Simon Says (24 page)

Except—There
was
something he wanted, wasn't there? I don't need a computer screen to remember his journals—he wrote that he wanted readers to look at things from a new perspective. He wanted to show them things they hadn't known before. And he did that in his two books. I swallow, finally seeing the true magnitude of his waste. Graeme didn't just want to reflect other people's ideas in his writing. "What mattered to him was showing new ideas—new perspectives. And he accomplished that Only he never realized it.

He told me on the rooftop that he showed his readers what they were doing and who they were in his books, so they'd stop and think about themselves. I think of the way I show what to reach for in my paintings, and remember Steve telling me that they made him uncomfortable because they demanded too much. Maybe my paintings don't speak to everyone—maybe
Graeme's books speak to people who would turn away from my paintings. His books don't tell them what to strive for, but if it makes them think about who they are and change themselves because they aren't who they wanted to be, isn't that the same effect? And he would have gone on finding new ways to make readers think, if he hadn't killed himself.

"You shouldn't have accepted that there were only two possibilities open to you," I say out loud, as if his spirit could still hear me, "either my judgment, or the empty reflection you let the world make you into. You should have fought harder to find a way to live up to your writing, the way I try to live up to my paintings. I came here wanting to change, even if I didn't know how."

And suddenly I realize that Graeme may have decided he couldn't change (
decided wrongly, because he
did
have so much more to give—it's a mistake he can't ever take back),
but his journals and his books were showing me a different idea—they were telling me that I could change. He didn't want me to stay hidden in my studio. He thought he couldn't be the person (
creator
) he wanted to be in the end (
the person I wanted him to be—yes, but he wanted it, too
), and he chose to kill himself because he couldn't go on living with the emptiness (
and he wasn't empty—if he'd only held on, he could have found the self inside, the self that reached out to his readers and showed them ideas they hadn't thought about before—the self he always wanted to be, and
was). But even if he couldn't see it in himself, he could see
that I wasn't empty. I'm afraid, but I'm not empty. He was telling me I could let the Kyles of the world lock me away forever, or I could set myself free.

When have you felt most alive, Charles?

When Graeme Brandt stood in my studio and looked at my paintings.

You're right, Graeme. I can't hide forever.

I sit down beside his grave, confessing the real secret of my heart that I'd kept hidden. The sketch I made of you wasn't a lie, but it was only a moment's truth—sketches are transitory, because who you are at any moment is only one step on the road of who you become. I've made myself stay that masked Harlequin for far too long. You didn't have to stay a mirror forever. When you decided you didn't like that image, it wasn't too late to change. But my true guilt is deeper. Instead of showing you that momentary sketch first, I should have let you see my paintings. Paintings are eternal because they're a promise of what might be, and that potential is always somewhere ahead of you, forever possible and forever worth striving for.

Suppose you'd seen my paintings when your mother and your teachers were trying to mold you into their idea of a writer, and your father was trying to mold you into his idea of the perfect son—when they were all teaching you to play Simon Says? Could you have shown them your real self then, instead of reflecting back the image they wanted? And even though you didn't see my paintings until too late, even though you didn't believe you had a real self, you
did
have a self buried deep inside the heart of the kaleidoscope—a self that was strain
ing to get out, and you put that self—your ideas—into your books. You've left behind a legacy that will make a difference to everyone who reads them, who understands them. You left me a legacy, too—the demand that I admit the truth.

If I died today, who would be better for my having lived? No one. I think of my paintings, of my hope in asking Steve to look at them, of my pride in showing them to Cindy, of my pleasure and shame at my father's hanging that football painting in his office, of my longing for my parents to really look at my paintings and understand them. I always meant for my work to be seen.

I think of my father hopefully extolling the possibilities of computer programming, and my mother looking away from my paintings, and I ache with wishing I'd kept on showing them my real work until they accepted it—and accepted me. Why didn't I? Why weren't they out in the open for Graeme to see?

Mother says ... paint happy pictures, Charlie, pictures that won't make people nervous. Keep the. other pictures to yourself.
Comforting words when I was little and the other kids made fun of me, then called me names, then finally looked at me strangely and pushed me away. Comforting words for a mother who doesn't want her friends to think there's something wrong with her because she has an artistic son. But I'm no longer a child to do what Mother says.
You're not a little boy anymore, Charlie—painting pictures is fine for a hobby
—I'm
not
a little boy anymore, and I've got to find a way to take responsibility for myself—for my art. It's not just a hobby. It's never been a hobby. It's my life.

And they were never comforting words, were they?
Simon says ... keep your art separate, keep it safe from the people who laugh at you or sneer at you, who resent your drawings
—It wasn't me keeping my art safe—ever—any more than it was Graeme becoming his own person by taking his own life. He made me into his Simon so that I could take the blame for his wasted future. And I let my mother be my Simon—Or did I
make
her be my Simon, telling me what to do? Instead of her being entirely responsible for being disappointed in the son she's got, did I somehow make her feel that she had to tell me how to behave? Did Graeme
make
his mother into the domineering voice who told him to be a writer, and did I make mine into a barricade against the hurt?

The simple tombstone shudders and blurs through a gray wash of tears until there are two tombstones—one for Graeme's body, one for the lost hopes we both share. I shake my head. Does
everyone
play Simon Says? Was Rachel trying to fix me because I expected her to? Do we all react to each other's expectations, even when we think we're not?

And then it comes to me, like a silver-plucked violin note hanging in the air. Not everyone.

I blink away the tears, put the folded letter carefully away in my pack, and climb stiffly to my feet, my anger at Graeme for casting me as his Simon slowly bleeding away like the colors draining from a paintbrush dipped in turpentine. It was his fault for looking for Simons everywhere, for believing there had to be someone else telling him who he was. It was his fault for believing me, and wasting everything he could have become—that
insight, that shining potential. But he was right—I was doing it, too. I listened way too long even when I thought I was screaming defiance in paint I listened to the voice condemning me to isolation, and I did what I was told. There's only one person I know who doesn't listen to any Simon.

