Art Lessons

by Katherine Koller

  While I gather up my sketchbook, he jumps out of the car and runs to my door to open it. As he shuts the door behind me, he kisses me once on the neck, and then walks me up to the house. On the steps, my sketchbook jabs him in the ribs and inside, Louis starts his I-want-some-too-barking, which is what he does when anyone is hugging someone else. Brian kisses me once more, this time on the forehead, teasing me. He opens my front door and keeps kissing me as we move inside. I let Louis hold my sketchbook in his mouth, to shut him up, and kiss Brian with Irish coffee lips and two hands. Colours start whirling in my head. The colours intensify.

  No one home? Brian murmurs.

  Guess not, I mumble.

  Mmm, he says, with a long and lean kiss, and I’m feeling his shoulders now. They feel like they look.

  And his hands are up my shirt, unhitching my bra. I catch Louis’ look, perplexed, and he gives a little growl that permeates my Irish coffee brain.

  Sorry, you have to go, I say. They’ll be home any second.

  Is that why?

  I don’t even know you, Brian.

  He pulls back, gives me a look like that play didn’t go the way it should have, but he’s got another one in mind, and maybe he’s going to go back and check out Morgan.

  In three elastic strides, Brian’s in his car and burning out of sight, and I know he won’t be back, and I won’t get my basketball practice sketches, but the colours in my head continue, circling in a kaleidoscope. Shades I don’t remember. A new palette from an unknown planet. A planet of boys.

  Dave.

  Jerry.

  Tim.

  Rufus.

  Dennis.

  Hues and intensity and shades blend with boys from before:

  Freddy.

  Darryl.

  Ricco.

  I turn off the light and crouch in the dark, my hand circling the dog’s back, trying to memorize brightness, tonality. To ground this brilliant world, get it down on paper or canvas or an old white shirt. One of the colours is basketball orange, sweaty and warm from Brian’s open hand, and in motion. All of the colours are in motion.

  Late Spring Frost

  We’re in Jason’s white Toyota pickup, making the first tracks down the alley in feathery May snow, rounding like a dream into the driveway. Jason cuts the lights and the motor and pulls me to him again. We’ve been out watching the stars by the river. The dinky clock shines 4:09. The only sound, our breathing. The lane light sparkles snowflakes. Inside, kisses, skin on skin, warm again.

  There’s nowhere else I want to be. We’ve been going out since we met at a New Year’s party. Kimmy, from junior high, introduced us. But before that, his grey eyes picked me out across the basement rec room, kept looking over at me, so I looked back. Jason and Kimmy go to a different high school. He had just broken up with his girlfriend and bleached his hair blonde to celebrate. He’s in the last year of the automotive program and works for his dad at a garage. He likes that I’m from a different school. His old girlfriend was clingy.

  But we’re pretty into each other now. Out every weekend. The party tonight was at his friend’s. We stayed the latest, as usual. Then went to the ravine. His dad doesn’t care when he gets home, as long as he’s at work on time and takes care of the truck until he pays it off. I’ll be tired tomorrow, but I usually make it for Saturday morning art class at the gallery. Not sure they can teach me anything anyway, but I’m way behind on my final portfolio for school.

  We don’t hear the van until it cranks up the driveway beside us, doors slamming in the middle of the night. Dad opens my door, yanks me out of the truck and calls in to Jason.

  What the hell are you doing bringing my daughter home at this hour?

  Mom hits Jason’s window with the palm of her hand. Jason flips his baseball cap backwards and fast-turns the pickup down the driveway, skidding on new snow, and my car door slams shut by itself.

  Snowflakes waft down on my nose and hair, trying to keep me in place, but I run after Jason, slipping on snow tracks. Dad, breathing hard, catches me from behind, arms tight around my waist. He lifts me up, twisting me back toward the driveway.

  I hate you, I yell.

  I’m a siren in a white wilderness. I kick at the air and plow Mom in the hand. Dad pushes me in the gate and I break away, running for the lock on my bedroom door.

  Mom keeps her voice low.

  We were at the hospital. Babci had a stroke!

  I hear Stella crying.

