Jonathan C. Lewis
Author and Artist
Catherine de' Medici
A fictional travelogue; four minutes to read.
For months now my teen daughter Brittany has been hinting—her hints delivered daily—that I should start going out, dating, hooking up, whatever the kids say nowadays. So far, I’ve put her off by joking that the only dating I need is carbon dating.
Three years after her mom’s death, I still wear a wedding band. Whenever I open the front door to our, uh, my house, I expect to see the woman I married. When Scheherazade plays on my car radio, I hear her voice. I still want to breathe her air.
As solo traveler, I’m getting used to not depending on other people for my happiness. People come and go like tour guides.
Last week my normally opaque grief counselor prodded me, “When someone you love leaves this world, you’re still here with your special way of loving. There’s an entire world of other people to love.”
I got the message. I called a college friend—a woman. From a mutual friend, I had heard about her divorce finalizing.
During our call—the first in over twenty years—she was quick to inform me that she preferred Catherine to Cathy. In college, Cathy was her breezy, flirty, playful name.
Now it’s Catherine. Catherine the Great. Catherine Deneuve. Catherine de' Medici.
She seemed pleased to hear that I was coming to Chicago. We agreed to meet among the Impressionist paintings at the Art Institute.
In college, we were never an item. More like here-and-there friends who met up, seemingly by accident, for a quick lunch between classes. If we had any chemistry, it was more stoic American Gothic than sensual Rowers’ Lunch.
Her laughing eyes loved the world, if not everyone in it. We were a friendship short of a romance.
Now I‘m here. On time.
Actually, I’m early. In the men’s room I’ve had time to comb my hair, splash water on my face, check my zipper.
She’s late. Flop sweat tickles the small of my back. My shirt is clammy. It clings to my chest, my armpits.
Twenty more minutes pass.
I idle the time checking out artwork by assemblage artist Joseph Cornell. A solitary, caged paper parrot perches on a stick. A taxidermied pet perpetually transfixed by an unattainable ring.
Cornell practiced “the beauty of the commonplace” but nothing today feels common. The moisture is vacuumed from my mouth.
On the phone, I teased, “I hope I still make a good impression.” Maybe that was too much, too suggestive, too revealing, too nervous.
Until the museum closes, I still have some friends. Like the best of friends, art frees me to smile, or cry, or see the world anew.
I text Brittany, “I’m being stood up.”
My daughter who has yet to learn that Catherine de' Medici was once the most powerful—and ruthless—woman in 16th century Europe, texts back, “She might be parking.”
I’m a diptych in anxiety. The underpainting of my life.
Waiting on a hard marble bench, my hands grip the edge, my back hunches over. Half of me wants Catherine to appear; my other half is ready to hide in a cubist painting.
Amid the gawking, milling crowds, their footsteps reverberating in the exhibit halls, I stare at the wall clock.
Catherine. Cathy.
