He stops painting and examines me. "You doing all right?" he says. "Do you need some water or anything?"
"I"m all right," I say, trying to impress him with my ascetic skills. I ignore a spontaneously itchy kneecap. "Now it"s your turn. Ask me anything."
He holds his brush midair, considering. It"s impossible to tell whether he"s considering my question or the painting. His hair and eyebrows are as black as squid ink, and standing by his easel, staring pensively into the middle distance, he almost looks like a painting himself.
"What are your weaknesses?" he says. This seems an unusual choice, given the panoply of options, but I"m willing to roll with it.
"Physical or metaphysical?"
"Both."
"I care too much what other people think," I say. He asks what else. "I don"t like my calves." He makes a humming noise, taking it in. Then we"re both quiet for a while, and he paints.
Here"s a weakness I chose not to articulate: I lack restraint. I push things, even when everything is going well. I can"t help myself. I know it"s unbecoming, but it"s as if I have an appet.i.te for something, only I won"t know what it is until I hear it. I look at the clock and decide not to say anything for an hour.
"Teach me something about painting," I say two minutes later.
At first, Misha is silent. Then he says: "The tendency is to make the bodies too small. Too small for the heads."
"What"s the hardest part?" He doesn"t reply, so I ask again. I"m hoping he doesn"t say: "The hardest part is getting your subject to shut up."
"The hardest thing is painting the part you find most beautiful."
"What"s the most beautiful part about me?" Seems logical enough.
He smiles broadly. "It"s all beautiful," he says.
"Come on."
"Your calves."
"Don"t be mean. Be serious."
"I"m always serious," he says.
I wonder if he is serious. He has the blunt candor of foreigners, and he doesn"t censor himself around me, which I like. But there"s a lot he doesn"t say. I tell my friends he"s a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a blintz. On our first date, I took him to a Persian movie about a boy on a bicycle trying to buy a pair of sneakers for his sister. Afterward, his eyes were bloodshot.
"Did you like it?" I said.
"As a matter of fact, I did."
"You sound surprised."
"I don"t like many movies," he said, slipping his ticket stub into his back pocket. "But that was a good one."
The next time we went out, we had drinks with some newlywed friends of his; the previous month, they"d gotten married in Slovenia at a castle whose name sounded like "mock rice." Tiny white lights were twisted through evergreens while we huddled around a heat lamp drinking flavored vodkas. Toward the end of the night I made the mistake of calling myself an open book. Misha burst out laughing and thumped his hand on the table.
"No one who refers to herself as an open book can actually be one," he said.
"But I am," I insisted. His friends were smiling politely. "Whereas you are ..."
The wife answered for him. "Misha"s a closed but readable book," she mused, which at the time I took as a challenge.
On our most recent date, we went dancing. "I"m pretending I wouldn"t rather be dead!" I shouted, making fun of the fact that I don"t really like to dance, but Misha couldn"t understand me over the music. He tilted his head and mouthed, What? Later in the evening, this became a private joke between us. I would put my lips next to his ear and whisper what I was going to do to him. He would pretend not to understand, and each time he mouthed What? I would lean in and say something steamier, softer.
The next morning, a blinding light flooded his Williamsburg apartment, where we"d slept next to a stack of bare canvases. He commented on the empty bottles of wine in the window seat, complimenting my tolerance.
"We all have our gifts," I said. In truth I felt as if I were wearing an infant-size bike helmet. "Although that last gla.s.s might have been gilding the lily." He laughed and suggested "the gilded lily" would be a great name for a c.o.c.ktail, maybe something with orange juice. A short while later, we set out in search of fried eggs and coffee and a newspaper. But while we ate breakfast, I only pretended to read my section of the paper. Really it was the last thing I was interested in.
"When were you first in love?" I ask. I"m not sure how much time has pa.s.sed, but the light in the room has frayed, and Misha"s water gla.s.s is empty.
"That question presumes a couple of things," he says.
"Have you ever been in love?"
His eyes circle the canvas. "Yes," he eventually says. "Once. You?"
"More than once," I say. "Many times."
"Many times?"
"The first time was my soph.o.m.ore year in college. I adored a junior who lived upstairs from me. I"d climb the steps to his dorm room every night, and we"d talk until the sun came through his circular window. I"d never met anyone so smart. He understood everything. I remember he had this poster of a bullfight on his wall," I say, then cut myself off. I can see from Misha"s face that he isn"t listening, or rather, he"s listening through me, waiting for me to stop. So I do. That bullfight poster had the most vivid colors I"ve ever seen; the artist must have invented a special pigment to capture the yellow of the sun, the red of the cape. It almost hurt your eyes to look at it, yet you couldn"t look away. The junior who lived upstairs from me died of a drug overdose the summer after he graduated. But he taught me one thing I"ll never forget: We all desire the cut of truth.
