ten years.”

Lowell looks around the room, but he doesn’t seem to be looking at anything in particular. It’s as if he’s looking into the past. He smiles.

“Boy, did he have a chip on his shoulder when I first met him. It’s still there, but it’s softened and filled in considerably.” He makes eye contact with me. “He used to be a big drinker, but I helped him tone that down. I saw his talent back then, and I could foresee him ruining it if he kept going down the destructive path he was on.”

He pauses before continuing. “One thing about Logan is that when he makes a change, he sticks to it. With my help, he stopped binge drinking years ago. And he managed to quit smoking this past year. I think you had a lot to do with that.” He smiles at me now.

“What’s your point, Lowell? That Logan’s capable of change even though he hates it?”

“A little bit.”

I sit up straighter and ask, “How did you find me?”

With a slightly embarrassed bark of laughter he says, “Well… Let’s see. First I went to meet with your Dean.”

“Dean Ascott, why?”

“I’ll tell you about that in a minute. He wasn’t terribly helpful. At least not until he left the office to get something and I managed to get a look at your file.”

“You looked at my college records?”

“Only to get an
address.”

“My address? Why?”

“I’m getting to that, just give me a sec. Of course, he wouldn’t give me your home address so I snuck a peek—”

“—You went to my house?”

I’m sitting up in my chair now, a hand on each of the arm rests. I can’t picture Lowell and my father meeting face to face.

“I was planning to but—”

“—Why?”

“Ava, will you let me finish a sentence?”

“Oh, sorry.” As I fold my hands in my lap and try to be patient, I notice I am wearing Sponge Bob pajamas. I start to blush with embarrassment, but it’s a little too late for that. I attempt to pull the robe closed to cover those crazy googly eyes, which must be a little distracting to the impeccably dressed agent sitting across from me.

“In the end I didn’t have to go to your house because someone came to me.”

“Someone?”

“A lovely young man by the name of Warren Simmonds.”

“What?”

Lowell nods. “Apparently, he contacted Logan’s publisher in an effort to reach him and they put him in touch with me. He explained what he wanted—”

“—Which was what?”

Lowell holds up a hand to shut me up. I bite my lip.