Rachel is written by Alicia E. Goranson and read by Amber Ashe.
Transcript:
“Have you ever thought of presenting yourself as an exhibit?” Aaralyn asks Rachel, with a dash of mischievousness in her eyes. Rachel knows it is important to placate the client. The client keeps the gallery in business. The gallery’s purpose is to find art worth displaying that speaks to people with upscale tastes. Something that has a certain expression, haunting, exciting, alluring, enrapturing. It can’t be strange. Strange doesn’t move product.
Rachel understands how much she knows of her clients’ tastes; born and raised in Connecticut on the edge of a fancy neighborhood, she ate with these people’s children, played with them, listened to their families’ expectations, and even visited their homes, provided she followed their extensive rules. The parents loved to pretend their children’s friends were deserving of being shown around what was, to them, an ordinary house. Certainly not as nice as the Drummond’s or the Vanderville’s houses. But acceptable.
Still, to this strange child, it must be seem like Oz, which briefly makes their parents feel better. Rachel noticed the cultural signifiers that filled these homes; their lamps’ shape and light temperature needed to coordinate with the room. The tables and chairs could clash if they clashed nicely. Rachel asks her clients at the gallery for photos of their spaces, and makes recommendations like she is a child visiting this glamorous, petty world. She has a sense of what these people endure, and how they surround themselves with feelings and ambiance; great sand bags filled with primal urges heaving down the stresses of eighty to one hundred hour work weeks. And being better than someone, anyone, they take seriously.
Rachel bought this gallery out as a favor from one of her parents’ friends, who felt Rachel would do well if she had a leg to stand on. On her first day in the gallery, she tossed everything away; the clay wash basin that folded up on one edge like a reclining woman, the mirror shaped as an owl’s nest, and the painting of the view looking down from the Seattle Space Needle. Everything was sold to other galleries at a discount so she could start again, fresh, like her parents’ friends could have and chose not to. She visited universities, dredged up artists on Craig’s List, attended showings in basements and tunnels under the city. She asked artists for the sorts of things she remembered her friends’ parents having. Maybe with a twist. She wants her clients to remember their own childhoods, the things that made them feel comfortable, the rustic fifty-thousand dollar chairs, the chandeliers that eschewed crystal and bronze.
Her art does not challenge. It is not whimsical. It is familiar. It is comforting. It is almost a dream made form. And thus, it is exactly what her clients want.
Until Aaralyn stopped by. Her tastes were nothing Rachel had experienced before. She had refused to take this old school, muscle-toned flapper of a woman on as a client. But Aaralyn did make the effort to explain what pieces she was looking for. Aaralyn took her out to dinner, brought her home, and explained what each piece of the walls and tables meant to Aaralyn. Rachel was spellbound and did her best to find one thing Aaralyn wanted. And then.
“Have you ever thought of presenting yourself as an exhibit?”
“No,” Rachel replies. She hasn’t.
And Aaralyn smiles.
-END-
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