Kaleidoscope (11 page)

“Oh Jade...it is completely normal to feel guilty about such things, especially when you
feel
like you're able to do such things, even when in reality, you might not yet be able to.”

Her implication that I was too broken to contribute to society did nothing to ease my parasitic feelings about myself, but I listened as she continued. “But you must remember that your mother is doing these things for you because she wants to help you, not because she's required to. Not to mention, you're contributing in other ways...by continuing to come here on your own every day, by writing in your journal and doing your best to make progress, you're contributing to your own well-being.”

“Well, I'm not the only important person on the planet,” I protested. “And I don't ever want people to think I feel like I'm entitled to anything just because I'm crazy.”

“Crazy is such an ugly word,” Ms. Orowitz replied, shuddering melodramatically. “And it's not accurate at all, especially not for you! You're on the path to healing. Just like someone going through physical therapy to get their bodies in proper shape after a car accident, you're going through mental therapy to do the same for your mind. I know you feel uncomfortable thinking of it that way, but it's a very fair comparison.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I mumbled, dismissing her logic.

Ms. Orowitz pursed her lips together; she didn't like being ignored or made to seem irrelevant. It was one thing about her that I'd caught on to and occasionally used to my advantage. She sat up taller in her seat as she prepared to blast another monologue at me, doing her best to make me understand her point of view. The truth was that I already knew her point of view, and I didn't care because it didn't change the way I saw myself.

“As stubborn as you are, you really are making wonderful progress, and you should be very proud of how far you've come since I first began seeing you. I know you're ready to conquer the world already, and that you want to repay your mother for her help in getting you this far, and you will! But it takes time. Rome wasn't built in a day,” she chastised.
How much more cliché could she possibly be?

I resolved to finish this pointless conversation with a reluctant truce as I tried to accept her well-meaning efforts. “I'll try to remember that. I will.”

This seemed to be enough to quell Ms. Orowitz's infuriating urge to persuade me into hating myself less with pure reasoning. If I was able to do that, then I certainly wouldn't still be needing to visit her once a week. I rolled my eyes furtively, careful not to let her see me in the transfixed gaze of her magnified orbs—when suddenly, I could take no more of being here with her. This room never ceased to remind me not of how far I'd come, but of how far I still had to go, and it sometimes felt like I'd never gone anywhere at all. I stood up, almost without thinking.

“Listen, I'm not feeling super great today, may I be dismissed? You have my memory exercises to look over anyway, so you have plenty of material to mull over already, I'm sure.”

“You may,” Ms. Orowitz responded. “Thanks for your time today Jade...again, I really look forward to reading what you've given me!”

“Uh huh, thanks.” I turned to leave, but halted in mid-step, whirling on my heel to face her again as a sudden realization dawned on me.

“Oh, one more thing! Um...do you have any more of those little journals that I could carry around?” I shuffled my foot in front of me. It was awkward to ask only because I knew Ms. Orowitz wanted me to. Her plan to “fix” me was going accordingly, and she knew it.

“Of course! Normally, as I told you last week, I'd like to decide whether or not the memory exercises are a proper course of continued action, but...” She rose from her imprinted chair and shuffled to a small shelf behind her desk. “I could never deny someone the tools to write simply because they wanted to! I'm afraid I only have these small ones, but if you feel the need to expand your writing into a hobby, you could always buy something bigger to have for your own.” She smiled at me and handed me another booklet of pages, this time fitted with a matte black sheen and a matching black pen.

“Thanks, I appreciate it. I'll definitely buy my own next time so I don't use up all your notebooks.”

“Oh it's no trouble at all. Same time, same place next week!”

CHAPTER TWELVE

“Alright everyone, we've come down to the final hours of our painting project. I know that painting people is hard, and I've really tested you guys with the time constraints. But I've seen a lot of your work progressing and I think it's safe to say that we're going to have some amazing results! Thank you guys so much for participating in this with me! I won't be giving much instruction today, but feel free to ask for my help if you need it!”

Mr. Pearson strode around the room in a dark green polo shirt, matched with the khaki-colored slacks that seemed to be a staple of his bland wardrobe. His hands alternated between resting on his hips and crossing in front of his chest as he slowly paced through to measure the progress of his “students.” Without thinking about it, I hunched forward a little as he passed by in an attempt to hide my canvas from view. Of course, hiding the nearly two-foot tall canvas with my average-sized frame was a rather difficult task.

Austin peered over the side of his canvas, propped up by a wooden tabletop easel, the same as mine was, across from me. “Why are you hiding your art? I bet it looks fantastic,” he said. He'd texted me the day before, reminding me how eager he was to see more of my work after looking at the small painting I kept on my bedroom desk.

“Well thank you, but it's not finished,” I said with determination.

“Fine, fine...but it's almost done, right? I mean this is it, the final stretch!”

“Almost,” I replied, mixing a tube of my own acrylic paints from home onto an art palette. “I have a few finishing touches I want to add.”

