Robin Black - Life Drawing

As I walked, I smiled, remembering the difficulty she’d had admitting what she thought of my work — as though she’d had to break through a barrier of some kind. As indeed she had. The barrier she knew about, the student critiquing her teacher’s clumsy attempts. And the barrier that only I could see. The daughter claiming her place again in my life.

I couldn’t tell Owen this, I knew. I wished that I could. I wanted to share how little her visit had to do with Bill. Not only because she had never known about us — which I had told Owen and doubtless would again, many times. But because she herself was, again, something more than Bill’s daughter to me. Something different. She was Laine. Her own person. My former student. A fellow artist, now. A friend.

And it wasn’t only because she had grown up, I understood, turning back toward the house. It was because both of us had.

Owen came in that evening with an expression I hadn’t seen for years. As I watched him gulp his water I was unsure if it was better to say something or let it go, but decided silence was pointless given his scowl.

“I really am sorry about that,” I said. “She was just trying to be …” I had no adjective to supply. “You know she never knew anything, right? I’m just her old art teacher, to her. This wasn’t a visit about … about anything that happened.”

“I really don’t feel like talking about this, Gus. What’s for dinner?”

It had been his turn to cook, but I let it go. “I just want you to …”

“Want me to what, Gus? What? Do you not understand that I didn’t even know you were in touch with her? I really thought those people were out of our lives. And here she is. In our house. Doing what? What did you actually do?”

“I showed her my work. We talked.”

He exhaled loudly as though this were the worst possible answer — as he would have whatever I’d said. “Great. You showed her your work. Did she like it?”

“Not particularly. Since you asked.” I stopped short of saying that at least she hadn’t just said whatever felt easiest, as I suspected he had been doing for nearly two weeks. “You never told me I had to cut her off.”

“It never occurred to me you hadn’t.”

“You wouldn’t have wanted me to. She’s a kid. She still needs me. I can’t believe you’d have wanted me to do that. To hurt her like that.”

Something flickered in his expression, and I knew that he agreed. “I saw you out there with Alison,” he said.

“We ran into her. I was …” I had been meaning to stop by, I remembered.

“Did everyone get along well?”

“It was all of three minutes, Owen.”

“Should I assume Alison knows all about this?”

“No. Of course not.”

A lie, I remembered right away, is a physical thing, like a new body part that has no proper way to fit.

“Fuck,” he said. “I really did not need all of this. What happens now? Is this to be a regular thing? How did she even find you?”

It was what Alison had asked about Paul: How did he find me? It seemed unfair that Laine should be cast among the dangerous people, the ones from whom we needed to hide. “I don’t know. I must have told her at some point. Maybe she saw the same stupid ad that Alison saw. Maybe she’s some kind of pathological stalker. I have no idea. I don’t remember what I told her. Or told you, apparently. She can’t hurt us though. She doesn’t want to.”

He looked at me without speaking. He didn’t have to say it: She already had.

“It won’t happen again,” I said.

“You have no idea. Let’s at least deal with reality. Maybe she’ll make it a weekly event.”

“That isn’t reality, Owen. She’s taking classes, living in New York. She isn’t hanging out here.”

“I guess I’ll just have to trust you about the details. Is there anything else going on?” he asked. “Anything else you may have forgotten you never told me about?”

I shook my head. “No. Well …”

His brows shot up.

“It has nothing to do with us. I’m only telling you in case there’s some technicality and you would consider this a lie. It’s just that she told me her father is remarrying. That’s all.”

He turned his back to me, putting his glass in the sink. “That must be tough news for you,” he said without a trace of sympathy in his voice.

“It’s not. It has nothing to do with me. Or with us.”

“Well, you must be happy for him.”

“Happy for him?” I wasn’t. Not at all. It hadn’t occurred to me to be, I realized with some shame. “Honestly, Owen, it has nothing to do with me. Laine is … Laine is … I have an obligation to her. Like when you save someone’s life, you’re responsible for them. And it isn’t her fault. It’s like punishing her for the stupid mistakes the stupid adults in her life made. I am so, so horribly sorry that you had to go through this. But I am asking you, as a favor, to just please understand that I can’t banish her from my life.” I heard myself putting it all on Laine, not describing her as any kind of daughter figure to me, not dredging up that old, unfulfilled longing. “I was ambushed. She didn’t mean it that way, but I was.”

He sighed, then turned around. “This isn’t easy for me, Gus.”

“I get that. I really do. And I’m sorry.”

“Just, please, if there’s a way to keep this from happening again …”

“I will.”

“Okay. Subject dropped.”

“Subject dropped,” I said. “But if it ever helps you to talk about it …”

“It will never help me to talk about it.”

“Then we never will,” I said, mentally adding it to the heap.

Don’t think of it as work, Laine had said.

It wasn’t easy advice to take.

Use your imagination .

My imagination? It seemed atrophied.

I had spent so much of my life trying not to imagine realities other than my own, certain that my envy of other families would demolish me. And when I’d shifted my focus away from those other children and their mothers, I had only slipped deeper into a different reality. The reality of things, of light. Appearances. Shapes. Vistas. Not people.

But here were these boys demanding of me that I exercise this long-unused capacity. And there was Laine, cheering me on to give them life.

I didn’t paint the morning after her visit. I drew. Little caricatures, cartoon figures really. Sitting. Running. Walking. Swimming. Fast, fast, fast. No time for me to think. Skiing. Bicycling. Dancing.

Just play , Laine had advised. So I tried to play. I worked at playing, determined to keep trying until I could play without having to work.

When I saw Alison that afternoon, we returned to the pond, our first walk there in some time. “That must have been tough for you,” she said as we started circling.

“Tougher for Owen,” I said, knowing immediately that she meant Laine.

“I’m sure it was tough enough for you both. Your Laine is a sweet-seeming girl. In spite of all the piercings, which I have to admit are not my thing.”

“She’s different from Nora, I know. She’s a whole different type of kid. Of young woman, I suppose.”

“Yes. But both artistically inclined,” Alison said. “So not quite as different as if one of them were a titan of finance or something. Both doubtless doomed to scrape for money their whole lives. Or teach high school. Like some of us.”

I had never thought of Alison envying us our financial ease. But it was hard not to hear it there, hard not to be a little startled by her tone.