When I was 11, I had a sleepover. It was the only one I ever had.
Jenny Dodson, Temeka Kline, and Bethanny Xiu came. They brought pajamas and snacks. We watched High School Musical and gossiped about boys.
When it was dark and time to go to bed, we did. We all slept on sleeping bags in the living room. But when it was midnight, I woke the other girls up and I took them to my father's study. I showed them the picture.
My father was a lawyer. His office was fancy and clean. He had a shiny, wooden desk and collage of framed degrees patterned across the wall. But on the opposite wall, he had a painting. It was a painting of a nearly empty room. There was a single table and three cracked, smudgy windows. There was no door. And there was a man in the room. He wore a black waistcoat, long, baggy trousers, a gold chain at the hip, a gray pocket square, black cuffs, high, sharp lapels, tight, slick white beard, and a top hat that covered his eyes.
Just a man in an empty room.
I took Jenny, Temeka, and Bethanny to my father's study after midnight and showed them the painting.
"He's getting closer," I told them. "So slowly you can hardly tell. But he's getting closer all the time. Just watch close. You'll see."
They didn't like that. Not at all. Temeka thought I was trying to scare them. Bethanny thought I was crazy. Jenny was just scared.
"He's creepy," said Jenny. "Why does your dad have that painting?"
I didn't know. "It's always been here. He just keeps getting closer." I stood up, holding the flashlight under the frame, stepping close, so close I could see the dust dance as I sighed. "He's coming for me," I said. "When do you think he'll get here?"
Jenny asked to go home early. She called her parents. The others left, too. And they never came back.
When I was sixteen, I brought Travis Post home to fool around. My parents were at work. Travis had just figured out how to put his hand under my waistband. I wanted to show him what to do next. But first, I had to show him the painting.
"Look how close he is now," I said, standing close, peering up, almost worshipfully. "When I was a little girl he was at the very back of the room. But now...look at him."
He was the same. Unchanging. Tall and wreathed all over in black. Hardly any of his real features exposed. Gold chain. Top hat. White beard. He was more than halfway across the room then. I thought he was going faster than ever in those days. The light from inside the office seemed to reflect off those cracked, smudgy windows. There was a static hunger to the tall man. A yearning. The same as I felt.
Travis left. He didn't want to be my boyfriend anymore, those we met again many times throughout high school, our hands finding deeper, warmer darknesses with every subsequent collaboration.
But it was never satisfying. Not with Travis. Not with Hiroshi. Not with Kyle and not with Jamal.
I was waiting. For something. Someone.
I dropped out of college. I had felt like I was drowning there. In people. In ideas. I was over-saturated. And I was scared I would miss him when he arrived. I went home, to my parents' house.
My father never liked the way I looked at the painting. And it scared my mother, but my father wouldn't remove the painting. He preferred to remove me. But that was him. His way of problem bypassing (never solving). His lawyer brain, favoring statutes over reason, logic over love.
I came home on Halloween and I was not well, but I knew in my heart that he was nearly arrived. I didn't say anything to my mother, who had opened my door. And I didn't say anything to my father, who sat with a client in his tidy, fancy office.
"He's almost here!" was the first thing I said, standing in front of the painting. "He's almost here!"
He was. He was nearly to the frame. So close to the foreground that much of him was lost now. His legs and the top of his top hat, cut off. Still the gold chain. And still the brim of his hat obscured his face. But he was here. Life size. Ready to arrive at any moment.
My father cursed at me. Demanded that I leave, but I couldn't. My mother pleaded. My father threatened to call the police. On his daughter. I didn't care. It was nearly time. The client shrunk away in the plush, purple chair, trying not to be seen.
My father struck me. I hardly felt it. I was too alive then. Beyond the body. He tried to push me out of the room. I couldn't. I wouldn't. But then I realized - the room was nothing. All I needed was the painting. He would come, no matter where I took him. So I lunged forward and grabbed the frame. It had seemed so immense when I was little. I never would have dreamed of doing something so bold as to grab it and lift it and take it. But I did. Or I tried. My father grabbed me around the throat. He choked me. My mother howled. The client found his sense and began pounding digits into his cellular phone.
But I had my grip. I wouldn't let go. And the painting came down. It came down with me. Collapsing to the floor. Revealing a small, metal door sunk into the wall. The door swung open.
My father was still wrestling with me. My mother, as if walking through a valley of mist, moved slowly to the door and pushed it aside.
My father looked back and saw and cried out. But my mother's small hands were inside the black space and grasping at a pile of binders and loose pictures. The hands shook and pictures fluttered down, one after another. Pictures I had never seen before. Of bodies. Small and bare. Dim, red eyes. My father dove on top of them, saying things, crying as he spoke, making vows, asking forgiveness, claiming sickness, saying words and words and words.
I rolled over, alone with the painting. The frame was undamaged. The canvas undamaged.
But the tall man was gone. It was nothing but an empty room. A lone table. Cracked windows. Dirt and dark and empty.
I sat watching and waiting. My father cried behind me. My mother stood still and silent. More people arrived. Police. One of them picked me up off the floor. They asked me if I was okay.
"He's gone," I muttered, staring down at the empty painting. "I waited forever."
They didn't understand what I was saying. "Let's get some fresh air. Do you want someone with you? A family member or a lawyer?"
"My father's a lawyer," I said, as they led me out of the house. Then I laughed. Because it seemed like the funniest joke in the world just then. "My father's a very good lawyer."
They let me laugh, though no one else seemed to think it was very funny.