Chapter Two #3
He immediately perks up. “Really! So cool!”
“The instructor actually seemed to like my drawing. He said something about how instead of trying to draw a likeness of the model, I was putting him together on the paper. Piece by piece.”
“That fits.”
“What do you mean?”
He shrugs. “I mean…that’s what you do. You’re not trying to make anything look pretty. You’re trying to fit it all together. So it works.”
I chew on this.
“Are you gonna go back to the art class? I think you should!” Raff insists. Nothing would make him happier than me embarking on a journey of personal growth.
The instructor comes over to look at Raff’s whales, and he turns his attention to charming the pants off her (likely literally, as there’s a fifty-fifty chance she goes home with him tonight, if history is any indicator), so I take an unobserved second to lift my paintbrush again.
There’s a big patch of white in the bottom corner.
I decide to fill it with another blue Raff, smaller this time.
I catch him gesticulating, a familiar posture.
The thing I paint doesn’t look like a human, exactly, and certainly not a specific human.
But there’s something there, a slant of line, that does, in fact, call Raff to mind.
The paint is somehow both blobby and too thin. Unwieldy. I don’t think I’m doing myself any favors with jumping headfirst into painting. On a whim (or maybe with Daniel’s voice still in my head), I reach into the art supplies basket and just grab a Sharpie.
I try one more Raff, this one in marker and almost microscopic in order to fit in the white space. As I draw him, I spike up his hair, give him all ten fingers.
It’s not a likeness. But it is Raff. The idea of him, at least. Constructed and alive, on the page.
For the first time since I found that lease, I realize my brain is calm, my thoughts are quiet. I take a long breath and it washes down all the way to my toes.
Ugh. It’s annoying when your friends actually know what’s good for you. I’d rather rot in my own despair.
It’s time to leave now. The instructor, I realize, is actually all dolled up.
A glossy black blowout and cat-eye makeup.
She’s shooing us out of the classroom, I’m assuming she has a big date with someone she thinks might be her whole future.
Or maybe she just wants to get laid. Either way, class is over and once again my possibilities are limited.
The world is narrowing in again. She pushes us out onto the street.
We’re halfway down the block when I realize I left my painting behind.
It’s fitting really, that I managed to capture someone I love, ensconce them safely on a canvas, and then I leave it behind by accident. I want the dim, tipsy classroom back. I don’t want to be out here, in reality, in a world where I don’t even know where my husband is.
I’m not…I didn’t write anything down today. Is that okay?
(Go, baby, go!)
Okay. I’ll try to do this, like, free-form, then. Okay. So, I’m sure it’s weird to be happy on a bad day. Has that happened to any of you before?
(What do you mean?)
I mean…okay, well, I can’t think of other examples, so I’ll just tell you what I’m talking about. It was back when I was first dating Roz.
(Roz again!)
(This guy is obsessed.)
(OMG shut up, let him talk, I die every time he talks about her.)
So, we’d been together about two months. And I’d never met anyone like her. Also…I’d never been treated like that before. Like…a princess?
(Yes!)
(Every man deserves to get treated like a princess!)
(Say more, baby!)
Ha. Yeah. Well, it’s true. Roz is the sort of person that if you see a commercial for a certain food and you say, oh, that looks good, then tomorrow night she’ll have made it from scratch for you.
She would walk past a store and see a sweatshirt she thought would look good with my eyes and then bring it home for me.
Just, like, on a Wednesday. It didn’t have to be my birthday or anything…
Let’s see…She came with me to wait in line at the DMV.
(That’s love, right there!)
(Keeper!)
Right? I went from doing everything. For myself, for my mom, for my brother. Then suddenly I had someone using a magnifying glass and tweezers to pull a splinter out of the bottom of my foot. Wait…where was I? I lost my train of thought.
(Bad day!)
(The topic is Bad Day!)
Oh, yeah. Thanks. Anyways, it was early days, and happy as I was with her, I was starting to worry a little bit.
I guess…I guess I was thinking I was kind of useless in comparison to her?
