Better Than Running at Night Page 17

  I took off my clothes. Not all of them at first. I left on my bra and underwear. But when I started drawing them in, I looked like a Victoria's Secret ad.

  I sat there, entirely naked, in front of a blank sheet of paper. I needed a good pose. I tried shifting my legs, my arms, my head. Finally I settled on one foot up on the desk, with the other leg relaxed. My head rested on the raised knee and my hands held that foot. My hair fell over my face.

  I sometimes had to draw with my left hand so I could see what my right hand looked like. I had to take breaks to keep my limbs from going dead. And it was really hard to draw my head and at the same time hold it in the right position. But Ed was right; I was a more reliable model than anyone I could've hired. Plus there was no one around to distract me, which was more relaxing than being in a class.

  I had a good feeling about this drawing, so I decided to take it slow. I got the basic shapes roughed in, and set it aside for the next day.

  Paintings and Pasties

  The seniors in the painting department were putting on a show. I was a little worried that the work would be so intimidating I'd be afraid to start painting again.

  When I showed up, the room was packed. People in clear plastic jumpsuits were serving hors d'oeuvres. Some of the girls wore pasties and G-strings, but mostly they were all naked underneath the plastic.

  A voice behind me said, "I hear that guy over there is a student's father!"

  I turned around. Ralph was pointing at a naked guy with a beer gut in one of the plastic suits. Well, he was naked, but he looked like he was wearing a hair suit under the plastic. Curly gray hair covered his body—except his head, which was bald. He had a beard, but he'd shaved his neck all the way down to his collar line. He was handing out pigs-in-blankets.

  "Ralph!" I said. "What's going on here?"

  "One of the apparel seniors made the outfits. Not very creative, are they?"

  "They're no papier-mache tree."

  "I'm telling you, Ellie, you and I could make a whole line of apparel based on wearing your insides on the outside. I've been thinking about this ever since that Valentine's party. I can see the label now: Insides Out. We could even have the seams showing, like they were sewn on the wrong side. It would be way more interesting than this amateur plastic stuff." He gestured at the hors d'oeuvres servers. "I mean, the only thing these outfits say is: Hey, look at me! I'm naked ... but not really!"

  A girl with flower-shaped pasties walked over and offered us some mini-quiches.

  We each took one.

  "It would be better if they'd painted the pasties to look like real nipples," Ralph whispered.

  "Right," I said, laughing. "Have you looked around yet?"

  "Yeah." He shrugged. "Pretty disappointing. I'll walk with you."

  The first painting was of a dragon getting its head cut off, breathing its last breath of fire in a knight's face. The next one was a white wall with a bloody handprint. It wasn't even painted well. Another was a huge self-portrait with a tear the size of a telephone dripping from the eye. There were only two naturalistic figure paintings. They hung side by side in the darkest corner of the room. Nate's work was way better than both of them.

  "Ooh, look at those titles," I said.

  "In a Pensive Mood," Ralph read, "and Melancholy Maiden." He opened his mouth and stuck his finger inside, pretending to make himself throw up.

  "Tell me about it." I laughed.

  "What are your paintings like, Ellie?"

  "They used to be like this," I said, gesturing to the paintings that surrounded us.

  "I can't imagine that."

  "Good," I said. "I haven't painted since the end of high school. But I think I want my paintings to look like Ed's drawings."

  "Wow," he said. "I liked those. I can't wait to see your paintings. Let me know when you're ready to show them. Maybe I'll design an outfit for your opening. We could print one of your paintings on fabric and make it into a dress, so it looks like you're the figure in the painting."

  "Ralph," I said, "the way things are going now, I probably will be the figure in the painting."

  Old Farts

  I stopped going to Gregg's class regularly. Once I showed up after not having gone in for a week and Gregg didn't say anything about it. That day he had us sitting on the floor in a circle talking about what we do to make art a part of our daily lives. He was taping our answers with a video camera.

  "You start," he said, aiming the camera at me.

