The Robinson-Barber Thesis

I want you to understand, it’s nothing personal. I’m going to be completely silent—you should know that. I won’t write notes or gesture or draw pictures. I might nod when I come in and when it’s over because I believe in being polite, but that’s all.

It would be the same if you were anybody. Anybody I was being forced to see, I mean. My parents are acting all very concerned—maybe I’d like someone younger? Would I prefer a woman? I said it made no difference to me. I’ve seen them like this before, and I knew there was no talking them out of it. My sister Ludi is neurodivergent, and they’ve kept her under their thumb her whole life for it. So I know who I’m dealing with. If I want to go to school out of state next year, I have to attend ten sessions with a therapist. That’s non-negotiable.

So they can make me be here, but they can’t pry my mouth open, right?

All I want is to go to Cooper Union and study art. The fucking tuition is free, for God’s sake. With the money they’ve been saving my whole life to put me through college, my mother could open the craft store of her dreams, stock it with every scrapbooking supply and rubber stamp ever made, and put up a sign that says, “Bobbi’s Hobbies.” Dad could finally quit working for Pabst and run the online version. I’ve already designed a logo and three dozen stamps.

Look, I’ve attached a brochure about Cooper. Founded in 1859. Free, if you can get in. I know I’ll get in. I’m giving you photocopies of the awards I’ve won, too, and a couple of articles where my name gets mentioned. Miranda Robinson, Miri Robinson, M. Sojourner Robinson, Mira Robinsdottir—they’re all me. Best self-portrait, age four, in the Bunnyville Gazette. First prize in the city-wide Martin Luther King Day arts competition, nine-to-twelve-year-old painting division, five years ago. First prize in the Milwaukee Art Museum’s “Draw in a Crowd” poster contest last summer. Also, you may not believe this, but technically, I won a blue ribbon from Pabst in a painting contest they held when I was fourteen. Naturally, there was a kerfuffle. You had to be twenty-one to enter, for one thing, because that’s the drinking age, even though you didn’t have to actually drink beer. If I had been a twenty-one-year-old Mormon, it would have been fine except that, as I mentioned, my father works for Pabst, and employees and their families, etc., etc. He’s the least paternal man you’d ever meet, though, so I felt no moral guilt whatsoever. I worked on the Cream City Riverwalk mural, too. Anyway, you’ll see.

I’m also giving you a copy of my transcript. Straight A’s in art, baby, which is what you’d expect, right? Also, one of the letters of recommendation my painting teacher, Mr. Barber, wrote for me. I wasn’t supposed to see them, but I’m good with my hands. Mrs. Michelli betrayed me, though. I couldn’t believe what she wrote. It’s none of her business to decide I could “benefit from the close student-faculty ties of a small liberal arts school in a non-urban area.” Where I’d go insane. The letter doesn’t say that anymore, anyway.

Mr. Barber went to Cooper Union. That’s how I know about it. He can draw like blessed Holbein when he wants to. I saw a picture of him once from those days. He was a redhead then and just scary gorgeous. I did his portrait looking like Reynard the Fox in the French folktales. Gave him a big, bright, bushy tail.

Maybe I’ll draw you. That’d be rich, right? My parents would be paying you to sit for me. We have a deal, okay? You don’t have to take your clothes off if you don’t want to, although it would be good practice for me. It’s harder than you would think to hire a nude model when you don’t have a real studio. Or maybe you’d want to wear a costume.

The studio space I had at school turned out to be a joke. Do you know, some of my best drawings got thrown away because I didn’t take them down before 3:00 on the last day of school? Mrs. Michelli had to have been behind it—I found them outside in the dumpster under the cafeteria trash—though of course I can’t prove anything. They were studies for the Stations of the Cross, for Christ’s sake. You’d have thought we were at Stalin High or something and not Our Lady of Mount Carmel.

