Daedalia is a serialized novel, with a new chapter released every Monday morning. The story is designed to unfold slowly, the days in between, a space for it to settle into your imagination. Each chapter is a 10–15 minute read/listen. Check out the Table of Contents if you want to jump to a specific chapter. Want something to binge while you wait? Three novels, complete with audio narration are ready for you to dive in.
Previously…
Daedalia’s World Trade Center installation turned her into a pop-culture myth, and after 9/11 the missing panels became a magnet for conspiracy, grief, and fanaticism. The attention followed the myth to the gates of Marabelle, forcing Lefty to escalate security and start playing defense in earnest.
The following transcript is an interview with Lefty Moody recorded on July 1, 2036.
MM: Tell me about the chickens. Why chickens?
LM: I don’t know. I didn’t give it too much thought. Your mom was the artist. I was just trying to think of the dumbest, kitschiest thing I could to get the jackals and lunatics out of our lives. Things were getting crazy.
But the chickens… let’s see. Well, you have to remember your mom and I grew up in the Appalachian Mountains where you couldn’t throw a rock without hitting some crappy folk art. It was usually sold at these roadside stands alongside jars of honey and apple butter and used vacuums, or whatever people back in the holler had that wasn’t nailed down. I’m sure you remember passing a few of those on trips we went to visit your grandparents, right?
MM: Yeah, I guess so.
LM: Well, I convinced your mom that the only way to get these crazy people to give up and leave us alone was if it became clear that she wasn’t Daedalia. The most effective lies are the ones wrapped around a kernel of truth. There were all kinds of pictures of the shed on the internet, and everyone knew it was an artist’s studio because of public records about the former owner.
MM: So you made Kelly into an amateur folk artist with a passion for chickens.
LM: Christ, Mare. She was your mother. You don’t have to refer to her in the third person.
MM: The only way you can refer to anyone who isn’t you is in the third person.
LM: Of course. You’re the expert. Look, the only reason I agreed to help you with this project is because you promised you’d tell the whole story like you’ve done in your other books. The world doesn’t need another vicious takedown of what we did, what our lives were about.
MM: Can you continue the story, please?
LM: You were there. You remember. Your mom put all her serious art away for a year. We stored all her canvases and materials and transformed the shed so she could set to making these hideous chickens. She painted them on old boards, rusty tea kettles, and just about anything else we could find. Surely you remember this period. You would’ve been what, ten?
MM: No, I was seven, and I do remember. I think it was the most time she ever spent with me and the most I ever heard her laugh.
LM: That’s right. You were her assistant. I’ve kept a few of those pieces you helped her with. They were perfectly awful and I think she enjoyed making them. It was a new kind of challenge for her, to just make something the way a bricklayer builds a wall. Just physical. No internal dialogue.
MM: I’d forgotten I helped her. There was a lot of red paint, right?
LM: Yeah, yeah there was indeed, and you’d come out of her studio like you’d been in a fight with one of those chickens, splotches of red on your hands and face.
MM: What were you doing? Did you try to sell them?
LM: I had my role to play. It was no small feat to convince the world that I could marry a woman who made such horrible art, but I did eventually. I paid an exorbitant amount of money to buy the little gallery space in Santa Fe, where we could showcase these chickens. I think we may have sold three or four of the pieces in a year.
I remember actually being nervous that they would take off and be successful when the intent was for them to be an embarrassment, a loving husband’s indulgence of his wife’s hobby.
It took a while to sell the whole story to the most rabid of these lunatics, but we did. We started opening the gate on Saturdays to invite people into the studio to meet the artist. I managed to get the local news channel to come out and interview us.
MM: Yeah, I watched that last week on YouTube. You’re a convincing liar. That feisty journalist had done her research. I think she asked you more questions about Daedalia than the chickens, though.
LM: Yeah. I had to pretend to be even more of an idiot than I am.
MM: You told her Daedalia was a “fragile soul, not made for this world,” and that you’d never betray your promise to protect her from it. You had tears in your eyes when you said that. I watched that over and over again.
LM: Why?
MM: Because I wanted to see if it was real.
LM: And?
MM: I think you believe that story, so that much is real. She was a lot of things, but fragile wasn’t one of them.
LM: You know, you can be pretty damned judgmental. It’s what makes you a great writer, I guess, but it’s no fun to be on the stand in your courtroom. You’ll paint whatever version of this story serves you, like everyone else does. I just hope you’ll remember it’s your story too, whether you like it or not.
MM: Let’s be real. I was never really part of the story.
LM: You really believe that, sweetheart? You really feel that mistreated. You’re a grown person now. I’ll be gone soon enough and then you won’t have anyone to blame for your life.
MM: I don’t blame you, or her. Really. I’ve spent enough time in therapy to understand it wasn’t personal. You guys already had a story, a big story that didn’t have room for much else. She made art that changed the world. It’s okay that she wasn’t a good mom. Oh come on, Dad… don’t cry. I’m not trying to be mean here.
