8

I have to draw Graeme. I have to see if I'm right about him. I'm not sure I like the image, but I can't get it out of my mind. Ill know as soon as I see him and put the lines on paper whether it's a true drawing or not And I have to know—I have to understand him. I want to startle him, also. I want to define the bond between us. Or maybe I want to break it.

The drama department has a collection of one-acts scheduled next weekend, with a cast party after. If I'm right, that's the sort of party Graeme won't miss.

"You going to the cast party?" I ask Adrian.

"Probably," he says, a secretive smile on his face. I wonder who he's going with, glad that he's got a date.

"Can you get me in?"

"You don't really need an invite," he tells me, his voice curious. "But you can tag along with me if you like."

"Thanks." Graeme has to be there.

"What's so important about this party, anyway?"

I shrug. "I'm just a party animal, I guess."

Adrian laughs, a brittle sound like breaking glass. "Oh, that's you, all right!" The sketch I made of him hangs above his desk. I'm touched, and a little sorry I drew it for him, because I suspect he puts more stock in the gift than he should. But it's a true drawing, even if it's only one side of him.

I make it through the week, painting and keeping my mouth shut in Mr. Wallace's class. The shreds of the lemon are gone the next class session, and he never says anything else about it Stalemate, I guess. We have a new arrangement—a tumble of children's building blocks. I like the angles and the shadows and use charcoal to rough in the blocks on a fresh canvas without any little extras.

I wonder what Mr. Wallace would say if I painted the whole thing in black and white, or maybe sepia tones, like an old photograph? But I don't because I suddenly see that my perspective on these hard-edged cubes isn't quite perfect I rub out the charcoal and adjust an angle slightly, looking at the blocks in a different way—looking at the idea of fundamental techniques in a different way. If I'd seen the lines like this in my painting of the roof, the image would have been sharper, more focused. Why couldn't Mr. Wallace show us that instead of getting so hung up on the purity of photo-painting his dead-life arrangements? Or is that what he's been trying to teach us, and I haven't been paying attention? I paint the blocks with care.

I start phoning the people Rachel wants me to sketch, asking if I can come by and watch them work sometime, explaining that I don't want them to "sit" for me, just be themselves, and I'll take care of the rest It sounds so simple.... They fell for it of course, and I start sketching the truth they never realize they've revealed. I'm on overdrive, filling every minute so I don't have to think.

I even nerve myself to talk to Alona again in computer class. I ask her some questions about the kaleidoscope idea I had for the Lord Jim false image game, and she flips back her long braid and lights up with excitement She goes on about if-then cause-and-effect logic strings. I picture shimmering strands of gray brain matter logically stretching from situation to image, but don't think this will help me write the program, until Alona suggests we work together on it Apparently Ms. Cooper said we could team up for the term project. I must not have been listening. Alona says she couldn't think of anything interesting enough, but she likes this because she's a writer. I don't let her see my inner wince at the word writer. Are all writers like Graeme? Do they fit the pattern Vve seen for him? I don't know Alona well enough to know what she's like, and I don't think I want to. I like the way she smiles, though, and I don't want to see her eyes slide away from me (from my paintings) uncomfortably. I don't want to let myself hope they might not slide away but will light up with pleasure. It hurts more when I let myself hope.

Finally time drags past and gets me to the night of the one-acts, and I sit through them numbly, waiting. Bits of plays, moments of theater, fragments flickering onstage, and all I can think of is the images of Graeme Brandt in my mind's kaleidoscope.

This party isn't at the theater. The director's one of the dorm masters, and he's throwing the cast party in his dorm apartment I wander in behind Adrian and a light designer from the one-acts, as if I belong, and nobody stops me. A few feces smile at me—they look dimly familiar from the party after Adrian's quartet last week. If the same students are here, then I'm right that this is the group he feels comfortable with—I'm right that he'll come, too. Graeme. I hunt through the ice chest, hoping for a ginger ale, find one, and wait for him.

As soon as he walks through the door, I can't help my mind flying to his. But he's not alone tonight. He comes in talking to one of the actors, a few steps behind an older man who looks familiar. I saw him at the Orientation Week party. He has a strong, wary fece, and Graeme keeps glancing at him, including him in the conversation. I watch them together, testing the image that haunts me.

