Many Points of Me

by Caroline Gertler

  Unless I choose to. When I’m ready.

  If I’m ready.

  I slip G, age 10 into my desk drawer along with the mixed-up animals. And the tiny corner of the photograph with Dad’s toe in it.

  Chapter

  Eight

  Mom knocks on my door later that night, while I’m reading. Usually she just peeks in to say good night. But tonight she takes a seat on the edge of my bed. On the lacy-trimmed cover that I’ve had since forever, which I refuse to change for a new one even though it’s worn through and torn in places. I like how soft and familiar it is. That can’t be replaced.

  “Hey.” I set down my book, realizing I’m getting tired.

  “How are you?” She puts a hand on my arm—something she never seems to do anymore. It’s kind of comforting. But still, I shrug and pull away. Dad used to sing me songs every night, and then Mom would come in and rub my back and sit with me while I got close to falling asleep. I didn’t like her to sing to me because her voice wasn’t as good as Dad’s.

  Mom crosses her arms and I wish I could lean into her and wrap my arms around her neck, that she’d pull me close into a tight, warm hug. It’s just, that’s not what we do anymore.

  “I suppose I’ve been too distracted by my work lately,” she begins.

  I sit up higher in my bed. “You could say that.”

  “I know, and I’m sorry. But I’m also sad to hear you say that you’re not going to enter NYC ART. Are you sure?”

  “I don’t know. I just feel like nothing’s working.”

  “Oh, honey.” Mom wraps me into that tight hug I thought I wanted, but it doesn’t feel right. Not like it used to. I don’t hug back. “Have you tried?”

  I shake my head. “And Theo . . . he’s just so competitive with me.”

  “About what?” Mom squints at me, like she’s trying to see into my head.

  “About everything.” I turn away from her, wanting to hide my face. I don’t know how to begin to explain how complicated my feelings are about Theo. That I love him and am jealous of him all at the same time. I know she’ll just say it’s normal to feel that way with a best friend, that I should value his friendship. “Even with friends. I’m making some new ones.”

  “Oh. Like who?”

  “The new girl, Harper Willis. Her parents own one of Dad’s paintings!”

  “That name does sound familiar . . . Willis. Oh, yes, Dominic and Olivia Willis. Big contemporary art collectors. They have two of Dad’s paintings, actually.”

  “Which ones?” Harper only mentioned one.

  “They have one of the Bird series—Charcoal on Green. And the first asterism, Bird in the Tree. They’re lending both to the exhibit, so they’ll be coming over to the Met soon.”

  My heart skips a few beats at that. I hope I’ll get to see the paintings in person. “She actually invited me to hang out on Friday.”

  “Lucky you—the paintings should still be there. I’ve met the parents briefly; they know their art. Is she nice?”

  Nice is not the word that I’d use to describe Harper. “Well, she’s super cool and confident. And totally down-to-earth. She asked me to draw designs for this Valentine’s Day charity card sale she’s doing, which is why I’m going over there—to plan.”

  “Wouldn’t Theo be a good help on drawing card designs?”

  Ugh. It’s not like we’re still five and she can just suggest that I invite another friend along to a play date. “Actually, Chloe Chen and Violet Avilez are helping, too. Not with drawing, but the whole sale thing. They’re Harper’s best friends.”

  Mom knows what I mean by Chloe and Violet without me having to explain.

  “Let me guess. Theo doesn’t fit in with those girls?”

  I nod.

  “Do you?”

  I shrug. I don’t know yet.

  “Having other friends is nice. And important. But Theo—he’s a dear, old friend. And Harriet, too. I can’t imagine what I’d do without her. Without them. Everything’s been so hard. We need all the support we can get.”

  And without her saying it, I know what she means. She means that Theo will support and be there for me no matter what. The Mermaids—who knows. But what about feeling stuck with the old and dependable? What about wanting to try something different, new?

