Crystal Schubert fiction short story Murphy Cole, Art for Sale
Detail from Anxious Moments by Gloria E. Moses, Oil on Canvas, 24″ x 18″.
Murphy Cole, Art for Sale
Murphy was supposed to hire the girl Lena sent up to the gallery. That girl showed up ten minutes early, all strawberries and cream with shiny brown hair that curled at the ends. She’d shown up with her resume in a serious red folder, even though all it listed were a few high school awards and a job at the Dairy Queen three blocks from Town Hall. She’d answered every question the exact right way. She sent a text afterward, thanking Murphy for the opportunity.
Murphy was not supposed to hire the next girl. Robin arrived fourteen minutes late, dyed platinum hair brambly and tangled, her skirt at least an inch too short to be professional, and she knew it because she kept tugging it down through the whole interview.
“What would you say makes you a good fit for this job?”
“I’m… a big fan of your art?” Tug, tug.
Murphy laughed. “No, you’re not. I’ve never seen you in here.”
She sighed, very inconvenienced. “I’m supposed to get out of the house more.” Tug.
“And why’s that?”
Squeezing her knees together, chewing her lip, Robin surveyed the works that filled the gallery space. Loud, raucous vessels for Murphy’s anger hung on every wall—a technicolor landscape of Redwoods with a ‘For Sale’ sign screen printed on top, a faithfully rendered receipt she’d found in the garbage from the Guns, Guns, Guns store, a whole series of things collaged into the shape of flaccid cocks (the Target dog, sports cars she’d cut out of a million magazines, tourist photos from the Las Vegas strip). Robin frowned. “I actually don’t hate your stuff. Must be nice to be a successful artist.”
Successful. Stifling another laugh, Murphy scribbled a note: ‘Avoidant. Unpresentable. Unpersonable. So young.’
The Murphy Cole Art Gallery was housed in a little pink shack that overlooked moody Lake Superior, sharing a wall with a woman who mostly came around late on Fridays and early Saturdays to crank out ugly, misshapen loaves of bread to sell at the farmers’ market. The only reason Murphy even had this place had nothing to do with the success of her art, and everything to do with her mother’s life insurance payout. Split between her and Lena, it wasn’t a lot, but it bought Lena a car that wasn’t eaten up with rust, and Murphy half a shack in the remote Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Its simple wooden sign read, “Murphy Cole, Art for Sale.”
“It’s not a bad life,” Murphy said with a small, polite smile. Because it wasn’t. Not good, not bad. Neutral. Like standing water, collecting algae and mosquitoes. Success, she often reminded herself, could’ve been worse. “So, what would you consider your qualifications? This would be your first job, right?”
“Yeah,” Robin said. Her eyes were sad and gray and a little bloodshot.
When she didn’t continue, Murphy crossed her legs, then remembered she was still wearing her slipper moccasins and planted both feet on the floor, pulling them back under the chair. “And your qualifications?”
Robin shrugged and tucked her hair behind both ears. It made her look even younger. “I don’t really have any. I thought this was where I was supposed to get some.”
♦ ♦ ♦
Lena plopped Murphy’s wrapped BLT onto the only clear counter space by the gallery cash register. Outside, the summer buzzed with biting insects, and her sister brought in the mingled scent of DEET and coconut sunblock. “Tell me why I sent you the perfect mentee and you turned her away.”
Setting down her paint brush, Murphy wiped her hands on her jeans, streaking them with blue, before picking up the sandwich. She opened it carefully and took a bite, holding it with the wrapper so she didn’t accidentally eat any paint.
“She’s one of my top students. A hard worker. A dedicated artist. I thought you could take her under your wing. What was wrong with her?”
“Nothing,” Murphy said while chewing. “I just found someone better.”
“Better? Who?”
With her free hand, she moved a couple papers around, then dropped her reading glasses from her head onto her nose. “Robin Tran.” She finished off half of the BLT and carefully rewrapped the other half.
Lena smirked. “Of course.”
“What?” Frowning, Murphy turned around and picked up her paint brush again, dragging it in a straight line across the sky. “Stop looking at me.” She hated when Lena acted like she knew more about what Murphy thought than Murphy did herself.