Graeme glances across the room and our eyes meet He flashes the same clear smile I remember too well from the other night When I don't respond right away he raises his eyebrows slightly, and I realize I have responded. I'm smiling back at him without meaning to.

He says something to the others and crosses the room toward me. The actor shrugs and heads off to the kitchen, but the man trails Graeme possessively, his sharp black eyes examining me narrowly. I wouldn't like to tangle with him.

"Charles. How're you doing?"

The tone is warm but makes no demands, with none of the closeness I backed away from before. I feel relieved—almost safe being friendly with him.

"Fine. Good show, wasn't it?" Was it? I have no idea.

"We'll have to wait to see what Tyler writes about it before we know about that," he returns, his voice now rippling in amusement The right tone for the party. "This is Mr. Adler, my mentor." And then his tone changes again. "Sir, this is Charles Weston, the new sketch artist for Ventures. He just transferred here."

"Welcome to Whitman," Mr. Adler tells me. He glances around. "Don't make too late a night of it Gray. You should be working."

Graeme smiles at him gently. "Yes sir. As soon as the new book's right in my mind, I'll get to work like a good boy. You'll be begging me to take some time off and go to a party before I burn out."

Mr. Adler sighs. "At least you've got something in the works. It's been a long time since that first book, Gray."

"I know."

Mr. Adler shakes his head, then glances around for the director. "I'm going to see if Bill needs a hand."

Graeme watches him go. "He's right of course."

I nod. "I've been asking about your next book since I met you. At least you have to answer to him. I'm glad something's coming into focus."

He smiles faintly. "It isn't But it doesn't hurt him to think it is."

I can't answer that The silence lengthens between us until it becomes dangerous, but all I can think is, I'm right—I know how to draw him.

"Hello, Charles. Graeme." Rachel's cool voice breaks the silence, and I can't quite hide the relief as I turn to her. Shared silence means understanding, and Graeme and I don't really understand each other. It means acceptance ( even belonging)—things I can't be part of, no matter how much I want to. I thought he could show me how to belong without playing games, but he can't.

"Hi," I tell her.

"Any luck setting up appointments with the students I suggested?" she asks, her thumbs hooked in the pockets of a paisley vest that looks like swirls of oils on a watery surface. Graeme glances at me quizzically.

"I'm doing some sketches to go with an article," I tell him. "Yeah, I've met with three of them already and seen their work. I've already done roughs."

"Good—I'd like the lot by next week."

"I think I can manage that."

Graeme says, "IH let you guys talk shop." He gives me another smile and heads across the room.

Rachel watches his graceful walk, then turns back to me. "What about him?"

I tell her, "I was planning to do a rough sketch tonight, but I think I know just what to draw."

Her smile matches my own, and without warning time slides to a halt I know all about Graeme Brandt, I want to tell her. I know about all of them—the insiders, the successes that everyone else looks up to because they feel safe with them. I see what they think they are, and I understand why people like them. And I can tell you because you're not like them, are you? You're like me.

Then I see answering delight flare in her eyes, and I blink back into myself, remembering that she's not like me, not in the end. Why not? Why shouldn't she be like me? Why shouldn't someone be like me? But that's only wishful thinking. It's just that I want her (someone) to be like me. The real Rachel wants to see inside of me and rearrange the pieces, and that's different from what I do—I arrange the pieces in my sketches so other people can see the pattern. Rearranging pieces is more like forcing your pattern on someone else.

Nobody's like me, in the end. I just have to find a way to get used to it I slide my sketch pad out of my pack and turn away, looking for a place to sit I don't care how rude she thinks I am—the ruder, the better.

A mahogany telephone table stands in a corner, and I dose in on it pulling out the straight-backed chair and moving the notepad, the mug of pens and pencils, and the little vase of silk flowers to make room to draw. I deliberately don't look back toward Rachel. I pull out my sketch pad and make myself think of Graeme, instead. There's the deferential student I saw with his mentor tonight, the celebrity I saw at the writers' party that first week, the charmer I saw in action after the concert the aloof romantic who watched the storm with me, the writer I saw in his studio, the intimate friend I pushed away. The images revolve around and around inside my head as the kaleidoscope races out of control—all of them Graeme, and none of them the real Graeme.

My pen moves across the sketch pad, but my unruly left hand seems to have a mind of its own. Instead of the shifting lines of Graeme's (beautiful) responsive face, my hand produces a strong face framed by a neat cap of shining hair, dear eyes, with highlights in them that break apart into shifting kaleidoscope shards of colored glass. Before the lines of Rachel's face can come into focus, I turn over the page and force my hand to follow my eyes across the room to Graeme Brandt.

