How to Read an Unwritten Language (13 page)

A young woman, her delicate features clear even from a distance, sat on the other side of that tree in her own circle of intensity, a large notepad on her knees. Her blond hair framing her face, she stared up at the branches, one hand ranging across the pad as if she didn't need to see what she was doing. Then she examined what she'd sketched, erased a trace of something here and there and sketched again. She worked from the crest down to the twists of exposed roots on the ground, and this last part gave her some trouble. She hesitated, erased again and looked up with such concentration that her gaze could easily have passed through the tree to me. I watched her so carefully I actually felt I was helping her draw.

Finally done, she set her pencil aside, tucked her blond hair back behind her ears, and my curiosity overcame my shyness. I found myself walking toward her, with each step shedding a bit more of my habitual restraint, and when my shadow passed over her notepad she looked up in surprise.

“Could I see?” I asked. “I hope you don't mind …

She held the notepad against her chest. Her forehead squinched in alarm, though something else in her face held me: a hint of smoke in those blue-gray eyes, the aftermath of some fire. Her lips moved slightly, silently, and I imagined she was calculating dangerous odds.

“Okay,” she said, breathing out harshly. She set the pad back down on her lap.

Prepared to dispense polite praise that hid disappointment, I looked down at a tree reproduced in such detail I could almost see the autumn color in her penciled shadings. She knew the texture of bark and the odd symmetry of branches as well as anyone.

“My god, it's like a photograph. How can you do that?”

“Oh, it's all in the shadows.” She laughed nervously. “What's there, and what's not.”

Then I noticed that behind the tree sat one lone, distant figure on the lawn—
me
, though only half filled in: empty space where my arms folded across my chest, my face an outline with almost no detail, as if obscured by distance. “Oops, I moved. Sorry—I didn't know. Hey, I'll go back and you can finish.”

She glanced down at her pad, clearly embarrassed. “No, that's all right. Anyway, I have to catch my next class.”

She stood to leave, the slight flutter of her hand a wave good-bye, and she hurried across the lawn toward the fine arts building, taking with her that unfinished me.

*

My memory of her drawing's intricate details and empty spaces stayed with me for days. I tried to take notes during lectures but I couldn't complete a sentence. Sometimes, feeling watched I'd look up and glance about, but no blue-gray eyes met mine. Soon enough I found myself wandering the halls of the fine arts building, shyness and longing rising and subsiding within me as I searched for someone whose name I didn't know.

I'd almost given up, when one afternoon I walked by the student union's plush study area and saw her ensconced on a couch, busy with her sketchpad. She radiated such concentration that I simply stood and stared. But if I waited for her to finish she might run off again, so I marched over to the couch and sat beside her.

She turned without surprise, as if expecting me—though I caught a momentary tenseness in the delicate line of her jaw—and then set her pencil down to let me look. She'd re-created a section of the Oriental rug at our feet—circles within circles of stylized flowers, like a garden from a dream.

Her eyes, so clear and yet tinged with elusive shadow, seemed to say
Do you like it?

“Of course,” I blurted out, chagrined that I'd so openly answered a question she hadn't asked. Had I read her correctly?

Her lips parted, then suppressed whatever she was about to say, and I took in the lines of her drawing again. Each detail was shaded into a slight slant, making everything vibrate, even the blank spaces she hadn't yet filled in, and then I remembered why I'd searched for her. “You never finished me, y'know. Can't I give you another chance?”

She arched an eyebrow a notch, then tamped it down. “Well, I'm not very good at drawing people.”

“Really? But that tree you drew was incredible.”

“That's what I mean—I'm good at trees. Things. Not people.” We sat in silence until I blurted out, “I know something about trees too—I used to work at a nursery. I can tell you something a little unusual about that oak you drew.”

Her attentive gaze invited me to continue, and I said, “Do you remember that bunch of fungus growing near the bottom of the trunk? Kind of wedge shaped?”

She nodded. “Uh-huh. It looked a little like … steps, from where I was sitting.”

