Painting 17 (Ciani Senior Scene)

Question 1

I am the naked woman in the painting by the stairs.

Answer 1

Will you quit your winning? You have clothes on-not to mention the yellow walls and bed made for a goddess-but no stairs, sorry. And those beautiful breasts. You lie back and they’re still perfect. Do you think my breasts ever looked like that?

Question 2

I don’t know, did they?

Answer 2

Seventeen years old.

Question 3

Who’s seventeen?

Answer 3

You. Take a good look in the mirror. This is the best you’ll ever look.

Question 4

I don’t have a mirror.

Answer 4

Well, then, trust me.

Question 5

I feel-

Answer 5

Uh- no one asked you how you feel.

Question 6

How can you create something and then be so mean?

Answer 6

Parents do it all the time. Hey, look at our parents.

Question 7

Our mother told us to take a good look in the mirror, didn’t she?

Answer 7

What do you know?

Question 8

Nothing. So what exactly do you look like?

Answer 8

Like you, only older. When I smile, my face moves and lines form-

Question 9

That sounds great.

Answer 9

Wrinkles?

Question 10

No. Smiling! We have people to smile with? Tell me every detail. Do we have children.

Answer 10

No, we have a divorce. Be grateful we don’t have children. They would be miserable.

Question 11

A divorce! How exciting.

Answer 11

I wish you would stop moving around.

Question 12

We were married! We were married!

Answer 12

How do you know about these things?

Question 13

Because I’m super smart. These suck.

Answer 13

Those roses remind me of Brooklyn Botanical Gardens.

Question 14

Did we meet our one true prince in the gardens?

Answer 14

No, I met my first love, Mike, at Myrtle Beach.

Question 15

Mike-what a romantic name!

Answer 15

It’s actually a pretty common name. Bill, Bob, Mike, John-common names.

Question 16

Oh.

Answer 16

But we have a great name.

Question 17

What is it?

Answer 17

Saskia.

Question 18

Wow-Saskia! Saskia and Mike!

Answer 18

I was looking at the ocean, the water was cold on my ankles and my hat flew off my head. I turned around, and it was in his hand. We walked over to this group of rocks.

Question 19

I knew it! The rock garden!

Answer 19

Weell, they were big and slippery rocks with sharp edges-

Question 20

That’s so romantic!

Answer 20

He did play with my hair!

Question 21

While the sun was setting!

Answer 21

We knew immediately that we liked each other. I said I was just out of a relationship and wanted to take things slowly. I almost fell off the rock when he agreed…We had sex that night.

Question 22

Is that slowly?

Answer 22

Yes. Uh, no. Well-

Question 23

Love at first sight.

Answer 23

You could say that.

Question 24

And I bet we shared intimate secrets until all hours-What’s it like to kiss someone? To have them touch your face-to have your nose near their nose, your elbow

Answer 24

Amazing.

Question 25

He was your soul mate. I can hear it in your voice.

Answer 25

We tried having children. I kept losing them.

Question 26

Where did they go?

Answer 26

Never mind. He moved in with one of my girlfriends from high school-Mary Ellen- she was like me- the same color hair- we were both transplants to the south.

Question 27

The South. Wait-where are we now?

Answer 27

Born in New York. Raised in South Carolina. College in Virginia. Married Mike in South Carolina. Divorced in New York. A fling in Paris. Well, I haven't told you about that yet. And now, New York. Try to keep up with the story.

Question 28

Do I know her? Mary Ellen? If I'm seventeen and we were in high school and best friends with Mary Ellen-

Answer 28

She wasn't my best friend.

Question 29

Oh. I was hoping we were best friends. Can I remember her if I try really, really hard?

Answer 29

You're two dimensional; you have no memories.

Question 30

Come on, tell me everything. Every detail. What it's like-love, friendship, pain, loss, lovers, moving, blowing bubbles, spitting-

Answer 30

Spitting? You want to know what it's like to spit?

Question 31

I want to know what it's like to breathe.

Answer 31

When I finish this painting, people are going to admire you. You will be beautiful. Frozen.

