by Sara Polsky
Ms. Triste is familiar in a way that feels comfortable, not tense like sitting with Leila and James again. She keeps talking as I follow her toward the front of the room, moving her hands as if she’s still painting.
The gestures remind me of my mother conducting her classical symphony. It’s hard not to think of my mother when I’m in art class, but for once what I’m remembering isn’t organizing her pills or getting her up in the morning. When I’m painting, it’s easy for me to imagine how she feels when she’s in her studio, humming and waving. And every trick I use—perspective, shading, light and dark—reminds me of sitting next to her while she taught me how to do it.
Ms. Triste gestures me into an empty chair. She waits beside the table as I arrange my backpack underneath the seat and pull out my sketchbook and a pencil. I’m not in my usual alphabetical-order seat because I joined the class late, so my view of the room, of Ms. Triste’s paintings hanging on the walls, is a different one than I’ve had the last two years.
“The rules about quarterly projects haven’t changed,” Ms. Triste tells me. “The schedule of due dates is on the back bulletin board. You know what to do.” She smiles again and moves off to another table, pinning her hair up with a pencil as she goes.
I open my sketchbook to the picture of my mother. I’ll need something bigger for my final project this quarter, but Ms. Triste always tells us to start small. You can make it bigger later, but you can’t build on anything if you don’t create something to start with. And right now, this drawing of my mother in her white bed with a tray of wiggly foods over her lap is the only foundation I can think of. Maybe because she’s all I seem to be able to think about.
I sketch intently, layering in clean and direct lines, as if now that I’m letting myself think about my mother, the world has snapped back into focus. I add the weave on the blanket and a pair of feet in old sneakers, just on the edge of the picture. My sneakers. The toes are pointed up, alert, but there’s a hole in the canvas and one shoe’s laces are untied. They droop onto the floor, waiting for someone to trip, like a prop in a melancholy oil painting.
I work steadily until the bell rings. This is the best part about having art last period: we never have to stop early to clean up.
As I cram my sketchbook and pencils into my bag, I notice that my deck of cards, the one I offered my mother, somehow ended up on the floor. I’m about to reach for it when someone bends down next to me and picks it up.
“Hey,” says Natalie, holding the cards out, waiting while I put them away. The gesture surprises me. The other day, flopped on the grass talking about running away to the city, she didn’t seem like the kind of person who would go out of her way to pick up something someone else had dropped.
“Are you going to your uncle’s office today?”
I nod. Uncle John and I set up an official work schedule: Mondays, Thursdays, Saturdays.
“I’m driving over now if you want a ride,” Natalie says. “I need to do some work with my pictures from Saturday.”
“Sure,” I say. I think I’m starting to crack the code of when Natalie’s actually being friendly.
I follow her to her locker, standing on the other side of the bright blue door while she shuffles books in and out of her bag, which is covered with patches and pins. When she stands up, somehow her bag is several inches thinner than mine, like all of her homework just evaporated into thin air. Following her through the hallways and out into the parking lot, watching her nod hello to some of the people we pass, I feel weighted down and uncool. As we pass Leila’s usual spot, I turn my head away from it.
Natalie’s car is gray and old, not silvery and new like Leila’s. Through the back window, I can see stuff piled on the backseat: a few cardboard boxes, a dress on a hanger, a tripod, and a library book.
“You have to hit the door before you try to open it,” Natalie tells me, pounding on her own door. “Three times, right next to the handle.”
I do, banging the side of my fist against the gray metal. It feels oddly satisfying.
“I bargained with my mom for a car when my parents told my sister and me they were getting divorced,” Natalie says as we climb in. “And then I bargained with my dad to teach me how to drive. It’s not much of a car, but it gets me places.”
I slide the seat back to create more room for my legs and my bag, which I’m nervous to toss on top of everything else in the backseat.
“I bet you ten dollars,” Natalie says, “that when we get to the office, the first thing my mom will do is complain to you about the mess in my car.”
I hear the annoyance in her voice, and I almost tell her then—that my mother is in the hospital; that when I talk to her, I’m not even sure she hears me. It’s hard to get worked up about Natalie’s mom thinking she doesn’t keep her car clean enough.
So all I say is “I don’t mind the mess.”
That seems to be enough for Natalie, because she flicks the radio on and waves a hand at me to adjust the station.
Once we’re out of the parking lot, Natalie lowers the volume, turns her head as much as she can while driving.
“So,” she starts, “what’s going on with you and that guy?”
I blink. “What guy?”
Then I realize she must mean James—she saw us the other day in the hall.
“Nothing,” I say, but by the way Natalie scoffs, I’m guessing I said it a little too quickly or I’m blushing a little too much.
“Nothing,” I say again, more emphatically. But I also start giggling for some reason, and so does she. “We’re sort of friends?” I try. “We have English class together.”
“Sure, that’s all it is,” she says, clearly not believing me at all. “I know your secret.”
Hardly, I think. But as we sit there laughing and I keep shaking my head, I don’t feel like I’m hiding anything.