  “The next few months are going to be extra-challenging,” she continues. “I need to focus on Dad’s show. The reviews we get will determine his legacy. It’s not just a matter of critical success, honey. It’s also a financial issue. If we get good reviews, it brings up the value of Dad’s art. Everything . . . I’m lucky to have this opportunity from the Met, and I need you to understand.”

  I roll my eyes and grimace. This is what I hate about the art world. It’s like these people don’t even care about Dad. The value of his art is all that matters. The price.

  Mom sees the look on my face. “Oh, honey, I shouldn’t put this on you. But there are some realities you need to understand. Doing this all alone—it’s a lot.”

  I clench my teeth. I want to tell her she’s not all alone. She has me. I wish there was something I could do to help. But I’m afraid I’m part of her problem—raising me, alone.

  “But I came in here to talk about you. Not me. You. And NYC ART. Dad would’ve been so proud of you for entering.”

  “Maybe,” I whisper. No one really knows how Dad would’ve felt.

  “Does this have anything to do with what I asked Theo the other night—about the Q&A for the catalogue?”

  I look away from her and pick up my book again, but can’t focus on the words.

  “Because I meant it when I said I’d like you to participate, too. It didn’t come out the right way when I asked. It was like one of those conversations I had in my head with you, and I forgot that we hadn’t actually had it yet, so then when I asked him, and realized I hadn’t asked you . . .” She scratches her forehead like she’s trying to clear up the muddle in her brain. But I don’t say anything to make this easier for her.

  “Oh, honey, I’m getting this all wrong. I’ll be proud of you no matter what, or who, you choose to become. Dad would be, too. Entering NYC ART—it’d be nice, but it doesn’t define who you are.”

  Her words wash over me. I’m not even thinking about NYC ART anymore. Instead, I’m thinking about the drawing I found. G, age 10.

  I could tell her about it right now. Show her what I’m pretty sure is the asterism sketch on the back. I could get all the credit for proving what Dad planned to do.

  Only if I showed her right now—I wouldn’t get credit at all. I’d just be handing her something I found on the table. A few pencil points on the back of the paper don’t prove anything on their own. It was just a feeling I got.

  Mom always says instinct is the initial spark for art historians to make their discoveries, but then they need to do research to prove that instinct is correct.

  Someone has to do the research to prove what those pencil points mean.

  And that someone, why can’t it be me?

  Later, after I hear her door close, I tiptoe out of my room. I clutch Dad’s portfolio—minus G, age 10—to my chest.

  I slide it back into the pile where I found it. One of the piles Mom said she hadn’t looked through yet. The portfolio has been in storage all these years with stuff she said she’s never even seen. For all I know, she’s never seen this portfolio before, either. So she won’t know that one drawing is missing.

  Chapter

  Nine

  At first, every time I look at G, age 10 in my desk drawer, I feel a spark of connection to Dad. Like we have a secret between us.

  But as the days pass, the good feeling about taking the drawing fades. Instead, it makes me feel alone—more alone than ever. The one person alive who knows this secret thing.

  It’s like if a tree falls in a forest and no one’s there to hear it, does it make a sound? If no one knows about Dad’s last asterism sketch, does it mean anything?

  Part of
me longs to tell Theo, who’s an expert at figuring out these kinds of situations. Theo-Dare would know how to prove the sketch is what I think it is.

  But real Theo would be a do-gooder, responsible—try to convince me that the drawing is too important to keep to myself. He’d want me to tell Mom. And then it would no longer be my discovery. Or he’d try to help me, and it would become our discovery, not mine alone.

  So I decide not to tell anyone until I have proof.

  Every time I’m home alone the rest of the week, I look through the folders and papers and books on our big table.

  Mom continues to separate the materials into two piles: 1) bring to the Met for the exhibit, and 2) put back in the archives. So I have to be careful not to mess up anything.

  And nothing I find seems important, anyway. Like Mom said, most of it is early work. But I keep looking. For what, I don’t know. I hope I’ll know it when I see it.

  I search the Internet for articles about Dad’s asterisms and look at the Met’s and Whitney’s descriptions of the asterism paintings on their websites, but none of them mention anything about sketches for the paintings on the back of drawings.

