her work. Shanae’s portrait looked majestic, and Maggie knew that it was her intrusion that made it so. No,
Maggie thought, what she did was not an intrusion, but an improvement. There was an unmistakable care in
the way Neal retained the touches she had made to the portrait — it was a capitulation before another artist’s
genius.
In all the years she lived under his roof, Maggie could only remember a single moment when she felt
her taste align with Neal’s. One sleepless night, Maggie looked out of her cupboard and saw that Neal was
awake, watching a movie projected on his living room wall. It was a documentary about an artist named
J.M.W. Turner, and before she realized, Maggie had watched the whole thing in tears. Turner’s paintings
emerged from a luminous gossamer of light, and she longed to walk among the tiniest details the artist
depicted on his canvas. If only she could slip into Turner’s ports and harbors, her size would be proportional
to the world at last.
In the days following the first time Maggie contributed to the portrait, she and Neal established a kind
of rhythm. Neal, working for a few hours in the morning, would hit an impasse by the afternoon, smoke his
weed, and fall asleep. Maggie took over from there. Since Neal’s pastel chalks proved too heavy for her, she
continued to use Shanae’s lip pencil to make guiding sketches. Inspired by the time she saw Shanae cross the
living room naked one early morning, Maggie decided to sketch Shanae’s breasts. At first, she worried if it was
cruel to force Neal to draw his ex-lover naked, but he rose to the occasion and filled in Maggie’s
rendering of Shanae’s nipple with an unflinching shade of Burnt Sienna. With every layer they added to the
portrait, Maggie felt herself growing closer to Neal. They were communicating through the portrait. They
understood what the other desired.
When the portrait was complete, Shanae stood naked against a European harbor at sunset. Then one
afternoon, Neal invited his friend Joe over for drinks. Joe wore a t-shirt that refused to meet his pants over his
pudgy midriff, and his eyes looked sleepy behind his glasses. Maggie would not have chosen such a character
to appraise their art. Yet when she saw Neal wheel in the portrait, mounted on a French easel and covered
with a golden cloth, she could not contain her excitement. She held her breath as Neal unveiled the
portrait. She watched Joe bend over and bring his face close to the canvas, adjusting his glasses on his nose
and scratching his chin in contemplation. Joe’s tone was subdued, but his words, when they came, echoed
through the room and washed over Maggie: It’s good, very good, man. It’s the best thing you’ve drawn in
years. Maggie closed her eyes and smiled. And then, Joe inquired what Neal had done differently, what had
made him improve so quickly. In response, Neal reached into his pocket and tapped out a plastic bag of weed
on a tiny square of paper. Maggie waited.
Perhaps Neal could have described her as a miracle, a divine hand from the god of creativity that
inspired him to new heights. Whatever the explanation, one thing was clear: Maggie expected to be a part
of it. In the end, Neal attributed the portrait solely to himself, to some rare, heightened state of mind which
he achieved by smoking marijuana. He explained—with much humor and animation—that whenever he
smoked weed and fell asleep, he would experience a sleepwalking episode that allowed him to draw in ways
he had never done before. Maggie, having heard all this, withdrew back into her cupboard, climbed into bed,
and pulled the covers over her head.
When Maggie opened her eyes again that evening, she saw a man peering down at her. A shaggy
beard covered his face, and his hair dripped with rain, but she recognized his eyes. Maggie jumped out of bed
14
Cauldron Anthology