Like deadweight? Well, then I got laid off.
I’d been working for a home renovation crew and getting really good at it, but hard times, yadda yadda, I’d been the newest hire, I was the first to go.
So, I have this new girlfriend, who I already feel like is out of my league.
And she’s so thoughtful and feeding me and clothing me and…
I’m about to show up for our date and tell her that I’m unemployed now.
I just thought…there’s a chance this is it.
There’s a chance she’s going to count all the tally marks and realize there just aren’t enough.
So, as I’m walking, I’m looking in the shop windows, thinking, should I buy her a sweater that would match her eyes?
Then I’m passing a grocery store and I’m thinking, which foods did she mention liking and could I ever cook them?
But I don’t really land on anything and before I know it, I’m already to her apartment, where we are meeting for our date.
Usually, when she’d open the door, she’d be, you know, with the makeup and the hair and the outfit.
And if we were staying in, there’d be something for dinner.
I’m making it sound like I was expecting her to do all that, which I really wasn’t, I swear.
It just was a fact. That was what she did.
But this night, she had, like, sweats on. And she was standing there like this.
(HA)
So, I asked, I said, are you sick?
(HAHAHAHAHA)
(OH NOOOOOOO)
Yes, well, I can see that all of you know that that is always the wrong thing to ask someone. And that was the first time she ever called me a butthead. The first of very, very many. “No, you butthead,” she said. “I’m just grumpy.”
She gets these days, maybe three or four times a year, when she’s just grumpy and there’s nothing she can do about it and she just has to wait it out.
But…it made me happy. Because even on that day.
Like, if that day had a title, up until that moment, it would just have been “Vin Is a Failure.” But then I realized that the title could change.
I could change it to “Vin Has an Opportunity.” So I came into her house, popped popcorn, and then picked her up and tucked us into the couch and put on the TV and waited for her to not be grumpy.
And it took like eight seconds. And then she was turning toward me and playing with the buttons on my shirt…
And then she was telling me about her day…
And then she was laughing with me…And then she was sitting up and deciding she was hungry for a slice of pizza…
And then she was dragging me off the couch to a pizza shop a few blocks away…
She was still in sweats, by the way, with her hair like, wild, and that was the night I learned that she really, usually, tries to look totally put together, but then sometimes she just doesn’t give a shit at all, which I’ve always really dug…
But anyways, she said, what are you smiling about?
And I realized while we were eating pizza that I had this huge grin on my face, even though I’d had such a bad day up until an hour ago.
“You were grumpy, but I cheered you up,” I told her.
And then I told her I lost my job. And…yeah.
That’s Roz kind of in a nutshell, I think.
There weren’t tally marks, not really. My whole life, it’s always been about…
what can I bring to the table? What can I offer?
But even when I thought I didn’t have anything to offer her…
I was still the right, I don’t know, recipe.
For her. It was just that…we fit. We. The two of us.
It wasn’t about stats. My job or my skills or anything you could ever list out on a piece a paper.
And…that was the first time that had ever happened for me.
And sitting there, jobless, I still felt useful to her.
(It was in the intangibles!)
Yes. Thank you. Exactly. What she really liked about me…
it was in these little moments you can’t tally.
On the couch, cheering her up. And that made me feel…
she made me feel…perfect. Perfect on a Bad Day.
Perfect without even having to try. That would be the actual title of that day.
If I had to go back and name it. I’ve learned…
the hard way…that you don’t get very many of those days.
Where everything is perfect without trying.
I’ve learned that trying…is maybe all you can do?
Even if I used to get it right without having to think about it.
But that’s…that’s not…we were talking about me being perfect on that one bad day.
Oh, and she didn’t mind that I got laid off.
I mean, she felt bad, but she didn’t think I was a loser.
A couple weeks later, she told me I should move in with her to save on rent.
So I could afford to go to technical college.
And that’s the story of how I became an electrician.
Or…something. All right. That’s it. That’s it for tonight. Next time I’ll write it down.