A Blue So Dark (3 page)

"When you all start to draw your own Bedroom in Arles," she tells her students, which is their cue to open their sketchbooks and pick up their charcoals, "you're going to find yourselves trying to put it the way it should be. To draw what you think you should see. But you can't, that's not the assignment. Draw what you see, not what you think you see."

My eyes start to tear up a little, I feel so guilty. Mom was right-I was overreacting. I am an overprotective creep.

I gather up my sketchbook-I've got a hundred copies of my own Bedroom in Arles by now-and head outside, sit under one of the enormous maples that are turning the redhot colors of sunset. I've got a few minutes to blow before I'm due at my job-nothing fancy, just an errand-runner for a photographer a couple of blocks from the museum-so I start sketching the small outdoor stage in the park behind the museum, the one with the stone Corinthian columns poking at the sky, the one where Shakespeare in the Park gets performed every July.

The pulse of skateboard wheels pulls my eyes up. At the opposite end of the parking lot, two skaters weave in and out, like they're both moving through some sort of obstacle course marked by invisible cones. One-a gangly thing with a nose like a toucan's beak-pops his board, trying to land on top of one of the park benches. He misses, though, and crashes into a heap on the pavement, shooting out such a frantic slew of fucks and shits and goddamns that the second skater launches into belly laughter.

Suddenly, my stomach bottoms out, like I've just rounded the top curve on a roller coaster track. I know that laughing skater. Jeremy Barnes, who took one of Mom's drawing courses last summer. Jeremy Barnes, whose baggy Bones Bearings T-shirts could never hide the stunning, lanky lines of his body. Jeremy Barnes, who made funky wooden necklaces out of retired, beat-to-shit boards, the wooden geometric shapes hanging on steel cords around his neck. I'd wanted one of those necklaces so bad, my mouth practically watered-I'd spent most of those drawing class periods sketching Jeremy's profile, and imagining what it would be like to wear something against my skin that his fingers had held, crafted, created.

My stupid girly crush must've been so obvious to Mom, because suddenly, she was coming up with projects for everyone to do in pairs, and always putting me and Jeremy together. Only when I got up close to him, he smelled clean and steamy, like a late-June rain. And I was reduced to a ridiculous, blubbering pile of melting Jell-O. Criminy.

Remembering makes my ears burn all over again.

But I can't quit looking. Just like it always happens when he's anywhere near me, my eyes are on strings tied to his wrists. I can't pull myself away. Even from here, if I'd never seen him before in my life, I'd be able to tell he's gorgeous, with a beauty mark. So help me, God, a beauty mark. Right there on his upper lip, like in those old pictures of Cindy Crawford. Only it doesn't look stupid, and it doesn't look girly on him. It looks like something I'd like to eat right up.

"Fuck," Jeremy's friend screeches. "Fuck, fuck, fuck," like machine gun spatter. But I can't look at that skaterI'm still staring at Jeremy, at his long hair, wondering, Who even wears long hair anymore? Except it really is gorgeous. Usually, with old-school, has-been rocker types, they grow their hair out just to let it go all frizzy and scraggly around their shoulders. But his hair is thick and beautiful, and he really, honestly, could be in some sort of shampoo ad, it if weren't such a girly thing to do.

I wrench my eyes away long enough to realize that the boy who's crashed is bleeding. Both his palms are skinned. He almost looks like he's been peeled. And he's pissed-I figure I would be, too, since Jeremy's still cackling so hard he can hardly even breathe.

The bleeder fires off a few more explosive swears as he stomps off. "Fuck you, goddamn. Pussy. Shit. Christ."

Jeremy's laughter dies, gently, like a breeze trickling out from between tree branches. He starts to put his foot on his board, but tosses me a double take. Stares at me while the dancing maple leaves above me scatter a random pattern of light and shadow, warm and cool, across my face.

Instinctively, I turn, expecting to see Janny behind me, because that's where boys look. Or it used to be, anywayat Janny, my gorgeous best friend, who always knew exactly how to wear her woman's body. Some girls just do, you know. Me-I've always had these ridiculously voluptuous curves like Marilyn Monroe or Jayne Mansfield or any of the other torpedo-boobed pin-up girls from the '50s, but I'm not the kind of girl who likes it when boys whistle and catcall and make lewd remarks about me in the school hallways. Janny, though, she really used to thrive on that crap. So while I was walking around in my oversized hoodies, she was sauntering toward her locker like she was practicing for the day she was going to be a Victoria's Secret runway model. And pretty boys like Jeremy always came flying, like bugs to one of those lit-up back porch zappers.

