Fragile Beasts (32 page)

To Luis, he was an idol, friend, mentor, and savior. He not only offered Luis an escape from the confines of a large family and small town but he provided him with a new philosophy to live by. He changed his life by allowing him into his own.

“Qué te pasa?” I hear Luis behind me. “Snooping? Looking for cigarettes and pornography?”

“Oh, please,” I tell him. “I came by to show you Shelby’s postcard and Rafael’s letter, and your door was wide open.”

I hand them to him.

“Where were you?” I ask.

“Outside. I was haggling with that new man over his price for rabbits.”

“And?”

“And I see conejo con ciruelas in our future.”

I smile and take a seat in an easy chair.

“Shelby seems to be having a wonderful time in Paris. She made me start thinking about Kyle and Klint. I feel like I’m not doing enough for them. I should be expanding their horizons, not just feeding them. I thought that maybe we should give them Spanish lessons.”

Luis puts down Rafael’s newspaper clippings, throws up his hands, and rolls his eyes.

“Te has vuelto loca o qué?”

“There’s no need to be so dramatic. No, I’m not crazy. What’s wrong with wanting them to learn a second language?”

“You can want it but unless they want it, it’s not going to happen.”

“Then how about a trip to Pittsburgh? I could take them to a museum or to see some live theater. Or maybe something historical? An outing to Gettysburg?”

“Oh, yes, yes, that would be good,” he replies with exaggerated eagerness. “That’s what they want. To drive two hours so they can stand freezing in an empty field while you tell them about cannonballs and slavery. At least it will be an interesting account coming from someone who lived through that time period.”

“You’re very funny.”

“I think you are doing enough for them.”

I get up from the chair with the intention of leaving, but as I’m crossing the room, I catch sight of a sketch lying next to Luis’s computer.

“What’s this?” I ask.

“Oh, no,” Luis rushes over and tries to take it from me.

“It looks just like your brother Javier except it’s obviously a caricature. It’s very good. Where did you get it?”

Some inner turmoil plays across Luis’s face. I can’t imagine why he’d want to hide the identity of the artist. I’m about to ask him again when he replies defeatedly, “From Kyle.”

“Kyle?”

“Yes, Kyle. He’s doing one of each of my siblings. It’s going to be a Christmas gift for Miguel.”

I examine the sketch closer.

“I had no idea he could draw.”

“He can paint, too.”

“Paint? You’ve seen paintings?”

“Yes.”

“Why hasn’t he told me about this? He sees the paintings hanging in my house. He must understand how much I love art.”

“I found out about it only because I ran into him one day when he had his
sketch pad with him and he was forced to explain. He’s shy about his talent. I’d say he’s almost embarrassed by it. He has no confidence yet.”

“Then he needs to get some.”

Luis takes the sketch from me and puts it in a drawer.

“He’s not going to get any if you come down on him like a pound of bricks.”

“A ton of bricks,” I correct him.

“It doesn’t matter. Even one brick is a lot if someone throws it at your head. You’ll scare him away,” he scolds me. “You have to be subtle.”

“I can be subtle.”

“No, you can’t.”

My head is instantly whirling with plans.

“He probably needs some quality supplies. I could let him turn Stan’s upstairs study into a studio. It has wonderful light. He should take art lessons.”

Luis stops me with a glare.

“Great artists find their own way. They aren’t coached like baseball players.”

“I don’t want to coach him. I want to encourage him. He should be nurtured.”

“He should be left alone.”

I reach past Luis, open the drawer, and retrieve Kyle’s picture.

“I can’t ignore this,” I say.

Luis sighs.

“I know.”

I spend the next few days trying to decide how I should broach the subject of art with Kyle. Luis did have a good point about the need for subtlety. Every scenario I concoct seems too deliberate, and I finally accept that I’m going to have to be spontaneous.

An opportunity presents itself on a Sunday afternoon when I happen to run into Kyle in the upstairs hallway, which is an extremely rare occurrence. He’s without his brother, and he doesn’t seem to be in any particular hurry.

He greets me and I motion him toward me.

“What do you think of this painting?” I ask as he comes to stand in front of a reproduction of
Los Borrachos
.

