My son, Porter, and I have been battling over a moderately terrifying painting, a pretty little portrait of a rustic girl in the woods that I picked up on Painter’s Street in Shanghai. “It’s creepy, mom.”

I have to admit, he’s right. The dealer on Painter’s Street looked shifty and sold it to me cheap, which I didn’t think about in the moment. I’d bought a few paintings around that time, and didn’t focus in on the creep factor until several months later. I said nothing to anyone; Porter noticed it on his own. The painting is all well and good on the surface, a forest scene with all kinds of sweet elements, a pleasant wood, a charming young girl looking out at the world, resting on a rock with a crown of flowers in her hair. What’s not to like, unless you look long and hard and realize there’s something unnerving about the eyes, and once you see it you can’t unsee it. That’s how it ended up in the bathroom.

I feel guilty throwing it away, because art and stuff, but that bathroom is seldom used, so my conscience can plead semi-innocence if, over the course of years, it is accidentally damaged by moisture—darn, isn’t that a shame. Besides, it’s genuinely handsome in that room, and situated as it is over the toilet, my back is always to it, what with being female and all, and I take care not to meet its eyes when I wash my hands. Porter, being male, is not so lucky. “Its eyes are following me, mom. Instead couldn’t we hang a nice metal plaque saying ‘The toilet was invented by James Joyce in 1776?’” Read More