Many Points of Me

by Caroline Gertler

  Mrs. Velandry waves at us with two hands: one for me, one for Theo.

  I use a key I wear on a leather cord around my neck to unlock the outer door.

  I pinch my nose closed against the pee smell as Theo and I dart through the inner door and into the lobby, across the chipped and dull marble floor. We cover our ears to the racket of Olive barking. The blast of the radiator brings warmth back to my fingers and cheeks.

  “G, I’m still telling you the Theo-Dare story,” Theo shouts above Olive’s racket.

  “Yeah, let me just say hi to the dogs, and then she’ll stop.”

  Theo glumly takes a seat at the base of the stairs. I ring Mrs. Velandry’s door and wait for her to turn all three locks.

  The dogs rush to me, jumping up on my legs, licking my hands. Olive quits her barking to sniff me wildly, wagging her tail. Royal plops himself on my feet. I scoop him up for a cuddle, give him a kiss on top of his head, and hand him back to Mrs. Velandry.

  “Good day?” she asks.

  “Not bad,” I say.

  “Come by for some zucchini bread later—you, too, Theo,” she says as I head to the stairs.

  “Thanks,” we call.

  “More Theo-Dare?” he asks, standing up.

  “Yeah,” I say, taking the steps two at a time. Our building has a rickety elevator that’s painfully slow and gets stuck at the worst times. I don’t have the patience.

  I’m a few inches taller than Theo, and faster. I could race up these stairs to my apartment on the top floor and leave him a flight behind if I wanted. But I stay only a few steps ahead. Trying to focus on his story.

  We get to Theo’s floor. Five. I keep walking.

  “See ya later!” I don’t look back.

  “But, G, don’t you want to hear the rest? Sketch through some NYC ART ideas together?” I hear worry in Theo’s voice.

  He’s worried because I’m breaking our routine. Every day after school we go to his apartment, have a snack, do our homework. Draw. Paint. Play with Krypto.

  But today. Today is different.

  I want to be home.

  Without Theo.

  “Too much work. Gotta focus.” I take off up the last flight of stairs. Lightning speed. Super G speed.

  No time to feel regret over the confusion and disappointment left in my wake.

  Chapter

  Six

  The landing outside our apartment door looks like a warehouse.

  Mounds of flattened cardboard packing boxes, empty painting crates, and Styrofoam peanuts cover the floor.

  It did not look like this when I left for school this morning.

  Our sixth-floor apartment is called PH, or penthouse, which sounds fancy but just means it’s the top floor of the building. The reason it worked as an artist’s studio for Dad is that it was built on the roof, with a double-height living room that has windows facing south. Plus the balcony was a total bonus.

  It felt magical, growing up in Dad’s art studio. The New York Times once did a profile of Dad’s Sunday routine. They wrote something like: “There’s no clear line between Hank Rosenbloom’s home and studio, especially on Sunday mornings when the aroma of coffee brewing and French toast on the griddle fills the space, momentarily masking the smell of paints and oils, enticing his six-year-old daughter to take a seat at his drafting table to enjoy her brunch, all crafted by the hand of the artist.”

  The sentence is long so the words get jumbled in my mind. But it captures the feeling of how our Sunday mornings were: that mixture of art and French toast.

  The framed article hangs on our kitchen wall above the whiteboard where Mom and I scribble notes to each other. Like our life with Dad can be framed and admired—remembered as part of the past. Mom’s French toast is such a poor comparison to Dad’s that she doesn’t even try. It’s more likely to be instant oatmeal and egg whites. Even the door to our balcony has been locked since then. I have no idea where Mom keeps the key. That magical feeling of living in Dad’s studio has turned ordinary.

  Bubble Wrap pops under my feet as I step over boxes to get to the front door. I use the other key on my leather cord for this door, but it’s already unlocked, which means Mom is home.

  There’s an even bigger surprise inside: Dad’s paintings. After almost two years of living with bare walls, the shock of seeing Dad’s splashes of color everywhere makes my head spin. I half expect to see him standing at his easel, humming along to opera, gliding his paintbrush across a canvas.

