Simon Says (7 page)

I don't know how I'm going to make a living with my art, and I don't care. I could dig ditches or work in a factory—any sort of boring day job in order to pay the bills, so long as it leaves my head clear for painting.

So I cleaned out a storage room in the basement—Charlie's den for his little hobby, like Dad has the garage. I saved my allowance and birthday money for supplies, and I kept painting—in the afternoons, at least, when they were both at their jobs. Then, when they came home, I'd have dinner with them like a nice, ordinary son, and do my homework, as if I cared about the grades that were supposed to get me into college. Sometimes I'd paint again after they went to bed, or I'd get up early and paint I'd hear the pipes when Mom took her shower and know it was time to stop. If they didn't want to see my paintings, they didn't have to see
them. And neither did anybody else.
Simon says ... keep your art separate...
So I made sketches in school and hid my paintings in the basement. Those sketches of the elementary school teachers who didn't like my pictures finally paid off—in middle school I started doing cartoons for the school paper. The other kids seemed to like my caricatures. So did the teachers, as long as I didn't draw them. I was pretty sure everybody liked the cartoons more than they'd like the real paintings. What a joke—caricatures in print, and all this for real.

One canvas freezes me as I crouch, flipping through the pile. Why did I bring this one? I see a portrait of a girl, beautiful, lush—not my style at all—with long silken black hair and wide, trusting blue-black eyes that pull me, drowning, into the past.

Mr. Brooks is right. I could use a class in portraiture. The canvas isn't much like the subject. When I painted it, I couldn't understand why Cindy refused to recognize herself. Now it's pretty clear. I painted love, not the girl herself. An adult would laugh at it, I guess. But it was true for me then. Looking at it now, I have to admit that Cindy was never like that. I just thought she was.

But she could have been.

It was spring of ninth grade (
after all those school art teachers, after giving up on Steve, after I should have known better
), and I had two tickets to the touring production of
Phantom of the Opera
and no date for the show. Cindy was gorgeous; I have to admit my painting doesn't lie about that And she'd never been obnoxious to me, like the jocks and most of the other girls who went out with them. She'd even say something nice
about my caricatures once in a while. Everybody was talking about the show and how hard it was to get tickets. The matinee seats were a birthday present from my mother—she wanted me to get out more and do things with other kids. I would never have expected Cindy to go out with me normally, but I thought maybe the show would be a big enough incentive to interest her. Even though I didn't really think she'd say yes, I asked her—and she did. I didn't expect to enjoy the matinee (the show was pretty glitzy), but the performance seemed to have a kind of glow about it And so did Cindy.

She asked questions about my drawings, and she wanted to know why I didn't do more than just the cartoons in the paper and messing around in art class at school. She said she'd heard I painted some great stuff in eighth grade. I couldn't believe she'd actually been talking to the other kids about me. But Mrs. Sayers was terrific in eighth grade. I didn't show her any of my real paintings, but I did more in class than I'd done in a long time, and it was as if she could guess at the paintings she couldn't see. She was always encouraging me to try something new. In ninth grade we had a by-the-book right-and-wrong teacher who was probably afraid her students might be more creative than she was. And after what Steve had told me—well, I didn't feel like exposing much in class anymore.

Cindy and I talked all through the intermission, and then we went for pizza after the show, and I told her a little about my painting, and she seemed to listen, really listen. She didn't make fun of the idea of being an artist Maybe she thought it was romantic. I don't know what
she thought I just looked into her blue-black eyes and talked, and she smiled up at me like what I was saying was special.

We went out a few more times and ate lunch together every day in front of all the other kids in the cafeteria. She really seemed to want them to see her with me. The kids smiled at us, secretive, unfriendly smiles, but I ignored them. I just loved being with her. Then I painted her from memory, and I knew I had to show her the portrait and my other paintings also. Cindy would understand—unlike my mother. She wouldn't tell me it was a phase I was supposed to outgrow. Cindy wouldn't act as if there was something wrong with painting pictures that showed people there was hope beyond the wolves and the heart-crushing expectations that tried to cut you down to something petty and mediocre. I knew Cindy would
see
what I was trying to do with my paintings. And her reaction would be a taste of what I'd see on everyone's face when I had my first show. I was still young enough to think the day would come when I could show my paintings to the world.

