My Only Friend La Croix - Chapter 11

The soda-fired vase that my mom had gifted me was a beautiful ashen-terracotta blend, grey on some sides and reddish on the others. She gave it to me almost in a hurry during my prior visit to Phoenix, but she still chose it deliberately from her large cache of pottery. The vase struck me with its faceted forms and I had no hesitation in accepting it; I knew it was the perfect size for painting, about six inches tall and just large enough to be filled with a bouquet of flowers. My mother had told me that she made it during a demonstration in which the instructor crafted thicker pots, then used a wire to trim the excess with irregular, jagged patterns, leaving behind a set of sharp facets. The lines in the vase might make it easier to paint, I thought, and it was imbued with character. The soda firing made the surface a complex, speckled transition from light gray to a darker ash, connected to a rusty, terracotta brown.

I picked up a set of orange and yellow dahlias so that I could start a still life, a style of painting with which I was unfamiliar and uncertain how to approach. The vase and its sharp forms seemed easier to represent, while the dahlias would be the hard part. Some of the flowers were rich and developed and fully formed. Others were still just budding.

I painted over a panel which I had already laid a few layers of blue and green paint. I gravitated towards the knife, smacking down dull grays and harsh reds against the blue underpainting. I was happy with the forms of the vase, but I drew blanks when it came to the flowers. I stared at them for a long time, dissolving vision and hoping for something greater. I poured orange and yellow out onto my palette. I scooped the paint onto the back of the knife, then fired from the hip into the panel. I was only aiming for a suggestion.

The piece remained flat. I left it to dry for the day. The air rushed in from my open window, the first touch of cool evening air contrasting the late-summer heat of San Francisco. I stood over by the window, feeling the chill float into my second story unit, gazing out into the homes up beyond Market Street.

There was no helping that Dee was on my mind. The last time I saw her in Los Angeles, I couldn’t help but look at her with lucid intensity, trying to capture vivid detail, marking a moment which I knew would pass. At the time, I had considered to myself it might have been one of the last times that I saw her. I took note of her soft brown eyes and the uneven part of her upper lip which I found so attractive. Taking note of all that I could, I felt that rueful, unwelcome ambivalence creep into my body, hollowing me out. I didn’t know if she knew that I looked at her with this intent, treasuring the moment, and I think if I had told her the cause it would have broken her in then. She asked me if I was happy with our long-distance situation the night before, and I couldn’t bring myself to answer her truthfully. I did not want to ruin the time that we had to spend together. She looked at me as if freshly baptized, and I figured that I had nothing to offer her but disappointment to come.

It wasn’t that long ago that I had wished that she lived in San Francisco, in any one of those houses beyond Market Street. I don’t know—I thought for some time that she was my soulmate. Something in my gut told me that our time was coming to a close. I gazed back at my half-complete painting but none of the sights made it to my brain.

Ethan gave me a call a few weeks later, just before the week around Thanksgiving. His dad had an empty leg on their Lear going from SFO to Chandler, so we could make an impromptu trip to Phoenix. I hadn’t planned on going back for the holiday, but I didn’t want to pass up the offer.

We piled in the jet and took off going north, circling around the south side of the city. The topography of the city made more sense from above, and I could see the sharp hills planing out as the hills stretched toward Ocean Beach. We flew the hour. Ethan and I each had a Heineken. It was golden hour coming into Phoenix, and flying in the Lear allowed me to contrast it so suddenly with San Francisco. Fewer people, all stretched for miles. Everything in Phoenix has the same warm, desert hue.

Mom picked me up from Chandler when we landed. She drove us home with the windows down, baking in the wonderful nighttime heat. It was one of the best feelings in the world.

Thanksgiving came and went. The nostalgia of being in Arizona and spending time with my family elevated my spirits while I had to simultaneously fight attitudes of regression to childhood attitudes and patterns. I often felt stale being home as nothing has changed in my home since I was ten, except now the orange tree which lived as long as I had was now dying. I wanted to see if we could plant a new one. Mom was agreeable but the momentum on that fell off as soon as the idea was uttered, interest evaporating back to the status quo.

I spent the remainder of my time in Arizona at Sam and Jacob’s. Matt came by and he brought his dog, Bob. We did a load of nothing before the sun had set fully. Finally the temperature had lowered so we all went outside to give Bob a break from his boredom. There was a show of lightning to the north and northwest. In my many years growing up with the Arizona monsoon, I had never seen a storm so bizarre. The lightning was rapid and pulsed multiple times per second, but the clouds obscured our view of any individual strike, so the light was atmospheric. Jacob commented on the light pollution from the valley. It was light enough for us to see, so Matt started to threw a tennis ball at the grey cinderblock fence across the grass. He would throw it hard so that it would leave an imprint of Bob’s slobber as a patch of darker grey against the fence, and Bob would catch it on the return off the wall. The darkness of the evening made it difficult to track the ball. Not too tough for a dog.

I thought about our decaying orange tree at my parents’ home while sitting in a plastic chair watching the dog go back and forth. I wondered if it was a sign for anything. It’s not that being home made me depressed, no—but I felt a stagnancy. I had said my final goodbyes with my family with no insurmountable pride over time well-spent. We hadn’t gotten up to much. Something caused me to feel a stranger in my own home, one who is welcome, yet surrounded by those who casually await his departure. Everyone seemed ready to resume their posts march along with routine. Something about it had rubbed me the wrong way, but I had probably contributed to the atmosphere. I wasn’t in the best spirits after having ended things with Dee.

I savored the monsoon air and my time with old friends and family, but I was ready to go back home. My painting was dry and needed more layers. La Croix waited for me in the fridge.

I sat ready for Bob to give me a chance with the ball. He dropped it before me. I threw with a straight arm and an early release to trick him into thinking that the ball should have hit the wall. He turned back towards me then heard the late thump behind him, snapping at it and returning it to any one of us willing to throw. I threw him a few straight ones, transferring his slobber onto the wall.