“You hired a little you.” Lena’s smirk turned whole grin. “Do you know how much trouble you’re in?”
“I hired the best candidate for the job.”
“Right.”
Murphy wanted to stab the paint brush through the canvas, but she kept slicing it back and forth, building a smoky blue tear-gassed twilight. “Eat dick.”
♦ ♦ ♦
Robin was very pretty. So pretty Murphy had the urge to warn her against it, as if she could change the way she looked. Lena had been right, of course, because all Murphy saw when she looked at Robin were her own fraught memories—borderline comments from her dad’s friends, her first boyfriend who threatened to kill himself when she broke up with him before college, the handsome professor who took her on as a pet project. ‘Your artistic voice is really something special, Murph,’ the professor assured her. ‘And with this face? You’re really going places.’
Men had always loved Murphy. She was petite, with a heart-shaped face and small, delicate features—and by the time she was a little older than Robin, every time she looked in the mirror, she wanted to break them all. Her nose, especially, but all of the hollow bird bones that made up her facial structure, too. She wanted to be ugly, to go unnoticed. Now she was forty-seven, she had her wish, and that’s how she finally realized her face was her only currency. Inside, she was everything no one wanted: poor and righteous and petulant and rank with envy. God. So much envy.
“One of the things I’ll need you to do is call clients when their art is ready to be picked up.” Murphy nodded, directing Robin to a stack of invoices, initialed at the bottom after she’d wrapped the canvases for transport. ‘Stack’ was generous. There were three. For the past month. This was her high season. Normally, she sustained herself on the backs of commissioned illustrations of furries online and the paltry but faithful checks she still received each month from Professor Wyndham, effectively buying her silence.
Robin’s nose wrinkled. “Can’t I just text them?”
“No, you have to call.”
Gutted, like a fish, Robin slunk to a squat. “I can’t talk on the phone.”
This would’ve been handy to know before hiring the girl. Though Murphy knew she would’ve hired her regardless. “Why can’t you talk on the phone?”
Robin didn’t stand. “I just can’t,” she huffed into the space between her knees.
“Okay, okay. You can text them. Get up.” Murphy hated texting, but she knew it was just a stubborn holdover, like her mom refusing to learn the complicated remote control and her grandmother griping about how no one dressed up to fly anymore. “You’ll need to learn the cash register system, too. You think you can do that at least?”
Slowly, Robin stood. Regained her steady breath. “Yeah. That’s fine.”
“And today, after you call—after you text the clients, I’ll need you to do some light housekeeping. Sweeping and dusting and cleaning the counters.”
“What will you be doing?”
Murphy put on her most authoritative voice. “I’ll be painting, Robin.” God, why did she sound like him? Lena must’ve put it in her head the moment she’d talked about Murphy mentoring her student. She’d never wanted to be a mentor. “That’s why I hired you,” she amended in a kinder tone. “So I can have more time to paint.”
“But no one’s buying anything.”
“You really—” No. “Listen, I can tell you’re smart. I know this is your first job, so this is a great learning opportunity. I’m your boss. I pay you. If you want me to continue paying you, you need to be respectful. You need to do as I say. Do you understand?” She couldn’t get Professor Wyndham’s voice out of her mouth. She wanted to spit. Wanted to swallow.
It wasn’t like that. She was going to be a good mentor, and she wasn’t going to ask for anything in return. She was paying Robin, for fuck’s sake.
“Yeah, fine,” Robin said. “Sorry, or whatever. Where’s the broom?”
“Invoices first, please.”
With a barely masked groan, Robin came behind the counter and got to work.
♦ ♦ ♦
There was one thing Robin was very good at, and it definitely wasn’t dressing for work. Murphy imagined a new hire bringing a classier aesthetic to the gallery. Clean, chic, and expensive. Robin was in torn black jeans and a hoodie with holes for her thumbs. Murphy didn’t have the energy to make a dress code when she, herself, was in her slipper moccasins, baggy beige overalls, and a cropped Bikini Kill muscle top.
Robin was, however, good at marketing. Social media.
Murphy had the requisite accounts; she posted to them, but her paintings got very little traction. Certainly not the level of traction her furry commissions got. The result of one request, “draw one like Ryan Gosling if he was a literal fox and also a medieval warrior and also had bedroom eyes and magnificent abs,” had gone viral through no fault of her own, and she’d been swamped with commissions ever since.