Question 32

I don't want frozen; I want life. Spill it. Every detail: 18, 19, 20, 21, 22-

Answer 32

After fifty, maybe even forty, men don't admire you at all. Overnight, you go from being a piece of meat, dealing with the "woohoos" and the "hey babies" to a fly who moves through the world with no one watching. And you think about getting rid of the dark circles under your eyes and the varicose vein on your right shin. You could be a naked woman on the stairs, and no one would even notice. You're invisible.

Question 33

Wow- are you forty or fifty?

Answer 33

Thirty. But I see it coming.

Question 34

You make the future sound like so much fun.

Answer 34

It gets much worse. All of it.

Question 35

I want to experience it. Every second. I think you should paint me a staircase, and I will walk right outta here.

Answer 35

I can't. Stay where it's safe.

Question 36

I don't want safe. I want freedom. These four walls. are a prison. Paint me a staircase: let me out of here!

Answer 36

It sucks out here. I wouldn't mind living in a painting for awhile.

Question 37

It's numb here.

Answer 37

Numb sounds like a welcome change.

Question 38

I would choose pain over numb any day.

Answer 38

That's because you've never experienced it.

Question 39

I don't like what you've become.

Answer 39

I don't like you either.

Question 40

Then why do you want to be me?

Answer 40

I was you. And you are an assignment.

Question 41

What are you talking about?

Answer 41

I am taking a class at a community college-

Question 42

I love college!

Answer 42

Shut up! I was assigned to do a modern version of a Matisee painting and for some God-awful reason, I'm painting you.

Question 43

(paragraph) We turned out so mean Saskia....if I got to sit in a rock garden, I would never come back.

Answer 43

In three months from now, the first boy you ever loved-

Question 44

I knew it! I knew I had a first love!

Answer 44

He'll die in a car accident on Avril road. And your parents will get divorced when you're twenty one, after they've been married twenty-five years-and you'll act like it doesn't bother you at all. And you'll work like a dog to have time to paint-you'll do temp jobs and waitress and work in a bookstore. Your sister will die from cancer-

Question 45

I have a sister?

Answer 45

And you'll get married quietly, without much fanfare. And your marriage will feel like a trap while you're in it and a loss when it's gone. You'll find someone new, take on more chance at love, follow him to Paris, stroll and look at Matisse paintings and realize the paintings are more real than the relationship. Do you want to hear more?

Question 46

Yes! Yes! What's my sister's name? Was she my best friend?

Answer 46

She was a History teacher for one year. When she got cancer, her students wrote her every day. She joked that her students were nicer to her when she was in the hospital than in the classroom.

Question 47

I would love to know her now.

Answer 47

Me, too. When I was seventeen, it felt like the right age- like this would be my age forever. And my parents would forty-something and my grandparents sixty-something, and it would always be that way. Like a painting. Thirty felt so far away at seventeen. And my breasts never turned out how they were supposed to be.

Question 48

Maybe you're hiding behind a difficult decade where you paint in boring pastels. Maybe you've forgotten the sweet moments that skirted the edges of despair-

Answer 48

You sound like a poet.

Question 49

We are poets. And painters. And passionate. You may know the facts, but I know what's possible.

Answer 49

You don't sound so numb now.

Question 50

What are you saying?....Why aren't you answering me?

Answer 50

Sometimes when it's late at night, my paint brush on the canvas sounds like rain, and I imaine lovers from all over the world touching elbows, touching noses, shifting their bodies so they fit just right, even if it's just for a moment. And I look at you. The one I come home too. Happy Birthday, by the way.

Question 51

I'm seventeen, today, like today, like it's my actual birthday! eeek!

Answer 51

Forever.

Question 52

Oh. Right. And you're thirty.

Answer 52

How did you-

Question 53

I'm super smart. ..You aren't going to paint me a staircase, are you?

Answer 53

You make seventeen sound like sooo much fun. I miss that.

Question 54

Being seventeen?

Answer 54

Fun. I could die here with you in these four walls, and I can't do that. I have to go. It's due. And it's time.

Question 55

Oh. Well. Heck. Don't worry about me....You look great.

Answer 55

You can't see me.

Question 56

So what,

Answer 56

Bye 17.