But Janny's nowhere in sight; she's home, fighting with her parents, like she does pretty much anytime they're all in the same room-and taking care of Ethan, who's about six months old now. I know that technically he's her son, but every time I see them together, I think he really seems more like some kind of weird tumor that travels all over her body-hip, shoulder, lap.

Like I always do when she's not around, I wish I'd sucked up some of her bravado over the years. Wish I could just stick my chest out, flaunt myself coolly, flick a pair of sunglasses up my nose like it's all choreographed. Shoot some clever one-liner like I don't really care what the world thinks of me at all.

The best I can manage is to pretend I don't notice Jeremy-which is like saying I have never once noticed the sky, or the itchy feel of grass against my legs, or the pelt of wind through an open car window. He's something you just have to notice-there's no overlooking about it.

I try to act like I'm completely absorbed in my sketch as the skateboard wheels come thumping over the cracks in the sidewalk. I wish the maple I'd chosen wasn't so close to the sidewalk, because then he wouldn't be able to skate straight for me. But he is-and he's skidding to a stop.

I bite my lip, because he's staring down at my stupid sketch. Jeez, it's so embarrassing that he's looking. I know he's going to start laughing at me, too, the same way he laughed at his friend.

I glance up, and oh, God, Jeremy's so gorgeous; he's wearing one of his recycled skateboard necklaces, this one a black and brown wave hanging just below his clavicle, and I practically ache to touch it, because I figure it's warm from his skin. And I'm afraid that with this thought running through my head, I must be just as transparent to him as I was to Mom last summer. He must know I'm practically slobbering all over myself. And I'm so mortified-like some awful girly-girl-I can't think of a single thing to say.

With the flick of the toe of his Adidas, Jeremy pops his board so that I can see the design on it. I realize he's painted the stone stage, too-only his hand-painted scene of the Greek columns is so surprisingly clumsy, it looks like something a six-year-old would have done with his crayons.

"Yours is good," he says, pointing. "Yours were always good." My stomach dips again, like I've been riding on a high-speed elevator that's come to a sudden halt. He remembers.

I glance back down at the abstract sketch I'd started of the stage. My columns look modern, like something an architect invented last year.

"Fix mine, why don't you," he says, dropping the board down onto the wheels and letting it roll toward me.

"What? I-"

"Yeah-take it. Fix it."

I'm flabbergasted, whopper-jawed. Stuff like this just doesn't happen to me. "How do I-"

"I think I know where to find you, Aura," he says with a wink and saunters off down the sidewalk, leaving me there beneath the maple, savoring his lingering steamy scent.

I feel all hot and wobbly inside, and my brain is just a broken piece of driftwood being slammed by the tide. In our pre-Ethan days, guys got thrust on me by Janny-like that moronic soccer player, Adam Riley, the one who used to hang out with Janny's Ace. Guys would flirt with me on assignment. But this was-What just happened? I wonder, daydreaming about what it would have been like if Janny'd been here to see it.

As I try to savor my weird, unbalanced feeling-excitement and sweet wonder-I look up at the window and I see my mom. She's at the front of her classroom, writing something on the same blackboard where she taped the print of Bedroom in Arles. At first, all I see is the word at the top: PERSPECTIVE, all caps, which seems normal enough. But along the side she's also written PEPPER and PET, which doesn't make any sense at all. Those words have no place up there on that board. I curse the window under my breath for not allowing me to see the looks on her students' faces. And I start to get the hot chills all over my body again.

It's okay, it's fine, it could be anything, you don't know what they've been talking about in there, I try to tell myself, but my heart is on fire.

Mom reaches out-almost as if to erase her words with her finger-but winds up touching them in the same way she would if she were blind and had to rely on a Braille sign to find out which bathroom belonged to the ladies.

She looks through the window, and flashes that everything's okay smile she gave me when I got mono from playing retarded make-out games with that douche bag Adam Riley in the ninth grade. The same smile she gave me when Dad had left, and I caught her sitting on the floor of her half-empty closet, hugging one stray loafer to her chest. The same smile she flashed before standing up on her own two feet, wiping the last tear track from her cheek, and saying, "Come on, friend, let's fill in all these empty spaces, you and me."

And just like I have for the past few weeks, I tell myself that everything really is fine.