Perhaps Graeme wasn't the one I came here to meet after all. Perhaps it isn't too late to ask the question I came to Whitman to get answered.

I feel my feet moving, leaving Graeme's escape behind, thudding across the pavement, back onto campus, running through the soft grass, past staring strangers, to corridors of practice rooms beneath the concert halL I stumble to a halt under soundproofed ceilings, scanning the room numbers, muffled bass beats throbbing around me.
Well, if you get stranded in the rain before reaching your safe haven, you can always dry off in 207 downstairs—I leave it unlocked.
The closest door says 221, and I hurry down the crowded hallway before I lose my nerve.

When I turn the handle of 207 and pull the door open, music swirls into the hall, exuberant red-gold chords dancing from the piano. Heads turn in the hallway, but the faces aren't glaring at me for letting the noise out Instead, they light up at the joy in the rippled notes. I step into a room cluttered with stacks of sheet music and bulging notebooks and stray CDs and even a dusty sweatshirt wadded up against the baffled cork walls, and ease the door shut behind me. The hall and
the feces disappear and even the clutter fades until there's nothing but me and the piano and the figure bent over the keyboard, releasing that radiant music. Adrian.

I think of his courage in letting his quartet be performed, in risking Tyler's reviews, in learning from the teachers here instead of hiding from them. I remember him coming back after Christmas vacation, hurt again by his parents' disapproval, sharp-tongued for a few weeks but refusing to lose himself or pretend to be something he's not. There are some things about yourself you can't choose to change, but you can change how you choose to live that self—stillborn, or all the way.

The music reaches its climax and dances to its finish, then his hands come to rest on the keys. For a moment his hazel eyes are unfocused. A smile plays softly across his lips like his music's lingering echo, and I stare, unable to speak. It's my sketch come to life—the face lit with love for the music that the mind and the heart have created. I'm stunned at my blindness in not seeing that he was the person I was looking for all this time—and shocked at how wrong I had been about that night at the party after the one-acts. Adrian didn't misunderstand either sketch, not for a moment. He didn't suspect that my sketch of him betrayed feelings that were different from my feelings for Graeme. He recognized himself in the way I sketched him. So he knew that if I could see inside of him, I could see inside of Graeme as well and find the emptiness there. He'd probably seen it long before. Adrian had never crowded around Graeme with the other admirers.

He sees me and blinks, his expression suddenly clouding. Oh God—did I succeed in pushing him away this morning? Is it too late after all?

"Charles?" His voice is wary, but not angry, as he half rises from the piano bench. "Are you all right?"

Thank you for not hating me. Now—please be the one Pm searching for.
"How can I do it?" I ask unsteadily, now that I'm finally poised on the parapet's brink for real. "Can you tell me how?"

He sinks back down, one arm resting protectively across his keyboard, frowning slightly. "Tell you how to do what?"

I ask the question at last "How can I show my paintings?"

Adrian doesn't turn away from me in disgust He doesn't repeat the answers he gave me in the dark—they were only the beginning. He studies me in silence for a long heartbeat Then he says, "Well, if it's anything like music, you're so excited about it that you play it for people who let you down by hating it Or by hating you for writing it."

I've done that I look down at my knuckles and see how white they are. Somewhere, in a different studio, a high string note soars hauntingly.

"But you already know that part don't you?" he asks. "Ifs not the end, though. The music won't go out of your head, so you keep playing it—you play it for someone else who's blown away, and you know inside that they're making too much of it but at the same time you can't help hoping they're not."

I think of Graeme standing transfixed in my studio.
He exaggerated my paintings in his journal—I know they're not masterpieces; they're not that deep, not yet, anyway. But I have it in me to become that good, that deep, in time, if I open up and let myself learn more. I feel a smile starting to build inside of me.

"And then, because it sounds so right to you," Adrian goes on, "you keep playing it, and writing new stuff, and playing that And after a while, you stop listening to the Tylers, and to the people who make too much of it and to anything except the song inside of you and the voices of people who can help you make it truer. And pretty soon, you're not asking
how
can I, any longer, but
who else
can I play it for."

I nod. That's what I want—to keep painting, and to listen to the people who can show me how to become better. "Thank you." And then, "I'm sorry—about your sketch this morning. I lied." In a rush, "It wasn't flattery—it was true—it
is
a true drawing."

He smiles suddenly, and I realize he's matching the smile on my face.

In the end, can forgiveness be that easy? Except..."But how can you just stop listening to the people who hate you for what you can do, for who you are—who want you to be someone else? How can you ever get close to anyone, if they all want you to be—well, who they imagined? Who Simon says you should be? Like—your parents who don't want you to write music—or be gay..." My voice trails off.

He looks away for a moment, flushing. Then he shrugs one shoulder. "Well, I just try to keep telling myself that not everyone's perfect I'm certainly not Other
people aren't, either, especially if they choose to play Simon Says. But whether they play games or not, they can love you and still not be able to understand you. All you can do is accept that and love them back and not expect too much. I mean"—he chuckles faintly—"you can't give up, and you can't give in, can you? I just tell myself that one day I'll find someone who loves my music, and me, for myself."

Could it really be that simple? Just not giving up and not giving in? In the end, does it come down to me accepting myself?

I think it does.

I smile at him. "Want to see something?"

He cocks his head to one side. "What?"

"Unless you're in the middle of something," I say, suddenly remembering how I burst into his practice room.

He laughs, a sound as happy as his music. "That was only my composition project, and it's finished—graded and everything. I was just playing it because I like it."