Kaleidoscope (14 page)

I sipped my water carefully, taking in as much as I could before I became overwhelmed.

“This place is beautiful,” I commented. “You have lovely taste.”

Austin sat up straight in his seat, looking smug for just a moment. “Why thank you...I'd like to think so.” He smiled at me with a wink and hunched forward, taking a large gulp of his lemon iced tea as he, too, admired the restaurant. “I've always thought it would be great to try to get my art up in here. It's just such a cool little place.”

He gestured towards an unframed canvass that depicted a small city scene on the wall nearest to our table. It was an impressionist-style version of the city around us; it was so accurate in its details that it felt like looking into the city through a small, textured glass window. A small label beneath it indicated the artist's name and website, and a price. The artist was seeking $200 for purchase of his work.

I smiled nervously—Austin's goal to hang and sell his art was lofty and impressive. “Oh, I don't know...I mean maybe. I mostly just paint for fun. I can't imagine anyone actually paying money for anything I've made.”

“Why not?”

I was caught off-guard by how simply he had asked. I twirled my straw in my glass as I stared into it. “What? I...I don't know, it's just hard to imagine.”

“I think you really could.” Austin flashed a charming smile at me. “Who knows, maybe our winning set will be up on display someday.”

I grinned at the thought. While I hadn't yet gone to see whether or not our paintings had been displayed at the rec center, I hoped to stop by as soon as I knew for sure. I wanted to see it for myself. It would be the first time anything I'd drawn or painted ended up in a place that wasn't my own home.

“Have you ever sold any of your art before?” I asked him.

He mulled the question over, twirling a napkin into a long cylinder as he did so. “Well...I did sell one thing once.”

I leaned forward with my elbows on the table, placing my chin in my folded hands in what I'd hoped was a coy and attentive gesture. Who knows what I really looked like, though. “Tell me about it.”

The look on his face told me that he was more than happy to.

“Well, as you know, I've been in a couple local art shows...nothing big or special. But the thing with art shows is that you need to enter an entire collection—not just one or two of your favorite pieces. So I had to find not six, or seven, but nine pieces of art that I actually liked enough to display to the public!

You're an artist too Jade, so you know how hard it is to find even one or two things that you don't hate.”

I nodded. It was comforting to know that even normal people had to make an effort to tolerate their finished creations.

“It was hard! So I usually just entered the same set with a couple additions and subtractions here and there to make it easier. Finally there was one older lady who loved going to the shows and had seen my display more than once, and she bought one of them.”

I smiled. “What was it of?”

“It was...a flower,” Austin said, tilting his head towards the ceiling, embellished with tasteful inverted pendant lights, as he remembered. “A purple flower, I think, in a vase—and the vase and background were in greyscale. It was only maybe fourteen inches tall, the canvas.” He huffed exasperatedly. “I was so thrilled that I was ready to just give it to her for free, but she insisted on giving me $100. And that's how much I've ever made with my art, which is why I'm becoming a chef.”

I painted the picture in my head of what that flower must have looked like as our waiter, lanky and chocolate-skinned with neatly coiffed ebony curls, shuffled up to the table. The young man, undoubtedly in our age group and wearing a name tag that identified him as Marcus, donned an enormous tray that he carried skillfully over one shoulder.  A fold-out rack looped through his other arm, and he set it up quickly, carefully loading the tray onto it and placing its steaming contents in front of us.

“Alright, my friends,” he said with gusto. “Who has the shrimp alfredo pasta with pesto garnish?”

“That would be me,” I said, timidly raising my hand. He set the enormous tray in front of me. Though I was still no connoisseur of food and was pretty much indifferent to the taste of most of it in general, I had to admit that this looked delicious.

“You're gonna love it. And here's your grilled bruschetta chicken with extra mozzarella, sir. Enjoy, you two!” Marcus winked at me and whisked away our empty beverage glasses like a magician His wink was almost conspiratorial. Why did it always seem as though everyone knew something that I didn't—first (and always) my therapist, and now this waiter I'd never met?

“Looks like we both ordered something a little Italian,” Austin said, savoring a bite of his meal. I nodded and sampled my own dish.

It was, by all standards of food I'd ever eaten, absolutely amazing. Before I knew it, I found myself making those horrible noises that Mom made when she ate, the ones I always hated and couldn't ever understand. I just hoped I wouldn't start having entire conversations built around how delicious the food was soon.

“Mmmm...yeah, I really love Italian food,” I said in between bites, all but forgetting my manners. The waiter discreetly placed new, full glasses of water and tea on the edge of our table before disappearing again. “It's probably my favorite, if I had to pick one...usually I'm not too picky though.”

“Not picky?” Austin chased down a mouthful of broccoli with his replaced beverage before fixing me with his all-encompassing gaze. “Food is probably one of the most amazing things on this planet. I mean yeah, we need it to survive, but we might as well enjoy it then! How can you be 'not too picky'?”

Instead of responding, I grinned at him from over the top of my glass. “You really are going to be quite the chef, aren't you? You're so dedicated.”

“I try to be. As Winston Churchill said,
“I have nothing to offer but blood, tears, and sweat.
”

I twirled another forkful of the delicious pasta into my mouth and chewed it thoughtfully. “I wish that I was as ambitious as you are, Austin. I really admire it, and I'm kind of jealous of it.” I hadn't quite meant to say that out loud.
Am I getting comfortable here?

“I wouldn't be if I were you...perfectionism has its downsides for sure. Plus, you have so many qualities of your own already. It wouldn't be fair!”

I watched him smile inwardly before he pushed his plate off to the side a bit, making room as he leaned in closer towards me. His sparkling eyes were still locked on me.

