Harder (33 page)

The thing I shouldn’t be talking about is art.

And what I say, when I open my mouth, is, “How do you know? How is that … How do you convince people it’s okay for you to be doing this stuff?”

Raffe exhales a laugh. “Who, like parents?”

“No, not parents.”
Yourself
.

Because that’s what I mean. How do I convince myself that it’s okay to take art classes?

How do I make myself get out of my own fucking way?

I drop the spoon in my hand and say, “It’s like— Well, take electives. You have to have so many classes for your major, whatever that is—”

“Art,” Raffe says.

Annie nods. “Art.”

“Okay, but pretend it’s not art and you have to take bio classes, so you take those, one or two a semester, but you’ve got all these electives. So how do you decide what to take?”

“Whatever looks interesting,” Raffe says.

“Or if I’ve heard it’s really great,” Annie says, “like Gender and Women’s Studies with Professor Gates.”

“Okay, well, what I do is think about work. I think what’s going to be most useful to get a job that pays well. What’s going to mean I’m in a position to make the most out of college.”

“So how’d you end up in Studio Art?” Raffe asks.

“Fluke.”

“Huh. It seems like a good fit.”

“I got a B-.”

“Rikki’s a hard grader.”

I look around, because he’s talking about her like she’s not here, and I realize she’s not. She must have slipped out when I wasn’t paying attention.

“You know that assignment with the still life, and we were supposed to paint the apple?” I ask. “My apple looked like it belonged in a children’s book. This dipshit next to me, he never seemed to have the first fucking clue what was going on—swam through the whole semester in a daze—and then he paints this apple with, like, black and purple and blue and yellow and pink and white on his brush. No red at all. But when he’s done, it looks exactly like an apple.”

“Wait, is this Kyle?” Raffe asks.

“Is that his name?”

“Skinny kid, always made Rikki repeat the demonstrations?”

“Yeah, him.”

“He’s fucking gifted with colors, man.”

“That’s what I’m saying. So
Kyle
is creative. He should make art. But me … I don’t want to be dicking around, wasting money on four credits when I’m not going to get anything out of it.”

“Sounds like you got a job out of it,” Annie points out.

“That was a fluke.”

“Lot of flukes in this story,” she says mildly. “You know how I got into art?”

“How?”

“I took a class in high school, started messing around with drawing and painting and sculpture. When the bell rang, I never wanted to leave.”

“Same for me,” Raffe says, “except it was here. First art class, and I was in the studio all the time. I’d forget to eat. Skipped meals, skipped parties, so I could be here doing this. Me and Annie—that’s how we met.”

“But don’t you worry what you’re going to do with it?”

“Rikki and Laurie seem to be surviving all right,” Raffe says.

“But not everybody’s as lucky or as talented as Rikki and Laurie. You could crash and burn, and then where’d you be?” Raffe says, “I’d be a guy with a bachelor’s from Putnam who knows how to work hard on something that’s important to me, and who knows how to take something I’m passionate about and try to realize it, and how to communicate that passion to the rest of the world. That’s not, like, wasted time. And even if it was, I’m not sure I care.” He picks up a plastic tub full of frit and powder and starts shaking it to mix the color in. “Plus, dude, you’re what, twenty?”

“Twenty-one.”

“So, you’re twenty-one. You’re allowed to fuck around and experiment with stuff. I’m pretty sure it’s the point of being twenty-one.”

“It’s not like you can only ever have one career,” Annie says. “You can make art and teach school, and if you hate teaching school you can run a gas station, and if you hate running a gas station you could try your hand at embalming dead bodies, and the whole time you’re making things, if that feels good.”

“Embalming dead bodies?” I ask.

“Just as an example.”

Raffe finishes shaking his frit and sets the container down on the table. “For what it’s worth, Leavitt, you’ve got talent. It’s just not the same as Kyle’s. He’s got an eye for color. You’re precise, and you see things from more than one angle. You’re good at solving problems, because you’re fucking persistent. I could see all that just taking a class with you, and I know I’m not wrong because Laurie hired you, which he wouldn’t have done if he didn’t think you had something.”