  Maybe this was his way of acknowledging my absence.

  "I've been drawing every day."

  "And?"

  "And that's it."

  "What do we say to that, class?"

  Everyone put their hands to their faces and made farting noises. Blue mohawk guy made armpit farts. I guess it was a trick Gregg had taught them while I'd been away. The only one not doing it was Sam.

  "Any other old farts here?" Gregg asked, scanning the ring of farters with his lens. "Hang on. Hang on a second." He put the camera on the floor between him and the guy with the blue mohawk. "These damn things are in the way. I can't focus." He removed his thick round tortoiseshell glasses and put them beside the camera.

  "Hey, do you want me to film?" asked blue mohawk guy. "I'm a film major."

  "No, I can handle it," Gregg snapped as he lifted the camera to his face.

  "Oh, that's cool," said blue mohawk guy. "I didn't mean to imply you couldn't handle it or anything."

  "Now where were we?" Gregg asked, aiming the camera at us once again.

  Blue mohawk was fidgeting with Gregg's glasses. He squinted at them through his own wiry frames.

  "Who will we land on this time?" Gregg turned slowly, surveying his students.

  Blue mohawk took off his glasses and delicately placed Gregg's frames over the bridge of his bony nose. He looked confused. "Do you even have a prescription for these things?" he asked.

  "Well, not a prescription exactly," Gregg said with a nervous laugh. He held the camera away from his face. "My glasses are what I like to call 'Cosmetoptics,' if you get my drift."

  "Yeah. Cosmetic. Optical. I get it." Blue mohawk traded Gregg's glasses back for his own.

  "Now," Gregg said looking through the camera, "back to business! Who's next?" He landed on Sam, whose hands were in his lap.

  "Over Wintersession I ate every Dunkin' Donuts flavor," Sam confessed.

  "Give me more!" Gregg shouted.

  "Every doughnut, muffin, and bagel. I tried them each once. Except Boston cream, which I got a few times."

  "Where's the passion?" Gregg asked. "It's not art without passion!"

  "I needed to know!" Sam's voice rose. "I needed to know what they all tasted like!" He stood up. Gregg followed him with the camera. Sam ran to the corner of the room, where he'd left his backpack. He pulled out his sketchbook and rifled through the pages. Gregg was right behind him. Sam found the page with the doughnuts list. "I wrote it all down, every flavor I bought, so I wouldn't repeat myself!" He waved the book in the air. "But I had to repeat myself! I did it for a girl! Because Boston cream was her favorite flavor! I bought it three times!" He didn't look at me once.

  "What do we say, class? Is this guy living art?" Gregg asked the circle of students.

  The class cheered.

  "Yes, I think so," Gregg said. "He saved himself at the end there."

  Kind of Guts

  "Had to do it?" I whispered in the hall after class. "I never asked you to keep buying that flavor. I didn't know it was an art project."

  "Neither did I," he said. "But Gregg made me realize that's what it was."

  "Do you really believe that?"

  "I'm trying to learn what Gregg has to offer," he said. "But he shouldn't have been so mean to you."

  "It's all right. I can take it. I've been showing my work to Ed these days. I don't need Gregg."

  "Can I see what you've been working on?"

  "Sure," I said. "Why don't you walk home with me. And this t
ime you don't have to stand around in the bathroom."

  "Okay." He laughed nervously.

  "I think about that sometimes," I said as we sploshed through the slush. "I shouldn't have made you wait in there. You could've stood in the same room as me and just turned around. Even if you'd seen me, it wouldn't have been so bad. We see naked people all the time, right?"

  "That's true," he said. "I just didn't want to make you uncomfortable."

  "Maybe I should warn you," I said, as he wiped his feet repeatedly on my doormat, "you might find my new drawing surprising."

  Inside, he immediately spotted the drawing leaning against the wall in the corner of the room.

  "Is that you?" he asked.

  "It is."

  "Man, Ellie," he said. "That's totally rad."

