After Tasha’s story they took a break. Those who vaped gathered in the front yard. Jessa did not allow vaping in the house. She claimed to be acutely susceptible to second-hand vaping, swearing she smelled tobacco when most vape fluids had no scent and were in the flavors of Jolly Ranchers. Nadine sat on the doorstep and Josh took a seat in front of her on the grass. Violet, the only other vaper, learned from the great Billy Joel to “leave a tender moment alone” and meandered off to check her Twitter.
“Sheesh, that was a little dark. Good thing I’m not a fan of fro-yo.” Nadine was the youngest of the group and an actress. Her quarantine style reflected this. Loops of blonde hair quilted around her skull with the kind of Victorian handiwork that existed before telemarketers and HR departments plundered a population of would-be artisans. The complexity of the updo camouflaged her roots coming in like late wheat. She wore a sweater that may have been expensive, track pants that were not. She was one of the few quarantined women who still wore make-up and jewelry. Josh watched a tiny gold locket with a speck of turquoise on its case rise and fall into the hollow of skin that canopied her every breath.
He had fallen for Nadine the moment they met at Art and Jessa’s last holiday party. She was delicate, the sort of beauty one took for granted living in Los Angeles. Lithe, white skin lightly polished by the sun, starved by necessity, starved the actress way into thinking that was what they wanted, whoever they were. If entertainment hadn’t evolved, if these actresses would have stayed in vaudeville or on the stage, they would see their audience and be nourished by them. For Nadine, there was only a set of overblown creators and under-paid crew, hoping, for love of God, it would either stop or start raining, that they would finish before sundown or that night would come on already so they could start filming, always wanting something from her and the real world that did not exist at that time. So when Josh or anyone else looked into her eyes as they chatted at a Christmas party over glasses of punch that were actually just punch or on a porch smoking something that actually wasn’t smoke, her eyes would plead in their famished way and those before her would mistake it for captivation.
“I hope I don’t have to follow that. I’m not much of a storyteller.” Josh became conscious of his demeanor. Sitting in the grass in a suit had a Continental air he could not pull off.
“Do you want to trade places? You’re so dressed up. I’d hate for you to ruin your suit.”
“No worries. Dry cleaners are still essential businesses.”
She pulled her sleeves over hands so that only the fingers holding the vape pen peeked out. It was getting cooler as the sun went down. Josh worried that the conversation would take a terminal plunge to the weather if he didn’t think of something fast.
“But you must have plenty of stories, being an actress.”
“I don’t know if I’m the kind of actress you think I am,” she blushed. “My last few jobs have been slinging crazy for the Lifetime network.”
He knew exactly the kind of actress she was. He had spent many an unbillable hour since they met trolling her IMDB page and whatever too-watermarked-for-masturbation Getty images of her the internet had to offer. “How can you say that about ‘Confidential Terror’?”
“You saw that?” She coughed a little into her vape smoke.
“I love a good psychological thriller.”
“I spent a week interviewing an actual psychiatrist for that role. The producer said it would help me with authenticity but he paired me with child psychiatrist! I mean, how am I supposed to get from child psychiatrist to death row psychiatrist?”
Laughter lifted her posture, her shoulders relaxed and her hands appeared again from the warmth of her sleeves. He had to keep her talking. There must be some juicy story from shadowing a child shrink for a week that would keep this ember glowing before him, in spite of late season Santa Anas and the inherent vice of a romance between an actress and an agent.
A white burst in a field of blue. Sometimes stars, exhaustingly precise, at its edges. On days when there was no blue, the field could be lavender or grey. But it should be blue because that was how Simon remembered it. Simon was an honest little boy, a truth seeker.
He thought it was his best quality. Not like those other boys who stole blue crayons from the psychiatrist’s office.
After the twentieth identical drawing, Simon’s kindergarten teacher suggested he go see Dr. Diane. There was something about drawing the same thing over and over again that upset adults. It was all Simon wanted to draw and he couldn’t understand the fuss. He had seen a short film on early animation when his parents took him to Disneyland. They must have drawn that mouse a million times. Each twitch of his tail, whistle or spin of the helm would have been a stack of drawings. Mickey frozen in time with one or two elements moving with the subtleness of entropy.
Dr. Diane was the only one who didn’t mind the drawings. She encouraged him to draw whatever he wanted and even complimented him on slight variations in the field or size of the central burst. He had given her a few, which she hung by clothespins on a length of ribbon draped across the back wall of her office. Drawings by other children hung there as well, most of stick figures or frantic vibrations of color scribbled with force. Halos of overhead light reflected on their thick wax.
Simon liked Dr. Diane. She had glasses that didn’t cover her face and a mole on her cheek that would have been disfiguring for a grander beauty but it seemed to align her other features the way an odd vase might draw the eye to the finer table it rests upon. Simon thought she would smell like dandelions if dandelions had a scent.
She asked him questions while he drew which he did not find distracting. She had a measured way of speaking that could just as easily be ignored as listened to. When he did pay attention, he found her questions more intriguing than those of other adults who were fixated on what was already in their control: his meals, bedtime, the friends he saw at playdates they arranged, the things he wanted that they would later provide. Dr. Diane was more concerned with how he felt at night, awake, when the white burst moved from the paper to the ceiling, spoke to him with its wide white fingers as a sorcerer to the enchanted. She showed him pictures that reminded her of his drawings: a summer sky with firework showers, a white dahlia in full bloom against a blue curtain, even an Edvard Munch painting of the sun. She asked how he felt about these pictures, if any of them carried the same weight as his own drawings. She was never frustrated when he answered no. Everything he said or did in their hour together seemed only to spark fascination or amusement in her. Words he would hear from further rooms, “preoccupied,” “morbid,” “depressed,” “trauma” were never used by Dr. Diane.