  Even if I do find proof, then what? It’d probably be too late to make it into the exhibit. But that’s not why I care, anyway. Proving the drawing is a sketch for the last asterism is something I want to do for me—not for the world.

  By Thursday afternoon, Mom’s teaching day at Columbia, I’ve found nothing.

  I’m alone at home after school, except for Dad’s paintings. I look at all of them propped up around the room, wondering if one of them can tell me something. If they hold any clues.

  What if he made asterism points on the back of the canvases? I’ve heard of artists sometimes doing that—sketching directly on the back of a canvas. Maybe he made points on the back of the unfinished canvas that mirror the ones on the back of G, age 10. That would prove that the drawing is a sketch.

  I know I’ve seen the back of that canvas, during the time that Mom had flipped it around so we didn’t have to look at its blankness. But I wasn’t looking for evidence then. I didn’t look closely to see if Dad drew anything on the back. And if Mom noticed anything, she didn’t say.

  I go up to the canvas, which is taller than me. Six feet—about the same height as Dad. It’s been collecting dust in the corner for almost two years. There’s literally a line of it along the edges.

  I put my fingertips to the frame to tilt the canvas forward, and a poof of dust tickles my nose, making me sneeze. I’m mindful to sneeze away from the canvas and into my elbow. Even though it’s just an empty blank, it’s still Dad’s work, and I don’t want my sneeze particles to contaminate it.

  It’s heavier than I expected. It almost slips forward on top of me. I use both hands to brace it and peek around to the back.

  There’s nothing. Just clean, untouched canvas. The raw edges stapled to the wood frame. I lean it back against the wall. But just because he didn’t sketch on the back of this canvas doesn’t mean he didn’t on the others.

  Next I check G in Blue. The portrait of me as a triangle is much smaller. Gingerly, I touch the edge of the frame, careful not to get any fingerprints on the paint. I’ve been trained since I was a baby to look, not touch. Sometimes Dad would let me touch paintings. Back then it was okay if I accidentally smudged something because he was there to fix it. Now I wouldn’t risk it. Of course, it’s been so many years since Dad painted it, there’s little chance it’s still wet, even though oils take forever to dry.

  I tip the painting forward and peek at the back. Again, no marks. Nothing.

  I check the other paintings—Figure in the Dusk, Glimpse of Light, Self-Portrait in Brown, and The Dimness of Being.

  Nothing. Nothing, and more nothing.

  Which makes total sense: Dad wouldn’t make points on the backs of these canvases; they’re not asterism paintings.

  He made the points on the back of the drawing of me. Maybe what I need to find are drawings for the other asterism paintings—not finished canvases, not sketches or scraps of paper. Drawings, like G, age 10. There should be one of Mom, one of Dad, and one of a bird.

  And I know just where to start looking. Mom has her own special drawing from Dad, like Theo has his. A drawing Dad made of her when they first met.

  The drawing is under glass in a delicate gold picture frame, propped up on our fireplace mantel. In between the cross-stitch sampler Mom’s mom made for my parents when they got married, with their names entwined in a tree, and a black-and-white photograph of Mom and Dad with me as a baby, taken by one of Dad’s photographer friends.

  I walk over to the fireplace. The thin gold frame is light and cool in my hands. I’m about to take it over to the table, where I can set it down and slide open the frame, when I hear footsteps outside our apartment and the front door handle turns. Mom’s home early. Shoot. “Hello!” she calls out as I race to put the picture back on the mantel.

  I’m standing there totally awkward by the fireplace. Mom gives me a puzzled look. “Everything okay? What’re you up to?”

  “Um, I’m just—I was—” Staring at me from the corner of the living room, next to the balcony door, is the large case for Dad’s telescope. I point to it. “I was thinking it’d be fun to try using Dad’s telescope again one night. You know. We haven’t used it since—”

  Mom’s hand is to her mouth and she looks like she’s seen a ghost. “Oh, honey.” She drops her leather workbag and strides over to me without even taking off her boots or coat. She pulls me into a hug.