  "Thanks."

  "No, really," he said. "That takes way more guts than anything Ryan Brakee does. He has the kind of guts it takes to perform onstage, but you have the kind of guts it takes to—" he walked over to the drawing. "The kind of guts it takes to bare your soul."

  It was the best compliment anyone could have given me.

  Needed

  I hadn't checked my e-mail since I'd started my new drawing project. In fact, I hadn't been doing anything much aside from drawing, eating, and sleeping. Whenever I felt lonely or sad, I picked up my charcoal or a book. But one night after dinner I went to the computer lab to see if I had any messages.

  There was one. It was from Nate.

  e

  i NEED you. please call me.

  i'm sorry you think i suck.

  n

  It was dated three days ago.

  I signed off.

  You Must Choose

  That evening I was supposed to meet with Ed. His night class ended at nine-thirty. This one was in the Garage, too. Ed shouted good wishes at his students as they filed out the door.

  "Have a good week, Charlie!"

  "Good luck on your homework, Lisa!"

  "You're all showing incredible improvement!"

  The students shot awkward smiles back at Ed. That must've been what we looked like in the first weeks of our Ed experience.

  Ed jumped when I walked in the door.

  "Ellie! So glad you came tonight! I've been looking forward to this ever since you came to visit me two weeks ago. Can't wait to see what you've got!"

  He hurried me over to the modeling stand, where I unrolled my drawing and laid it down for him to see.

  His jaw dropped. Literally.

  Squeaky beginnings of words tried to make their way out of his mouth.

  "Ellie, I'm speechless," he said. "You've learned a lot since you drew from the figure in my class." His voice was quiet.

  My face was hot.

  "I've been studying a little," I said.

  "You've come a long way!" he shouted. "And you used yourself as a model. Great practice! This isn't just drawn well technically. It's moving. There's a sense of inner struggle."

  Then Ed did something he never did when I was in his class; he gave me some real in-depth criticism.

  "Keep in mind, Ellie, each part of the body is like those blocks you drew back in the beginning of my class. The head is a sphere, the limbs are cylinders, the torso and pelvis are rectangular solids. You're making these shapes too complex. You're breaking each shape down into thousands of shapes. Think simple."

  He drew me some diagrams of how to simplify the figure.

  "And toes!" he exclaimed. "Toes have structure! Toes are not worms that dangle off the end of your foot! Make your toes look solid, like you could put weight on them when you walk!"

  He bounced up and down on his toes.

  "Even tiny components to the body are geometric! They have volume!"

  He sketched some feet, with volumetric toes, on the side of my drawing.

  "You really want to figure out this anatomy, don't you?"

  "Yes."

  "Here's what I want you to do," he said. "For next time, Ellie, I want you to redraw this the way I showed you, breaking it down into geometries, as if the body were made of blocks! Then I want you to make an overlay with tracing paper and I want you to try to draw the skeleton in that pose. Keep it simple! Lines only!"

  He was grinning madly.

  "Doesn't that sound like fun, Ellie?"

  I nodded; it actually did.

  "Ellie," he said, "it's not always fun. Drawing the figure is one of the hardest things to do well. You have to make decisions at all times!"

  "What do you mean?"

  "There are choices every artist must make! Every mark or movement we make is a decision, whether you are performing, abstracting, or creating realistic images. If you fail to consider each decision carefully, your work will be flawed, and it will undermine the emotion you're trying to portray. It's easy to get away with fudging an abstract piece, or even a still life. With the human figure, though, it is agonizingly difficult, because people know what people look like! Here, look at this!" He pointed at the drawing on top of a pile his students had left on the modeling stand. "What's wrong with this torso?"

  "The external obliques," I said. "They're too squiggly."

  "That's right!" he said. "All muscles are convex! And here it looks like the external obliques are collapsing in on themselves!"

  "Looks painful."

