I take the folder out of my backpack and pull out the drawing. There’s G, age 10 on the table.
It’s quiet except for me and Mom, breathing softly. And another presence, too. Dad, reaching us, through the marks on the page.
“There she is.” Mom traces the lines of the drawing, lightly, lovingly. Like I did when I first saw it, and for the days after every time I looked at it. “She’s beautiful.”
She means me. At age ten. The way Dad drew me, then. Beautiful.
I bite the sore on the inside of my cheek, which isn’t actually so sore anymore. It’s healed a bit the last couple of weeks. But I bite it as I flip the drawing over to show Mom the back. The part she maybe doesn’t know about.
“Mom, I think I know what this is.”
Her reaction tells me it’s true.
“Is this a sketch—for the last asterism?” She puts her hand to her mouth. “Georgie, this is everything.”
Mom squeezes me, hugging me tight. We’re both sobbing, so you can’t tell where she ends and I begin. They’re not just tears of sadness, though. It’s not just about losing Dad. It’s also about finding something new: the joy and relief of this discovery.
We sit like that, together, until the tears slow.
“And there’s more, Mom. Look.” I set the bird drawing before her. The one of the cardinal in the snow, that I just got from Mrs. Velandry. “Turn it over.”
“Oh, wow.” Mom’s eyes gleam. She presses one palm to her chest and touches her other to the paper. “Can you believe that Mrs. Velandry’s had it all these years?”
Her lips twitch and spread into a smile. “And I might have one, too!” She goes to her room and comes back with a portfolio. Like the one I found the drawings of me in. One of Dad’s.
She flips it open. It’s empty except for one drawing, which she slides out of the plastic sleeve. A drawing of her. Like the one on our mantel, but this one looks less finished. And on the back: the points. A sketch for the asterism of Sally in the Stars.
Mom sets it down next to the other two, the bird and G, age 10.
“I checked the other drawing.” I point to the frame on the mantel. “But it wasn’t that one.”
“Good thinking,” Mom says. “You wouldn’t have known to look for this one. I’ve always kept it private, just for me. Dad made it soon after we got married. I never thought much about the pencil points before. I always assumed he was using the points to guide his lines. Or they were just random doodles. But now it’s so obvious. I know—we know.”
I feel a glow inside, that I’m the one who brought it to her attention.
“Georgie, do you understand what an incredible discovery this is? We can use these in the exhibit. It’s going to make it all come together, to show these first sketches of Dad’s process in making the asterism paintings.”
“I know where the last one is, too.” I’m hesitant to tell her about Theo’s drawing, the sketch for Man on the Moon, because I know he won’t want to give it up, even if just for the exhibit. But he’ll have to. It’s too important for him—for anyone—to keep private anymore.
“Theo?” she asks.
I nod. Of course, Theo.
I get that twinge of jealousy again. The irritation like dirt in my eye, that Theo’s a part of this, even though Dad wasn’t truly his father. But then, Dad didn’t paint him—he wasn’t going to be the last asterism. It was me. And more than that—there was enough of Dad to go around for all of us: for me, Mom, Theo, even Royal and Mrs. Velandry. And for the whole world—everyone who loves his art, all the people who will come to the exhibit to see his paintings. That’s why we speak of artists in the present tense, that’s how Dad still is.
“Mom—does this change your Q&A with Theo for the catalogue? I mean, Dad must’ve thought of painting asterisms before that night when Theo asked him if he’d tried to paint the stars. If this drawing is from when you got married, and he made the bird drawing when I was a toddler . . . that was way before that night.”
Mom sits back in her chair to consider the question. “He told Theo that he hadn’t yet painted the stars, but that doesn’t mean the idea hadn’t already occurred to him. It seems clear from the sketches here that he’d doodled ideas for asterisms for a long time. But he didn’t go full force ahead with it—actually making the paintings—until Theo’s question. So, Theo’s anecdote is still important. Sometimes it takes a direct question like Theo’s to make an artist’s idea come together. But it also takes someone like you noticing things like the points on the back of the drawing to bring these discoveries to light.”
