Alice's story, conclusion

"Oh my God, if you guys threw that away, I swear, I will kill you. No, no, no. All relationships aside, say you took it down and hid it somewhere, that's fine, put in in the attic, okay, but throw it away, no! No, no, no!"

"Not that one, not that one!"

"No!"

After Alice and Joel awkwardly fell apart, Alice's reception by Joel's parents was not the same. Before they'd treated her like a daughter-in-law; now they "hated her guts" -- Alice's words. I'm about to prompt Alice for a specific example, but I don't have to. She goes off on a story.

Alice may have mentioned somewhere already that she's the artsy type. I don't think she'll object if I go further than that and say she's an artist. For as long as I've known her, she's surrounded herself with the fruits of her creativity: paintings and sculptures, some very personal, others just pretty. As befits an artist, Alice draws material from her own experiences, and her relationship with Joel was no exception. "I did this beautiful portrait of Joel. This incredible portrait of him. It won awards at art shows. It was one of my favorite works," Alice recalls. It was called The After-Dinner Look. Alice describes this warm moment frozen in time: "It's him stepping in from their patio with the pool behind, stepping in from the sliding glass doors toward the kitchen. And he kind of has this sort of looking up, this 'So you wanna...' expression. Which, I dunno, maybe other people wouldn't see that in the portrait, but I do, because I know what it means." Alice is fond of this painting not only because of its skillful execution or its nostalgic subject, but also because of the secret in Joel's smile. It's her own personal Mona Lisa.

I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it does when Alice tells me the lesson she took from this portrait: "Never give artwork like that to the lover." After the breakup, Alice let herself into Joel's parents' house with her spare key to drop off some stuff she'd had of his, his hockey jersey and the like. It must have been a bitter moment already, and it grew more so when Alice saw that The After-Dinner Look was no longer hanging on the wall. "God only knows what happened to it now, which is my biggest heartbreak," she says. She thinks Joel's parents might have disposed of it. Mona Lisa, meet trash compactor.

If Joel's parents did throw the painting away, though, Alice got her revenge in one small way. The After-Dinner Look was not the only memorable scene from their relationship that Alice committed to canvas. She describes a second painting, called Home Too Early -- "because that's what happened," she explains, "when we did the deed for the first time." She describes her painting -- an Impressionist-style piece, all in yellows, because she was trying to paint the light rather than the objects. "And it's us in bed, and it's a sideways shot of the bed, the window of the bedroom in the background. And I'm in the foreground, and you just see sort of my figure, and my hair. And then Joel is sort of behind me, and his head's popped up, and has a really alert expression." Alert, of course, because Joel's parents had just unexpectedly pulled into the garage. It must have been terrifying then, but Alice laughs now as she describes the scene.

Well, Alice kept that one. "And of course, when I met Everett" -- she continues, referring to her next boyfriend -- "I changed that painting and gave him longer hair... because now I was sleeping with Everett!"

And that's Alice's story. The only thing I feel compelled to add, because I'm not sure how well it came across in this first exercise in biography, is that for all the awkwardness, frustration, and eventual animosity, Alice remembers her relationship with Joel very fondly. "A wonderful soul," she says. "He was such a dear, kind, generous... he would give you anything, if he could give you anything at all, if he had to sell a kidney to do it." She's even wondered if the relationship might start up again someday. And thus the wheel turns.

On Monday we'll return to my desultory musings. The following weekend I hope to have another interview, and maybe the weekend after that we'll finally get around to talking to strangers.