No one seemed to have the same affinity for feminist collages and painted critiques of capitalism.
“There’s so much missed opportunity here,” Robin told her. It was the first time Murphy had seen enthusiasm on her face since they’d met. “Let me do a total makeover for you. Free of charge.”
Murphy rolled her eyes. “I’m already paying you.”
“Please?” Robin had come in that morning with dark circles under her eyes, and now she looked so light, Murphy could hardly say no.
They worked side-by-side, with Murphy painting and Robin flitting between screens on Murphy’s laptop, her methods both purposeful and completely opaque. To Murphy, at least.
“Hey. You have a tattoo,” Robin said suddenly. Murphy had been bent over a finicky little periwinkle flower, sprouting from a sidewalk crack.
“I have several,” Murphy said, but when Robin started unabashedly scanning for them, she sighed and put down her paintbrush. “They’re mostly hidden.”
“What’s the point of that?”
“They’re for me.” A thin wreath of stinging nettle leaves around one ankle. A tiny possum playing dead on her left hip bone. One on her inner thigh, a quote from the boyfriend she’d had after the professor stuff played out: too little/too much. Robin must’ve been seeing the one on her side, which should’ve been hidden under a bra band, but she wasn’t wearing one. Sylvia Plath: “I am horribly limited.” There was something she’d loved about wearing her inner critic, forcing her ugliness to the outside.
Robin mimed violent gagging. “Gross. You’re one of those.”
Murphy felt like a lockbox, and everyone had a key but her. “One of what?”
“Like, ‘I don’t care what anyone else thinks about me,’ but you care more than anyone.” She went back to the computer, scrolling so quickly through images Murphy couldn’t imagine Robin was actually seeing any of them. “‘I’ll tattoo myself where no one can see it. I’ll open an art gallery on some depressing coastal road with no cross-traffic.’ It’s like… a theme or something.” She shrugged.
Crossing her arms, face hot, Murphy said, “Respectful. I’m your boss, remember?”
She needed to find a new tone. Less condescending. More empathetic. Because every time she spoke to Robin that way, she got an involuntary tingle and a sinking sense of shame and a devastating flood of all the things that could’ve been hers by now. Awards, real galleries, New York parties, and who knew what else? She hadn’t gotten far enough to find out.
After a while, once Murphy cooled and finished painting all the rogue flowering weeds in the sidewalk crack, she glanced at Robin. Time to be the adult. The mentor Murphy wished she would’ve had at this age. “Can I see what you’ve done so far?”
Robin turned the laptop to show her. She’d created a cool new logo for the gallery, using a continuous line drawing Murphy had sketched of the pink shack when she first bought it. “I brightened up some of your pictures, but we’ll need to take new ones. Plus, I picked a more neon color palette for everything. It’s more like… rock and roll or something.” She chewed her lip and looked up at Murphy through heavy mascara. “Do you like it?”
Murphy’s heart swelled. Fuck Lena, she knew she’d picked the best candidate. “Yeah. I do, actually. You’re really good at this. Is this what you want to do? Marketing?”
“No, I’m not that good. All your socials were just really, really bad.”
“No, you are that good,” Murphy argued. “Don’t sell yourself short.”
Snort-laughing, Robin said, “I’m really not.”
“Okay.” Murphy folded her arms on the counter. “Then what are you good at?”
“Nothing, really.” She shrugged.
Murphy shook her head. “Everyone’s good at something.”
“Except me.”
“No, not except you, you’re not special—”
“Oh, I know I’m not special. That’s what I’m trying to say.”
She tried a different tack. “What are your interests?”
Robin scratched the back of her head, squinting up at the ceiling, then said: “Nothing, really.”
God. This was why Murphy never had kids. Or one of the reasons, anyway. The first reason was obviously that her important reproductive parts had likely atrophied from disuse—after the professor, she’d tried a few times with nice enough men, but every physical encounter left her trembling and crying, and what was the use? So pregnancy was kind of impossible, if she couldn’t allow a man to kiss her, let alone enter her. But also, it was bullshit like this.