“He didn’t hire me,” Annie says. “I applied.”

“He didn’t hire Josh, either,” Raffe says. “Or Macon. I didn’t even know you were in the running for that job.”

“I wasn’t,” I admit. “I didn’t know there was a job in the first place. He just offered it to me.”

“There you go.”

There I go.

And actually, I feel like I’m moving. Like I’ve taken a step to the left and cleared a path that was blocked.

I’ve got a sketchbook at home full of ideas for shit that I would build or make or do if I had unlimited time and supplies. A sketchbook I’ve never showed anybody—not even Caroline—because it’s scarier than it should be to step away
from what I know is practical in favor of what might turn out to be impractical but fucking
pleasurable
.

My sister keeps drawing these grid drawings, one after another, like she can’t stop. They’re all she wants to do. But she keeps telling me they’re not
real
art, even as she gets better and better at them.

My grandma Joan has a houseful of blankets she’s knit. She makes them without patterns, and they’re fucking impressive, but if you ask her anything about them she’ll tell you she just does it for her arthritis.

Not because it feeds something in her to make beautiful things.

I don’t know if what I want to make would come out beautiful, but fuck, I’ve got things I want to try just for the sake of trying it, glass I want to melt and metal I want to cut up and this idea I had for if you could take a tree and cut it into slices and suspend them, somehow, vertically, so you could see what the tree looked like when it was alive the same time you could see inside the tree and read the story of its life.

I don’t know if that’s art.

I guess it is if I say it is. If it makes people feel or think when they look at it.

I don’t know if it would be
good
art. Could be it’s just playing. But giving myself a chance to figure it out—that’s what I want.

That’s what I want for me, and that’s what I want for Frankie, too—to be able to see me doing that, so she knows it’s okay if she wants to do it herself.

I’m starting to see that if I get what I need, Frankie’s going to get what she needs, too. That what’s good for me and what’s good for Caroline is what’s good for my sister.

“Where’d Rikki go?” I ask.

“Back to her office,” Annie says.

I check the clock and I’m surprised to see it’s seventy-five minutes since I got here. I was supposed to be stopping for a minute. I’ve got to get dinner sorted out. But it’s late enough now that Caroline’s probably fed Frankie.

“I’d better head out,” I say. “Thanks for showing me this stuff.”

“You want to grab dinner?” Raffe asks. “Annie and I were going to go into town for subs.”

“Thanks, but I can’t.”

“Oh. Okay.”

I’m reminded of that day with Krishna, when he came up to me outside the art building and harassed me into coming over for dinner.

He’s back in Chicago for the break.

I think tonight I’ll give him a call.

“Would you guys want to come out to my place?” I ask. “Not tonight, because I don’t know what Caroline’s got going on, but I don’t know, tomorrow? Day after? I have to warn you I’ve got a kid sister living with me, so if you’re not into kids …”

I trail off.

I guess what I’m saying is,
I’ve got some baggage. I live off-campus with my girlfriend and my little sister. I don’t really know how to have friends, and I can be a grouchy fucker if things aren’t going my way, but I’d like to talk about art with you. Both of you
.

It takes a year, waiting for their reply, and I age a decade.

“Kids are good,” Annie says.

“Is there anything we should bring?” Raffe asks.

It’s that easy.

Just that fucking easy.

Spring comes late in Iowa, but that year was an exception. The December snow gave way to a frozen January, clear and blue, everything crystalline and sparkling.

West’s eyes under that sky were all fire and ice.

His hands were cold when they moved beneath my jacket over warm skin, and I would shriek, but I loved the shock of it.

The shock of having him. Keeping him.

How that could become normal–how it could fall into a rhythm of busy days and familiar nights, but still surprise me into gratitude over and over again.