  There’s G in Blue, a portrait of me. A smallish square panel that shows me as an ultramarine blue triangle, floating against a white background.

  Dad said ultramarine is the most expensive blue pigment, which is why he chose it to paint me. During the Renaissance it was made from the semiprecious stone lapis lazuli and was worth more than gold. Old master artists used it for painting the dress of Mary. It was one of Dad’s favorite colors: a deep, brilliant blue. Like royal blue. But I don’t know if that blue is the color I’d choose for myself. I don’t know what color I’d choose.

  All I see for me now is a deep moody gray. Charcoal.

  There’s Glimpse of Light, with its stripes and layers of yellows: canary, daffodil, lemon.

  Figure in the Dusk, which shows Mom as a burgundy cylinder against a black background. I wonder why he chose that color for Mom. Burgundy, made up of pigments like red ochre, brambleberry, oxblood.

  I try to see it in her as she calls from where she’s seated at the table, “Hi, honey!”

  The reality of what she’s doing—hard at work on an exhibition about Dad—fades his presence from the room.

  She doesn’t even ask me how my day was or look up from the notes she’s making on a legal pad. Her hair is pulled back into a messy bun and she’s wearing her thick tortoiseshell glasses, which means she hasn’t showered and she’s tired and she might not shower or put in her contact lenses for days.

  I don’t see her as burgundy, but as dull beige. Fawn or taupe on a good day.

  Maybe the burgundy drained out of her when Dad died.

  “What are all those boxes? It looks like a tornado blew through here.”

  “Major crunch time for the exhibition. I just got them from storage, and I’m working through it here, and then bringing what I need over to the Met.” Mom looks up, but not at me. At the piles on the tables. “All these early sketches and notebooks that we’d almost forgotten about. Some are from when he was around your age.”

  “Can I see?” I walk over to the table and set down my backpack.

  “It’s a total mess.” Mom rubs at her eyes and pulls her bun tighter. “This early stuff was just thrown into boxes with no rhyme or reason. Most of it, I’ve never seen before, and the ones I’ve gotten through today aren’t even dated. Take a look—but not at this pile, which I’ve already gone through. Tell me if you find anything interesting.”

  All of Dad’s art is interesting to me. Because for ten years, I was in his life. I was there when he made his art. I saw him draw and paint and step back and make changes and throw things out and start over and, finally, decide a piece was done.

  I start sifting through the stacks of papers in front of me. Mom sits back in her chair and looks out the window, like her attention is caught by something out there. “Remember how Dad used to make those mixed-up animal drawings with you?”

  Of course I do. He’d start a sketch by making a head, and then fold the paper, and then I’d draw the body, and fold and give it back to him to do the legs and feet. And then I’d unfold the whole thing and we’d end up with a crazy image. I keep a folder of those mixed-up animal drawings in my desk drawer. Sometimes we’d play it with Theo, too. But recently when Theo started one and passed it over to me, I said no. The game isn’t as fun as it used to be.

  “I found one today,” she says, handing it to me. “That’s what made me think of it. Not sure how it got boxed in with all these papers.”

  I look at the drawing, on a piece of yellow constructi
on paper that’s old enough to have faded along the edges. I smile: Dad had drawn a penguin head, I drew a butterfly body, and he’d finished it with elephant feet.

  “Maybe that’s what I could do.” Draw myself as a mixed-up animal for NYC ART. A girl with a unicorn horn, a blue jay’s head, dragon wings, a lion’s mane, and a mermaid’s tail.

  “Do for what?” Mom asks.

  I tell her that the NYC ART theme was announced today.

  “Self-portrait!” She leans toward me. Focusing on me for the first time since I got home. “How lucky! That’s the best theme, isn’t it? Last year, what was it? Growth or metamorphosis or something? Too obscure. So, what are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, I can’t wait to see what you come up with.” She opens her mouth to say something else, then stops and says softly, “Wouldn’t it be special to have your first art show at the Met at the same time as Dad’s?”