“Yeah, that's right. Beefsteak fungus—don't ask me where the name comes from. Well, it turns the wood under the bark a nice, dark brown, which makes the tree more valuable when it's cut down.”

Her eyes narrowed—a sign of pleasure, I would eventually discover. “That's very interesting, but I can't draw what's under the bark, can I?”

“Well, maybe not directly. But I think it gives the tree more personality, don't you? Wouldn't that affect the way you draw it?”

“Certainly. Anything else I should know?”

“Let me see … ever draw a tomato plant?”

“Not lately.”

“Well, if you do, remember that the leaves are poisonous.”

“I'll try. What can you tell me about this?” she asked, gesturing to those swirling yet stationary flowers on her drawing pad.

“Sorry, I don't know much about Oriental rugs.”

We were back to silence again, so I struggled to discover something in those patterns that might be its own language, and then I recalled the curious designs left on bark by tree worms. “I can tell you an odd idea your drawing gives me,” I ventured. “It looks like letters or words from an alphabet people can't read. I mean, if flowers could write, that's what a page from one of their books might look like.”

Her hand lingered near a crescent of white petals. “That's nice,” she said. She turned the page. “What about this?”

It was an illustration of a bicycle, the spokes of its wheels flaring in furious motion, though no one rode it. She might not have been able to draw people, but she made objects animate: alone on the page, that bicycle sped headlong down its own path, on some mysterious mission.

“Well,” she said cautiously, “does this give you an odd idea too?”

“Yes, it does.” I laughed. “Those two wheels—um, see the angle you give to the tires?—seem like they're trying to move toward each other. Impossible, but sweet.”

She regarded her drawing as if with new eyes, though I couldn't tell if she agreed with my interpretation. She turned the page again. “And what about this?”

*

Her name was Kate Martin, and when I asked if I could see her again she tucked a wave of hair behind her ears and agreed in an offhand way that it would be nice if we bumped into each other again sometime. And suddenly I was alone on the couch, watching Kate making her way down the promenade, clutching her artist's folder like a shield.

What could I do in the face of such skittishness? I waited. Yet after one long week that I could barely endure I finally allowed myself to look up her name in the student directory. Then I crossed the campus, repeating her address and room number like a mantra. Hoping to engineer a chance meeting, I loitered outside her dormitory, an old brick building with long rows of windows open to the improbably mild air. Her room was on the third floor. I scanned each window carefully for a glimpse of her, and I found myself wondering how she might draw that curtain's idle fluttering up there, or the skewed reflection of the clouding sky on a pane of cracked glass. I only vaguely heard the crackling of steps through the fallen leaves behind me.

“Hello?”

I turned to see Kate balancing a pile of art books that reached to her chin. If she'd caught me at my vigil, her face betrayed nothing.

“Oh, hi,” I managed, astonished at my good luck. “Can I help you with those books?”

Kate glanced furtively toward the door of her dorm, then the hint of a smile surfaced on her lips. “You could've helped me a lot more,” she said, “if you'd waited outside the library instead of here.”

“I'll try to do better next time,” I replied in full blush. I reached out for the books on top.

Having succeeded far beyond what I'd hoped for, I happily climbed one flight of stairs after another with Kate, though when we reached her door and she fumbled with the keys I expected her to politely send me on my way. The latch clicked. Kate pushed the door open with her foot and strode inside.

“You can put them on the floor,” she said, affecting a light tone. “Doesn't matter where.”

While she hung her jacket on a coat rack, I carried my load of books as far inside her room as I dared and eased them down on her desk. Setting my backpack on the floor, I glanced around her room: the usual ancient oak dresser, prison-regulation bed, and two chairs, one with worn cushions. Not so usual were the rows of drawings tacked to the white walls and gleaming in the afternoon sun: a dried leaf; a necklace of small, ridged shells; a drinking glass, its surface delicately patterned with condensation; a few coins, face down; a worn book, its spine a tattered flap; one single, magnified blade of grass.

A breeze swept through the open window. Those drawings shivered and swayed gently, alive somehow, their rustles a whispering. “They're beautiful,” I murmured to Kate, who'd settled in the cushioned chair. “You really should try to draw people.”