February was projects and papers, phone calls and television interviews. It was waking up early to drive to the Quad Cities for hair and makeup so I could film something for the morning news. Seeing my name in the
Des Moines Register
, sitting in a hotel conference room and answering questions for eight state senators, none of whom implied I was a slut.

All of whom shook my hand and thanked me for my service to the citizens of Iowa.

February was reading about nonprofits, political action groups, and campus organizations. Talking to activists. Thinking about guest speakers.

Planning for a future with no walls on any horizon.

February was Frankie making friends with a girl named Nadine and bringing her home to play once, then a second time, then as many nights as the two of them could get away with it.

It was Quinn back from Florence and me making time to see all her pictures and hear about her Italian escapades.

It was me making time for Bridget, too, to listen to how things were going with Krishna and give her advice she didn’t need because actually, it turned out, things were going pretty well.

It was the beginning of art therapy for Frankie, her nightmares easing up, my insomnia getting a little bit less intense.

February was West at the studio or out in Laurie’s shop. West talking about Raffe and Annie, West telling me what he was making, what he would try next, what he’d failed at but he had an idea, he had another idea, he had a new idea.

I gained ten pounds in February.

Then it was March, and it rained so much that the world turned brown and squelching. The snow melted away. The rug inside the front door developed a crust of mud. We had to leave our shoes on garbage bags to keep flakes of dirt from falling off us everywhere we walked.

Spring break marked a year since West left Putnam for Oregon. We gave Frankie over to the Collinses and drove to Iowa City for dinner, just the two of us. Appetizers and main courses and dessert over a flickering candle, plates passed back and forth across the table, more to talk about than we could ever say.

I laughed a lot at that dinner, because my life was so full it
spilled over. West pulled me close in the truck, kissed me with the rain pounding onto the roof and the windows until I was breathless and laughing all over again.

And then there were crocuses.

April brought sunshine, the world drying out, the first questing blades of grass pushing through the earth. Rugby practices to plan. A rally to organize. Every day, some contact to be made, some reporter to talk to, some new thing to pursue.

This was how it would be. It was how we would be, always.

This full of change. This full of life.

Spilling over into words and laughter, cold hands and hot mouths, and the sound of rain drumming down.

The lawyer’s office is cold.

Outdoors, the temperature is exactly perfect. Sixty-four degrees and sunny, which is unheard of for April in Iowa, so that all anyone wants to chitchat about is Gulf currents and global warming.

At Putnam, it’s one of those afternoons when the entirety of the winter-pale student body emerges blinking from their dorm rooms and spreads out blankets on the lawn of the quad. Boys strip off their shirts and toss Frisbees. Girls hold their textbooks, their chem notes—whatever props they require—when really they’re out there to watch the flesh parade.

I’m sitting at a conference table with the lawyer and my dad on one side of me, West and Frankie on the other. Across the gleaming cherrywood surface, Nate is flanked by his lawyer and both of his parents.

This isn’t how it’s normally done. My father made that abundantly clear.

It’s not normal to insist on signing the papers in front of the person you’ve accused.

It’s not normal to bring your boyfriend with you, or to invite along a girl too young to fully understand what it is she’s being asked to witness.

Settlements don’t usually take fifteen weeks to negotiate, either
, I told my dad,
but I let you have your way. Give me this
.

The document is nothing. I don’t know why I expected a sheaf of pages, binder-clipped together, covered in tape flags, when I’ve been part of hammering out every single one of these terms.

I guess we expect the turning points in our lives to be plastered in flags and warning signs when, in fact, most of the time our lives change when we’re not paying attention. We blow past the markers without even seeing them, and then we come to the end of some path and find there’s no label for it at all.

No guardrail. No dead-end sign.

Just six pages and fifteen paragraphs, with a blank line at the end where I sign my name.

“Initial here,” the lawyer says, so I do that, and I watch him shove the sheets across the table to Nate.

The man holding a pen across from me isn’t anyone I know. I broke up with him before the start of our sophomore year. Now we’re coming up on the end of junior year, and we’ve slipped past estranged to the other side of it.