  "You see? You'll never be able to look at this drawing again, without those obliques bothering you! Even someone who doesn't know anything about anatomy will be stuck on those obliques! They might not be able to tell you exactly what the problem is, but they'll know something is just a little bit off. And then they'll think about that more than they'll think about what the picture is supposed to mean. Understand?"

  "I think I do," I said. It was the longest I'd seen him stand in one place, talking calmly. Well, calmly for Ed. This must be what he's like when he's drawing, I thought.

  "Most students don't understand this stuff," he said. "I think they could, but I've found that usually, they only want to know the basics. So that's what I give them. But incessant decision-making—that's what separates the pros from the amateurs."

  "Are you saying that people who do things like lock themselves in a vault aren't really artists?" I asked.

  "Let me put it this way," Ed said. "Art is not all about doing. If that were true, everything would be art." He got on the modeling stand, kneeled, and slowly raised his body into a headstand. "You see?" he shouted, upside down. His face started turning red. "Some people would say, because what I just did was unexpected and wacky, it's art! But let's face it, that would mean I make art about fifty times a day! I don't think I have the energy to be making that much art!" He pedaled his legs in the air as if he were riding a bicycle.

  I laughed. If Ed didn't have that much energy, who did?

  "Art is about thinking so hard, you're afraid your brain might burst out of your skull! It's about knowing how to control your craft to perfection!" He lowered his legs and turned right side up. He stood, beaming and purple-faced, comb-over flopped to the wrong side of his head. "Ellie, you have the skill to pull off paintings that are just about doing. But I have a feeling you'll be more fulfilled if your work is also about thinking! The choice is yours!" he shouted. "And you must choose!"

  Blackout

  When I got home that night there was a body sprawled on my doorstep.

  His hand was drooped over his face and he was passed out.

  Probably some townee high school kid or a homeless guy. Strange, though, that he'd choose to lie on my steps rather than a doorway on Main Street. Maybe I should call a homeless shelter, I thought. The temperature was above freezing, but still it wasn't an ideal night to sleep outside.

  The street-lamp bulb in front of my house was burnt out, so I could just barely see his slumped shape.

  I immediately headed for the back door so he wouldn't wake up and harass me.

  Before I made it around the side of the building, I crept back to take another peek at the guy. There was s
omething familiar about him.

  I gasped.

  The thick hair—now not quite so electric.

  He'd been waiting for me.

  I sat on the steps beside him. He reeked of alcohol.

  I put my hand on his head.

  He didn't budge.

  I stroked his hair a few times.

  "Nate?" I whispered.

  The only movement coming from his body was his breathing.

  I wrapped my arms around him and rested my head on his back. I thought about taking him inside, putting him in my bed, and holding him all night.

  I wanted to do it without waking him up. But he was too heavy to carry.

  I went inside and got a wool blanket. I wrapped it around his entire body, leaving a small opening for his nose and mouth.

  In the morning the blanket lay in a heap on my doorstep.

  Totally Symbolic

  Tchaikovsky's violin concerto was on loud. I was humming along.

  I thought the knocking was part of the music. But then I saw Sam through the window, walking away.

  I ran to the door. "Hey, come back!" I called.

  "I just came by to see what you've been up to," he said as he walked up the steps. "I haven't seen you in class for two weeks."

  "I've been drawing at home," I said. "And drawing at the nature lab. And drawing at the library."

  I let him in. He closed the door behind him, and stayed facing the door.

  He said something I couldn't hear, but I could tell it was a question from his intonation. His voice was so deep, it didn't carry over the music.

  "Hang on," I said, turning down Tchaikovsky.

  Sam's face was still fixed on the door.

  "I said, Do you mind if I look?"

  "No, go ahead!" I said. "You didn't have to stay turned around like that!"

  "I don't know," he mumbled. "I thought you might want to keep it private."

  He walked over to my easel.

  The mirror was still leaning against the wall. Beside the mirror, I'd hung the old drawing, which I'd fixed up a bit since my talk with Ed. Books, photocopies, and sketches were splayed all over a table beside the easel.