The colors I mixed were vibrant, beautiful shades of blue and purple that contrasted with the cool grey hues and light colors I'd used on a majority of the painting. Inspired by the dream I'd had recently, I wanted to add an array of butterflies to the foreground of the image. I smiled to myself as I tried my best to recall the euphoria that went along with the scene in my head, glancing over the edge of my own canvas to get a glimpse of Austin as I did so.

“Want to see mine?” he asked, his voice muffled by the bulk of his canvas. “I'll show you mine if you show me yours first.” Peeking his head over to be heard better, he sang the last line in the tune of
'Swing Life Away,'
which I'd revealed to him was one of my favorite songs.

“I said not until I'm finished!” I exclaimed, reaching deftly to paint a smear of purple on his exposed left hand. He quickly withdrew it, glaring at me as he held in a smile.

“Hey! This is a positive flow environment, stick to painting the canvas!”

***

Throughout the remainder of the period, Austin and I exchanged quiet conversation in canvas-muddled mumbles. We talked about his siblings and his mother—and also about his seldom-seen father who showed up randomly every couple of years to try to buy his childrens' love.

“It's probably for the best that his visits are becoming less and less frequent,” Austin said on the subject. “He's a dick. I don't know if he was less of one when my mom met him, but I seriously doubt it.”

We also spoke in length about his budding profession as a chef, and his plans to go to culinary school part-time during the spring at one of the local universities. I was impressed, not only by his clear goals for the future, but by his versatile ability to create in many mediums—even with food.

“What made you decide to become a chef instead of just a regular artist? I mean, you said you've done a lot of these classes and art shows and all that, so obviously you enjoy it. Why cooking?”

“Well...aside from the fact that being a chef is a way more practical career that provides the actual ability to be hired? I mean, you can't live without food.” Austin's eyes gleamed with amusement. “But really...I like to create anything and everything, in any shape or form possible. And you're right, painting and drawing are probably my favorite hobbies, next to gaming of course, but cooking is just something I've always gotten, you know? It's something I've been really good at and that comes naturally to me.

Plus, the look on someone's face when they love what they're eating—it brings joy to people in a way that's very different from the way that painting does.” He shrugged, applying a few quick, wide brushstrokes to his painting. We were approaching the last twenty minutes of the session, and we were both almost finished.

“That was a great answer. Wait...you play video games? You don't strike me as the nerdy type.”

Austin's features took on a look of mock offense. “Who said anything about me being a nerd? Video games are awesome, you should try them!”

I chuckled and shrugged my shoulders. “I don't know, I've never been much of a TV person.”

Austin chuckled too. “Well, before I go on a tangent trying to convince you that you're missing out--what about you, Jade? What do you want to do when you're older?”

I hesitated as I pondered an answer to his question. Could I tell him that I didn't really see myself being thirty or forty years old with a career, a decent car, and all of the other middle-class luxuries afforded by working one's entire life, because I didn't see myself ever making it to that age? Could I tell him I'd normally avoided thoughts of such things because it added a permanence to them—one that made it harder to back out of if I ever decided that I'd wanted to? There are so many paths in life, and I hated to think I'd pick the wrong one and just be stuck with it. There had also been, after all, a time very recently that I didn't even want to be on this planet anymore—it was the day that began an adventure through a long list of shrinks that were supposed to “fix” me.

I don't remember much of the start to my therapy, and honestly I'm glad for that in this case—but I do know it's been exactly one year and eight months since I started seeing shrinks. Six therapists, several intermittent periods of resisting it and feeling like my life was not my own to live, and several times of giving it one more try and sticking it out for a little while longer—and I still hadn't given hardly any thought to what I might want to do with my life. That is, if I ended up living a lengthier one that would require me to be productive member of society instead of the leech that I currently was.

No, I couldn't tell Austin any of that.

“I'm...not sure what I want to do,” I said finally with a sigh. “Obviously it would be great to support my family with my art, but the chances of that are slim to none. Like you said, it's not a very practical career choice. Honestly, I always figured I'd just be a server or work at a grocery store, something like that...just something to help Mom out.”

Austin smiled. “That's admirable. I can completely relate to that.” Austin had been working since he was fifteen to help his mother out at home, so I knew he could.

“But it's not like you're going to live there forever. Even if you do, you don't want to just survive—you want to live! A grocery store...come on, I know you can do better than that.”

“Well, I just haven't thought much about it,” I said, my tone indicating the end of the conversation. A few moments of silence passed as I put the last finishing strokes of paint to canvas, brushing away the insecurity I had in my lack of ambition with each flick of the paintbrush. I pushed my stool back to get a more objective view of my painting and sighed triumphantly.

“Alright, it's done,” I announced to him.

Austin's stool creaked as it slid against the linoleum-tiled floor– the speed with which he got up at this announcement was startling.

“Me too, but I want to see yours first!” He started around the edge of the table, standing behind me as I sat observing my work.