“Almost all of the paintings here in my home are originals,” I explain to him, “but I have a few copies of some of my favorites that are out of my
league, so to speak. This one is a reproduction of a very famous painting by one of Spain’s most famous artists. Have you ever heard of Velázquez?”

“No.”

“No? Well, certainly you’ve heard of Goya.”

“No.”

“No?! What do they teach you in school?”

“I don’t know. A bunch of stuff, I guess, but not much about Spanish artists.”

“Have you heard of Picasso?”

“Sure. Everyone’s heard of Picasso. Even the guys on Klint’s team know who he is.”

“Really?” I say, pleasantly surprised. “You mean to tell me these baseball players discuss Picasso’s artwork with you?”

“Not exactly. One time one of them came up on me while I was drawing a picture waiting for Klint to finish practice. He took it and showed it to everyone, and they all made fun of me. Then after that every time I’d come around one of them would say, “Hey, look. It’s Klint’s brother. He thinks he’s friggin’ Picasso.”

My brief hopes are dashed.

“Sorry about the language,” he quickly adds.

“That’s terrible.”

“It’s nothing.”

He shrugs off the memory.

“Yeah. I like this painting. I’ve noticed it before. The expressions on their faces are very realistic and …”

He pauses to search for a word and comes up with the correct one.

“… and modern. They look like guys I know. They could be my dad’s bowling buddies. They’re drunk, right?”

“Yes. It’s called
Los Borrachos
. The Drunkards. This figure over here is Bacchus, the god of wine.”

“When was it painted?”

“In the early sixteen hundreds.”

“It’s kind of cool to think that four hundred years ago people were still pretty much the same.”

“I’ve always thought it’s a shame they haven’t changed.”

He smiles at this, and I’m seized by an urge to show him my most cherished painting.

“Come this way, Kyle. I want to show you something else.”

I lead him to my room. It’s large and airy with a high ceiling, two walls of windows, and a soothing pale green color scheme. I can’t stand clutter in the place where I sleep. For this reason I have few furnishings and none of the bric-a-brac—the jewelry boxes, perfume bottles, and framed photos—that most women display on dresser tops and bedside tables.

I have only one painting here.

“This is my pride and joy,” I tell Kyle. “It’s an original Joaquín Sorolla. It was given to Manuel by a wealthy fan who was an art collector. Manuel gave it to me because I loved it so much.”

Kyle studies the beach scene. A girl and boy, holding hands, stand in front of a spangled sea. The shirtless, barefoot boy stares down at his younger sister in a billowing pink dress who’s tugging him toward the water. He watches her with touching patience.

“It’s beautiful,” Kyle states simply.

He continues staring at it, and his expression turns sad.

“What is it?” I ask him.

“The girl. Her face. She looks a lot like my sister.”

“You don’t talk much about your sister.”

“There’s not much to talk about. I don’t get to see her.”

“Would you like to see her?”

“Sure.”

“Why don’t you tell your mother this?”

“I don’t know. It’s kind of hard to talk to her about stuff like that.”

“Surely you can ask to see your own sister,” I say, trying to control my temper against this woman who I’ve only met once but feel a lifetime of hostility toward.

“She’d take it the wrong way and get mad.”

“How could she possibly …,” I start to ask him but he looks so uncomfortable, I decide it’s a topic I should drop.

“Kyle, I wanted to talk to you about your own art.”

The panic in his eyes should be enough warning to me that I should drop this topic, too, but I forge ahead.

“I’ve discovered that you’re quite talented. I’d like to help you. I could arrange for art lessons.”

He shakes his head vigorously.

“No. I don’t want any help. It’s not like that. It’s just something I do.”

“But don’t you want to improve?”

“I don’t know. I guess. But I don’t want to make a big deal out of it.”

“Art lessons wouldn’t be a big deal.”

He continues shaking his head while he blushes deeply.

“No. No lessons.”

“Are you embarrassed?”

“I entered an art contest once. I wouldn’t have done that if I was embarrassed.”

“How did you do?”

“I took second place.”

“That’s wonderful,” I cry as a startling burst of irrationally extreme pride surges through me.