Occasionally, family members may reach a point in which they cannot tolerate the odd behavior of the schizophrenic any longer. Often, this leads them to seek help. Other times, it causes said family member to -walk away, like the complete raving jerk that she is.

don't have a clue how to skate (and don't exactly want to look like a moron trying to figure it out on a busy sidewalk at quarter to one on a Saturday afternoon), so I carry the board to Zellers Photography. I told Mom only vague basics about my little cash-basis job, jumping over the name-Zellers-like a hopscotch square. Mom isn't even aware that I know about this particular studio, but it's not that hard to figure out, you know? I mean, the owner, Nell, puts twenty-percent-off coupons for senior portraits in the Crestview High newspaper. Zellers Photography, the address right there in black and white. And the way everybody at school talks her up, you'd think the white cursive Zellers in the bottom right-hand corner of the senior pics she takes is actually some ultra-chic fashion label. So why wouldn't I be curious?

I'm frozen for a minute on the sidewalk, just beyond the plate glass, because I can see Nell in there, sitting in the front room of the studio with her chin-length white hair and her big, round black glasses. She has a phone to her ear, and she takes off her glasses to put something up to her eye-some magnifying lens or a jeweler's loupe-and she squints at a sheet in her hands. Probably, I think, some negatives.

She hangs up the phone, slips back into her glasses. When she sees me, she throws her chair back so dramatically, it almost looks like a scene from a silent movie. She opens the front door and stares at me, her lips strung about as tight as one of those high wires that acrobats are always swinging off of at the circus. "Kid," she says, "if you don't get the balls to come in soon, I'm going to go nuts."

"Excuse me?"

"Quit hovering," she says, glaring at me like I'm some random teenager who's chasing walk-ins away from her store by doing a bunch of fancy skateboard tricks down her front steps. Like I'm just some troublemaker-Scat, kid, no handouts for you.

Her eyes run me over, up and down. Me in my dad's ex-weekend jeans-the ones he used to pad around in every Saturday, with the Metallica patch on the backside-and an oversized hoodie with giant paint splotches, my coarse black hair falling out from a sloppy ponytail. "That's what you wear to work. After you don't even bother showing up or calling last weekend," she says, like what I have is some office job, the kind of thing where I need to wear heels and know my Social Security number and be the legal age for official employment. Her eyes are like shish kebab skewers.

"Nell," I say, wounded. Literally wounded, as if it's my mother that's getting after me. My voice comes out highpitched and whiny, like a child's, which I hate.

"Nell," she mimics, singsong, like it's a chant we should be jumping rope to. "Don't tell me-you've got problems." She says it kind of snotty, a la some sweatshop owner with a whip. But her lashes fly backward behind her glasses and her eyes dilate, like she's a little afraid there might really be trouble.

"Maybe I do," I snap back, thinking about Mom and the murky tide I'm afraid is trying to roll in.

Nell's chest heaves. She shakes her head, rubs her chin. Her eyes hit the skateboard in my arms with the force of a kick. "What, with a boy?" she taunts me. Which instantly pisses me off. The sweet, unexpected treat of Jeremy's compliment-had he been flirting with me?-turns bad. It's a gold ring I've plucked from the sand at the edge of the Florida shore, only to realize it's staining my finger green. Nell's ruined everything, in less than two minutes.

"Forget it," she finally says. "Whatever. I was fifteen once, too. Before the Civil War."

And like that, she's not mad anymore. She's heading back into the studio, and I'm following her, and she's talk ing like it's business as usual. "Got so much going on, with the show..." she rattles. But that's Nell. She's really one of those type-A personalities, so high-strung that if she were a dog, she'd be one of those little twerpy things that bark at ear-splitting decibels and just don't know when to shut up.

She rushes to her desk, and I stare at her in her plaid slacks and her white blouse with the big open collar, chunky jade necklace at her throat. She's just so incredibly polished. There's nothing about her that looks messy-I can't imagine her ever making a mistake, like dating the wrong guy or taking a wrong turn in traffic or even so much as leaving her umbrella behind in a movie theater. She looks like a perfect piece of Ming Dynasty pottery behind glass. Don't touch, don't touch, don't get your grimy little hands all over it.

Her photography studio's in an old brick building, one of those historic downtown sites with so much age that as I make my way inside, I don't feel like my sneakers are flopping against wooden boards, but against decades. The coolest part of Nell's studio is the way she always slaps her newest stuff all over the walls. Last summer, the place was full of brides, the white froth of their meringue-style gowns flowing everywhere. September, it was animals-plain old house cats and mixed-breed mutts caught in such perfect moments, their personalities zinging like lightning bolts across their faces, you'd think they were human. ("People are insane about their pets," Nell had grumbled with a shrug when I'd tried to compliment her shots.)