She wanted to shove her hard-earned wisdom down Robin’s throat.
“You can’t seriously be interested in nothing,” Murphy said. “That’s no way to live your life.”
“Why do I need ‘interests’?” Robin said the word like it tasted of blood. “Life is just like, finish school, work some clickety-clackety computer job, get carpal tunnel, then die. I’m okay with that. I’ll just come home and watch TV every night—”
“Ah-ha! You’re interested in television!”
Robin frowned. “Not really.”
“Look, I get it,” Murphy snapped. “When I was your age, I was all brash confidence. I knew so much. Way more than I do now. No one could tell me I didn’t know the world yet. But you don’t know how much living’s gonna humble you.”
“Oh, trust me, I’m already—”
“No.” Murphy put up a hand. “You don’t know. You can’t know. Look at you.” Suddenly her eyes were burning, and she didn’t know why. “You just can’t.”
Robin had the decency to leave a little time for Murphy to recover herself, before rolling her eyes. “Sorry that it took you, like, three more decades than me to get cynical.”
“I’m not—I’m not cynical.” Murphy was definitely cynical. “I just mean, like, look at you.” She put an awkward hand on Robin’s shoulder and pushed her out a little, to get a good look at her. “You’re beautiful.” Murphy sniffed. It was so hard to explain, and she knew she wasn’t going to get it right. She barely knew Robin, so she couldn’t tell her that watching someone so young hate themselves, give up on themselves, felt like a stab in her chest.
She wanted to tell her: Don’t do it, please don’t.
She wanted to say: Adults used to tell us we were unique as snowflakes, and I’d roll my eyes like you are now, but it’s true. Everyone is unique, just like everyone else, and stop hating yourself for it. It won’t do you any good.
“You have the world at your feet,” Murphy finally said. Untapped potential. Unruined psyche. Murphy almost resented her for it. But more than that, she wanted to protect Robin from all the trauma that would come, from being young, from being gorgeous, from being talented. Because, regardless what Robin would admit, the social media thing was a talent, and Murphy was sure she had others.
Robin went back to the laptop, adjusting colors on the new logo in some image editor. “That’s way too much pressure.”
“All you need to do is find something you like, and then follow it. The rest will work itself out.” It hadn’t for Murphy, but it probably did for some people. And Murphy hadn’t had a Murphy. She’d had a Professor Wyndham.
♦ ♦ ♦
“I made this for you.” Robin held out a bracelet between two fingers, like it was a piece of trash. “It’s galaxy sea sediment jasper. The heart is amazonite.”
Murphy didn’t know gemstones. It was three strands of dainty, marbleized beads with hints of pink, purple, and turquoise. The center bracelet had the smallest turquoise heart, set apart by knots on either side. Slipping it on her wrist, Murphy admired it. “You have an interest.”
Under all the obnoxiousness, her little mentee had actually listened to her. Murphy’s heart thrummed to life for the first time in ages.
Robin shrugged. “Anyone can put beads on a string.”
“Anyone can put paint on a canvas,” Murphy said.
“Clearly,” Robin smirked.
How did Lena deal with this all day, now that schools no longer allowed corporal punishment? Murphy turned the bracelet, running a finger along the tiny beads. “Have you made any more of these?”
“I could.” The look she wore was like a time machine. Suddenly Murphy felt seventeen, too. Unspoiled. Loaded with promise.
Murphy shook her head. “You should. You can sell them here if you want.”
“Like, on consignment?”
“What do you know about consignment?”
“I looked it up.” Robin shrugged again. Like ‘I don’t care what anyone thinks about me,’ when you care more than anyone.
“How about you give me ten percent?” Murphy would make pennies, at most, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to give Robin a future to hold on to. To develop her confidence. And, truly, her resilience. No one came into Murphy Cole, Art for Sale. She’d make a few bracelets, Murphy would compliment them, and maybe in November, the odd client would grab one for their grandkid as a stocking stuffer.
The hard truth that Murphy would give her, eventually, was that art was 99.9% rejection. And when you stopped getting rejected, when things felt too easy, there would almost always be a cost. Someone above you, wanting their due. But that lesson was for later.