Mr. Barber was just as distraught as I was when he found out about the drawings. He’s really protective of me, and if he’d been there, of course, he would have saved them, but he had to be at a special conference on restoration and forgeries that day, though the principal and everybody else thought he was home with the flu. I’d taken an early train down to Chicago for an open rehearsal of the Newberry Consort. They were performing hymns and antiphons by Hildegard of Bingen, so it was a good opportunity to broaden myself. I even forced myself to leave before the Q&A, because I was trying to be responsible and not bother anybody with another one of my “escapades.”

I have a great visual memory, so while I’d have liked to keep the studies, if only because people would find them interesting one day, I worked out a lot of problems while I was doing them, so I was prepared. I’d planned to do a series of eighteen-by-twenty-four-inch Masonite panels, but then I realised Mount Carmel needed a mural. Which is why I spent July breaking into school. I’d gotten as far as “Jesus Meets the Daughters of Jerusalem” (that’s number eight out of fourteen, in case you’re not Catholic) when they held a tour for prospective students.

Unbelievably, they couldn’t see that this was added value. I should have charged a fee.

Anyhow, there was a kerfuffle. My mother will have filled you in. The upshot was I had to break out of my house and into school again and take pictures of my own work before some mindless soulless drone of a robot slathered Benjamin Moore’s Virgin White Number Three all over it. They keep the corridors in that school blinding, like you’re supposed to have some kind of road to Damascus experience every day on your way to chem lab. And all the Jesuses did not look like me, no matter what you’ve been told. I made a different person be Him every single time. I’m giving you slides. These are what’s going to get me into Cooper, baby.

Anyhow, it’s going to be great. I can go to the Met all the time and MOMA. I don’t know if I’ll even be able to stand going to The Cloisters. I might just stand there and shake all over, you know?

You can keep some of the drawings I make of you. I can’t let them see me bringing paint and an easel in here, but if the drawings work out, maybe you’d meet me in the garage, where I have a little studio space. I found a picture of you online, and you’ve got that great Northern Renaissance pallor and tall forehead. I could let you know when my parents won’t be home. You’re probably wondering why I wouldn’t just take photos and work from those. I might, a little, but the camera just flattens everything out too much. Really shits all over plastic form if you know what I mean. Dockney (can’t be too careful, but you’ll know who I mean)—he’s just an illustrator. All that garbage he wrote about the Old Masters and their lenses. According to him, Van Eyck and Vermeer did it with mirrors. Even Holbein—you know The Ambassadors, right? The double portrait with the big anamorphic skull at the bottom? According to the Dockney-Calfo Thesis—more mirrors. It’s just a shame he can’t be sued for libeling the dead, not even in England.

I hope you’re not having trouble with my handwriting, by the way. It’s like this cab driver is making it a point of pride to hit every pothole on Miller Parkway. It’s probably some kind of phase he’s going through. Take free love. People always think artists are all about free love, but I’m over that now. Sex is debilitating. I’m going to found an artists’ community someday, but we’re going to be celibate like the Shakers. We might not even try to sell our work, just support ourselves by farming and making things. Maybe Mrs. Michelli will see an article about us and find out how practical I can be.

Here’s the other reason I have to go to Cooper. Peter Cooper left half his money to establish an art school, but the other half went to a school for engineers. You probably see what I’m getting at. Ludi and I are a team. She’s a mathematical and scientific genius, and when I’m twenty-one, she’ll be eighteen. She can join me, and I can be her legal guardian. They’ve always promised she’s going to be my responsibility someday. Hold on, because I know this sounds ambitious. Between the two of us, we’re going to prove that Dockney and Calfo made it all up. You’ve heard of special relativity? Maybe you’ve read about wormholes and time dilation? Well. Ludi and I are going to do a little traveling backwards and introduce ourselves to Mr. Holbein. The only thing that worries me is whether he’ll think it’s worthwhile coming back with us and rubbing Dockney’s nose in it. People always think great artists are all full of themselves and brash, but Holbein strikes me as more the humble and self-effacing type. I can be pretty persuasive, though, am I right?