For nearly two years, I saw a GP who didn’t like to touch my body, or that’s the feeling I got. If I was only asking her opinion or filling a prescription, things were fine, if a little impersonal. But when she examined a rash on my arm, or looked into the dark depths of my ears, she turned nervous, and her hands skittered lightly over my skin. During a breast exam, she’d pressed her fingertips quickly into my left boob, then my right. Her repulsion baffled me. After my first few appointments, I began to wonder if her touch was normal, and the problem was actually me. I’m tall, nearly a foot taller than she was, broad shouldered and soft fleshed, and my skin is so translucent you can see the pathways of blue veins beneath. But doctors are accustomed to all types of bodies. When I started seeing her, I was recently single and alone in a new town, so maybe I’d forgotten how it felt to be touched by someone who wasn’t hungry for my skin, someone who didn’t need me to touch them back.

Despite the weirdness, I felt an affinity with Dr. Pham and never considered seeing someone else. We’d both gone to the same university on the other side of the country, and her framed medical degree on the waiting room wall always reassured me that at least one other educated person had chosen to make that small city—big town, really—their home. (I was an awful snob back then.) Like me, she was left-handed, although the writing on her prescriptions was clear and neat, unlike mine and unlike most physicians’. More a teacher’s hand than a doctor’s. Also, the area had few GPs, and even fewer female doctors, so it would have been difficult to replace her.

Dr. Pham, professional that she was, never asked about my personal life, but one morning, after I’d been her patient for over a year, she surprised me.     

“Have you gained some weight recently?” she said. It was something my mother might ask, except she’d deliver it with an edge.

“I have,” I said. “But I’m not worried.” I’d heard about doctors fat-shaming their patients, and if that’s what she was doing, I intended to shut her down right away.

“No, you shouldn’t worry. Just monitor yourself.” She gave me a smile.

Dr. Pham was petite and thin. She dressed conservatively in neutral colours—knee-length skirts and blouses, but the fabrics looked cheap, the garments faded and worn, which was strange. I knew exactly where I’d shop, locally and online, if I had a doctor’s income. She was in her mid-forties, about ten years older than me, but her authority made it seem like more, while her unlined skin put her closer to my age. She wore her dark hair smoothed back into a tight bun. She was quite pretty.

I didn’t tell Dr. Pham that attempting to change my weight was futile. It wasn’t a matter of cutting out potato chips and taking up jogging. My diet and exercise were consistent. It was as though a mechanism inside my body was fine-tuned for me to acquire fat and shed it at certain times for mysterious biological reasons I didn’t need to understand. I had wasted my twenties trying to control this process, and now I just accepted it. But Dr. Pham wouldn’t understand, being a doctor, being the same small size her whole life, or so I imagined.  

I’d been thinking a lot about the female body around the time Dr. Pham mentioned my weight. That week I was installing a solo show of female nudes at the municipal art gallery where I was employed as administrator and lead curator. I’d impulsively applied for and accepted the job the year before. After my breakup with G. I hadn’t just wanted out of the condo we’d shared, I wanted to disappear from the entire city, the whole province. I’d never before felt that way about an ex, that I could not bear to occupy the same place as him. But G. hurt me so badly I put a thousand kilometres between us. 

My curatorial background was in new media and 3D installations, not paintings, but the gallery was limited in the media it could show, and the town’s appetite for anything too conceptual was limited. I didn’t particularly care for nudes, as a subject, but, along with landscapes, they were popular with both artists and gallery goers there.

Robert Felling was the artist, and he was early in his career, although he was in his late fifties. He was a local man who’d retired from his career-career as a bank manager about five years previous to paint full-time and had already showed in a number of group exhibitions in the region. It was Robert who had proposed the show title in his submission package: “Feminas Nudus.” The former me would have pushed for a different title—something more subtle, definitely nothing Latin—but now I didn’t bother. I’d learned to pick my battles.

The gallery was a tiny room tucked into a forgotten corner of city hall. I did nearly everything, from hanging paintings to designing show flyers and updating the website, to hosting openings, to smearing putty into little nail holes and dabbing white paint over them between shows. There was also a board of community volunteers who helped jury applications, curate the shows, and assist with hanging. The members were three elderly women in need of hobbies, and two middle-aged men who were successful local artisans (one a ceramicist, the other a glassblower), and who did the heavy lifting on installation days.