LM: I can’t help it these days. I cry over TV ads. Let’s finish this so you can get whatever version of the truth you need.
MM: We don’t have to keep going right now.
LM: No, I want to. I made a promise to help you. What’s your next question?
MM: Mom stopped working at the ranch after that. Tell me about that time.
LM: Every day, there were fewer and fewer people turning up outside our fence with their cameras and notebooks, but it would take years before people completely forgot about us. For your mom, doing her art was like breathing and she wanted to get back to it, so I rented a place for her in Colorado near Telluride. She would go there by herself and work for a couple of weeks at a time.
MM: I remember her being gone and missing her. Did she ever take me with her?
LM: Not to that place, I don’t think. She didn’t want to disrupt your life.
MM: I don’t think that was the reason.
LM: Yeah, that’s fair. She needed her space, even from me, especially after everything that had happened. The 9/11 thing changed her and it wasn’t just the public attention and criticism. Her relationship to the work shifted. I think it scared her after that, working. But she was still driven to do it.
MM: What do you mean?
LM: You understand your mother wasn’t just an artist, scratching images on a canvas, right? Surely you get that by now, after all these years. It’s like she stood at a portal between two worlds, and she didn’t fully understand either one, which was her great sadness. She was an interpreter between two parties who would never understand each other.
I can see you don’t believe me. It took me a lifetime to understand and accept what I think I knew after looking at those sketches in her notebook when she was sixteen. After what happened to you, I’m sure a part of you shut down any ability to see some things, to really see her. She never forgave herself.
MM: But that wasn’t her fault. She wasn’t even home. It happened while she was away.
LM: Exactly. But it was more than that, more than her absence. She had invited something into our lives.
MM: It’s late, Dad. You’re getting tired. We should wrap up for today.
LM: If you can’t talk about it now, Marabelle, how many more chances will we have?
MM: But I have talked about it with the best therapists money could buy for years. In fact, it’s all that therapy that tells me you’re projecting right now. You’re the one who hasn’t dealt with it.
LM: Are you going to write about it? You’ve come around here asking about the chickens. Is your book going to be a comedy, or a historical account of detached observations? Or is it going to be something real, something you’ve engaged with? You know, you have much more of your mother in you than you think.
MM: I’m not sure what those parts could be. I don’t think we could be more opposite.
LM: That’s because you don’t know yourself or her the way that I do. You want me to count the ways? You’re willful, stubborn, and single-minded to a purpose. You feel things deeply, but you don’t want to acknowledge feelings exist. You’re private and enigmatic to most everyone in your life.
MM: Tell me, Dad, are there any good qualities I share with her?
LM: You still don’t understand. These are all things I love about you both.
MM: Then what’s wrong with you? Why are you here, hiding away in this little place? Why don’t you pick up the phone when I call? Why didn’t you come to the event last year? It was the culmination of your life’s work, the grand reveal of the magic trick you spent your life setting up and you weren’t there.
LM: Because I didn’t want to relive it all again. What I thought was success when I was a young man is not success now when I look back. I failed your mother and I failed you too.
MM: I don’t get you. I think you’re more of a mystery to me than she is.
LM: I don’t know how that’s possible.
MM: How did you see what you saw in her so young? I’ve seen some of those early sketches. They’re not remarkable and it’s not like you were some art aficionado. You were a baseball player.
LM: It wasn’t her art, what I saw on the pages of her notebook. I mean, it was, but it was more than that. I felt this raw connection to her. She was so frail and so fierce all at once and no one had ever really seen her. It wasn’t something I planned. People grow toward one another, I think. People become something more when somebody sees them. I believe that.
MM: I believe that too, Dad. It’s okay. It’s okay. I love you.
LM: Sorry, sweetie. I’m a mess. I just miss her so much.
MM: Me too.
LM: I’m proud of you, you know that? I’m glad you’re writing this book. You have such a gift to see things so clearly. Whatever you’re worried about, whatever’s holding you back, let it go and write our lives the way only you can. If you do that, you’ll get it right. You won’t find the truth, no matter how much research you do.
MM: Why do you say that?
LM: Because the truth isn’t one thing, is it? It’s layers. You don’t know the truth of someone’s life from one conversation or one thing they made. You come to know them because you let them in. You let them become part of you.
MM: That’s what Mom did.
LM: Yes. Yes it is.
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Their banter feels so natural and familiar: a father and adult daughter remembering the past differently, getting frustrated, falling into old patterns. When she says "I was never really part of the story," that's her truth, but he doesn't want to hear it. Instead of acknowledging her pain, he throws it back at her, which is so realistic in families. I enjoyed how they danced around the big mystery / event, daring each other to go there. And Lefty's observation that came with age and experience: "People grow toward one another, I think. People become something more when somebody sees them." Each of them trying to be understood by the other. A satisfying and touching chapter.
Intriguing!! Can’t wait to learn more.