  Sure, that’d be great, but what if I don’t come up with anything?

  What if I can’t come up with anything?

  “I just think—I’m not going to enter.”

  As soon as the words are out there, I know I mean it. Entering is a choice I can make. I might have to make a self-portrait for class, but NYC ART is optional. An option I’m not going to take.

  “Really?” She studies my face like she’s trying to figure out what I’m thinking. “But you’ve been looking forward to it for years.”

  Dad always took me and Theo to see the NYC ART exhibit in the spring at the Met. We’d walk across the park; he’d point out the daffodils and forsythia and cherry blossom trees. Sometimes it would be one of the first real bright, sunny days of spring, the kind of day that makes you want to stay outside forever. Other times it would still be chilly and wet, and the museum, with its perfectly regulated temperatures, would feel cozy.

  Either way, we loved seeing those kids’ artworks on the walls of the education center at the Met—their names and titles and ages and schools printed on labels next to their pieces—and imagining the day it’d be our turn.

  I look back down at the mixed-up animal, a spot of bright yellow next to those piles of papers, the lines blurring before my eyes. “I don’t know. . . . I don’t want to talk about it. I’m just hungry.”

  She springs to action, to do something that can make me feel better. Right away. “Snack? Sliced apple and cheddar?”

  “Sure.” I push aside a stack of papers to make more room at the table.

  “Careful, sweetie!” Mom’s voice turns shrill. She’s worried I might damage something.

  “I just need a place to eat!” My words come out angrier and sharper than I mean them. Sometimes—a lot of times—it’s like these random pieces of paper with Dad’s pencil marks and brushstrokes are more important to her than me, her living, breathing daughter.

  Mom winces like I’ve hurt her. She turns to the kitchen. I almost wish she’d yell back. To tell me she’s as sad and confused as I am. But, no—she’s got her work, her job keeping Dad’s memory alive.

  While she’s in the kitchen, I flip through the papers in one of the piles. Some sheets have just a few lines on them, random shapes or scribbles that look like Dad trying to work out ideas.

  But then, toward the bottom of the pile, there’s something hard.

  A portfolio.

  Not just any portfolio, but the kind Dad always used, with a black cover and clear plastic sleeves inside for drawings.

  I thought all his sketchbooks and portfolios were in one box together. Apparently, not this one.

  I pull it out from the bottom of the pile, flip open the cover, and take a deep breath.

  This is definitely Dad’s. His name is on the inside front cover in silver Sharpie, where he wrote his name on all his portfolios.

  Maybe this is one that nobody knows about.

  And maybe I’m the only person ever to see it.

  Besides Dad.

  Chapter

  Seven

  The first drawing is of a baby, sleeping peacefully in someone’s arms.

  Not just any baby.

  Me. I see it written clear as day, in Dad’s cursive on the lower back corner of the page, when I turn over the plastic sleeve: G, 7 months.

  Without looking at each page, I can tell from the thickness that the portfolio is nearly full—with drawings of me.

  I flip through. There’s me at thirteen months, eighteen months, twenty-nine months. The initial G and the age written on the lower back corner of each one.

  My first instinct is to call out to Mom. She’s still in the kitchen, her phone pinging away in a texting exchange.

  Good. More time for me to be alone with the portfolio.

  Because I don’t actually want to call for her. I don’t want to share this or ask her about it. I want to look at in my room, by myself.

  If I tell her, she’ll make it official. Catalogue it, enter it into a database, conserve it, write an article about it. Take it away like she took away Dad’s paintings.

  But this is me. It should be my own private thing to look at. For just a little while, at least.

  I slip the portfolio into my backpack, sling it over my shoulder, and head to the kitchen.

  “I’ll take my snack in my room.”

  “You sure?” Mom asks as she hands the plate to me. She’s probably happy to have me out of her way so she can focus on her work.