He stands talking to his mentor, the perfect posture of respect His expression is attentive, and even though I can't hear his voice I'm sure it's just the right tone for a student accepting his teacher's advice. It's a terrific performance, better than anything onstage tonight. Adrian says ... show time.

Now I start sketching in earnest—swift uncompromising lines, unyielding black. All the thought I've put into seeing inside of Graeme, all my struggles to understand him, everything I hoped and the truth I have to face—it all goes into the drawing. A slender figure emerges, pen poised in his graceful right hand. Around the figure, a series of mirrors reflect wished-for images toward the waiting author. I take pains to show each expectation. But within the circle of mirrors, and above the lean body, just where the head should be, I draw yet another mirror—huge, empty, all-encompassing, reflecting all of the images back on themselves. Without hesitation, ignoring the ache in my fingers that tells me I've grasped my pen too tightly for too long, I sign the sketch and rip it out of the pad. I know it's a true drawing.

I hear a gasp and a distant murmur of voices. I mean to look for Rachel, to give her the sketch, but when I look up I see Graeme coming toward me, his expression puzzled but friendly. I know, I want to tell him. You see? I understand now. I've seen how you play the game. But I don't understand why—and I don't think I can forgive you for not being who I thought you were.

On a deeper level, I'm begging, Please let me be wrong.

He readies the table and bends down to look at the drawing, then freezes, staring at it I wait for him to say something, but he looks up from it his blue eyes gone nearly black, turned into bottomless pools. Someone says something to him, and he snatches up the paper, folding it roughly in half to hide the stark lines.

"Graeme—" I can't shorten his name, like the others do, the ones who don't know him. But he doesn't stop to listen. He backs away from me, then turns. He's across the room and gone before I have the chance to say more.

"Well, well."

The other kids, strangers with hungry eyes who enjoyed the show, have turned away, whispering to each other. But Adrian leans against the wall beside the small table.

"Your sketch seems to have made quite a stir."

His tone sounds almost relieved at Graeme's abrupt departure, and he studies the door instead of meeting my eyes. I realize he's been standing there for a while now—long enough to have seen the sketch before Graeme hid it—long enough to compare it with the sketch I did of him—no doubt long enough to tell himself that he's made a conquest after all, that he won me over to the point where I've spurned Graeme Brandt for Adrian Lawson. Something inside of me snaps at his assumption that I could care enough about him to be in tentionally kind to him and deliberately cruel to Graeme. I want to rip the sketch I made of him into shreds. Why did I ever think that roommate might mean friend! That his music that night might mean we had something in common? You let somebody get a little close to you, and they think they own the right to twist your actions any way they like. Adrian turns to me and his eyes widen, nonplussed by the fury he sees in mine.

I hear a snicker and snap my head around. The guy's face is dimly familiar—someone from the concert party, maybe? Some stranger who doesn't know me, doesn't matter, but who must be drawing the same conclusion as Adrian? The other student meets my eyes for only a second, then he lifts his shoulders in the barest shrug and turns away.

I grab my sketch pad, shove it into my backpack, and get to my feet, leaving Adrian to hold up the walls on his own. Why do I keep forgetting? Why do I let anyone get close? Rachel stands there, gazing at me with such understanding and regret that I want to scream at her for asking me to draw Graeme if she knew what he was like. I want to scream at Adrian, at all of them. But mostly at her. She has no right to feel for me, no right to realize what I put into that sketch, no right to sense how I feel about Graeme (and about her—to sense how much I wish she could be like me—how much I wish she could actually know me and like me, but she can't), no right to look at me through those cool eyes and break me into fragments and see inside me.

I force my shaking legs to walk past her. I want to grip her in my left hand and shake her until she loses that look of understanding, until I shake that knowledge from her brain and her eyes turn blind and meaningless like everyone else's ( Graeme's) eyes.

Then I'm out in the steamy night, and I don't know where to go. I can't face my room, with Adrian coming back to it later. I can't think about him or I'll end up wanting to shake him as violently as I want to shake Rachel. I can't think about any of them.

