Wally

Wally had sweated two big rings of damp under each of his arms by the time he made it to me at the circulation desk on Tuesday morning. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket—a real handkerchief, like you see in old-time movies—and blotted his forehead and neck.

“Good morning to you, and a good morning it is.” Wally panted out his greeting.

“It’s a rough one out there today, isn’t it, Wally?” Lenny asked him, pushing a cart of new books over to the display wall.

“Yes, sirree,” Wally replied, lowering his handkerchief and looking at the smears of wet grime on it. “This summer is too hot for me, I tell ya.”

“I’ll second that. I got up at four in the morning today to get started on a paint job, just to beat the heat. The paint was practically boiling in the can the other day when I was working at noon.”

Wally cracked a broad smile and chuckled. “Boiling in the can. Is that right?”

“Practically,” Lenny answered him. “You can feel the AC best in that corner back there.” He motioned to the children’s room behind him. “Why don’t you rest there for a little while, cool yourself off a bit?”

“I just might do that,” Wally answered him. “I just might. Thank you very much.”

Wally folded his handkerchief tidily and then slipped it back into his shirt pocket. He pulled a white carnation out of his plastic grocery bag, which was more torn and mangy-looking than it was last Tuesday, something I hadn’t thought possible. He really seemed to take that Reduce, Reuse, Recycle thing seriously, except he seemed to be permanently stuck on Reuse. I bet he had drawers full of used rubber bands at home and cabinets overflowing with empty glass jars, their lids impossible to find because they were all stuffed into another bursting plastic bag somewhere.

“There you go,” Wally said to his flower as he placed it in the vase and removed the old one. “Pretty as a picture.”

“Hi, Wally,” I greeted him. “Thank you for the new flower.”

“Oh, you’re always welcome for the flowers. I bring my flicks and I bring my flowers,” Wally said, gesturing to the movies still banded together in his bag. Then he started coughing, barely getting his arm up in time to cover his mouth. His whole body lurched forward on the last deep cough of the set. It was so loud and full it seemed to shake the entire building. He might have even scared himself with that last one—his eyes looked wide with surprise and a trace of fear. He lowered his arm from his mouth with a slight tremor, then shook his head.

“That was a whopper,” he said, to himself or to me, I wasn’t sure. One thing was sure, though, and that was that every single person in the library was staring at him. It was that loud.

Beverly came out of her office and clasped her hands in front of her chest, looking at Wally with worry lines etched across her forehead, deep as rake marks in sand.

Lenny caught Beverly’s eye and nodded to let her know he was on it.

He approached Wally, concern shading his face. He put his hand on Wally’s shoulder, and his voice went soft. “Been to a doctor about that cough yet, young man?”

That was so like Lenny, to call him young man. I didn’t know for sure, but it looked like Wally was at least eighty years old.

“Ehh.” Wally waved him off. “No need for a doctor.”

“You’ve sounded better, Wally,” Lenny told him gently, “at least to these ears.”

“I’ve sounded like this as long as I’ve known me,” Wally joked. “Don’t need to see a doc for a plain old cough.”

“Just a plain old cough, Wally?” Lenny asked in a tender voice.

Wally’s face clouded over for a short, dark moment, then quickly reset itself. I had never seen Wally look anything but content: giddy over his flowers or pleased over his movie selections or happily focused on the wall of brand-new releases. Those were the three phases of Wally I’d seen all summer long.

“A little cough never hurt anyone,” Wally told Lenny. “It’s good for the insides. Gets everything up and moving around.”

Lenny paused a moment, then responded with, “Well, my friend, I have to say that is certainly an interesting way of looking at it.” He looked over Wally’s head to make eye contact with me and raised his eyebrows.

I shrugged in response. At least Lenny was trying.

“Jamie,” Wally addressed me. “I got my DVDs to return.”

“Of course, Wally. I’ll take those for you.” I moved quickly to him so he wouldn’t have to release his hold on the counter, which seemed to be keeping him upright.

“This was a really neat one. About an artist who does all these paintings but then her husband takes all the credit for it. True story. Really a good one.”

“Really?” I asked, turning the case over in my hands to read the back. It was PG-13, so my mom wouldn’t have a problem with me watching it. It was the middle of July and we were way overdue, my mom and Aunt Julie and me, for a movie night together. I missed snuggling up on the couch between them with our traditional movie snacks: root beer and chocolate chip morsels poured right onto hot popcorn so they melted streaks of chocolaty goodness all over the salty kernels. The only thing that would make movie night better would be if Vic were there, too.

The summary on the DVD case explained that the story was about two artists who meet in the park one day, begin to paint together, then fall in love and get married.

Of course, after reading that, my mind jumped right to Art Club.

And Trey.

Art Club met every other Friday after school, from October through June, and was open to all sixth, seventh, and eighth graders. We met in the art room with Mrs. Holm at three o’clock and ate snacks while she lectured us on an artist or a particular style or a new material she wanted us to try. She always had slides to go with her talk, and also books and postcards of prints to pass around. While Trey watched the slides, I snuck glances at him. He was always there early and took the same seat, right up front.

After the slide show, we each worked on our own project while Mrs. Holm circled around and helped whoever wanted help. I loved those Friday afternoons.