  Stella whispers, I tried to call, but you wouldn’t answer your phone!

  Mom takes Stella back to her room and doesn’t return. Dad’s steps are heavy on the stairs. He passes by my door without stopping. Doors close down the hall.

  Quiet as dust, I collapse to the floor. My dead cell phone slides out of my bag, under my bed. I let it be.

  I will myself not to stir. A stroke. That means paralysis. I make my limbs stay where they land. I ache for Jason.

  For Babci. I wonder if it hurts to have a stroke.

  Cramped, every muscle stabs. My thoughts, twisted ropes; my heart, pounded flat; my guts, shrink wrapped. My ears ring. My eyes sting. I make no move.

  The stillness of the house, when I get up off the floor, startles me. Is it that early that everyone’s asleep?

  I wonder if I’m alone. In an alarming new way, I am.

  I get up, bone by bone, so stiff I can hardly stand, pins and needles in every muscle. My purple sketchbook is halfway hanging off my desk, about to fall, so I take it, my arms acting out of habit, scooping a pencil, an eraser into my jacket pocket. My brain is whitenoise, grey screen. All of me feels heavy and prickly.

  Downstairs I snatch a can of juice from the pantry. Cranberry, my usual first choice, but it burns road rash down my throat, ragged from screaming. I sip it slowly to make it hurt more. Outside, my gripless flats gather in snow, smudge the thin calm white way to the hospital. Nothing appears in my path. At this early hour, no traffic interferes with my silent trajectory.

  It’s way after hours, so I stand in the cold light of the hospital door a long time. Finally, a group of worried relatives in saris and slippers come out; they hold the door kindly for me, but I can hardly mutter a word of thanks when I go in. My throat feels stopped up.

  Babci’s room is dim. She sleeps.

  I open the curtains, but nothing in the sky breaks through the dark. No dawn light. No moon. Not even a scribble of cloud.

  I crouch on the windowsill and sketch, leaving out the tubes and the breathing mask. I work on the meshed lines of her face, deeper than I remember, caressing each one with my pencil. I draw her eyes the way I want them: open and shining and bright. The feeble break of day reveals delicate leaf-vein creases on her chin. Her breaths have no pattern, and more than once I freeze my pencil, waiting for the next inhale. My stomach gurgles.

  A nurse checks in. Her cheeriness exposes me: a hunched troll.

  Have we had a good night? Good girl! Lucky to have a visitor so early!

  I pause, in awe of this nurse, name-tagged Patsi, a chirping bird among the old and sick.

  May I take a peek?

  I show her the portrait so far.

  Your grandma is beautiful!

  The lines around Patsi’s eyes dredge with real concern, care. A kind of love.

  I wish someone would do this for all of them, she says. There’s so much beauty here that no one sees.

  Patsi puts both hands on my shoulders for a moment, and the two hills there melt into a prairie across my back. My mouth involuntarily nudges open. My throat a raw fist, I can only nod. She waits for it, my manufactured smile, and takes it with her to cock-a-doodle a patient behind the curtain to yet another day.

  When I finish the sketch, Babci sighs. It takes a long time for her next breath, and I don’t breathe until she does.

  In this dry close
air, I’m sputtering and choking when Mom comes in. She pats my back and hands me a tissue. My sketchbook slips to the floor. She picks it up, studying the portrait while I wipe away snot, spit and tears. I force my voice until the growls morph into words.

  Mom, I don’t hate you.

  Finally, she says, I know.

  She looks at me from a new distance, face to face. We’re on opposite cliffs now, but we’ll never take our eyes off each other.

  I wonder if Mom ever kicked and screamed at Babci. Then she adjusts the oxygen mask on Babci’s shrunken face, smoothing out the torqued elastic across her ear and I know that, in her own way, she has.

  My hand shakes as I start to rip out the page, the last one in my book, and pass it over. Mom’s hand stops me.

  No, you keep it, she says. For your portfolio.

  The purple bruises on the back of Mom’s hand from when my foot kicked her last night curdle my guts. I run to find a washroom and then a payphone to call Jason. I get his voicemail.

  Yeah, call back, I’m out.

