The Making of Masked Ball
During the pandemic, donning an N95 made me reflect on all the masks I’d worn long before—most without ear loops. There was the Girl Scout with a flexible sense of honor, the carefully calibrated androgyny I cultivated in corporate America, and the kindly fundraiser with an unspoken “or else.” I had quite a collection. So did everyone around me.
That parade of selves, coupled with the solitude of lockdown, sent me to my studio. There I found myself painting faces that were elusive, even cryptic. Amid the frozen flesh and enigmatic stares, their pursed lips seemed to murmur, “Mum’s the word.”
I didn’t buy it.
The longer I lived with these figures, the more they revealed themselves. Each seemed to possess a personality and voice of its own. Somewhere between the brushstrokes, I learned to listen. The writer in me soon joined the painter as I began writing their stories.
Portrait by portrait, story by story, Masked Ball emerged: thirty-eight portraits paired with thirty-eight stories, ranging from mordant fairy tales to sharply observed slices of life. It turns out my subjects had plenty to say.
Story Excerpts
“The Contortionist”
I emerged from the womb an outsider. My family—a feral pack of Russian intellectuals—had somehow put down roots in the most milquetoast neighborhood in the Midwest. My friends’ fathers were lawyers and doctors; mine, meanwhile, was something called an “editor,” doing cryptic work for a small “progressive” newspaper—whatever that meant. Under no circumstances did I want to be the odd girl out, so I casually told classmates that my father owned the Tribune. Those little narrative adjustments soon became a full-time act—a kind of social contortionism.
I’d be damned if I didn’t fit in.
“Dark Queen”
Once upon an eternal midnight, there lived an insomniac queen.
In her kingdom, this was a scandal of the highest order, for her subjects relished sleep—snoozes past sunrise, naps after midday aperitifs, catnaps tucked between obligations. Unable to partake in these national pastimes, the queen concealed her affliction as one might conceal a crime. As a child, she had been a prodigy of false slumber. With lowered lashes and measured breath, she deceived her governess from behind the brocade curtains of her gilded canopy bed. For this performance, she was affectionately dubbed Dormigliona, the Great Sleeper.
“On My Honor”
Honesty is the best policy—just not in my family. If we’d had a family crest, Pinocchioism would have been emblazoned across it.
Mendacity, apparently, runs in the blood. Even into his fifties, my dad regaled me with tales of his high school basketball glory days. Presiding over the kitchen table, he’d fervently recount how he made his “championship-winning clutch shot against St. Michael’s.” Even at ten, I had my doubts. Not because I was especially perceptive, but because old family photos made one thing abundantly clear: Dad had been a dumpling of a boy, with no discernible relationship to speed or sport. But these were pre-Google years. How was I supposed to fact-check a decades-old story from some obscure Indiana town?