Life Drawing (20 page)

“Yeah. I know. But then why are you doing this?”

I didn’t answer. There was no answer that wasn’t better suited to a therapist. Or a husband.

“I say just go for it, Augie. And if you fail, then you fail, right? What’s the big deal? Obviously, your instincts or whatever are telling you to do this. It’s new ground for you. It’s exciting, right? Like when I did those collages and they sucked so unbelievably, but then when I went back to painting, something had changed. In a good way.” She looked at her wide black leather watch. “Shit,” she said. “I really have to go. Seriously, I cannot be a minute late. Mom’s been a little wacky lately. Turning fifty maybe, and then
Dad’s whole upcoming wedding thing. She never says it bothers her, but she’s been a wreck ever since she found out. They
‘stayed friends,’
you know.” The term came in giant air quotes. “I don’t think she fully understood about being divorced. Until he and Miriam …”

“You shouldn’t make her wait. Come on, let’s get you on the road.”

But she paused in the studio door. “I feel like I’ve let you down,” she said. “Like I said the wrong thing. I don’t want to just rush off …”

“No.” I shook my head. “You said the right thing. The exact right thing. And the only way you could have let me down is by lying to me about this. I needed to hear it.” I laughed a little. “I’m not saying I know how to respond. But I needed to hear the truth.”

O
utside, we ran smack into Alison, heading toward my house. Introducing them, I was aware of being in Owen’s line of vision should he be near his window.

Alison was friendly and told Laine she’d heard wonderful things about her. Laine seemed excited to meet Alison, the cheery British neighbor who had finally broken through the fortifications of Augie’s hideaway.

“I’ll leave you two to say goodbye,” Alison said after a few exchanges. “So nice to meet.”

“You were coming over …?” I asked.

“I was,” she said. “But it can wait. Maybe stop by in a bit?”

I told her I would.

As Laine and I hugged goodbye, I said, “Thank you for all that,” and she said, “I really hope you do it, Augie. You have to finish them. Just play. Don’t even think of it as work.” Then, “Love you!” when she got into the car.

I waved as she drove away.

“Love you, too,” I said, as her car disappeared from sight.

I
went for a short walk after that, by myself. Down the driveway and about half a mile on the road. I had more to process than just Laine’s painting advice—and I wanted to think it through in solitude, before the scene with Owen that I knew was bound to come.

It had been Laine’s description of Georgia, of how Bill’s marriage had hit her so hard, that had startled me. Listening, I had expected it to be like a mirror held up to my own bruised heart, my own bruised ego, the image revealing the fragility of the truce I’d forged with those aspects of myself. After all, I too was the jilted woman, still mourning her lost love. After all, the last real mirror I had looked in had been filled with concerns about what Bill would hear about my appearance, my own face fused with imaginings of his.

But something had shifted. Just in the past hour. Or maybe it was a shift already in the works, just waiting for the right circumstance to be complete.

Laine.

Before there was Bill, before we were lovers, there was Laine. A messed-up, angry girl with talent, who needed me. Before her father and I found each other, she and I already had. Before there was danger, there had been nurturing. Caring. A kind of mutual recognition that can only be called love.

As I walked, I smiled, remembering the difficulty she’d had admitting what she thought of my work—as though she’d had to break through a barrier of some kind. As indeed she had. The barrier she knew about, the student critiquing her teacher’s clumsy attempts. And the barrier that only I could see. The daughter claiming her place again in my life.

I couldn’t tell Owen this, I knew. I wished that I could. I wanted to share how little her visit had to do with Bill. Not only because she had never known about us—which I had told Owen and doubtless would again, many times. But because she herself
was, again, something more than Bill’s daughter to me. Something different. She was Laine. Her own person. My former student. A fellow artist, now. A friend.

And it wasn’t only because she had grown up, I understood, turning back toward the house. It was because both of us had.

O
wen came in that evening with an expression I hadn’t seen for years. As I watched him gulp his water I was unsure if it was better to say something or let it go, but decided silence was pointless given his scowl.

“I really am sorry about that,” I said. “She was just trying to be …” I had no adjective to supply. “You know she never knew anything, right? I’m just her old art teacher, to her. This wasn’t a visit about … about anything that happened.”

“I really don’t feel like talking about this, Gus. What’s for dinner?”

It had been his turn to cook, but I let it go. “I just want you to …”

“Want me to what, Gus? What? Do you not understand that I didn’t even know you were in touch with her? I really thought those people were out of our lives. And here she is. In our house. Doing what? What did you actually do?”

“I showed her my work. We talked.”

He exhaled loudly as though this were the worst possible answer—as he would have whatever I’d said. “Great. You showed her your work. Did she like it?”

“Not particularly. Since you asked.” I stopped short of saying that at least she hadn’t just said whatever felt easiest, as I suspected he had been doing for nearly two weeks. “You never told me I had to cut her off.”

“It never occurred to me you hadn’t.”

“You wouldn’t have wanted me to. She’s a kid. She still needs
me. I can’t believe you’d have wanted me to do that. To hurt her like that.”

Something flickered in his expression, and I knew that he agreed. “I saw you out there with Alison,” he said.

“We ran into her. I was …” I had been meaning to stop by, I remembered.

“Did everyone get along well?”

“It was all of three minutes, Owen.”

“Should I assume Alison knows all about this?”

“No. Of course not.”

A lie, I remembered right away, is a physical thing, like a new body part that has no proper way to fit.

“Fuck,” he said. “I really did not need all of this. What happens now? Is this to be a regular thing? How did she even find you?”

