The Chalk Artist
Page 30
Maia said, “He designed the new game. UnderWorld!”
“What?” Lois exclaimed. “Collin. Is that true?”
“Not exactly!” he called over his shoulder as he carried coats to Maia’s bedroom.
Kerry arrived, and Aidan followed, carrying an enormous chocolate cake dusted with powdered sugar. “I tripled the recipe,” Kerry said.
“He was one of the designers,” Maia told Lois. “I don’t know if you’ve seen it yet, but you stand in the center, and the whole game showers down on you like fireworks.”
“Fireworks! You worked on that technology?”
“I was a concept artist.”
“What?” Maia’s ears pricked up at the past tense.
Meanwhile, Kerry found Nina in the kitchen, ladling punch. “This one is spiced,” Nina explained, “and this one’s spiked.”
Kerry told Nina, “It was so strange hearing my own child recite.”
Dawn said, “Remembering all those lines?”
“No, just hearing him say so many sentences together. I’d almost forgotten the sound of his voice! I was so surprised.”
“I was surprised too,” Nina told Kerry.
Kerry set her glass down on the counter and touched Nina’s shoulder. “Thank you.”
“He did all the work. Not me.”
“I know that isn’t true. You tutored him!”
“I mean he did his own thing,” Nina explained. “He learned one poem and then at the last minute he just—switched.” Stop right there, she thought, but she couldn’t help adding, “I think he could have won.”
Maia swept in, looking fierce.
He’s told her, Nina thought, as Maia unwrapped a tray of baklava.
“Nina says Aidan could have won,” Kerry told Maia.
But Maia was distracted, thinking about Collin. Was he really giving up Arkadia, and all that money, and all that magic, to look for work in Somerville? Was he really looking for some indie-animation thing?
“I really think he could have done it,” Nina told Kerry.
“It doesn’t matter,” Kerry reassured her. “For me it wasn’t about winning.”
“I know.” Nina couldn’t help sounding wistful. “But he’s so talented. It’s a little hard.”
“Just wait ’til you have kids,” Maia interjected, blessing and cursing Nina, both at once.
As night pressed against the windowpanes, a new girl slipped inside the door. She wore a silky black shirt, black tights, black boots. She was strange and beautiful, her face pale, her hair and lips dark, her eyes outlined in black. At first, nobody recognized her—not even little Henry. When she bent down and said, “Hey! Remember me?” he shrank away from his former babysitter, frightened by her red-black lips, her huge dark eyes.
Lois was the first to greet her. “Diana, honey! How are you?”
“Good.”
Alert and narrow, a greyhound of a boy, Jack appeared behind Diana. “And what have you been up to?” Lois inquired, but she had been seventeen once, and she thought she knew.
Maia was playing African music, flamenco music, tangos by Astor Piazzolla. She rolled back the carpet and danced with Greg. The china cabinet rattled; the whole apartment began to hum.
Nina had abandoned her post to sit with Collin. No one was watching in the kitchen, so Jack and Diana served themselves spiked punch. Jack had two cups, and Diana had almost three. They laughed together and Diana leaned against the counter.
He said, “I know where we should go.” They got their shoes and slipped out the kitchen door.
In the living room, Sage was on her knees dancing with Henry, holding both his hands. Collin and Nina sat together on the couch and watched, while, at a little distance, Aidan watched them. Nina rested her head on Collin’s shoulder, and Collin stroked her hair. How casual he was. He didn’t even need to look at her.
Maia’s windows steamed up. Her kitchen overflowed with neighbors in their stocking feet. The front door stood like a green island in a sea of boots. Everyone was drinking, everyone was warm and loud as Aidan slipped outside. It was snowing when he crossed the street to his own house.
He knew Diana and Jack were in there. He could see their footprints on the steps. They were up in her room, tipsy, kissing, laughing. He hesitated, wondering if he should venture in or return to Maia’s house. He didn’t want to watch Collin stroking Nina’s hair, and he really didn’t want to listen to Diana and Jack.
Hesitating, he noticed a padded envelope stuffed into the mailbox. He pulled it out and read two words in handwriting he knew. For Aidan.
He picked up the box and studied the curve of his own letters in Miss Lazare’s writing. How strange to see his name there out of school. He stared at the words and then in a rush he ripped open the envelope and felt the thick book inside.
Oh. He knew what she had done. She had bought him his own poetry anthology because he was a winner too.
He almost threw the thing away. He didn’t need anthologies, and didn’t want to be consoled. Even so, he pulled the book out, hoping for a card.
Now he discovered something else entirely. This was Lazare’s own Dickinson, the one she had carried in the classroom and the hall. The very book he’d turned facedown on the desk. Don’t do that! It’s old. You’ll break the spine.
He found no card, no explanation, except for an inscription in blue ink. Not Miss Lazare’s compact handwriting, but some other penmanship, pale and spidery. For Nina Lazare, in recognition of excellence in public speaking, and with kind regards from her teacher, Lawrence B. Rousse…She had given Aidan her own prize. She had won it in school, and now she was giving it to him.
He closed the volume and weighed it in his hands. Then he took a flying leap off the porch. The bare trees tilted, neighbors’ Christmas lights flickered around him as he almost fell, but he caught himself and landed on his feet.
Clasping the book with one arm to his chest, he raced up Antrim. He had no goal in mind, no destination. All he wanted was to run.
He stopped at the corner and looked once more at the treasure in his arms. Then, winded, he retraced his running steps, walking down the street again. He was not religious, but, like his mother, he believed in mysteries. Now he realized that Nina had sent him a sign, as Elvish queens bestowed a diamond flask, a gossamer handkerchief, a ring of gold. She had sent him a message with this poetry. He was noble, and he was magic. He was a champion and a prince.
No, none of that. Not really.
He saw the lights of the party. He had returned, but he stood out on the sidewalk, too shy to go inside and thank his teacher. Brushing snow from Nina’s book, he felt her distance, magnified by kindness. There was nothing he could do, and nothing he could say. He could not explain what he felt, even to himself, the mix of hopelessness and grace. She didn’t love him—not the way he loved her—but she had singled him out. She had given him her gift.
TO MY TEACHERS
Dana Izumi
June Brieske
Mabel Hefty
Tom Earle
Bill Messer
Liz Foster
Eileen Crean
Leonard Russo
Betty Sullivan
Jerry Devlin
Bill Alfred
Michael Anesko
Larry Benson
Barbara Lewalski
George Dekker
David Riggs
Jay Fliegelman
John Bender
Seth Lerer
Stephen Orgel
BY ALLEGRA GOODMAN
The Chalk Artist
The Cookbook Collector
The Other Side of the Island
Intuition
Paradise Park
Kaaterskill Falls
The Family Markowitz
Total Immersion
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALLEGRA GOODMAN’s novels include Intuition, The Cookbook Collector, Paradise Park, and Kaaterskill Falls (a National Book Award finalist). Her fiction has appeared in T
he New Yorker, Commentary, and Ploughshares, and has been anthologized in The O. Henry Awards and Best American Short Stories. She has written two collections of short stories, The Family Markowitz and Total Immersion, and a novel for younger readers, The Other Side of the Island. Her essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, The Boston Globe, and The American Scholar. Raised in Honolulu, Goodman studied English and philosophy at Harvard and received a PhD in English literature from Stanford. She is the recipient of a Whiting Award, the Salon Award for Fiction, and a fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She lives with her family in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she is writing a new novel.
allegragoodman.com
Facebook.com/AllegraGoodman
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