—
Claire calls Natalie over as soon as we get there, looking stressed and impatient, and sits her at a computer, using the same big gestures Natalie does as she starts explaining something about the photos. Natalie looks at me and rolls her eyes, and I tilt my head back, my way of saying I get it. I do—but my stomach still hurts when I look at them together.
Natalie’s mom is at least aware of her daughter’s comings and goings. Natalie’s mom is right here.
I watch them for only a moment before I cross the room to Uncle John’s office, weaving between the desks and stepping carefully around the piles of paper that spill off tables onto the floor.
There are three other people leaning over Uncle John’s table, and I don’t want to interrupt their meeting. So I stand just outside the door, slightly off to one side, until he looks up and sees me. I’m tall enough to look over the visitors’ heads, and I see drawings and photos spread out in front of them, heavy books holding down the corners.
“Sophie, come in, please,” Uncle John says. He stands up, and the people in the chairs turn around.
I can tell just by looking that they’re a family, a mother and father and daughter. The mother and daughter look alike, more so than Natalie and Claire, with the same reddish-blond hair and identical noses and freckles. I have the urge to draw them, to try to capture the tiny similarities in their faces.
Uncle John smiles warmly at me. It’s a smile I’ve seen him give other people over the last few days, but he hasn’t directed it at me in years.
It surprises me, and I hope his clients don’t notice that I hesitate before smiling back.
“Sophie, this is Trudy and Michael Carter and their daughter, Anne. Everyone, this is my niece, Sophie, who’s one of our interns.”
We all mumble hello, and Uncle John waves me into a chair and passes me a notepad and pencil. I take them and try to figure out what an actual intern who wanted to be here, who wanted to learn everything about architecture, would do with them.
&nb
sp; “We just got started,” Uncle John tells me. “The Carters own the plot of land we visited the other day.” He points to the table, and when I look closely I see some of my sketches there. The photos are older, black and white. They must show what the house looked like before it became empty and rundown. The porch is level and the windows unbroken, and there’s a gazebo in the backyard, a swing hanging from one of the trees.
“Sophie’s just going to take some notes,” Uncle John says, and I sit up straighter and perch my pencil over the pad. I listen to all the questions Uncle John asks about what the Carters need to change, what they would want to change if their budget were unlimited. I try to take down everything. For the first time in almost a week, I pay attention.
“We want to restore as much as possible,” Trudy says, and I hope she means the gazebo and the swing too. “With one exception. My mother’s going to be moving in with us, so we need to add some space on the first floor for her. She’s in her seventies and she’s been in and out of the hospital, and she’s not moving so well anymore.”
She stops. I look at my notepad and flip the page with a loud crinkle so I won’t stare. My mother’s been in and out of the hospital, Trudy said, and I wish I could ask her how she managed to say it so easily.
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Uncle John’s voice is steady, and he pauses until the Carters nod at him in acknowledgment. “We can definitely design the house, even with the restoration, to accommodate that.” I remember to take notes again as he asks Trudy and Michael questions about how far Trudy’s mom can walk and explains that they can add a ramp for her to the home’s front stairs.
Finally Uncle John is done, and we all stand up at the same time and shake hands in a confusion of arms reaching over the desk. I wait in the office while Uncle John sees them out.
When he comes back in, I’m not expecting him to say, “So, are you ready?”
“Ready for what?”
“To help me with the project. The Carters’ house.” He sits back down, grabs a pad and starts sketching, explaining where he’ll put windows to make the best use of the land’s light and the way he’ll create a separate bedroom-bathroom suite for Anne on the second floor.
“Now, what about this space for Trudy’s mother on the first floor?”
He glances up at me. He’s not just talking to himself. He’s really asking.
I lean over the table, studying Uncle John’s sketch. I think about the way I feel in Aunt Cynthia and Uncle John’s house, never sure if I’m sitting in a chair one of them usually sits in or eating food that someone else was planning to have. Always out of place.
“Maybe you could add some rooms here, off the kitchen,” I say, tracing my fingers over what he’s drawn. He was pressing harder on the page than he had to for a sketch, and the lines are thick, the way I imagine braille. I wonder if Uncle John can read them, figure out the shapes of these people’s lives, just by touch.
“She probably shouldn’t have her own kitchen, in case she forgets to turn the stove off,” I say. “But this way she can be right near it, so she won’t have to walk through everyone else’s space if she just wants to get a glass of water or something. And you’re already expanding the second floor right above that spot to make the room for Anne.”
I glance up at Uncle John and he’s nodding and scribbling down notes, so I keep going. “Maybe she should have a bedroom and one other room, so she won’t feel like she’s being confined to a tiny corner of the house. And her own bathroom.”
“Good,” Uncle John says, sketching as I talk. “This is excellent, Sophie.”
I think of Trudy’s and Anne’s faces, how I wanted to draw them. Now, by helping to design their house, I sort of am.
Except that Uncle John is doing the actual drawing. And as I watch him sketching out what I just said, the new bedroom and bathroom and small living room just off the kitchen, I realize something.
