Page 19 of All That We Never Were

“Did you get some rest?”

“A little. Is there any milk left?”

“I don’t know. I need to go to the store.”

“Maybe…maybe I could go with you.”

“Sure. I could use the help.”

That, and I was happy to get her out of there, so she’d at least have a bit of fresh air. I concentrated on my most important job while she sat at the bar eating breakfast. When I was done, to my surprise, she came around the desk and bent over my shoulder to see what I was doing.

“What is it?” she asked, squeezing her eyebrows.

“I’m offended you asked. It’s a kangaroo’s ears.”

“Kangaroos don’t have ears that long.”

I realized our first trivial conversation was going to revolve around the length of kangaroo ears. I asked her to grab a stool from the kitchen and sit down next to me. Elbow to elbow, I laid out the drawings in front of her.

“The deal is this: Mr. Kangaroo has to tell the kids why it’s bad to throw trash on the ground, leave the water running, or eat burgers until you pop.”

Leah blinked, her brows still knit.

“What’s that got to do with its ears?”

“It’s a cartoon, Leah. Doing it that way makes it funny. You know, exaggeration, like giving it big feet or little rat arms. Kangaroos don’t laugh like this in the real world either.”

I pointed to the glimmering white teeth I had drawn in one of the panels and saw how a smile trembled on Leah’s lips before suddenly disappearing, as if she had realized it and taken a step back. I wanted to keep her a little longer by my side, because the alternative was watching her shut herself up in her room.

“What do you think of my artistic gifts?”

She tilted her head. Thought. Sighed. “I think you’re wasting your talent.”

“This from the girl who stopped painting…”

She gave me a harsh look, and I felt relieved to see her react, giving an immediate response. Cause and effect. Maybe that was the deal: grab onto the string and start pulling, pulling it tighter and tighter.…

“So what’s your excuse?” she replied.

I raised an eyebrow. I didn’t see that coming. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You want a coffee?”

She shook her head as I got up to go to the kitchen. I served myself a cup, cold, and sat down beside her at the desk again. I showed her a few other jobs, the most recent ones I’d done, and she listened attentively without asking more questions or taking any particular interest in anything. Being with her was easy, comfortable, like all the things I loved in life.

I went on working, and she grabbed her headphones and walked out to the back porch. While I drew the background of trees behind Mr. Kangaroo, I couldn’t stop looking at her. Because there, with her back turned, with her elbows leaning on the wooden railing listening to music, she looked so fragile, so diffuse, so vague…

That was the first time I felt the quiver.

But at the time, I didn’t know that tingling sensation in my fingertips meant I wanted to draw her, capture her in lines, and keep her for myself, grab hold of her in fingers covered in paint. I wouldn’t manage to capture her as she was, live, whole, until much later.

I left after a half hour, pulled off her headphones, and put them on. She was listening to “Something.” With the first chords, that bass like a carpet under the notes, I realized it had been ages since I’d heard the Beatles. I swallowed and thought of Douglas in his studio telling me how to feel, how to live, how to be the person I was in that moment, and I asked myself if there was a part of me that had turned my back on that. I took off the headphones and handed them back.

“Are we still on for going to the store together?”

* * *

We drove into the city, crossing it to the opposite end. I parked almost at the door, we entered the supermarket, and we walked together up the aisles. Leah grabbed some cookies for breakfast and white bread without crust.

“What are you doing? That’s almost offensive.”

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