The machine picked up, the familiar recording repeating itself. “God,” I groaned. “I can’t stand this.”
“You want me to answer that?” he said suddenly.
“Yes,” I said, even though there was something in his tone that made me hesitate. “But—”
“You’re sure?” he asked, cutting me off.
“Norman—”
He was already across the room. His forearm was tense, his fingers white at the tips as they grasped the phone. “Hello?”
I sank down into the cushions. This wasn’t my fight, either.
“Yeah. I’m here,” he said, lowering his voice. “No. It’s okay.”
I concentrated on the protractor mobile over my head, trying not to listen. I wondered what his father was saying.
“We’ve been over this,” Norman said in a tired voice. “Nobody is asking you to help me. I’m not expecting it. I did this myself.”
I stood up, thinking I’d slip outside until he was finished. But he held up his hand, stopping me, without even turning around.
“I can’t believe you,” he said, and he laughed this weird, not-funny laugh. “I always thought you would just understand that it was important to me. I really did. I never expected any of this.”
I could hear the voice rising on the other end, and Norman closed his eyes.
“Whatever, Dad,” he said, and he turned to me. I looked at him and he looked right back, eyes steady, without a canvas or a purpose between us. “You know, you can say it doesn’t matter to you all you want. But I’m not the one calling every night, Dad. That’s you.”
Then he stood there, listening. I couldn’t hear anything. And after a minute, he hung up the phone.
“Norman,” I said softly. He looked down at his arm, flaking off some paint with one finger. “I’m so sorry. I wasn’t—”
“Forget it,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s okay.”
He walked back to the easel and stepped behind the canvas. He looked tired, and I remembered when I’d caught him dreaming. I wondered if it had been his father’s face he’d seen then, too.
I sat back down, sliding on my sunglasses. Neither of us spoke.
“It’s like,” he said suddenly, “I’m the only one of us kids who isn’t doing exactly what Dad planned. The whole art thing makes him nuts, always has. His idea of art is one of those velvet paintings of dogs playing poker.”
I smiled. A breeze blew through from the open door, sending the protractors spinning. They clinked against each other and the rulers as Norman watched, just shaking his head.
“I really like this,” I said quietly, pointing at the mobile.
“Yeah?” he said. “Geometry was the only subject I ever liked in school, you know, besides art. There’s something so even and nice about it. All those theorems and givens. No doubts.”
“I know,” I said.
“I liked that you could just depend on it to be the same, forever,” he said, holding the paintbrush loosely, his eyes on the mobile as it turned and turned overhead. “You could come back to it in a million years and find it just the way you left it.” And he looked at me and smiled, and I felt it, all the way to my toes.
“I like that,” he said.
It was quiet for a minute, with only the leaves rustling outside. I felt responsible for what had just happened; I wanted things to be even. It wasn’t just smiles that you sometimes had to earn.
“Norman.”
“Yeah,” he said, rubbing his hands over his eyes. It was late. But I had to do something. So I touched my lip ring with my tongue and took a deep breath.
“Remember, when we started, and you asked me if I had anything I didn’t want to talk about?”
He wiped off the brush with his shirttail. “Yep.”
“Well, I do.” I pulled my legs up, sliding off my sunglasses. “What you’ve seen of me, this summer? It’s not really who I am. I mean, it’s not who I was.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“The thing is,” I went on slowly, rubbing my fingers over the worn blue of the chair, “everyone at home hates me.”
I expected him to stop me, but he didn’t. It was almost scarier that way. I wanted Mira to appear at my elbow, carefully guiding me away just as she had at the bazaar, saving me from whatever would tumble next from my mouth. But I was on my own.
I swallowed. “I used to be really fat,” I said, “and we were always moving from place to place until we ended up in Charlotte. And there, someone started a rumor that I slept with this guy when I didn’t. I didn’t even know him. We were just talking, and—”
“Colie.”
“No,” I said firmly.
Outside, a breeze was blowing again: I could hear Mira’s wind chimes. I had to keep going.
“Nothing even happened, but the next day they all called me names and have ever since. That’s why I was so mean when you came to pick me up that first day. I wasn’t used to anyone being nice to me.”
“You don’t have to tell me this,” he said, very quietly.
“I want to,” I said, and my voice was cracking. “You’re the only one I’ve ever wanted to tell.”
I still wasn’t able to look at him, even as he stepped out from behind the canvas.
“Colie.”
I shook my head. “That’s the real me, Norman. I mean, not that I did those things, because I didn’t. But to them I was always a slut, still a slut.”