Eighteen #2
“You don’t need to ‘earn’ me, Garrett,” I say.
I feel a breathless pain at the thought of him trying to fit in with everyone, of the way he works to be good at everything.
I used to think it was arrogance, that it was about being better than everyone else.
Now I realize that it’s about him feeling like he’s good enough to deserve attention.
“You don’t need to ‘earn’ my family or your friends, either. You know that, right?”
He looks like he doesn’t fully understand or believe me, but he doesn’t argue.
“And you can be messy around me. It’s when you’re the most honest.”
He smiles at that, and it isn’t a one-third grin this time. It is soft and vulnerable, pulling at the corners of his eyes.
Then we take a photo, the two of us together. He has me return to my place on the stairs, balances his camera on a stump, sets the self-timer, and runs to join me. He trips along the way, barely making it in time to throw himself down on the step just below me, his shoulder even with my thigh.
He lets me see this one. In it, I’m resting my elbows on the tops of my legs, smiling confidently at the camera.
It surprises me, seeing myself look like this, and I wonder whether—if I were to compare it to the ones he took before—it’d be possible to see the difference in my face.
I am different now. The world is different now.
And Garrett? In the photo, he’s a fluster of energy, his hat forgotten on the ground at his feet, his cheeks flushed from running, his hair the warmest part of the forest—like oak leaves, the ones that hang on the branches, russet and stubborn, through the entire winter.
His head is turned toward me—eyes bright, smile wide—as if the camera caught him before he could pose for the photo.
There’s something about the picture that makes my breath catch: how it has captured this moment and no other. The snow will melt in the spring, and in the summer, the two of us will be gone from this town, leaving only stone stairs in a forest, leading nowhere.
When we tromp into the kitchen through the back door, Aunt Liz is standing at the island with a pile of mismatched antiques in front of her: a rusty weathervane, a teacup, a wooden pipe, a Beatles album.
Her tongue pokes from the corner of her mouth as she examines them, reaching down into her toolbox for a tube of superglue.
Aunt Liz regularly comes over to “borrow” merchandise to turn into art.
The Irontown Arts Guild, which operates out of a narrow, ancient building on Main Street, has an ongoing exhibit reserved for her work.
She picks the teacup up and smashes it against the counter. It shatters, and she nods approvingly.
“Mosaic?” I ask, pulling off my boots.
She looks up. “Maybe.”
I throw my hat and gloves onto a rack by the heating vent. “Garrett’s an artist, too. A photographer.”
She beams at him. “That’s right—another artist in the family!”
He hangs his jacket on a hook. “Not really. It’s just a hobby.”
“All art is. Until you realize you’re making money off it.” She chuckles. “Not that I’m doing that anymore. When can I see your work?”
“It’s nothing special—”
“Yes it is,” I interrupt.
She looks between the two of us, eyes narrowing, as if she’s examining a piece of her mosaic. Her lips form a line.
“Huh,” she says in a tone remarkably similar to the one Garrett used when he first saw the pride flag hanging in my bedroom.
Then she straightens and addresses him. “Well, whenever you’d like another set of eyes, I’d love to see your stuff.
And if you’d ever like to join me in my garage-turned-workshop, you are more than welcome to. We could make something together.”
Garrett considers her. “Yeah. I’d actually really love that.”
“Saturday afternoon?”
He nods, his expression painfully grateful.
She gives us another look and returns to her art.
We pass through the kitchen and into the entry hall, and as soon as we’re out of earshot, Garrett whispers, “She knows, doesn’t she.”
“Absolutely.”
He grabs my arm and we pause. “Do you think she’s okay with it?”
“With us being … a thing? Why wouldn’t she be?”
“Just checking.” He’s trying to act like he doesn’t care, but I know him too well now to buy it. “Do you think she’ll tell your dad?”
“Probably not,” I say. “Why, are you worried he’ll try and scare you off or something? He doesn’t own a shotgun.”
“Just hunting rifles.”
“Really,” I say. “He won’t care. He’d be happy for us.”
Garrett nods. “But can we hold off on telling him? Just for now?”
“Sure,” I say. “But, Garrett, it’s okay to be messy with him, too.”
Late that night, as I sit at my Casio in the glow of my desk lamp and computer screen, I realize something: I no longer struggle to create music of my own, no longer sit for hours in the unsettled clutches of writer’s block.
The imaginary judgmental audience that once prevented me from writing has dispersed.
I think my mom was in that audience, and maybe a version of Dad, but now they’ve been replaced by Aunt Liz and Emma and Katrina and Garrett—and by the real version of Dad, who believes I can do this.
I’ve worked and I’ve learned and I’ve practiced. I have original things to say.
So tonight, when I place my fingers on my keyboard, melodies stream out as if they had already been there, like a story I already know but haven’t yet written.
It’s the first time I think of myself as a composer.