  The kind of hug that could be comforting if it’s what I wanted right now. But what I really want is more time alone to look at the back of her drawing and continue my search.

  “Mom, where’s the key to the balcony door, anyway?” I ask, pulling away.

  “Oh, gosh. It must be here somewhere. Maybe in my jewelry box, or my office desk. I don’t know. Everything’s foggy from those days. I promise, I’ll find it by the time the weather turns nice. And the windows need to be cleaned, don’t they?”

  It’s not like I think I’ll find anything helpful to my search out on the balcony. Looking at the actual stars isn’t what matters. Dad made up his own asterisms, after all.

  But, maybe, if I look at the stars through his telescope, it’ll tell me something about what he was thinking, how he was thinking. Maybe, using Dad’s telescope again will feel like being with him. Because just like the unfinished canvas for the last asterism started to fade into the wall, so have my memories of him. The things that don’t always show in his art. The things that made him my dad.

  Chapter

  Ten

  In science we’re doing a unit on astronomy. Dr. Anders tells us that the sun is ninety-three million miles away, and that the light from the sun takes about eight minutes to reach the Earth. So the sunlight we see happened eight minutes earlier.

  Eight minutes doesn’t seem like a lot of time, but things that can change the course of your entire life can happen in those four hundred and eighty seconds.

  With an eight-minute delay, I could change my decision to take Dad’s drawing and hide it in my desk drawer. Because Friday morning, the portfolio with the drawings of me is no longer on the table, which means Mom’s put it somewhere else, and I’ve missed my chance to put G, age 10 back where it belongs—if I wanted to.

  If I had an eight-minute delay, I could’ve chosen not to sit with Harper at lunch on Monday. Because the next day, she waved me over to their table. Even though I could see across the room that Theo was saving me a seat at our old table, I didn’t want to say no to Harper. And that’s how I begin sitting with the Mermaids.

  Every time I chose Harper over Theo that week, it pushed him farther away. I didn’t even see him after school because he was busy doing set design for the middle school musical. Walking home without Theo, I felt like I’d forgotten something. I kept stopping to check my backpack and make sure my homework planner and books were inside.

/>   And I haven’t made the choice yet to tell Mr. Butterweit and Theo that I’ve decided not to enter NYC ART. Telling them will make my decision official. But I know I have to do it soon to give Mr. B the chance to enter someone else’s work.

  Art looms on my schedule for Friday afternoon, my second-to-last period of the day, before science.

  During free-draw period at the start of class, Mr. B sets out the hand mirrors again. “Self-portrait” is written in large bubble letters across the whiteboard. A reminder that even if I don’t want to submit an entry for the competition, I have to make something—for class, for my grade.

  All I can think of is a mixed-up animal. I pull out a tray of Cray-pas oil pastels, which are like softer versions of crayons. They’re smooth on the paper, and their effect is like paint.

  First my favorite blue-green color to make a mermaid tail, highlighted with curlicues in glittery silver. In my art I can become one of the Mermaids. I get that flow in my hand—the flow that’s missing when I try to draw my actual self.

  I’m working on the outlines of the unicorn horn and bird head when Harper plunks down into her seat next to me.

  “Ugh, I’m so late.” She pulls out her sketchbook. “Dr. Markham made me have this psychobabble meeting about how I’m adjusting to my new life. I’m all what? I’m not new here anymore. Seriously. You New York people just like to talk and talk.”

  I laugh. I had my own Dr. Markham “psychobabble” meetings in fourth grade. About Dad. Dr. Markham still asks to have check-ins with me. And she gives me sympathetic looks whenever she sees me, like we have a special connection.

  “What’re you working on?” Harper twists her hair into a long rope, then coils it into a messy bun with a pencil through it. Maybe that’s why I like her—I don’t even need to talk; she can carry on a conversation by herself. “Oh, that’s so cute! A mermaid. With, what’s that—a unicorn horn? Super cool, Georgia! Can we use that for one of the Valentine’s cards? Bring that idea to our meeting!”