Holloway: Chapters 6–10

“Pointillism,” the technique is called. If you stand very close, all you can see is dots, and the painting loses meaning. Step back, and back again, and then—there. The impression appears.

Then I take measured steps back, tiny steps, as tiny as I can make them. I’m trying to find where it happens—when the image transforms from discrete dots into a story.

All the layers and textures—gravel on the road, for example, and how I might gesture to its variation in a painting. What if I did a watercolor wash of grays and white, then went back over with gouache to bring in dimension?

The Neapolitan sky, striated softly, pink and peach and golden, stretches untethered and grand.

My entire plan consisted of bringing my mother’s remains to the place she always yearned to go and seeing the art in Paris. Beyond that, I had nothing. No ticket home; no home, at all, to return to. I was ambivalent, I realize, about whether I would continue to exist.

Most people would say that Gillian’s distorted face was simply a perception, that the real Gillian and her real face existed separate from that skewed impression.

Most people would say that Gillian’s distorted face was simply a perception, that the real Gillian and her real face existed separate from that skewed impression.

And, yes, I can understand that is objectively true, in that it is the only truth that can be objectively agreed upon.

Robot sits at attention.
“Ladies first,” Adrien admonishes as he hands me the plate and a fork—also aluminum.

It was a deal we had, something we’d worked out together back in middle school, when she’d wanted me to sign up for an extracurricular activity and I patently refused.

It was a deal we had, something we’d worked out together back in middle school, when she’d wanted me to sign up for an extracurricular activity and I patently refused.

She had joined a network of “Autism Warriors,” moms who shared tips and tricks about how to parent their spectrum kids—ways to sneak unpalatable foods like spinach into brownie mixes; detox protocols for “healing” from vaccinations the kids may have already been subjected to; do-it-yourself ABA regimens to help overstimulated kids learn to control their reactions.

She had joined a network of “Autism Warriors,” moms who shared tips and tricks about how to parent their spectrum kids—ways to sneak unpalatable foods like spinach into brownie mixes; detox protocols for “healing” from vaccinations the kids may have already been subjected to; do-it-yourself ABA regimens to help overstimulated kids learn to control their reactions.

I might have told him that he was wrong—that I wasn’t categorically opposed to gossip (after all, gossip is a tool that facilitates bonding as members of an in-group trust one another with shared information), but rather that the other girls had not often chosen to share their information—or time—with me.

Adrien’s voice has grown serious, and the back of my neck prickles. I don’t understand all the nuances of what he’s saying, or why this Marcel would have to “enlist”...