So she came over one Thursday afternoon while my parents were at work. We sat on the couch for a while—she wanted to make out, but I couldn't get into it No matter what I dreamed in the dark, I wanted to give her something more than just hot skin and sweaty hands in the light I wanted to give her myself.
Stupid—I was so stupid.
I led her down to the half-finished basement where I had my studio, and flicked on the banks of work lights. My paintings were set along the walls so she could see them. Only the best ones were out I had others
stored in cases, ones I wasn't as satisfied with but that weren't bad enough to scrape off and paint over.

Cindy saw the portrait first, and looked puzzled. Then she looked at the canvases, one by one, and said nice things, but she acted confused, almost frightened. I thought maybe she was overwhelmed—it was a lot to take in. She didn't say very much, in the end, and she didn't stay as long as I'd hoped. But I sat in my studio after she'd left, not feeling so alone there, because someone had seen my work—had really
looked,
and had really
seen.
It was the best evening I ever spent I only went upstairs for supper, then hurried back to sit there, seeing my paintings through Cindy's eyes. I couldn't wait to see her at school the next day.

But Cindy was in a rush at her locker the next morning, and when I practically beat the bell getting out of biology to meet her for lunch, there was another guy at her locker with her—Rob Gorey, one of the basketball players. I figured she was just giving him an assignment or something, but then—She saw me, and her eyes slid away. She looked up at Rob and smiled in that special way I'd thought was just for me. My stomach clenched, and I tried to breathe but my lungs felt like balloons with the tops twisted, pressing against my rib cage. I remembered the secretive smiles. The other kids had known, all along. She'd wanted Rob from the start She just wanted to make him jealous by going out with someone else—someone expendable. She used me. And I let her see my paintings.

Cindy laughed. She leaned against Rob and she laughed, a high splintering sound. There was a roaring
in my ears, but I heard the words she spoke—something about boys who think a bunch of oily, ugly paintings is a big deal. Even though it was hard for me to hear her, I'm sure she called them ugly.

The two of them seemed spotlighted under the fluorescent lights, as if they were the only ones lit up in the crowded hallway. Cindy's black eyes flashed, and her hair wrapped around her like a shroud. Beside her, Rob stood in his black T-shirt, stiff as a poker. I stared, seeing ugly oils on canvas, and the two blacks fused, rimmed by bright lights, and my world turned black.

I skipped lunch. I skipped the afternoon. I went back to school the next day, but I skipped the rest of the year for all that. My left hand scrawled pop quizzes and then finals, but my mind was in my studio, keeping it locked, keeping my paintings safe. I promised my paintings that I had let them (
myself
) down for the last time. Mother was right:
Keep your art separate—keep those pictures to yourself
Then I was out of middle school and away from the kids who'd known Cindy and seen her that day—the kids who'd smirked—the kids who'd known what she really thought of me. Tenth grade, starting high school, was a blank slate, and that was easier. I could play a part in the classroom (I had learned to stumble through the motions of Simon Says at last), and I could come home and hide in the basement, painting behind a locked door. I certainly never took another art class, though. I just drew cartoons for the school paper.

And I never let anyone else, not even my parents, see my paintings again, until the auditions for Whitman. If
I wanted to get accepted, if I wanted to meet Graeme Brandt (
if I still dreamed of someday learning how to find the courage to show my art for real
), I had no choice except to show four of them to the committee.

I stand up slowly in my new studio, my knees stiff. I slide Cindy's portrait behind another canvas—a scene of birch trees, their trunks lined up like prison bars. I want to forget I ever let her into my studio.
I can still hear her brittle laugh, shattering me.
What I do here belongs to no one but myself.

The tree-trunk-prison painting reminds me of the rustling birds in the trees. I open another case and pull out one of the canvases I'd stretched and prepared before coming here. I prop it up on my easel and lay out my palette. I sketch in the shape of looming trees in a few strokes of a yellow ocher wash, then mark off the section for the birds overhead. In the foreground, just left of center, I rough in the shape of a person. I study the proportions. Does Mr. Brooks think I need work on perspective, too? Well see what I can take away from the class. The perspective looks right to me.

