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“He didn’t hire me,” Annie says. “I applied.”
“He didn’t hire Josh, either,” Raffe says. “Or Macon. I didn’t even know you were in the running for that job.”
“I wasn’t,” I admit. “I didn’t know there was a job in the first place. He just offered it to me.”
“There you go.”
There I go.
And actually, I feel like I’m moving. Like I’ve taken a step to the left and cleared a path that was blocked.
I’ve got a sketchbook at home full of ideas for shit that I would build or make or do if I had unlimited time and supplies. A sketchbook I’ve never showed anybody—not even Caroline—because it’s scarier than it should be to step away from what I know is practical in favor of what might turn out to be impractical but fucking pleasurable.
My sister keeps drawing these grid drawings, one after another, like she can’t stop. They’re all she wants to do. But she keeps telling me they’re not real art, even as she gets better and better at them.
My grandma Joan has a houseful of blankets she’s knit. She makes them without patterns, and they’re fucking impressive, but if you ask her anything about them she’ll tell you she just does it for her arthritis.
Not because it feeds something in her to make beautiful things.
I don’t know if what I want to make would come out beautiful, but fuck, I’ve got things I want to try just for the sake of trying it, glass I want to melt and metal I want to cut up and this idea I had for if you could take a tree and cut it into slices and suspend them, somehow, vertically, so you could see what the tree looked like when it was alive the same time you could see inside the tree and read the story of its life.
I don’t know if that’s art.
I g
uess it is if I say it is. If it makes people feel or think when they look at it.
I don’t know if it would be good art. Could be it’s just playing. But giving myself a chance to figure it out—that’s what I want.
That’s what I want for me, and that’s what I want for Frankie, too—to be able to see me doing that, so she knows it’s okay if she wants to do it herself.
I’m starting to see that if I get what I need, Frankie’s going to get what she needs, too. That what’s good for me and what’s good for Caroline is what’s good for my sister.
“Where’d Rikki go?” I ask.
“Back to her office,” Annie says.
I check the clock and I’m surprised to see it’s seventy-five minutes since I got here. I was supposed to be stopping for a minute. I’ve got to get dinner sorted out. But it’s late enough now that Caroline’s probably fed Frankie.
“I’d better head out,” I say. “Thanks for showing me this stuff.”
“You want to grab dinner?” Raffe asks. “Annie and I were going to go into town for subs.”
“Thanks, but I can’t.”
“Oh. Okay.”
I’m reminded of that day with Krishna, when he came up to me outside the art building and harassed me into coming over for dinner.
He’s back in Chicago for the break.
I think tonight I’ll give him a call.
“Would you guys want to come out to my place?” I ask. “Not tonight, because I don’t know what Caroline’s got going on, but I don’t know, tomorrow? Day after? I have to warn you I’ve got a kid sister living with me, so if you’re not into kids …”
I trail off.
I guess what I’m saying is, I’ve got some baggage. I live off-campus with my girlfriend and my little sister. I don’t really know how to have friends, and I can be a grouchy fucker if things aren’t going my way, but I’d like to talk about art with you. Both of you.