  I close my door and clear my desk, pushing aside sketchbooks and mason jars crammed with pencils and markers. I switch on the desk lamp, lighting up the bulletin board over my desk. It’s filled with drawings and sketches I’ve made over the years, and Polaroids I took of Mom and Dad with a camera they once gave me for Hanukkah—the two of them smiling at me from our living room couch, a side view of them arm in arm on the beach, the backs of their heads looking at Dad’s art, Dad’s ice skates—and a funny series of Theo cuddling Krypto. The blue faux fur van Gogh hat from my cringey Halloween costume peers at me over the edge of a bookshelf, stuffed in between my books and LEGO sets I used to build.

  I pull out the portfolio, placing it on my desk next to the snack. My heart flutters as I turn the pages. They’re like kisses from Dad, blown across time. Dad had watched me, seen me, loved me enough to study me, to draw me, to capture me in pencil on paper. And I had no idea.

  The drawings are different than G in Blue, the triangle portrait of me in our living room. Sure, that painting is pretty, but the triangle could be anything. Not like these drawings, which are figurative representations of me. Which couldn’t be anything but me.

  The portfolio has twenty sleeves, and all but the last three are full. I’m sad for the empty sleeves—the ones he didn’t get a chance to fill.

  Some images are drawn super loose, just a few lines. Toddler me, running, jumping, swinging, like Dad was figuring out how to capture me in motion.

  Some are detailed face drawings. In G, age 7, I’m looking straight on, into the eyes of the person—Dad—drawing me. I like how strong and confident I look there.

  The last page jolts me. Because, at first glance, the drawing looks like it could be of me now. The style is in between detailed, figurative, and looser, more abstract.

  It’s simple, using a few spare lines to capture the image of this girl in three-quarter profile. She’s sitting in a chair, like the cozy womb chair in the corner of our living room by the bookshelves. Head bent, hair falling across her cheek, like she’s reading a book in her lap. Her eyebrows knit together, lips pursed in concentration.

  I like the energy of the girl in that drawing. You can tell she’s absorbed in her book. Not aware that someone—Dad—is watching, drawing her—me.

  This is me. This is who I am.

  My truth.

  A shiver runs down my spine, like the ghost of Dad returned and did this sketch only yesterday.

  The writing on the lower back corner of the page confirms: G, age 10.

  Two years ago.

 
This must be the last drawing Dad ever made of me. Right after I turned ten.

  A great, awful ache fills my chest.

  If only I could reach back through the pages of this portfolio to that ten-year-old version of me, to tell her to hold on to her father a little longer. To enjoy every moment they have together because it won’t last forever.

  But then I notice something else on the back of this page.

  A series of dots. Pencil points.

  Like the points of stars that make an asterism.

  The pencil points are faint, not super definite. Like they could just be the pencil marks showing through from the front of the paper. You could almost miss them if you didn’t know what they might be.

  But with that split second of recognition, of knowing, my teeth chatter like with fever chills, and I’m suddenly so cold that I wrap my soft gray wool baby blanket from my bed over my shoulders.

  I slide the drawing out of the sleeve and run my fingers over the lines of the paper, ever so gently, careful not to rub away the pencil marks. I lift it up to the light of my desk lamp. To see if the pencil points are random. Or if they mean something.

  And against the light, it’s pretty clear to me.

  Those pencil points match up with the lines of the drawing of me on the other side of the page: one point for the top of my head, one for the tip of my nose, one for the back of my head, two points along my body, two more for my feet, and three points to show the book I’m holding.

  Ten pencil points in total. Ten, maybe, for the age I was when Dad drew this.

  The last asterism.

  This paper, this drawing, G, age 10, here in my hands, might be proof.

  Proof that it was me. I’m the last asterism.

  Or at least, I think this drawing proves that.

  Mom’s voice on a phone call echoes from the living room.

  My brain tells me I should show her the drawing. So we can announce to the world that we know what Hank Rosenbloom’s fourth asterism was meant to be. Hang it in the Met exhibition along with the finished paintings.

  But there’s so much of Dad that I share with the world. This is one piece of him that’s private, that’s mine. It’s like Dad left this portfolio, this drawing, behind on purpose for me to discover, and I don’t have to share it with anybody. Not even Mom. Or Theo.