“No. See. That’s what I mean. It’s nothing great.”

“It is great.”

“No, no, it’s not.”

Watching the torment on his face, I suddenly recall Luis’s words. If Kyle was actually dodging real bricks, he couldn’t look more frantic and distressed than he does now.

“I’m sorry. I’ve made you uncomfortable. I’ll drop the subject.”

“Thank you.”

“But could I at least see some of your work?”

He turns back to the painting, which seems to calm him. I see a level of comprehension in his eyes that I know I don’t possess.

“Okay,” he says.

It will be his first act of faith in me and my first true test as a guardian angel.

E
veryone assumes if you’re going to paint a picture, the reason behind it is so other people can look at it. I guess that makes sense, but that’s not why I do it. I don’t like to show people my artwork. I’d rather stand in front of someone naked than show them one of my paintings, and believe me, I’m not exactly thrilled about my body.

My mom used to say I was obsessed with drawing when I was a little kid. There was no pride in this observation. She made it sound like I had a disease. My dad was a little more forgiving. He’d take the time to look at what I handed to him, and, for a moment, I’d see a glimmer of wonderment in his eyes before they’d fill with confusion. He didn’t understand what I was doing or why I was doing it or how I was able to do it. My talent was an attack on his sensibilities and on my mom’s ego. In their minds, it was something I did on purpose to make myself different from them. If I had to pick one quality in my mom and dad that harmed their parenting skills the most, it would be that they took everything personally.

Maybe I was different from them but not because I tried to be. I look at the world in a different way. I see shadows and angles instead of objects. I see light and color instead of situations. What I see I need to put on paper.

Once I’m finished with a project, it feels like a violation of my privacy to show it to someone else. (Except for the drawings I used to do for Krystal and now the ones I’m doing for Luis. It’s not the same when you make something especially for someone.) This isn’t because I’m embarrassed. I don’t care if someone hates my work, and I’m definitely not searching for compliments. The only thing worse than people who make fun of an artist is the people who make too much of him. The reason I don’t like anyone looking at it is because I feel like no one has the right to have any opinion at all.

Miss Jack liked what I showed her. She knows what she’s talking about when it comes to art—and she’s not a bullshitter—so hers was one opinion that meant something to me for a change. She also didn’t do any phony raving about how great I am. She talked mostly about my promise and potential. I liked the fact that she assumed I’m not going to stop.

She was true to her word and didn’t bring up art lessons again. She brought me a couple art books instead: one about the Prado in Madrid and the other about Joaquín Sorolla. She told me I should copy some of the pictures in them, and I told her I thought it was wrong to copy. She said not in the case of painters. It was very important to copy the masters in order to learn technique and form. Hadn’t I ever seen people in art museums doing sketches of the paintings? What did I think they were doing? she asked me. When I told her I’ve never been to an art museum, she got the same outraged look on her face that she did when I told her I didn’t know Goya. At first I regretted the confession because I saw a forced trip to an art museum looming on my horizon, but the more I thought about it, I realized I wouldn’t mind going.

I’ve had the books for about two weeks now, and I’m having a hard time concentrating on anything else. All I want to do is look at the paintings. After I’m done, the images seem seared onto my brain, and I can see them clearly even while I’m falling asleep at night. Sometimes I’ll remember something specific about a particular painting and I feel like I’m going to go crazy if I can’t get back to the book to check it out.

I even started taking the Sorolla book to school with me. (The Prado book is too big.) Not only is it a book filled with paintings of children frolicking in the sea and women with parasols strolling through gardens but the cover is pink with bright purple lettering. I keep it well hidden in my locker and only take it out when I’m sure no one’s going to see it. Once I even took it to the john with me.

I know I’m taking a big risk but I can’t stop myself. I feel the same way I did when I had to draw the blown-glass fish on my mom’s kitchen wall. My personal safety has become a secondary consideration.

I finally chose two pictures to try copying. One is a dark, intricate battle scene by Goya. The other is a sunny impressionist seashore scene by Sorolla similar to the one Miss Jack owns. This time the roles are reversed and the sister is older and is trying to lead her baby brother into the surf.