That twinge of jealousy I feel for Theo seeps out of me as Mom talks. Because as we sit quietly together, looking at the three asterism sketches lined up on the table, I think about how Dad used to call me and Theo his binary stars. Now I realize there’s enough light for both our stars to shine.
Despite everything that’s happened, we still celebrate. More than just our birthdays this time. Theo and Harriet come upstairs, Theo with a bunch of foil balloons in our favorite colors—green-blue stars for me and red hearts for him. Krypto perches on his shoulder. Harriet holds the round cake with M&M’s on top that form the number twelve.
Mom wipes at her eyes. “Looks delicious!” she says. “Happy birthday, Theo!”
“And happy birthday to you, dear Georgia,” Harriet says. “You all okay?” She puts the cake down on the table and goes to Mom’s side. Mom, who’s nodding and still wiping at tears in her eyes, but smiling at the same time.
“It’s always an emotional time of year, isn’t it?” Harriet says, pulling Mom into a hug. Because of Dad. The time of year he was sick, two years ago.
“And, there’s this.” Mom gestures to the drawings on the table. Harriet and Theo come up to take a closer look. Even Krypto seems to be curious.
Harriet doesn’t get it—all she sees are pencil points on the back of paper.
But Theo gets it, right away. His eyes twitch, his jaw drops open. “Are these . . . ?”
I nod, the grin on my face spreading wider.
“You got it back?” he whispers. I’ll fill him in later, but for now, I just hand him back his lucky eraser.
Mom explains to Harriet that these are initial sketches for Dad’s asterism series. Simple little jots, which maybe didn’t mean a lot to him, but mean everything to us. Especially the sketch for the last asterism, G, age 10.
And I say, “Theo, your turn.”
“Now?” he asks, making sure it’s okay, that Mom knows everything. I nod.
“I’ll be right back.” He hands me Krypto to hold while he runs back to his apartment and returns a minute later with his drawing—the self-portrait of Dad.
He places it facedown on the table. On the back, the pencil points of the asterism for Man on the Moon. It completes the series of four asterism sketches. Together, we make things whole.
Twelve turns out to be the most mixed-up birthday celebration ever. Eleven was my first without Dad. It was a blur; I barely even remember.
Twelve—with a piece of chocolate cake, a scattering of M&M’s, the asterism sketches, and even Mrs. Velandry—feels like everything that got mixed up when Dad died is getting sorted out. All the different parts of me have been put back together in a new way.
That night there’s a super moon. The full moon is closest to the Earth in its orbit. We can see it through our living room windows—glowing huge and bright. Like the moon is checking in on us, coming to give us a birthday hug.
“Let’s go outside to see it better!” Theo suggests.
“Great idea!” Mom says, even though it’s freezing cold. “Oh, but I couldn’t find the key.”
Mrs. Velandry gives me a look.
“Um, I have it,” I whisper. Mom’s confused, but she just shakes her head, doesn’t bother to ask me how or why.
We step out onto the balcony, to get a better look at the moon. The balcony that isn’t the same without Dad. But a place where I can imagine him with us. Or
if not with us, up there, in that large round disc of a moon. Watching us.
The moon’s orbit around the earth is not a perfect circle. Tidal and gravitational forces pull on the moon, affecting its orbit. Just like my orbit, and Theo’s orbit, are not perfect circles, either. We don’t always follow the same path. But we always come back together at some point.
“I heard on NPR today that the super moon appearing larger to us is an illusion,” Harriet says. “They call it the ‘moon illusion.’ The moon seems huge when it’s rising on the horizon in comparison to objects next to it. But it’s not actually that much bigger.”
I try to ignore her comment, which takes away the magic of what we see with our eyes, and bask in the glow of the moon. I imagine Dad up there, making his mark in the lunar dust. Maybe one day I’ll meet him up there and make my mark next to his.
But for now, I need to make my mark down here on Earth.