“Tell me about your pool.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Do you go swimming in it?”
“Not anymore.”
“Does that make you sad?”
“Not really.” The crayon box had been replenished with not one but three different shades of blue. He knew Dr. Diane had been paying attention, had detected the slightest change in his mood when there were no blue crayons. She was the type who would notice the tail move between two frames of Steamboat Willie.
“I might be upset,” she mused, “if I had a pool in my backyard I wasn’t allowed to use.”
“I’m not.” Layering the cornflower blue over the cerulean with midnight swirls was having an almost dizzying effect on Simon. This drawing had the potential to be his best yet.
“Your mother thought maybe you’d like to move. To a house without a pool.”
“Well, I don’t. I wish she wouldn’t worry so much.”
“Why do you think she worries so much?”
“Because I died.”
Dr. Diane placed her palm flat on the table. They sat a kids’ table more suitable for Simon than Dr. Diane, who was taller than most women. Definitely taller than his mother and maybe even taller than he would be one day. During their sessions, she would place her hand awkwardly on the table or her equally small chair to steady herself. Simon thought it was very brave of her to choose a profession working with people who were not her own size.
“Mom doesn’t like it when I say that but it’s true.”
“Well Simon, as a doctor I’m not going to disagree with you.” She picked a pale yellow crayon, a fresh voice in the box, and placed it in front of Simon. “What do you think about adding a little of this to the white part, maybe give it some depth?”
“Like in the Mooch painting?”
“Yes,” she smiled, “like in the Munch painting.”
This was the first piece of advice she’d offered Simon since their sessions began so he considered it seriously. The crayon was almost white, a yellow delivered through the white feather of a songbird. He closed his eyes briefly, trying to remember if this color had been present, if its delicacy had gone unnoticed. He didn’t think so. He rolled the crayon back to her side of the table. “It’s a pretty color, but it’s not right. That painting was of the sun.”
“I understand.” She picked up the crayon and placed it back inside the box. “If you had to describe your drawings, how would you do it?”
“You know how,” he couldn’t mask his annoyance. Simon was tired of being asked to explain the drawings. Dr. Diane usually didn’t ask about them, but he thought perhaps she sensed the special accuracy of this one.
“Suppose I was someone interested in buying one of your drawings. How would you describe them to me? If you continue with your art, Simon, people will ask. Most artists are asked about the inspiration or meaning behind their work.”
“But I’m not an artist. I’m just a kid.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that.” Dr. Diane ripped a sheet of paper from the drawing pad at the center of the table. She plucked a magenta crayon from the box and drew a circle. She drew two triangles at the top of the circle and colored them in emerald green. She then took a black crayon and added spaced apart features and a curlicue protruding from the circle’s side. She slid it across the table. “What do you think?”
Simon looked up from his drawing to her crude illustration. It was of an animal washed clean of any identifying characteristics, “What is it?”
“Exactly.” She crumpled the paper and shrugged. “I’m not an artist and I’m an adult. It’s not about age, it’s about talent. I like your drawings. I want to know more about them.”
Simon used white crayon to color the central burst even though the paper was white. It gave the burst the quality of white it possessed when he’d entered it. He remembered moving through the white, being simultaneously lifted and swallowed. The white entered his body, changing and not changing him, like white crayon on white paper.
Dr. Diane placed one elbow on the table and propped her chin up in her hand. She looked tired and dreamy. With her hand framing one cheek and her mole the other, she was perfectly contained, held by the world in a way he was not. “I think you might miss this place.” Dr. Diane tapped his drawing gently. “That’s why you like drawing it so much. It may also be why I like looking at your drawings. Because you were happy when you were there.”
Simon put the white crayon down and rolled it with his palm against the table. He was a truthful boy but there was too much truth here. Those minutes of death inside the white ring, the rotary of blues shifting hues around him, those carrying minutes, of course, they would be missed. There was a feeling of the white burst waiting for him while leaving him behind.
“How does it feel not to be there anymore?”
He had no answer he felt would satisfy her. This was why he was sent there every week. This was why his mother knit her brow when he ran out of hiding places for the drawings in his room. It was why his classmates, even his friends, sometimes called him a zombie. It was why his father stood with an open beer, his fingers woven through the chained link fence now surrounding their pool, staring into water murky with the seasons. Simon remembered in Steamboat Willie when Minnie Mouse was almost left behind. She ran along the shore with her only possessions, a guitar and sheet music. It was a certainty she had been too late until Mickey swung the crane out that lifted her by her bloomers onto the boat. But just as she came aboard everything important to her was immediately devoured. A starving goat ate the music then the guitar. Minnie was forced to make music with what was on the boat. Her instruments were bizarre and often cruel. Simon felt this was most like coming back to life. He wasn’t sure if Dr. Diane would understand, if she had ever seen the cartoon or would think him babyish for bringing it up. He wondered if anyone would ever understand. His only comfort was in the idea that if he made enough drawings, maybe imperceptible movement would become perceptible, things he couldn’t explain could be shown, and everyone would stop worrying and just live.
**This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.**
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