  I do. Sorry about last night. I’m at the hospital with my grandma, but I’m going home now. Phone me when you get this message?

  When I get home, Dad grounds me. I’ve never been grounded before.

  No Jason until after finals.

  What?

  And your portfolio is handed in.

  Dad!

  He’s distracted you from it, Cassie. And from yourself.

  How do you know?

  He’s made you... anxious. You’re happiest when you’re at your drafting table.

  Dad’s hardly looking at me. He doesn’t come in my room, but stays in the doorway. He knows I’m not a little girl anymore. So why does he want to pin me to my art table? He doesn’t even like my art.

  What about a curfew? What if I got in at midnight?

  We already tried that, Cassie. No. It’s only two weeks. He closes my door.

  Before Dad takes away my cellphone, his old one that he pays for, I call Jason again. I get his voicemail again. I rush my message, not sure how to say it.

  I’m not allowed to see you till after exams! My last one is the 27th of June and it’s over at 4. I’m going to go crazy not seeing you. I’m sorry. I really, really am.

  Jason doesn’t call the house phone, but then he never did.

  To pass the time, I sleep a lot.

  Stuck in my room, I have no interest in studying for exams, but I settle back into my evergreen cone series. They’re realistic, so they take time, focus, attention to every fascinating detail. I’ve been collecting for a while, and I wanted to have a mosaic of diverse cones, a community: pine, spruce, fir, balsam, cedar, hemlock, larch. After many false starts, I finally loosen my markings, move away from the actual, and the cones get a little more impressionistic. They go faster once I relax and let go of perfection. The first ones look messy, but gradually I get a rhythm and they soothe me. I keep working, and eventually the floating feeling comes back, I’m out of my head, until I think about Jason, and then I wobble and dive back into bed.

  Lying there, I think about adding insects—ants, beetles, a worm—when Auntie Magda comes up to my room. I haven’t seen much of her since Christmas, when she and Lowell were still married. They waited until the New Year to get their divorce. I’ve been wanting to ask ever since.

  Was that planned?

  No, no, my darling, no. Not really. I mean, I didn’t know if it would last. The men I meet, they don’t stay. I get tired of them.

  Jason said the same exact words to me, about his girlfriends. It makes me shiver. Auntie Magda sits on my bed, and hugs me to her. She digs in her bag.

  I brought chocolate. From a client, but for you.

  Take me away. I want out of this house. Mom treats me like an alien and Dad’s being a homework cop. I can’t do anything.

  No. Here’s why. You have a family here, I live alone. I put on that wedding, you’re right, for Mama. It was for her, but I hoped, I really hoped, it would be true. But Lowell and his friend, the one who took his condo? They’re a couple. He’s with him. And I’m alone again.

  I stop unwrapping the bar of Swiss chocolate.

  So why did Lowell go through with the wedding?

  Same. For his parents.

  You both did that for your parents?

  It’s stupid, now we know. We liked making the wedding, but we couldn’t make a marriage. It was expensive, but in one way, it’s good we tried, because now Lowell knows for sure. He’s a much happier man. We still have lunch.

  I thought I could believe in you.

  Her hand reaches in her bag again. Oh, no. Out comes her Kleenex. She’s going to cry.

  Auntie Magda, no.

  I wanted to have my own job, make my own money, have my own car. Mama wanted me to marry. I did what I wanted. And now I know that it’s absolutely right for me. Not that I won’t stop looking for a wonderful man, but I love my life as I am. You do what you want, but don’t leave your Mom. Not like this. Not now.

  She sniffs and wipes her eyes, expertly salvaging her mascara.

  Now, taste your chocolate and get back to your work.

  And I do. The chocolate helps.

  After Biology, my last exam, waiting in his pickup is Jason with that loose smile and those steely eyes and I’m rescued.

  Hey, Babe.

  Drive, drive anywhere, go any place, get me away.

  Yeah?

  He’s looking at me, touching my hair, waiting to turn left. He leans over to kiss me, and we creep out of our lane, and get hit by an oncoming truck. The sound of crunching metal reverberates in my ears.