When Theo and I blow out the candles, we each make a private wish. I don’t know what he wishes for. Maybe to get in to NYC ART, maybe that Harper can be his girlfriend. Or that one day, he’ll find his father.
I wish that from today on, the new me will start to feel less mixed up. I’m becoming less like a cut-paper silhouette and more like a Louise Nevelson sculpture—lots of different pieces that don’t seem to fit together, but make sense as a whole once they’re placed in the same work of art.
I apologize to Theo again, for everything. Even for cutting the piece of Dad’s toe out of the photograph. I give it back to him, in case he wants to tape it back together.
The Dad-piece that’s missing in me won’t ever get filled or replaced. But other parts will shift over it, and it won’t feel like such an empty space anymore. It’ll begin to feel like it’s somehow, impossibly, okay to be that way.
Chapter
Twenty-Seven
Mom and Harriet want us to tell Mr. Butterweit what happened first thing on Friday. But I beg off because of being exhausted and overwhelmed and ask to wait until Monday, which they agree to.
Also, I have something I haven’t had in the longest time: inspiration. I want to have a real self-portrait ready to turn in when we talk to him.
I decide to go to the planetarium at the Museum of Natural History that weekend, because it will put me in the right frame of mind. I invite Harper and Theo to come with me.
Going to the space show reminds me of Dad. When I was little and couldn’t fall asleep, Dad would take me on what he called “nighttime walks.” The world outside felt different, in my pajamas, when the sky was dark and children were supposed to be sleeping.
We’d look at the stars from the park. But you can’t see them very well there, with all the bright lights of the city. Dad promised to take me camping upstate one summer so we could see the stars for real. That won’t happen now, not with him, but at least I still have the planetarium. And I know I’ll do that camping trip, someday.
Theo, Harper, and I settle into large, comfy seats below the screen arced overhead like a sky. The lights dim. Sitting in the middle, between my friends, I get lost in the darkness.
We learn that the stars continuously crush inward, and gravitational friction causes their interiors to heat up. The energy in their centers makes them appear to shine.
We also learn about the far side of the moon—how one side of the moon always faces away from Earth. Its terrain is rugged with craters, and no human being has ever set foot there. You only ever get to see half the moon. You never get to see the whole thing.
The moon is as familiar as anything in our lives. But a part of it is always hidden, out of sight. Just like with people: we have all these different sides of us, and sometimes you only know one side of a person. Or you discover another side that you never knew was there before.
Like I have the lighter side of me, the Harper side. But I can still have the deeper Theo side, too.
That’s when it comes together, like I hoped it would. Like Theo’s question made the idea come together for Dad. My self-portrait idea, my Truth. A way to complete the ten pencil points Dad made on the back of G, age 10. The last asterism—in my own vision.
As we walk down the exit ramp from the space show, Harper’s bubbling with plans, other parts of the museum she wants to explore.
“Dinosaurs are awesome,” Theo says. “I used to go every weekend.”
“Let’s go now!” Harper says.
But I just want to get home to my art supplies. “You two enjoy.”
At home, the first thing I do is march up to the wooden trestle where Dad’s paint cans are stored. No one’s touched them in nearly two years. The metal is cool, and dusty. I take down one of the black paints and try to open the lid. Of course, it’s stuck. So I use the metal edge of a screwdriver to pry it open.
That smell. The mix of car fumes and grass. It smells right.
The paint has separated, with a thin congealed skin on top. I remove it, and use a stir stick to blend the paint and liquid back together. They’re not too dried up, after all. A few good stirs does the trick. I open a few more cans of black paint and do the same.
Then I take the fourth wood panel, the one I didn’t even bother trying to make for my lunar dust portrait. I paint the background black, mixing the different pigments in a way that feels good. It flows; doesn’t feel forced. The vision is there in my head, and my hand is capturing it the way I see it. Everything is working together.
When it’s finished, I let it dry. And then I take a piece of tracing paper and use a thick pencil to draw myself. Not how Dad drew me at age ten, but how I am now, nearly two years later, at age twelve. I don’t even look in the mirror to do it. I don’t think too much. I just let the pencil move, trusting it will come out right. And it does. I trace over the pencil lines with my silver paint pen.
