And Then Things Fall Apart (22 page)

I could seriously type a thousand pages about pottery. It is all about clay and the earth and centering. Centering is like this: The wheel just spins and spins and spins. The key to getting the clay to shape up and make something of itself is to concentrate on keeping the clay whole and secure at the center of the wheel. I have to zone into the core of me and think of nothing but where the crux of the clay is, where my
center and the center of the clay and of the wheel all come together.

There is this moment when it is all perfect and the water and slippery clay are so in unison, it's like they aren't even moving at all. And I hold my breath and
IamIamIam
. And then I screw it up or there's an air bubble or whatever, and that is what it is. And, ah. It is the most amazing thing I have ever done with my hands. So far.

The classes also remind me how unique and fearless my mother is. Which, what with all that has transpired, I had conveniently forgotten. And you know, taking the D&D money may have been the gutsiest thing she has ever done in a lifetime of doing gutsy things. Instead of keeping the fires of resentment burning at white-hot-pottery-kiln-levels the rest of my days, maybe I should give her a bit of a break. I'm a little less mad at her every day. We are taking turns glazing each other's pots. We have a few off-kilter “vessels” with daisies in them in the kitchen. I'm making a mug for Dad for his new place. Trying to, anyway. Rome wasn't built in a day.

Yesterday, a Sunday, I had to ditch what was going to be a double date with Nic and the Squirrel and Matt and me so that Mom and Dad and me could go on a family date to Millennium Park. Summer hangs on in Chicago, and it is still practically as hot as a month ago, except the nights are cool. Being all together as a family is very weird, surreal, sad, and uncomfortable. Still.

Mom didn't know what to wear. We were in her room and she was pulling clothes from her drawers like a sitcom teenager before a date with the school quarterback, which is so not what this was.

“I want to look decent but not great,” she said and ended up wearing a beaded T-shirt and a denim skirt and her Crocs ballet flats, like a camp counselor on talent show night. I wore some sort of going downtown outfit but didn't obsess, though I did bring my Plathware cardigan for moral support.

I was nervous too. I didn't want them to scream about Amanda. I'm so over her already, even if they are not. I also didn't want to make awkward chitchat about the D&D, which my mom has nothing to do with now. I didn't want them to give each other longing and knowing glances fraught with meaning that only the long-married and soon-to-finalize-a-divorce would understand. I didn't want to feel like a third wheel.

There were so many ways I knew I didn't want to feel that when we finally parked in the garage beneath the park and walked over the bridge to the fountain, I was as shocked as anyone that we were all having a great time. Well, at least a good time. I mean, we just—were.

There's this fountain that is a giant four-inch deep wading pool with these two giant video screens that spit water at each other. Security there zooms around on Segways, and couples in tuxes and wedding dresses pose for wedding
pictures. It's like being on the holodeck on
Star Trek
. It is otherworldly and really peaceful, unlike any other place we have been together as a family. Matt and I had always talked about going, but we never seemed to get around to it. And being there for the first time with my parents was important to me. We needed new ways to be together. What is more utopian and fresh-faced than Millennium Park?

What was most amazing was that there were protesters there. They were protesting what I thought was a war, or blood for oil, or the environmental degradation of the earth (all good candidates), but no. They were protesting
meat
. They wore cartoon animal masks, a lamb, a cow, Porky Pig with electrical tape
X
s on the eyes. One really chubby (vegan) dude in a shockingly creepy sheep mask was dancing in the center of the giant wading pool, splashing around like a maniac with a sandwich board on him that had a website on it. Happy Cow or Vegans Go dot something or other.

Since the summer, I have decided that I should start meaning what I say. To make choices and stick with them. I thought that deciding I was
not
going to sleep with Matt was going to make my life easier and less fraught, and it has. Same with my vegetarian longings. Vegan is pushing it, but the beach hot dog I shared with Dad is going to be the last morsel of dead flesh that's going to pass my lips. And I'm for real. Just say it and make it so. Besides, I love cheese.

Anyway, this X-eyed maniac was tossing flyers with the
vegan food pyramid on it, and my meat-slinging parents had no one there to impress but me, and they did. Intrigued, they took a few pamphlets and put them in their pocket/purse. I told them they should each put one on their respective refrigerators so they'd know what to feed me. After much nervous giggling, we walked over to the Bean.