Today, the studio is full of framed black and whites, the images so old it's like I've stepped into a time warp. Like it's 1969, because here's an old VW bug-the kind with the engine in the back-plastered with NOW bumper stickers, and here's a woman (the tag stuck to the glass says it's actually a self-portrait) with long, ironed hair and a skirt so short it barely even covers her belly button. Another photo's a still life, but instead of apples and oranges, it's an assortment of roach clips and political buttons-peace signs and enameled flowers that scream Stop the War Machine and Anti-Draft and End Mass Murder in Vietnam!

"What is all this stuff?" I ask her, pointing.

"Oh, pictures for the show," she sighs. "Trying to decide which ones to use."

"The show?"

"Yeah-you know," she says, waving her hand like it's nothing-like she's just rearranging some old knickknacks. "That First Friday Art Walk business."

"You're going to be in it?"

"Yeah," Nell says, sighing into her chair. "A change of pace from all the family portraits that pay the bills."

"What's the theme?" I ask, trying to make sense of it all.

"Theme," she snorts. "My-life."

This practically lights my freaking hair on fire. My eyes start bouncing through the details in the photos, searching them the way some ransacker would rifle through the contents of somebody's drawers. "Your life?" I say, disbelief wracking my voice.

"What?" she laughs. "You don't think an old lady like me ever smoked weed or got arrested at a war protest?" She grins as she twirls a shock of electric-white hair around her finger.

"Who's this?" I ask, my heart knocking on my tonsils as I point at one of the framed photos. But I'm not talking about the younger Nell in the frozen image, wearing a one-piece swimsuit. I'm talking about the girl Nell's hugging-she's twelve, maybe thirteen, with long black hair. They're laughing in the picture, their bodies tangled like they've accidentally fallen onto the beach. Grains of sand dot their thighs. But they look like they're just so absurdly happy, they don't care that they've crumpled into a painful heap, elbows in stomachs, thigh bones crashing together like cymbals.

"My daughter," she says. I know that's what she says. But the words that bounce in my head, up and down like rubber balls, are your mother. Because this is her-Grace Ambrose, born April 3, 1970-when she was younger even than I am now. This is my mother, before illness built a nest inside her brain. And this is Nell when she was Grace's mother, when times were still sweet, when no one knew yet that Mom would leave home in a furious rush, barely eighteen, and never speak to Nell again.

"I didn't know you had a daughter," I lie, glancing over my shoulder at the white-haired Nell. The truth is, Nell's the one who doesn't know she has a granddaughter, let alone that her granddaughter is standing in her very own studio, as she has just about every Saturday for the past five months now, because she wanted to know if her grandmother really was the evil incarnate her mother always made her out to be.

"Yeah, well, you know-" Nell says, her voice trailing off like a pop song that fades at the end instead of culminating in one loud, final guitar chord. "It's complicated."

"Mothers are complicated, too," I mumble.

"Yours must be," Nell laughs. "I swear, with a name like `Aura,' I always figured somebody drop-kicked you in the woods-only, instead of being raised by wolves, you were raised by the last hippie commune on the face of the earth."

Thank God my town is just big enough to get lost in. If I lived in a real-life Mayberry, I'd never be able to pull this off-Nell would have known exactly who I was the minute I'd shown up. Or the town busybody would have grabbed Mom's sleeve in the coffee aisle of the grocery store, blabbing that I was at Nell's studio-and I'd be in the coldest, darkest dog house ever built. I never would have gotten a chance to know my grandmother.

I turn back to the photo that looks exactly like the fairy tale I'd once believed in, back before I'd seen the reality of the ocean. White sands, blue water. Tropical paradise. In a place like this, I'd believe a girl could learn to swim. Here, I'd bet that Nell and Mom really did compete in a surfing competition.

"You remind me of her," Nell says. "My daughter."

I find myself backing away from these words, my sneakers squeaking on the historic floor, the way I'd try to back away from a rabid dog.

"But I can't use that one, anyway," Nell mutters, pointing at the beach picture. "My husband took it, not me."

That makes me work even harder to grab the details that swirl up at me from the photograph. Chipped toenail polish, soggy strands of hair trailing across a cheek, a dimple, a scab on a knee. My grandfather took this picture.

Nell's nervous laughter shakes a little of the seriousness from the room. "All right, kid," she says. "You come to work, or not?"

"Sure," I mumble. "But do I-do I really remind you of your daughter?"

"Every time I see you," she says, the words like bullets ricocheting off the walls.