Robin nodded, masking her smile. “Okay. Cool.” She didn’t look directly at Murphy, but her gray eyes were watery, transparently proud. “I’ll make some more. Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me. I’m just running a business. But don’t expect to be an overnight success, either. I don’t want to get your hopes up.”
“No, no. I won’t. I’m not.” But it was there in her shining eyes. Her hopes were at 30,000 feet. Thankfully, Murphy would be there to cushion the fall.
♦ ♦ ♦
“Is this the Robin’s Nest?” A young woman peeked only her head through the gallery door, several friends behind her hissing, ‘I don’t think this is the right place, Candace.’
“This is the Murphy Cole gallery,” Murphy said, jaw tightening. Robin wasn’t on for the day, so she had to put down her brush, again, and come to the counter. “But yes, if you’re looking for Robin Tran’s collection? It’s all right here.”
“I told you,” the girl, Candace, whispered back to her friends. They loped in, all elbows and knees, and Murphy winced, braced for them to knock into one of her canvases on the way to the counter. It had been like that for two weeks now. More customers than Murphy ever saw, even during the summer tourist season, and they were all there to pick through Robin’s bracelets.
Good for Robin. Truly. So good for Robin. She was really happy for her little mentee.
Murphy’s heart slowly roasted on a spit in her chest as she watched the young women coo over all the dainty bracelets and necklaces in the lucite tray by the register.
Rose quartz and pearl.
Burnt sienna tigers eye.
Emerald with gold spacers.
They bought out the whole stock.
When they left, it wasn’t closing time, but Murphy turned the sign over in the window anyway. Throat tight, she closed the shades. Then she went to the storage room where, behind the cleaning supplies, on the top shelf, there was an old pack of American Spirits. Okay, not that old.
Murphy hadn’t had a cigarette in two months. Not since she saw that article from the alumni newsletter. Professor James Wyndham Accepts Distinguished Faculty Award for Outstanding Mentorship, Creating New Leaders in the Arts. Him standing next to a girl who looked like Robin. Who looked like Murphy. Who was gazing up at him and smiling, his hand probably on the small of her back.
She tipped the package so a cigarette slid out. Then she counted. There were eleven left.
She lit it and inhaled deeply, letting the smoke tickle her lungs, feeling the damage she was doing to herself, and then, with shaky fingers, she texted Robin: Wow! Complete inventory sold out today! You go girl!
♦ ♦ ♦
Professor Wyndham had fucked her.
That was the whole thing. Long and short story.
It was what everyone assumed, and worse than everyone assumed. She was a consenting adult, she was his protegé. He was married, he was defenseless against her charms.
She could still see him after that first showing, at his friend’s gallery in SoHo. With all the adulation, Murphy had felt effervescent. And later, in the hotel room they’d shared to squeeze a few pennies, he’d towered over her. Unzipped his pants. “Say thank you now.”
Murphy had gone back to the alumni newsletter to torture herself. She glared at the young woman beside him who was getting everything Murphy had ever wanted. Wondered if she was sufficiently grateful to him after this photo was taken.
She’d convinced herself she liked it, back then. That she was in love with him, and that he was even more in love with her than she was with him, and goddamnit, he just couldn’t control himself around her. Murphy was too beautiful—what was he supposed to do with himself?
When she learned about the wife and the baby, she was full of righteous gumption. “No,” she’d told him when he unzipped. “Not like this. Not anymore.”
Then he’d done the same for her budding career.
No. Not like this. Not anymore.
♦ ♦ ♦
When Murphy wanted to kill herself, she was supposed to call Lena. So she called Lena. She called Lena enough in between these kinds of nights that Lena had long ago stopped worrying, and treated every call like it was exactly what Murphy said it was.
She was still at the gallery, and she swayed on the porch swing, with the porch lights off. Screeching insect noise scratched out any of the gentle, soothing lake sounds. The baker would be coming soon, and she didn’t want to be there to arouse questions, but she didn’t want to go home either. To the tiny efficiency apartment she was barely making rent on.
“So, how are things with Robin Tran?” Lena finally asked, with a small chuckle. Murphy had waited for Lena to bring her up. “Any regrets?”
“No,” Murphy said. “No regrets. She’s actually been really motivated. We had this chat about her interests, and I think she took it to heart. She’s making these bracelets now. I can’t keep them in stock.”