I mark twelve asterism points on the drawing of me. And I mix tempera to paint each point of me in a different color. Ones that represent everyone in my life: copper, aqua, marigold, fuchsia, green, mauve, burgundy, beige, olive, neon orange, royal blue. Colors that are kind of random, that you wouldn’t think fit together well, but somehow, on the dark outer space background, they do.
I pause to figure out a color that represents me. But, still, all I see is gray. Only it’s less charcoal now and more silver. It has a sparkle to it after all.
The paint is still wet enough for me to lay the tracing paper on top. I use a thin layer of glaze to set the tracing paper onto the black background. And let the whole thing dry.
Mom peeks in to tell me to go to sleep as it’s getting late. I try to hide my painting, but she catches a glimpse, and I see the pride on her face.
When I finish, in the early hours of the morning, I know it’s good. Powerful. They’re my asterism points. Not Dad’s. And I feel his approval somewhere deep inside of me.
I have the perfect title for it, too. Georgia in Orbit. I don’t know if that’s what Dad would’ve called it, if he’d had the chance to make the last asterism. But it’s the right one for me.
As I try to fall asleep, I think about how time is supposed to be steady and constant, but it doesn’t always go that way. Sometimes time feels slow and takes forever.
And sometimes it feels like it’s moving at the speed of light, and I can’t stop.
In science class Dr. Anders says that the speed of light in a vacuum is actually a constant. It travels 186,000 miles per second.
Maybe if I could travel at the speed of light, I could hurtle off this planet into orbit and float peacefully among the stars, too far away to care about all the little things happening on Earth.
But here I am, firmly weighted down by gravity. Hurtling toward Monday. Time for Theo and me to tell Mr. Butterweit everything.
On Monday morning, clouds threaten rain on our walk to school. Theo and I find Mr. B in the art studio before first period, sketching at his desk.
“Hi,” I say.
“Oh, hi.” He looks up, and shuts his sketchbook, like he doesn’t want
us to see his work. “Nice surprise to see you two. What’s up?”
I know what’s on our minds, but I wonder what’s on his. We’re always sharing our work with him, but he keeps his drawings private. “Can we see what you’re working on?” I ask, stalling for time.
“Well, okay, but only for you. I get a little insecure about my work, just like anybody else.”
He flips open the sketchbook to the most glorious landscapes. Fantastical, magical landscapes, with princesses and knights, dragons and unicorns.
“Cool! I love these.” He lets us flip through a few pages.
“They look like illustrations,” Theo says.
“They are. For a picture book I’m working on. My wife wrote the story, and I’m doing the illustrations.”
“Can we read it?” Theo asks.
“Someday, I hope.” He smiles. “Now, what about you?”
There’s only one way to begin, and I’m the one who has to do the talking, as Theo’s mouth clamps shut. “We need to talk to you about NYC ART.”
Mr. B gives me a worried look. “Is this about wanting to withdraw your entry?”
Having Theo here, by my side, gives me the strength I need to tell Mr. Butterweit the whole story. I warm up to it, and Theo relaxes a little, even adding a few comments here and there, but he’s more nervous than I am. In a way, he has more to lose.
When we finish, Mr. B’s confused look turns to sympathy. “Oh, my. This is a first.” He leans back in his chair and puts his hand to his forehead, like he’s trying to work out a problem. “I’m not even sure who to reprimand here, if anyone. It sounds like you both did something wrong in this situation, and tried to fix it on your own, and everything’s worked out, but I’ll still need to discuss it with your mothers and come up with some sort of consequence for these actions.”
Theo and I nod. I have something else to share with them.
“I ended up making a real self-portrait.” I reach into my backpack for the panel that I brought with me. My asterism self-portrait.
“I’m calling it Georgia in Orbit,” I announce proudly, setting it out on Mr. B’s desk for them to admire.
Many Points of Me Page 16