“There's a reason I can't …” she said, then stopped, her calm front gone.

Afraid she thought I was hinting for her to finish my portrait, I began, “It's okay, I didn't mean to …” but my words trailed off too. Kate's face seemed to struggle with itself, a private battle that I had to turn away from.

Why had I said that? Now she was preparing to ask me to leave. I scanned Kate's gallery for one last look and paused at the drawing of a drinking glass and its moist surface. Each delicate drop was a tiny world, its tracery of shadows hinting at the teeming life within. One bulging bead appeared so ready to burst that I waited for it to streak down the glass until I heard Kate's hesitant voice.

“Would you like to hear why I don't draw people?”

Exulting inside at my good fortune, I answered, “Yes, I would.”

“Well, pull up a chair,” she said, her words traced with an odd weariness.

I sat across from Kate, and her face, bathed in afternoon light, looked as ripe as those nearly trembling beads. She stared at her gallery of drawings a few moments, as if asking their permission before beginning.

“I guess I should first tell you,” she finally said, “that I'm a transfer student. At my last college I took a lot of jobs freshman year, anything to get by and help pay for school. Once I even took a job as a model. An art class model.”

Kate paused, stared hard into my face. “I'm telling this only to you. Only to you. Do you understand, Michael?”

Already my curiosity was tempered with a vague unease, but I replied as earnestly as possible, “Sure, this is as private as you want it.”

Kate nodded, and continued. “I arrived a little early for that art class. The studio professor told me to make myself comfortable. That meant I had to undress behind a screen in the corner and put on a robe. So I did, and when I came out the studio was still empty. In front of the easels there was this riser with a small couch and stool, so I sat on the stool, and because the professor didn't say anything else I kept my robe on. When the students finally came in I checked to see if any of them were in my classes. None were, thank god. But this kept me so busy I forgot that I still hadn't taken off the robe.”

Kate looked away and ran her fingers slowly through her hair. “This is really embarrassing …”

“It's okay, you know, you can stop if—”

She shook her head, laughed. “No. I've gotten this far, haven't I?” She crossed her arms over her chest. “They all sat in front of their easels, arranging or sharpening pencils, but really, they were waiting for me. Finally the professor kind of coughed and reminded me that everyone was ready.

“If I'd undressed before they'd arrived, that would have been that. But now, with all those …
eyes
on me, I felt like I was about to do a striptease. I fumbled with the belt, my fingers were so … anyway, I dropped the robe.”

Kate turned a pale face to me and I blushed as if she'd caught me gawking, as if she'd just undressed before me and her white blouse and jeans and everything else were crumpled on the floor. But she simply said, “It's funny, but now that I've gotten started, everything's rushing back to me. I'm not usually so … talkative. I need a glass of water—my mouth is so dry.”

“I'll get it for you,” I offered, suddenly thirsty as well.

I knocked on the door of the corner bathroom and when no one answered I entered a room cluttered with towels dangling from shower rods. Shampoo bottles lined the edge of a bathtub, and toothbrushes, a nail clipper and makeup kits sprawled across the flat porcelain rims of a row of sinks. Drinking glasses of all shapes and sizes nestled together on a ledge above the water spigots, and then I recognized Kate's glass from her sketch. I filled it and gulped down cool water, then filled it again and waited for beads of condensation to appear on the glass's smooth, transparent surface, so I could see what she'd seen while drawing those beads of water.

But Kate was patiently waiting for me and I hurried back to her room. With a wan smile she took the glass. Head arched back, her throat rippled from swift gulps and I sat across from her again, now with the growing suspicion that I was being seduced. Yet Kate, her face nearly drained of color, seemed the unlikeliest person in the world to attempt this.

“Thanks,” she murmured, setting the glass down. “Well, nothing happened, I just stood there, all goose bumps. Then the professor asked, really very gently, if he could suggest a pose. All I could do was nod my head, so embarrassed that I was standing there like a stupid block, that the class still hadn't started.