Toward the end of one meeting back in March, a bunch of kids suddenly gathered around Trey, who was busily working with charcoal pencil.

“Oh my God, man. That is amazing,” Michael, a seventh grader, said loud enough for the whole room to hear.

“That is so unfair,” Olivia, an eighth grader, chimed in, leaning over his shoulder to get a closer look. “Can I take a picture of that?” She snapped a shot with her phone before he could even answer.

More kids left what they were working on to see Trey’s drawing.

“Whoa, Trey. That’s sick,” another eighth grader told him.

Trey smiled and thanked each person who complimented him, but you could tell he was in the zone and didn’t want to stop drawing long enough for a conversation.

A few more kids walked over to see his work and I went with them, swarming with the crowd for a peek. More compliments rang out and one boy even said, “Okay, I’ll have to burn mine now. It cannot live in a world where that drawing lives.” He got a few laughs, but Trey didn’t respond. He just kept moving his hand over his paper, sketching lines here and there, adding depth with crosshatching and shading.

Before I knew it, I was the only one left still looking, standing next to Trey with my mouth slightly open, staring at his work. My eyes kept fighting over drinking in his drawing, which was of an old rowboat washed ashore with a seagull in flight above it, or his hands, which were smooth and graceful and captivating in the way they made the charcoal glide over the paper.

He paused and leaned back in his chair, relaxing for a moment, and then looked up at me. “Hey, Jamie.”

“Hi,” I said back, my heart pounding in my ears.

“How’s yours coming?” he asked, when I continued to just stand and stare at him.

“What? Mine?” I stumbled. “It’s okay.”

“Can I see?” he asked.

“No. I mean, yes. It’s just, it’s not that good, not like yours,” I admitted.

He followed me to my easel.

“I don’t know. I’ll probably just start it over.” I tilted my head as I looked at my drawing, searching for something good in it.

Trey studied it for a bit and then said, “I like this part here, where these two lines meet.” He ran his hand over the bottom of the page, where the edge of a vase met the rounded side of a pepper grinder. I was drawing from a still life Mrs. Holm had set up for me.

“I like the shading you did, too,” he said. “That looks pretty cool.”

I looked at it and tried to see what he saw. With his hand in front of it, pointing, it suddenly looked cool to me, too. “Thanks,” I managed to say. And then I wanted to say his name. “Trey. Thanks a lot.”

He smiled and shrugged, then walked back to his easel.

I couldn’t understand how Trey and Trina could be siblings. Trey was as soft-spoken and modest and genuinely nice as any eighth-grade boy could possibly be, while Trina was loud and attention-hungry and brash in every move she made.

Vic had her own goofy theory to explain it: “Trina clearly swallows a whopping handful of mean-girl pills each morning with her no-pulp orange juice. Maybe she’ll run out some day and become human again. Maybe she won’t. But Trey—he doesn’t even know how to be mean. He’s just a really decent person. He can’t help it.”

I totally agreed with her there. I had seen him leave his easel in a snap to help other kids who were struggling with a drawing, and I’d also seen him stay after Art Club on Fridays when everyone else took off so he could help Mrs. Holm wash the tables and organize supplies.

Trey was better than decent. Trey was the guy who would give you half his sandwich without a second thought after Eddie Gazerro knocked your entire lunch tray to the floor. Trey was the guy who looked the crossing guard right in the eye and said thank you every single morning when she stopped traffic so we could cross the street to get to school.

Or this told it best, how beyond decent Trey was: When Cassidy Carter showed up at school with scabs and scratches all over the right side of her face in sixth grade and kids bombarded her all day with, “Oh my God!” and “What happened to your face?” Trey was the one person who simply asked her, “Cassidy, are you okay?” It honestly made me want to be the one who fell off my bike and came to school covered in gross scabs and peeling skin.

How could you not fall completely head over heels for a guy like that? Who was so wonderfully kind. Who could also draw. And who was also cuter then cute.

I was in deep.

I never missed an Art Club Friday the entire school year. Until the end of May. Part of my consequences was that I couldn’t attend my club. I missed the end-of-year show, where the best of our work was displayed in the auditorium like an actual gallery opening, with author tags taped to the wall under our pieces and lace-covered tables of crackers and cookies set out for refreshments. Trey never missed Art Club either, except for once. He wasn’t at Art Club the day after Trina posted my letter. He didn’t even come to school that day. To know that something I wrote embarrassed him that much hurt like crazy. It hurt probably just as much as a bad husband taking credit for his wife’s artwork, like in that movie Wally just returned.

Wally would spend a solid half hour now poring over the DVD collection, sliding out cases to inspect the front cover, read the description on the back, and then flip back to the cover again. Sometimes he even pulled up a chair. It bothered Beverly because the chair blocked the aisle and made it difficult for other patrons to get around, but she let him do it anyway. Because it was Wally.

“Thanks for the movie recommendation, Wally,” I called to him. “I think I’ll take it home.”

“Oh, you’re welcome, dear. It’s a good one. All about art. Love and art,” he called to me from his perch.

“Love and art,” I repeated under my breath, but I guess I was louder than I thought, because Wally responded to me.

“Yep, a great combination,” he said, “love and art.” He cleared his throat, then added, “Until it’s not.”

He laughed then, deep and guttural, and then starting coughing into his fist.