It was what Alison had asked about Paul:
How did he find me?
It seemed unfair that Laine should be cast among the dangerous people, the ones from whom we needed to hide. “I don’t know. I must have told her at some point. Maybe she saw the same stupid ad that Alison saw. Maybe she’s some kind of pathological stalker. I have no idea. I don’t remember what I told her. Or told you, apparently. She can’t hurt us though. She doesn’t want to.”

He looked at me without speaking. He didn’t have to say it: She already had.

“It won’t happen again,” I said.

“You have no idea. Let’s at least deal with reality. Maybe she’ll make it a weekly event.”

“That isn’t reality, Owen. She’s taking classes, living in New York. She isn’t hanging out here.”

“I guess I’ll just have to trust you about the details. Is there anything else going on?” he asked. “Anything else you may have forgotten you never told me about?”

I shook my head. “No. Well …”

His brows shot up.

“It has nothing to do with us. I’m only telling you in case there’s some technicality and you would consider this a lie. It’s just that she told me her father is remarrying. That’s all.”

He turned his back to me, putting his glass in the sink. “That must be tough news for you,” he said without a trace of sympathy in his voice.

“It’s not. It has nothing to do with me. Or with us.”

“Well, you must be happy for him.”

“Happy for him?” I wasn’t. Not at all. It hadn’t occurred to me to be, I realized with some shame. “Honestly, Owen, it has nothing to do with me. Laine is … Laine is … I have an obligation to her. Like when you save someone’s life, you’re responsible for them. And it isn’t her fault. It’s like punishing her for the stupid mistakes the stupid adults in her life made. I am so, so horribly sorry that you had to go through this. But I am asking you, as a favor, to just please understand that I can’t banish her from my life.” I heard myself putting it all on Laine, not describing her as any kind of daughter figure to me, not dredging up that old, unfulfilled longing. “I was ambushed. She didn’t mean it that way, but I was.”

He sighed, then turned around. “This isn’t easy for me, Gus.”

“I get that. I really do. And I’m sorry.”

“Just, please, if there’s a way to keep this from happening again …”

“I will.”

“Okay. Subject dropped.”

“Subject dropped,” I said. “But if it ever helps you to talk about it …”

“It will never help me to talk about it.”

“Then we never will,” I said, mentally adding it to the heap.

Don’t think of it as work,
Laine had said.

It wasn’t easy advice to take.

Use your imagination
.

My
imagination? It seemed atrophied.

I had spent so much of my life trying
not
to imagine realities other than my own, certain that my envy of other families would demolish me. And when I’d shifted my focus away from those other children and their mothers, I had only slipped deeper into a different reality. The reality of things, of light. Appearances. Shapes. Vistas. Not people.

But here were these boys demanding of me that I exercise this long-unused capacity. And there was Laine, cheering me on to give them life.

I didn’t paint the morning after her visit. I drew. Little caricatures, cartoon figures really. Sitting. Running. Walking. Swimming. Fast, fast, fast. No time for me to think. Skiing. Bicycling. Dancing.

Just play
, Laine had advised. So I tried to play. I worked at playing, determined to keep trying until I could play without having to work.

W
hen I saw Alison that afternoon, we returned to the pond, our first walk there in some time. “That must have been tough for you,” she said as we started circling.

“Tougher for Owen,” I said, knowing immediately that she meant Laine.

“I’m sure it was tough enough for you both. Your Laine is a sweet-seeming girl. In spite of all the piercings, which I have to admit are not my thing.”

“She’s different from Nora, I know. She’s a whole different type of kid. Of young woman, I suppose.”

“Yes. But both artistically inclined,” Alison said. “So not quite as different as if one of them were a titan of finance or something. Both doubtless doomed to scrape for money their whole lives. Or teach high school. Like some of us.”

I had never thought of Alison envying us our financial ease. But it was hard not to hear it there, hard not to be a little startled by her tone.

“You know,” I said, “Laine was so high risk for so long. Such a mess. It’s difficult for me to see her as the same person. I’m used to looking at her through a veil of worry, but now … now she seems all right. She seems so strong. It was really good to see that. Though the whole visit was a huge problem, of course. How is Nora doing?” I asked. “I’ve been assuming she’s okay, since you haven’t said otherwise.”

“Oh, I suppose she’s okay.”

“Any news on the job front?”

“I suspect she’s let that lapse since she’s been staying with Paul. There wouldn’t be any pressing need. Anyway, she hasn’t mentioned a thing.”

“Are you angry at her?” I asked. “You sound a little angry.”

“Excellent question. I don’t really know. Maybe. A little bit.
Not really. I try not to be, anyway. None of it’s her fault. She’s just making the best of a bad lot. We’re the villains in the piece.”

“You’re not a villain, Alison.”

“Nice of you to say. But who knows? I’ve certainly made my fair share of mistakes.”

I suddenly remembered something. “Wait, you wanted to see me yesterday. I was supposed to stop by. I’m so sorry, in all the mess of things I forgot.”

She reached over and gave my arm a quick squeeze. “I was just going to tell you my news, that’s all. I’ve decided to stay. Through the whole year, I mean. Until next summer.”

“Really? That’s wonderful. Amazing.”

But her news had fallen on me in an unexpected way.
Months
. That was the word that came to mind.
Months and months
. It seemed like a long commitment, a weightier change in our lives than I’d ever anticipated.

“I’m glad you think so,” she said. “Will Owen be able to shake this off? Is he the sort to brood?”

It took me a moment to remember the topic. “Oh, he can be pretty broody,” I said. “But then also … I mean, he stuck with me, right? So that pretty much defines him as a forgiving type.” I didn’t tell her about the silence in which we had gone to sleep the night before, the cold that had seemed to emanate from his side of the bed. “We’ll be okay. It’s just going to take a little time. All those reopened wounds.”