“Seriously though...you're a pretty intriguing person. A great person, too. I'm really glad we met.”

Part of me relished in the compliment—no, it was more than that.  I was overcome with unbridled gratitude. I could never express to him exactly how glad I, too, was that we'd met. The other part of me however, the one watching all this from the sidelines as if I were a puppet, simply couldn't understand. How could the star of the show--this beautiful, eloquent, and artistic person--possibly think so highly of the disheveled remnants of the person before him?

I couldn't help but look down, swallowing my food with some difficulty. “I...I'm glad we met too, Austin. You have no idea how sincerely I mean that.”

Then, I mustered up my strength and looked him in the eyes. It was time to give some of that trusting a try again. “For someone like you to want to be friends with someone like me, it means a lot. I—it's hard to explain. But I'll do my best.”

I had his full attention. Austin gazed intently at me, taking in my words and his meal all at once. “I don't have a lot of friends. I used to, but after we moved, you see... I mean, I've never been really social, obviously, but it's more than that, and it's more than the problems I made for myself since we moved here that have made that so...”

“Problems?” he interjected, looking mystified.

“I'll get to that,” I said with haste.
If he sticks around for it.
“I...I guess the best way to explain it, is to compare it to a puzzle. My pieces were once put together as a child...and then, just like that, it's like a giant something came along and just scattered them everywhere, into a dark pit of nothing. They're not missing—at least I hope not—but they need to be found. Only, it's hard to find something in the dark, you know? You...almost don't even know what you're looking for, and it's even more impossible to try to fit it together because you can't see the picture that you're trying to create.”

I looked down at my food, which was suddenly, even in all of its splendor, unappetizing to me. Though it made me nauseous to look at, the churning in my stomach still felt better than the thought of looking Austin in the face and seeing what I might find there. I felt the heat rise in my face, and my limbs shook nervously as I continued.

“The memory exercises  I've been doing are to try to piece them together, because I can't remember a lot of things, and...I'm just broken. I'm a broken puzzle. And something that broken usually has very few good qualities...at least not many that can overshadow the fact that everything else is a huge mess.”

The dissociated part of me watching the scene unfold was reaching out to me, begging me not to destroy the only friendship I'd made in years. She screamed in agony, falling on her knees and jabbing her hands into her temples, cursing me and telling me that I'd ruined everything. She flung the plate from in front of me, letting it crash into shards on the ground beside me, and she stormed into the street to be taken by the traffic.

Meanwhile, the physical me—the real me, I suppose—sat in silence, simmering with fear and self-loathing on the inside, awaiting a response in almost agonizing trepidation.

“You mean, you're like a work in progress,” he murmured finally.

“A what?”

“A work in progress,” Austin said with a small, lopsided smile. “Like our friendship.”

The flames within me fell flat, extinguished by a vast sea of relief and confusion. I inhaled deeply; his words had literally knocked the breath out of me. Part of me was upset that he'd simplified my insanity in such a way that made it seem understandable, but...was it possible that it
was
understandable? Was it possible I wasn't destined to feel like a different part of the universe, in a vat of silence where I would never relate to anyone? It seemed impossible that Austin could understand my turmoil, but I so desperately wanted to believe that he could.

And so I did.

              It didn't mean that my need to explain the depth of the situation had simply vanished. However, as I prepared to launch into a more specific explanation of my broken pieces, Austin continued.

“Jade, I'm not afraid of what's in there. In fact, I want to know more! I want to know more about your past, and your present...I want to know as much as I can about you, because they're all pieces to my own puzzle; the one of me trying to figure you out. It's hard to imagine anything ugly about you, and nothing you say about whatever problems you've faced will change the way I see you. Do you want to know why?”

I simply nodded, at a loss for words, and Austin reached across the table, grabbing one of my hands reassuringly.

“Because whatever battle you're fighting in that head of yours isn't what defines who you are as a person. In fact, for you to be facing something inside of you head-on, and to still be the person that I've come to know, speaks volumes about who you really are. You're a kind spirit; I could tell from the moment I saw you. It's what made me want to come talk to you in the first place. On top of that, you're amazingly creative...you might not have a lot of friends, and you probably live in your head a lot because of it like me, but you're so good at bringing that out for the rest of us out here to see. And don't even get me started on your observant sense of humor...”

Austin trailed off, flashing another quick smile at me before his eyes grew serious again. “But what you told me, it makes a lot of sense. It explains to me why you don't seem to see even half of the great things I see in you.”

It felt like I was falling into the center of the earth and   floating above it like a heavenly cloud, all at the same time. The dimly lit décor around me seemed to flash brighter, the sounds of the music became more concise, and the feeling of my heart pumping maddeningly in my chest felt like a war drum. My senses were on overload as I tried to process the feeling that had overcome me and the words which had caused it.
Love. I know it for sure now. This must be love.

I could feel myself smiling, though I couldn't control it. As our waiter Marcus came by to see how we were doing, I heard the sound of my voice somewhere off in the distance requesting a to-go box, and I imagined Mom's face as she asked me to bring her leftovers. I was only slightly conscious of the fact that Austin had done the same.               Before long, it was just the two of us again—but mostly it was just me, floating in the hands of this new, unruly, unwavering, and unimaginably beautiful new feeling. I could feel the snowy landscape of my heart, blistering with gray skies and flurries of snow, beginning to thaw into the first vestiges of spring. I hardly even knew the person whose soul appeared to be igniting to life, but it was in the best way of not recognizing myself that was possible.

“I...” I heard Austin hesitate, and it brought me back down to earth. He was faltering—an unusual quality for him—and I was afraid that the other shoe was about to drop. It did—but it was even better than I'd hoped.