“Seriously? That’s amazing. Never thought I’d hear the words ‘Robin Tran’ and ‘motivated’ in the same sentence. Though I suppose she has had a rough go of things.”
It was right then that Murphy realized she couldn’t say anything she wanted to her sister. She’d only sound bitter, and her sister couldn’t come close to understanding anyway. Her sister had never had a bone-deep dream, the kind where you feel like you’ll die if it doesn’t work out, and it’s almost worse that you didn’t. That you have to stay alive and find a way to live with your failure.
Murphy sighed. “I guess she needed a shove in the right direction. Any direction, really.” She tipped her pack of American Spirits and pulled one out. There were seven left now. “I just hope she realizes that when things blow up like this, they don’t always stay that way.”
“Don’t drag the poor girl down when she just got off the ground. I bet this is really cool for her!”
Murphy took a drag, shaking her head. “I bet it is.”
“You did this for her, Murph. That’s amazing, too. I know because of—with all that happened, you didn’t think you’d make a good mentor, but look at you! Passing the baton to the next generation of artists! I’m proud of you.”
Passing the baton. Murphy wanted to throw up.
That was the exact problem. She didn’t want to pass the fucking baton. She was only forty-seven, and she’d barely got to hold the baton at all. Now she was meant to be generous, give it to the next generation.
Fuck that.
Absolutely fuck that.
“Thanks.” She swiped at her eyes. “Anyway, I’m tired. I’m gonna get in bed. Talk to you tomorrow?”
Lena must not have heard the quaver in her voice, or the insects that gave her real location away, because she chirped, “Alright! Talk tomorrow!”
Murphy lit a new cigarette just as soon as she stubbed out the last one. Six left in the pack.
She was happy for Robin’s success. Or at least, she’d be a monster if she wasn’t.
It was a little unfair that she’d given up so little for it. That she hadn’t had to suffer. That whatever lessons Murphy had to impart were now null and void.
Maybe her bracelet business would peter out naturally.
Or maybe it would thrive. Get so big she could open her own shopfront.
Murphy had stalked the branded socials Robin whipped up. The Robin’s Nest’s following was already five times the following for Murphy Cole, Artist.
And the worst part was—this is what Robin would always think art was. Instant success, if you put in a little elbow grease. A simple formula only an idiot could fuck up. Why didn’t everyone do it the way she did? They must not want it bad enough.
The only good thing: Murphy couldn’t have felt further from her professor in that moment. Because she didn’t want a thank you, she didn’t want any payment from Robin at all.
Murphy grabbed the empty Lucite tray off the counter and placed it in the passenger seat of her car.
Careful not to wake the entire Tran household, she tiptoed up the brick front steps and left the tray at Robin’s front door. Before she dashed back to her car, she heard shouting inside. An older woman’s voice, loud and angry.
Murphy ran back to her rusted Chevy Silverado and slammed the door, locking it for good measure. Her heart was a wrecking ball against her ribs.
Then she pulled out her phone and drafted eight texts before sending the ninth: Robin. Sorry. Not working out at the gallery. Have decided to go in a different direction. Best of luck in future endeavors. -MC (P.S. Could use some work on your professionalism.)
♦ ♦ ♦
The new girl at the gallery wasn’t the best with socials, but she smelled like strawberries and cream, and she picked up where Robin left off. By the end of the month, Murphy Cole, Artist had another fifty followers. The new girl’s mother came in and bought an abstract piece that she maybe did, or maybe didn’t, realize was a bunch of corporate logos shaped like a cock and balls.
The new girl called her Ms. Cole. She wore black dress pants, heels, and fun tops under her blazer. She made phone calls without complaint.
The new girl asked Murphy to look over her portfolio for art school, and Murphy was more than happy to do it. Because the new girl’s art was technical. Labored. Her influences shone through like plagiarism.
Murphy realized, with a delight she’d never admit: the new girl wasn’t very good.
And Murphy thought, maybe she could be a mentor after all.
Crystal Schubert is a reader and a writer based in Richmond, Virginia. Crystal is currently working toward her MFA in Creative Writing, and her work can be found in Literary Mama, Points in Case, and wicked alice, among others.
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