My feet are moving across cracked, uneven concrete sidewalks. I'm out of the dorm area and into the main campus. I don't care about the curfew. I don't care about Whitman. I only came here for Graeme. And that's destroyed, or what I thought I'd find there never existed. I don't belong here, anyway.

Then I realize I'm heading for the studio building. I can lock myself in my studio and paint out all of them.

Excerpts from
Graeme Brandt's Journal

October 9-late (Senior Year)

He drew me. For some reason, I thought I'd be exempt, and yet ... it wasn't a caricature like before. There was no malice in it, like Tyler's. There sure wasn't any love, either, like the one he drew for Adrian. Why? What did he mean?

He drew me as a mirror, reflecting other mirrors in a grotesque dance that whirls on forever. Sure I mirror what people expect sometimes-he does the same himself. Or he deliberately acts opposite to what people expect-that's just a backward reflection. Everyone reflects people's expectations-I learned that a long time ago. That's why I wrote The Eye of the Storm, to show that But that's not all a person is. That's not all I am. Mr. Adler wanted to know what was going on, but I couldn't show him the sketch. He'd never have understood. No one would understand.

I don't understand.

Why did he single out that one aspect of me from all the others? I'm more than a reflection. But being that reflection sometimes means that people leave me alone when I want to do something that really matters. Isn't that how it works? We all reflect what people want us to be when we want to please them, but we're also more than just reflections of anything outside us. Aren't we? And yet...

I remember one day before I came to Whitman. My dad picked me up after work. I think maybe I'd gone to the library or something, and he came by to drive me home. It was a crisp fall evening, and Dad drove slowly, with the windows rolled down to feel the cool air. I could catch the tart smell of leaves burning.

Dad wanted to talk to me. He started out by talking about his job, clenching the steering wheel firmly with both hands, staring deliberately out through the windshield rather than at me. He said I should know that things hadn't been going as well as he'd hoped they would at the bank, that one of the other executives there was making some sort of trouble for him. I never understood what exactly, and he didn't want to say. What he wanted to tell me was that things were on their way to getting better. He said he didn't really understand my writing, but he was proud of me, proud that I'd been accepted at Whitman. He was proud that he could afford to send me, too. And I shouldn't tell Mom because it was a big secret, but he was saving money so he could take her to Florida for a second honeymoon. She always talked about wanting to go to Florida.

I could feel that he wanted something from me, the way Charles wanted something. But I knew what Dad wanted. Mom always said how hard Dad worked, all for us, so we had to let him know we appreciated it and we believed in him. I knew what Dad wanted was for me to confirm that he was just what a father should be-hardworking and good. He wanted me to look up to him and respect him, the way Mom always praises him, so I did it I nodded at him and told him how glad I was that he was my dad, and that I'd make him proud of me, as proud as I was of him—all the lines I knew he wanted to hear. By the time we got home, he was in a great mood, joking with Mom during dinner. And he kept looking at me like we'd been through something big together.

I knew he wanted to be the respected father to the admiring son, a television dad from the old days. And I became that son-l gave him what he wanted. It was so easy. And it didn't hurt me any. That part of your drawing is true enough, Charles-right then, I was a mirror of his expectations. And it made him happy.

We all reflect other people's expectations back at them. That's what I wrote about-the way we all do it in order to get something that's really important to us. Alan Travis wanted to save his family, and he'd show anyone whatever they expected to see in order to succeed at that So what if I do the same thing-reflect people's expectations back at them to make them feel better, or to make them like me, or help me, so that I can do what I really want? Why didn't you draw that, Charles, draw what I really want, who I really am? Why didn't you draw me in that central mirror?

If's like you didn't think I was there, inside the mirror, but 1 am-l have to be. Or else there's nothing inside any of us, just a blank surface waiting to reflect something, and that can't be. It just can't! But-I was there with my dad, only I wasn't I said what he wanted to hear. I didn't tell him what I really thought of him as a dad, because I didn't really think of him at all. I didn't have to.

Was I only real in the way I reflected what he expected to see in me back to him? And was his image made real because I reflected it back to its source? Two mirrors, constantly assuring each other of something that should have been true, and might have had a chance to be true, only we insisted on accepting images, instead. Why is that, Charles? Do you know? Do you have the answer?

Or did you see more than you thought? Did you see the emptiness I've felt inside myself, and draw that? Was that what you were trying to show me, Charles? Can you tell me what that emptiness is, and how to fill it?

I've got to talk to you.