Five months previous I’d projected the images of Robert Felling’s paintings onto the screen in Community Meeting Room D, then clicked through each one slowly. The board had loved the tasteful nudes—the thin, firm-breasted blonde sprawled on an antique chaise longue; the grey-haired woman from behind, all slack ass and pocked thighs, wading into a placid lake. But I’d purposely saved the best image for last. That painting was the largest, 48” x 36”, oil on canvas, halfway between impressionism and realism. It was of a completely naked woman on her back, a royal blue sofa beneath her. Her legs were folded, knees pressed up to her shoulders. Her head was thrown to the side, red mouth open, eyes closed. Long dark hair, damp and curly, was stuck to her flushed, blotchy cheek. Her soft belly had shallow little rolls, and her breasts had slipped toward her armpits. Between her legs was a dark concentration of abstract brushstrokes that did not look like pubic hair. Instead, it appeared as though her genitals had been censored. Which, of course, only made the viewer imagine how they’d look under all the paint. I didn’t love it, but I did think it was the strongest piece Robert Felling had submitted. He had captured something private, a genuine moment, in an interesting, dynamic way. “Rapture” was the title he’d given it. Again, cringe, but oh well.

“What do we think about this one?” I said, looking around the table. Even though I was the one with the MA in Curatorial Studies and BA in Art History, I always encouraged the board members to speak before I gave my opinion.

“Well, that’s really something,” Bev the quilter said.

“It’s quite…explicit,” Judy the former city councillor said. “Can we show something like that?”

“I don’t know that we can. Children come through here,” Marion the retired school secretary said. I couldn’t recall seeing one child in city hall since I’d been there. But I had to remember many people in that town were conservative.

“I don’t like it. It’s vulgar,” Margaret said. The only thing I remember about Margaret is that, according to her, Canadian art had peaked with the Group of Seven.

Ron the ceramicist disagreed. “I think the sensuality is extraordinary. And the colours, the scale.” He moved his hands into curved shapes as he spoke, as if recreating the figure in the air. Of course, you like the coming woman, Ron, I thought.

Mitchell the glassblower folded his arms across his chest and nodded his bald head. “I have to agree with Ron.”

After some more discussion, the board decided to accept the piece, and to offer Robert Felling a six-week solo exhibition early in the new year.

Soon after we accepted Robert’s show, I met him at the gallery, where he signed the exhibition contract and I showed him the space. Robert Felling was very tall with a large belly and snarled grey hair that hung almost to his shoulders, but not quite. His ice blue eyes were bloodshot, his brows unkempt, his cheeks ruddy. He shook my hand and then stood uncomfortably close as he spoke, his stale coffee breath poisoning the air. I disliked him immediately.

At the time, the gallery was exhibiting a group show of paintings, photography and sculpture: “Children at Play.” As we considered a black-and-white 8 x 10 of adolescent gymnasts, Robert leaned toward my ear, so close his hair teased my cheek. “I’d like to see you bend like that,” he said, low and husky. I was so surprised I nearly laughed. I was thirty-six and it had been years since a man had sexually harassed me, let alone in a work environment. But then I remembered all those times in my twenties when some guy had made a gross statement to unnerve me, and all those times I had been too surprised, or scared, or ashamed to retort and just silently absorbed his words. I became livid.

I leaned toward Robert Felling’s ear and made my voice low like his: “I’d like to see you never show here again.”

“Come on, you know I’m just kidding,” Robert said. He chuckled, took a step back and held up his smooth banker’s palms. Then he strode over to the opposite wall and pretended to observe a watercolour. I excused myself and went to the washroom in the foyer, where I ran my hands under cold water until I couldn’t feel them. Then I dried them off, went back to Robert and carried on with the tour, both of us pretending nothing had happened.

In early January, when Robert Felling sent me the high-res JPGs of his work for the exhibition catalogue, I immediately opened “Rapture” full-screen in Photoshop. Then I zoomed in until I could see the tiniest brushstrokes. Up close, the face and body were skillfully detailed, but when I magnified the crotch, to see if that would reveal something, all I saw was a fury of black and khaki and burnt sienna, as though scrawled by a kindergartner with a box of crayons and big feelings.

Next, I opened Robert’s artist statement. He’d emailed a long, rambling Word doc that digressed into separate rants about the commodification of art and fifteenth-century Florence that had zero relevance to his biography or his paintings. I got to work on editing. I was good at toning down male artist hubris in a way that made them read as gracious and humble, yet still authoritative. Plus, I always had to fix their spelling and grammar. Most artists, Robert Felling included, never noticed my edits. Or if they did, they said nothing. When you improve a man’s work, he will almost always credit himself.

The board members took turns co-curating and installing the shows, and Margaret and Ron assisted me with hanging “Feminas Nudus.” Ron suggested that “Rapture,” the largest canvas, should hang in the centre of the feature wall, the smaller pieces fanned out on either side. We propped the paintings in order against the wall and then Margaret and Ron and I stepped a few feet backwards, crossed our arms over our chests and took in the whole view. A few seconds passed while I waited for one of them to speak.

“Well. I think I’ve changed my mind,” Margaret said. “In the context of the other nudes, its vulgarity is somehow softened, don’t you think?”