On the canvas in front of me, a beautiful woman (at least that's what I'd hoped for) sat on a dark, velvety backdrop, her legs crossed off to the side. I'd used a lot of reference from my first practice sketch for the pose because I loved it so much. She wore a strapless white gown, the top half of which was covered in black tiger stripes, and her skirt was made of a frilly tulle that resembled a wedding dress I'd later seen in a different magazine. Matching lacy gloves adorned her hands and her arms, nearly up to her elbows in my attempt to make her look even more sophisticated. I knew nothing about style, so I'd needed some help with how to approach that fundamental part of what I was going for.

But her face, unlike the sultry model in the magazine, was softer. She was blue-eyed and pale, her porcelain skin nearly washed out against the long, platinum tresses that flowed around her face, save for a trace of rouge I'd added to her cheeks and lips. She gazed off somewhere into the distance, appearing to be lost in some image within her own head. A small smile graced her lips; it was a pleasant image she'd seen. Several butterflies rested on her skirt, while dozens more flitted in both the foreground the background of the painting. She seemed oblivious to their existence, absorbed in her daydream.

I had to admit—this was probably one of my most favorite things I could ever remember painting. Proudly, I'd added my signature in black paint in the bottom right corner.
J. Lauderdale,  '14.

Austin stood silent behind me for so long that I'd turned to make sure he was still there. I was concerned about his lack of expression...did I just create a terrible mess that left him without any words at all?

“Uh...hello?” I asked him, the anxiety evident in my voice.

“Jade,” he whispered, bending down so that his face hovered next to mine. “This is absolutely beautiful.” As he fixed me with his emerald eyes, I could tell he really meant it—in fact, his sincerity was enough to add rouge to my own cheeks. I looked down, fiddling with my hair.

“You think so? I...I tried to make her kind of like a fashion model, but the expression on her face was really important, so--”

“Shut up,” he interrupted me, surprising me. “It's incredible. You've put mine to shame.”

“I highly doubt it, Mr. Art Show,” I responded, eager to take the attention off of myself. “May I see?”

Austin walked back over to his seat, and he turned the canvas on its easel to me. “You sure can. I'm telling you!”

I had no idea what Austin was talking about. As I set eyes on his work for the first time since I'd seen him drawing on the bus, my breath caught in my throat. His portrait was of a young man, probably in his twenties or maybe early thirties, leaning on his knee in a thinker pose with his chin resting thoughtfully on his hand. The man's features looked a lot like Austin's own—he had the same caramel complexion and dark hair, though the subject's was longer and slicked back for a very formal appearance. This was magnified by his grey suit, decorated with maroon-colored pinstripes that had obviously taken a painstaking amount of time to render. Austin's subject was also against a dark background, facing the opposite direction of mine. He was also gazing at something that the viewer couldn't see, though his features were more focused and less dream-like than in my painting, even with the somewhat impressionist style that Austin's canvas had taken on.

“Austin,” I gasped, leaning in to get a better look at all the details he'd been able to pack into his canvas. It was hard to believe that he'd completed it in a mere six hour period. “I don't know what you're talking about. This is probably one of the best paintings I've ever seen from someone who wasn't famous! It's even better than some of the famous painters, actually.”

He laughed wholeheartedly, a robust sound that echoed through the room. “Well, I'm no Da Vinci or anything, and I think you're just flattering me,” he replied. “But thank you. I'm glad you like it.” He paused thoughtfully. “I like that even though we didn't see each other's paintings, that they almost go together.”

A dawning of realization struck Austin's handsome features, and his eyes widened.

“Actually...Jade! Do you realize...” He flitted hastily back to my side of the table, and I threw my hands up in surprise.

“Realize what? What is it?” I demanded.

Instead of saying anything more, he simply reached past me,  brushing against me with his torso as he pulled his easel to my side of the table. Then, he stepped around me, pushing it so that his painting was nearly touching my own canvas.

With awe, satisfaction, and a tinge of excitement, it only took me a moment to see what he saw.

“It's like they were made for each other,” he said, glancing down at me and crossing his arms over his chest. The two characters, facing in opposite directions, appeared to be looking towards each other when rearranged. Though our styles were a bit different—his had that impressionistic touch to it, while I grasped for a ghost-like realism—they did, in fact, appear as if they could belong together in a set. The warm and cool color schemes, similar contrast styles and composition...I could hardly believe my eyes. I simply stared at the two paintings.

“Wow, what are the odds...” Austin grinned. “I guess great minds think alike, huh?”

Mr. Pearson stood at the front of the class. “Alright,” he announced, loud enough to catch everyone's attention. “We only have a couple minutes left, so start cleaning up your supplies if you haven't already, and bring your finished pieces up to the front! I'll be setting them up all along the hallway outside until the first of December, alright? The rest of the staff will help vote for a few that really stand out, and those will be displayed out in the lobby!”