I begin mixing brown umber tones, and tree bark laced with shadows grows on the canvas. Around me, time stops. This is what I should be doing, not reliving the past but painting in the present I flow into the paint, remembering the lowering threat of the birds half hidden in the lacework of night-dark tree branches, and pouring that feeling into the work. There's only color and texture. If I heard music right now, it would be colors exploding inside my brain. Footfalls on the stairs are muddy gray, the voices in the hall are orange flashes,
seared with yellow. If I could see the students out there, they'd be moving shapes and patterns on a canvas, not threats or disappointments.

I can sense how good the painting is, how
true
it is.

I can't risk this feeling by letting anyone see the final picture. But it's not a risk, because the kid who dreamed of showing his paintings (
even as recently as last night, as recently as meeting Graeme Brandt, before seeing that he didn't have any magic answers
) is a different person now. He crippled his dreams to keep his paintings alive, fragments of color and texture barricaded within four walls and guarded by a hasp lock.

By the time I stop, the gray light outside has faded to a rainy twilight, and I've painted more than I thought I stretch sore shoulders and look at the figure striding between the murky trees, unafraid of hidden demons, knowing they're above him, but not caring. I scrape my palette and pry open the turpentine to clean my brushes. Then I look around the studio. There's something I haven't yet unpacked.

I find it in the crate with the supplies I intend to use for art classes here. It's the only sketch I ever made of myself, before the back view on my application. This is the only one that shows my face—sort of, anyway. I drew it when I started high school. It shows me as a masked Harlequin, like one of Mother's Comedia del Arte figures, armed with my pen poised in my left hand, holding my sketch pad as a shield, standing so that I hide a draped canvas on an easel behind me. I hammer a tack into the back of the door with the body of the hasp lock and hang the sketch there. That way I can see
it every time I leave the studio. It will remind me of my selves—the self that paints what could (
should
) be, and the self that caricatures what actually is—of the distinctions I don't dare forget If only there were a way I
could
forget them.

I thought I could learn how to bring those selves together here. After reading
The Eye of the Storm,
I thought Graeme Brandt understood the dangers of being driven by other people's expectations and judgments. I thought he knew the secret of how to be himself, out where everybody could see, and not be hurt by them. I wanted him to show me how I could give up the locks and masks. But I guess I picked the wrong person to believe in (
again
). He doesn't know the secret either.

So how did he write that book?

Excerpts from
Graeme Brandt's Journal

LETTER TO MYSELF

September 10 (Freshman Year)

Dear Graeme,

No. It might as well be Gray. As long as everybody else calls you by that nickname, you can just get used to it Remember, you have to live up to their expectations in the little stuff-keep them happy so they'll let you have your own way in the things that matter. Always remember that.

Remember that you have to take the right courses at school. Mr. Adler told you which ones he thought you should take, and you like them because he said you would. It doesn't matter that you'd rather have taken Shakespeare than the Modern Novel; it doesn't matter that you had to write about Kazuo Ishiguro when you wanted to write about Thomas Pynchon. You learned some interesting stuff, anyway. And what really matters is that Mr. Adler is pleased that you're following his advice. He likes your work and he's excited about your writing, so do what he says.

Remember you have to hang out with the right people. This year you're rooming with Jeff Langley, and the dorm parents think he's a great guy, never a problem. Your parents like him, too, and
their
opinion is what matters. They think Whitman might be too big a step for you-they're scared you might meet weirdos who do drugs, or creative types who wear strange clothes and do embarrassing things in public.
But Jeff has short hair and calls Dad "sir," so your folks approve of him. They don't know he's probably going to flunk out his sophomore year unless you write his papers for him or his own parents can buy him passing grades. Jeffs not stupid, but he's already an alcoholic Well ... at least it's not drugs. So you don't bug him about it, and you take a drink when he offers, even if you sip it very slowly. Jeff likes you to look up to him as someone who knows his way around, who can show you the ropes at Whitman. And your parents like to think he's keeping you out of trouble. Let them think that, if it makes them happy-they're going to think it anyway.