“Absolutely,” Ron said.

I didn’t think so. I thought the smaller nudes, their soft colours and tired compositions, became homogeneous and forgettable when grouped. The eye skipped right over them and straight to the bullseye between the reclined woman’s legs.

“You’re right,” I told Margaret. “Okay, Ron, let’s you and I get them up on the wall.”

Despite my snobbery, there was plenty I came to like about that town, and about the gallery and the job itself. I had plenty of autonomy, and control over the budget, which was granted annually by the city. The pay was decent, and the government health benefits were excellent. I rented a two-bedroom bungalow with an apple tree in the backyard—more space than I’d ever had in my adult life. I became friendly with a few women my age at city hall, but their lives outside work were consumed by their young children. My house began to feel empty, so I went to the local animal shelter to adopt a cat. I fell in love with a playful black kitten, but the woman at the shelter wouldn’t let me take her without her sister, a shyer carbon copy. “Sorry, they’re bonded,” she said, as if bonds weren’t broken all the time. In my little house the kittens quickly grew into cats. They spent much of their days asleep in a cuddle, black fur pressed together, dark limbs and tails so entangled that it was often difficult pick out which was which. I loved them both.

My new life was peaceful and stable. Happy, almost. But a year into it, my wheels began to spin. On social media and in the pages of Canadian Art, I watched my cohort from grad school ascend to higher and higher ranks at prestigious galleries in Toronto and New York and London. In their announcement photos, they all had ugly-cool haircuts and wore dark, angular clothing. Meanwhile, I’d been living in old jeans and getting my hair highlighted by Bev’s daughter in her home salon. I became angry at myself for letting G. keep the city I called home. He didn’t even work in the arts—he had the type of job he could do remotely, from any large town, medium city, or tiny backwater anywhere.

Most of all, I missed working with the art I loved, and the artists themselves. I’d never felt an easy fit in the gallery scene, but I’d wedged myself into my particular niche. I had grown up in a small town, a town even smaller than my new home, and had worked so hard to escape it. But then somehow, by my own choices, I’d found myself stumbling back toward that former life. My snobbery was a cover for my fear that, deep inside, I was still just a townie.

At the opening night reception of “Feminas Nudus,” Robert Felling gave an artist’s talk. The openings and talks were typically attended only by the gallery board and a dozen or so dedicated art lovers, but Robert had packed the small space with his friends and acquaintances. I was surprised to see the mayor there, with his little plate of cheese and crackers. I’d sent him personalized invitations to every opening reception, but he had yet to show. I watched Robert go over and clap a hand on the mayor’s shoulder, and I understood it was Robert who had invited him.

I’d allowed Robert a limit of twenty minutes for his talk. I’d given previous artists forty minutes, but I was worried if I gave him more time, he’d go off on tangents about the commodification of art and fifteenth-century Florence, and everyone would be forced to listen. Robert mostly stayed on topic, the topic being himself. After the talk, he took questions.

“How can I support myself as an artist?” a boy, maybe seventeen, asked. He had a shaved head and wore a canvas messenger bag across his lanky frame. He blinked and his eyelids were painted a sparkly purple.

“Let me tell you,” Robert said, with a big smile. “The trick is to make sure your wife has a good job. And make some good investments ten years prior.”

A ripple of laughter moved through the audience, and I looked around to see who exactly was laughing. That’s when I saw Dr. Pham, in line at the bar set up in the foyer. She wore a long wool coat, still buttoned, so she must have just arrived. Her hair was down, the first I’d seen it like that. It tumbled over her shoulders in glossy waves. Her eyes were on her phone, which she held in both hands as her thumbs pecked at the screen. I wondered if Robert and I shared the same GP, if poor Dr. Pham had to lay her hands on that vile man. Although, he probably wasn’t vile towards Dr. Pham. He probably had the utmost respect for her and her profession.

After the talk, I spent a few minutes trapped in a lacklustre conversation with an elderly couple, and when I emerged, I noticed Robert talking to Dr. Pham. He stood too close to her, his tall frame hunched, head bent to her ear. The doctor was still with an expressionless face, both hands wrapped around her glass of white wine.

“Laura!” Robert called to me, waiving, and I went over to him.

“I’d like you to meet my wife, Jill,” Robert said. “Dr. Jill Pham, I should say. Jill, Laura. She’s the boss of this place.”

Dr. Pham put out her right hand and I took it, like she was a stranger. Her fingers were cold from the wine.

“Hi,” I said. I was so surprised I couldn’t say anything else. Then someone called Robert’s name and he disappeared back into the crowd, and Dr. Pham and I were alone together.