Oh, the Bean.

With poetry and now ceramics, I am obsessed with forms of all kinds. “Forms” is a pretentious way of saying shapes, but is a better fit for what the Bean does to my insides. It's this giant, um, bean. Its real name is
Cloud Gate
but no one calls it that. I don't know if it's chrome or stainless steel or what, but it is globular, and its surface is mirror-shiny. It looks like it dropped out of the sky, a gift from benign and delightful aliens who expect the best from us humans. It's like the entrance to the future.

All these visitors were swarming it like ants, rushing up to laugh at their reflections, which were all swooping and elongated because of the Bean's elegant curves and dips. I went underneath and looked straight up to its center, like the underbelly of some kind of pregnant electroplated whale.

Then my parents caught up next to me and we were, right then, for that one moment, together, a family connected with an invisible magnetic pull that was intensified in the cave that the sculpture made. I knew this feeling was fleeting and hard to make stay, but it was the best thing
about the three of us, and was the forever kind of love you read about. And then I looked up at the throng of people swarming the Bean in their stupid shorts and baseball caps, strollers and digital cameras, and there we were. Mom. Me. Dad. Our reflections all swirly and gloopy and totally distorted but clearly and forever:

Us.

And then Dad got a call on his cell and Mom went to read the artist statement, and I was alone—at last—with the Bean. And I thought, as any Plathian worth their salt would, of Esther Greenwood in the hospital, knocking a tray of thermometers off the bed just to piss off the nurses. Of course, my pal Esther picks up a quivering liquid metal ball of mercury, to play with. (Not that anyone could ever handle such a known carcinogen today and not get put in a decontamination chamber.)

And just by thinking it, Sylvia and me and Esther were all connected.
Cloud Gate
was a giant ball of Esther's mercury, and the way it curved over me, at once solid and invisible, was my own new kind of bell jar. In the center of it, above my head, there was a perfect reflected circle of chrome, and as I turned my face up toward the core, I couldn't remember where I was or who I was, only that my face was in the middle and my body had its own center, and blue sky and reflected clouds bounced all around me.

Everything is connected.

Nothing is what it seems.

I was shattered.

Now I am intact.

I closed my eyes, rolling them back in my head so I was fused into a whole again, and everything was paperweight sparkle and children laughing and fountains splashing and the deep metallic chime of my heart against the walls of
Cloud Gate
—

I am

I am

I sofa king am.

Special thanks to my charming and tireless agent, Suzie Townsend, and all the people at Fineprint Literary Management. Respect and gratitude to Annette Pollert, the best editor I have ever had, and the supportive team at Simon Pulse. Thanks to Brenden Deneen for finding me, and Anica Mrose Rissi for liking my pages. Thanks to my fellow Plathian Peter K Steinberg at sylviaplathinfo.blogspot.com, and Emily Garber at StupidNailPolishNames.blogspot.com. Thank you to my friends and colleagues for their moral and actual support, especially Meg Mullins, Sarah Langan, Cathleen Davitt Bell, M. M. De Voe, Pen Parentis, Melissa Guion, Maribeth Batcha, and Hannah Tinti at
One Story
, and Hannah Moskowitz.

To my English teachers Ms. Carolyn Hammerschmitt, Mrs. Dianne Kirtley, Mrs. Margaret Cain, and Mr. Kevin Riberdy; I will spend the rest of my life thanking you. Margaret Mesic Nicholson, thanking you for always being my friend. Thanks to my amazing grandmothers, Josephine Tibensky and Marie Vrhel. And to my parents, Kristine
Vrhel and Robert Tibensky, thank you for everything, including my dysfunctional Czech Bohemian pirate family upbringing that made me who I am today. I love you. To Adam and Arthur for gleefully complicating my life and making it better. And to my dashing, patient, beloved, and prizewinning Scotsman, Mark Edgar, for making everything possible—thank you.

Arlaina Tibensky holds an MFA from Columbia University and her short fiction has appeared in
One Story, Inkwell
, and the
Madison Review
, among others. She curates and cohosts the acclaimed Pen Parentis Literary Salon in New York City. She lives in Manhattan with her husband and two young sons. This is her first novel. Find out more at arlainatibensky.blogspot.com.