  Jason holds on to his left shoulder with that arm, catches blood dripping down his ear. I’m calling him, Jason, Jason, but he won’t answer. With his other fist, the one nearest to me, he bashes the steering wheel. He keeps punching it, again and again.

  My neck is ratcheted; my head screams pain. My seatbelt was on, so my head didn’t hit like his. I don’t think I’m bleeding, but there’s windshield glass in my lap. The pickup clock face is cracked.

  I want to call Mom, but I don’t have a phone.

  There’s a siren coming at me, piercing my skull. Someone opens my door. Then they carry me away.

  White Woods

  They’re sending me to art camp for the whole summer in Deadsville, Alberta. I’m packed up, prisoner in my neck brace in the back seat. Dad drives the Chevy van a shade over the speed limit down Highway 2. Mom keeps her eyes on the road.

  Dad is saying this town’s not so bad. The boys had lots of tournaments here. They’ve got a decent rink, and there’s a burger bar near the soccer centre. On Main Street, Mom gets excited about a quilting store. Oh, and there’s a 7-Eleven. Big whoop. I know why they’re doing this. Because of Jason. They’re abandoning me for six weeks.

  The whiplash hurts, the neck brace is a bitch, getting dumped in this dive sucks, but not hearing from Jason is the worst. Not seeing him, holding him, having him hold me, making every cell of my body alive and awake.

  The camp building, a community college, sprawls low, a grey slab. Prairie burnt dirt and weeds lead up to a black door, scratched and abused by boots. But inside the door are bursts of colour, walls covered in student art. It invades my swollen eyes with light, hue, exposed prairie perspective. I can’t look away because of the neck brace. So I cover my eyes and ears as my parents lead me to my room. A barren single room without windows or room for three bodies to linger. A bed, that’s all. And a closet. Then they kiss me, the shell of me, and leave me there. On the way out, they promise to call. I don’t. I phone Jason instead. I leave messages.

  Hey? Call me?

  Like, maybe you could leave me a message?

  Are you there?

  All I feel now is flatness, funneling to a pit. The beige of my dorm room spreads o
ut around me. I slide into a hole of emptiness. I can’t imagine seeing anything, much less making anything, here. I’m in a desert.

  I spend all my time after morning drawing classes in the studio. I skip painting. I don’t want colour, even watercolour. The instructors don’t care, as long as I’m working. I keep my pencil in my right hand so I can’t hold my phone, another hand-me-down from Dad, but with a new phone number. Administration has already confiscated three phones from the careless.

  They’ve supplied me with a fresh sketchbook, poster-sized, with a black cover, which I appreciate because I’m back to black. But this time, that’s all there is. I don’t even see colour, could care less about it. The black book conforms to my black jeans, black T-shirts, black zip-ups and a black City of Champions baseball cap, a parting gift from Charlie and Tom, home for the summer just as I’m gone. I wear my hat backwards.

  Stella, bewildered by the accident and my abrupt departure, found me a fresh white eraser from the kitchen school supply cupboard. By instinct, Stella knew I needed something to squeeze as I angled my propped throbbing neck into the van. I fisted the soft eraser the whole way here. I keep it in my left hand, in class and out of class, and compress its warm blanched skin. I search with my pencil for something, anything, in the blank howling sky of the page.

  I can’t move my head in the neck brace. I can’t look down at my work, so I feel even more distanced from my hand. I can’t bend over it, cobra down and up and move with the page. I’m trunked in this brace, like a tree myself.

  Louis barks and whines, so I let him out of the yard when Dad made me rake the grass as a fresh air break from studying. I scraped the ground to wake it up, get green, get alive, after this winter that stretched into May and a truncated spring that forgot to rain. Louis plodded over to the bunch of trees and bush on our lot we call the wild area. It’s left over from when our house was first built, part of the ravine. It forms a screen from the front street and contains windsong in the aspens, the promise of Saskatoon berries, the natural rot scent of its mini-forest floor. By the time I bagged up the piles of dirty dry grass, Louis chose the shade of a chokecherry tree, flopped down facing the house and died. He made sure that I found him, not Stella. We buried him in the ravine.