“Rapture” loomed large on the wall directly in front of us, so we both spent a moment silently considering it. Then the doctor and I met each other’s eyes, and I watched as a pink flush bloomed across her cheeks and down her neck, blotchy, like the woman in the painting, and then suddenly I could see it—Dr. Pham, naked with her legs spread, her knees up, eyes squeezed shut, crying out in the intimate throes of passion. One of two things was apparent: either she didn’t know “Rapture” would be in the show, or she didn’t know it existed at all.

“Would you excuse me a moment,” Dr. Pham said, and gave a wan smile. She set her still-full wineglass on the edge of a bench and then slipped through the crowd and out of the gallery toward the bathroom in the foyer, and never returned.

Robert Felling didn’t notice his wife was missing until about an hour later when the guests had thinned and the party was winding down.

“Have you seen Jill?”

“I think she maybe went home,” I told him.

Six weeks later, on the day scheduled for the takedown of “Feminas Nudus,” I called Margaret and Ron and told them I was feeling under the weather and asked if they would please meet Robert at the gallery to help him pack up his paintings and bid him farewell. That entire day I stayed in bed on my laptop, editing my CV and combing the Internet for job postings, my cats dreaming next to me.

         

It was four months after the opening reception when I next had an appointment with Dr. Pham. I had been dreading seeing her, but she seemed so relaxed, I wondered if she’d moved on from the painting, the embarrassment, the entire evening.

“Everything’s okay with you?” Dr. Pham said.

“Everything’s great. Just need to refill my prescription.”

It was July and she wore a sleeveless red linen dress I recognized from Bella’s, the only high-end boutique in town. A few weeks earlier it had caught my eye in the window, so I’d gone inside to look. The dress was by a Canadian indie designer and cost three hundred sixty-five dollars, an astronomical price for most women in that town, me included. The doctor’s arms, I noticed, were tanned and soft, and her curves looked more prominent in the dress. Maybe her body had decided to add a few pounds. She looked good, in any case. My body had gone the opposite way and had leaned out a little in the summer heat. We were both just fine.

“I love your dress,” I told her. “Didn’t I see that at Bella’s?”

Dr. Pham’s face lit up. “Thank you, yes. They have such lovely things.”

“They really do,” I said, smiling back.

When Dr. Pham handed me my script, I noticed her wedding ring was missing from her left hand, leaving an exposed band of skin, pale and luminous in the cool fluorescent light of the examination room.

         

I don’t know what happened to Robert Felling, but he left town soon after his and Dr. Pham’s divorce was finalized. Bev the quilter confirmed both the divorce and the move—she always had the gossip from her daughter the hairstylist. Once, out of curiosity, I googled Robert to see if I could find any information, maybe a show somewhere, but nothing. His website had lapsed, and he didn’t have Facebook anymore. Maybe he was busy painting. Maybe the divorce forced him back to banking and he’d given up painting. Whatever happened, he was completely gone, and I didn’t spend too much time looking for him.

The next time I saw Dr. Pham, it was in September, for my overdue Pap test and breast exam. “Go ahead and undress,” said the MOA, gesturing to the table in the examination room. “The doctor will see you soon.” She shut the door behind her, and I stripped off all my clothes but my socks. I lay back with my bum at the table’s edge, my legs apart, heels resting lightly in the stirrups, and pulled the thin paper sheet up to my armpits. I waited a few long minutes as my bare skin tensed in the AC. Finally Dr. Pham knocked once and then entered. “Hello, Laura,” she said. She wore a cream blouse and a royal blue wool skirt—both beautiful, almost too beautiful for a regular Tuesday at the clinic. Her hair was down, and it had been cut into a chin-length bob. She sat on the stool between my knees and pulled on surgical gloves. With my naked body in that position and the doctor’s eyes on me, I suddenly pictured “Rapture,” even though there was nothing remotely rapturous about the situation. My cheeks began to burn, and my heart started pounding. I stared at the taupe ceiling tiles and waited for the doctor’s tentative touch, but when her hands met my body, they were firm and sure. When she finished her exam, Dr. Pham looked me in the eye and said, “If you don’t hear back from me, you’re good for another two years.” I thanked her and she left the room while I dressed.

I didn’t hear anything from the doctor, so presumably the results were all normal. Three months later, I would accept an assistant curator job at a contemporary gallery back in the city I’d given up. On a bright morning in early December, I’d pack a small U-Haul with all my worldly possessions, load my two cats into their carrier, and hit the highway to reclaim the life I’d surrendered too easily. Dr. Pham would never again perform my Pap, and that appointment was the last time I ever saw her. But neither of us could have known that at the time.

Krista Eide’s fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in a number of publications, most recently in Prairie Fire. She lives in Vancouver, where she works in film and reads prose submissions for EVENT magazine. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC. Twitter: @krista_eide

Image by kevin laminto @kxvn_lx