I say it before I really think about it: “I didn’t know you could draw.”
He looks up from the paper and smiles. “You didn’t?”
“I know it’s stupid,” I say quickly. “Obviously, you’re an architect. I guess I just never thought about it.”
“We do most of the work on computer now, actually,” he says. “So I could probably get away with doing a lot less drawing. I just like to get my ideas down on paper first.”
He leans forward and adds, “But I thought you knew that’s how I met Cynthia—I took a drawing class with your mother, back when they were both living in New York.”
He laughs a little, like a funny memory just popped into his head.
“No,” I say. My throat is strangely dry and scratchy. “I didn’t know that.”
“Your mother threw a big party right after class ended, and she and Cynthia were sharing an apartment then. I went to the party with some friends, and Cynthia and I started talking and it was just…” he trails off, then shrugs and smiles, as if to say, that was it.
I know Aunt Cynthia and my mother used to share an apartment in New York, long before Leila and I were born. They told us so many stories about it—the bright walls covered with pictures my mother had painted, the way she designed a screen for a corner of the living room so Aunt Cynthia could wall it off into a study while she was in law school. Leila and I used to talk about doing the same thing when we got older, moving into the city together while Leila became a famous musician and I did whatever I decided I wanted to do. I imagined us in an apartment just like my mother and Aunt Cynthia’s: small, but colorful and homey.
But I never thought about what their lives were actually like. I never imagined them throwing parties together, my mother introducing her sister to the quiet, nerdy-looking boy from art class.
Now I imagine Aunt Cynthia’s life back then like a slideshow: eating dinner in a restaurant with the boy from the party; sitting in class, taking quick notes, ink stains on her hands; meeting friends on Friday night for a movie, maybe an independent film at an artsy theater downtown. I picture her raiding my mother’s closet for something to wear when she goes out.
Uncle John clears his throat across from me and taps his pencil against the table. I look up, realizing I’ve been in a fog.
“Thanks for the help,” he says. “I think this project is going to turn out well.” He rolls up the floor plans, snapping a rubber band around them and setting them against a bookshelf.
“We should probably head home. Leila has jazz band on Mondays, so we usually eat early.” He stands up, grabs his bag from a chair, and starts tossing things in—the notepad he’s been using to sketch the Carters’ new plans, a book, his cell phone, the smaller bag he uses to carry his lunch.
I almost open my mouth to stop him when he says the word home, remind him that where we’re going isn’t really my house. My home is the tiny apartment on the other side of town with two names on the mailbox, written in a younger me’s capital letters across a peeling piece of tape: canon, amy and sophie.
But I don’t know how to explain that, so all I do is follow Uncle John out of the office.
Fourteen
In English class the next afternoon, the desks are back in small clusters, and Mr. Jackson has us sit with our groups from yesterday. James, Leila, and I settle silently into our spots. Mr. Jackson looks at each group sternly as he tells the class to quiet down. He doesn’t have to look at us.
“This setup is just for a few minutes, so we can iron out some details about the projects. Then we’ll get back into the usual rows,” Mr. Jackson says. Leila’s sigh of relief is so full I think I actually feel her deflate next to me.
Mr. Jackson answers a few questions about the assignment and then passes out a sign-up sheet with presentation dates. The first one is next week, and suddenly all I can think is I can’t do this. Actually sit with James and Leila in a room and have a conversation and come up with posters or costumes
or something by then? No. But when the sheet gets to us, that first slot has already been taken, and Leila writes our names in a messy scrawl, without asking us, next to the very last date.
“Do you really think…” James starts, as if he’s about to disagree with the choice. But then he changes his mind, I guess, because he just shrugs and passes the sheet to the next group.
For once, I’m on Leila’s side. Good, I think, as I watch her list our names at the bottom of the page. Let’s delay this thing as long as possible.
—
James catches up to me after class, matching my pace as I head for the art room. It’s at the far end of the hallway, so the crowd around us thins out quickly.
I wait for James to turn off into a classroom or say something, but he doesn’t do either. So finally, just outside art, I stop and face him.
“What?” I snap.
“What do you mean?” His rumbly voice answers.
I roll my eyes. “I mean,” I say, standing straighter and channeling Leila as best I can, “why are you following me?”
James shrugs, his backpack bouncing up and down on his shoulders. “I’m walking to band. You’re walking to art. It’s in the same direction.”
I give up. I reach for the doorknob and start to turn it before James says, “Wait.” When I look back at him over my shoulder, his hand is stretched toward my arm. He pulls it back.
“I just…you looked kind of out of it in English the other day. And then today you seemed upset. Are you sure you’re okay?”
He looks at me steadily, as if he can draw the answer telepathically out of my brain, and all I can do is blink at him. My mind is completely empty. No answer to offer, telepathic or otherwise. And then we’re just looking at each other, and I forget I’m even supposed to be thinking of one.
The second bell rings and we both jump.
James finally looks down. “See you in English, I guess,” he says, and I still haven’t said anything by the time he turns around and walks away.
