Page 96 of My Own Kind of Person

“You’re doing self-portraits for the application?”

“I don’t want to talk about it!” They scrunch up their shoulders. “I let myself want to get in and now I want to get in. And I don’t want…I don’t want to want anything.”

“But you—”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

“You—”

“I’m done talking about it.” They adjust themselves so only the tips of their fingers rest on the steering wheel. “I was trying to draw something for the application and it wasn’t working, so I went for a drive and you texted and I didn’t know how to reply but you were at the Big Duck so I went there. And one thing I’ve learned is that when you’re feeling bad and you don’t know how to fix it, it’s almost always the right choice to go to sleep. You might not feel better in the morning either, but at least you’ve taken care of your body.”

“That makes sense.” I add it to the list of reminders to myself of what I could do better. “But if that’s true, then why are we driving east instead of heading home?”

They’re silent for a while. “It’s hard to do what’s good for you just because you know it’s good for you.”

I turn the volume up. Andi leaves the main road and weaves through streets of mansions with tall hedges and wide gates. They pull around a corner and park at a dead end with some overgrown brush. Without a word they exit the truck, and I button up my jacket and follow.

The wind is freezing and salty. I follow Andi onto a dirt path through the brush along a fence, past a cheap sign saying this is private property. Sticks and leaves crunch under my feet, but below that is soft sand. Andi pushes aside a massive branch and the star-filled sky appears above a beach and the ocean.

Waves crash in the distance and moisture sparks on my face. We go down to where the loud water rises high and smashes against the sand. For thousands of miles there’s only this ocean. My legs go numb like I’m standing at the edge of a great height.

“How do you know this place?”

“Sometimes I go swimming at night.”

“In this?”

“I go out until I can’t see the shore anymore.” The wind hits against us, but Andi doesn’t close their eyes. “I only know which is the way back because the water pulls me the other way.”

I don’t say anything. I reach out and hold their hand.

Chapter 34

Shooting stars blink by. We sit side by side in the sand for hours, my friend and I.

Chapter 35

Andi pulls a sketchbook from behind the seat as I get in their truck. “I wanted the self-portraits to be completely identical. That was my point. I tried out different approaches but once I found the right one I did it the same way every time. Same lights, same pencils. And you know I draw exactly what I see. But I can’t make them right. Each one looks different.”

They turn on the overhead light and quickly pass me one picture after another so I only have time for a first impression before I’m hit with the next. In each, Andi looks directly at me, their eyes penetrating, but I know when it was drawn that look was pointed at themself in the mirror. I couldn’t name how one is drawn any differently from the next, and yet each has a different effect. In the first I’m confronted, pushed back. After that I’m allowed in. I recede. I soften. I’m unnerved by the intimacy. I feel safe. I feel grateful for Andi, I feel lucky that I get to know them. By the ninth and final portrait I see why it isn’t possible for Andi to keep themselves behind this face, and why I can’t keep myself hidden from mine anymore either. We need to allow ourselves to be seen. We need to be seen and to see each other.

Before I can say anything, Andi closes the sketchbook and looks out the window. The seeing is over.

“What would help you draw the last one?”

“There is no way I will look at myself again for that length of time.”

“What if I held up the mirror?” I say. “With the other portraits, you were alone and scrutinizing yourself. This time, I’d be looking at you.”

“I don’t know,” they say, but they nod. “We could try it.”

Moving quickly, they take out a mirror from the back of the sketchbook and a pencil from the glove compartment. They hand me the mirror and position it in my hands so it’s facing them. “Don’t look away,” they say.

They sit back with their sketchbook and a pencil. No eraser. They look at me and hold my gaze, then glance in the mirror and draw. The other portraits were careful studies that must have each taken hours. With this one, Andi’s hand moves quickly as they look from my eyes to the mirror to the page, and after a few minutes they pause and look longer at the drawing, possibly done. They look back at me with a fierceness I’m frightened by, and they go back to the page and add a few more lines.

“Okay.”

They flip the sketchbook around to show me. It’s Andi without anything in the way. Andi when they’re seen as they are. Andi when they’re seen by me. Or by a version of myself I didn’t know I could be. I’m usually the one who’s an emotional disaster. I’m the one who needs someone else to make it okay. But maybe that’s not all of me. I take care of Mom sometimes, don’t I? Maybe I can also be someone who cares for others.