When I stop talking, the room is silent. In another minute, I"ll notice the children"s voices down in the street, and the car horns, and the bleating of a delivery truck backing up. But for the moment, everything is still. I watch the illuminated dust particles caught in a nearby shaft of light. They"re floating, they"re flawless, and in some people, they might produce a feeling of peace. For me, it"s just the opposite. I know I should keep quiet, but I can"t.
"What"s the truest thing you"ve ever been told?" I say.
At first there"s silence. It feels like an unfriendly silence. "The things we"re told are never true," Misha says. "The truth must be revealed." He hesitates. "That"s our problem here."
I try to keep my forehead from bunching. "What do you mean, "our problem here"?"
"The difference between you and me."
"I didn"t know our difference was a problem."
Misha"s weary; he"s been working hard; I can see the fatigue in his posture. "Maybe not now," he says, turning away. "But it seems ... possible. Probable."
"A problem seems probable."
"Yes," he says, and when he turns to me, I can see everything in his face. I feel something behind my rib cage collapse, but I"m careful not to let it show.
"Ask me anything," I say again. I"m sitting with my back straight and my hands folded neatly across my lap. My expression is perfectly neutral; I"m afraid that if I try to smile, I"ll cry.
Misha"s eyes wake up and his body freezes. "Hold it," he says, putting one hand out as if to stop traffic. His expression has the restrained excitement of a person who has found what he was looking for. "I"m doing your face."
When Misha breaks through, this will be one of his first paintings to sell. It will go to a drawing room on Emba.s.sy Row, and my incredulous friends will ask: "Don"t you mind sitting naked in front of all those strangers?" But the truth is, I really don"t mind being naked. Being naked is the laziest form of revelation.
Misha and I won"t break up on this day. He will apologize, excited by his new understanding that the painting is going to turn out well, and he"ll hug me, and kiss my hands, and we"ll go for crepes at an old-style Parisian restaurant down the street. But in my mind, this is the day we break up. Things are born in the dark, beneath the soil, in secret.
The actual day we broke up was years ago now, but the thing that has stayed with me most is the irony of that portrait, of having been painted by someone who never really saw me. I complained about this recently to a friend, this disconnect between who we are and how others perceive us. I said: "The trouble is, I"m a fish, but everyone thinks I"m a rabbit." The friend just looked me in the eye and said: "Then why do you surround yourself with people who can only give you carrots?"
The dust particles continue to dance in their column of light. The cushion has finally stopped itching me, and the Hasidic grocery is closing up shop. I"m not sure what I"m thinking about-the Persian movie or that bullfight poster or my grandmother"s hair catching fire-when it finally registers that Misha is speaking to me.
"Ruby," he"s saying. He pulls me to my feet. He"s hugging me, happy. "Ruby." He takes my hands, and I look into his face, momentarily confused, trying to shake the feeling that I"m gazing into the face of a stranger. "It is finished," he says, and we both take a step back, to better see what we have made.
THE SUMMER BEFORE.
This was the summer before the divorce. I was thirteen, and Sarah was twelve; Lindsay had just turned six. Sarah and I spent our time looking for excuses to get away from our two-bedroom cottage, with its sullen moods and sudden thunder. Lindsay followed wherever we went. She"d started sucking her thumb again that year, and insisted on wearing the same bathing suit, the one covered in floppy purple tulips, every single day.
We trusted the lake, but we didn"t trust Lindsay. She eavesdropped constantly and had the spooky habit of showing up in our plans before we even knew what they were. One morning, while our mom and dad were arguing about the nature of "facts" while bacon popped and splattered on the stove, we got a call from the Zimmerman brothers, asking us to meet them at the rope swing. Sarah and I slipped away quietly, but when we got down to the dock, there was Lindsay, already seated in the Lightning Bug, our small yellow outboard.
"Get out of the boat, Lindsay," I said. "Now."
She kept her eyes lowered and didn"t move; she didn"t even dare suck her thumb. I leaned on the side of the boat with my foot, tilting it down. Water rushed in, and Lindsay gasped, but she stayed put.
"Stand up!" I said. I yanked my foot away and the boat lurched. Lindsay braced herself and looked up. When our eyes met, her lower lip began to quiver.
"Mom says that if you go in the boat, you have to take me with you," she said.
"Mom"s not here," I said. "And you"re not coming."
"Come on, Lindz, just get out," Sarah said, glancing back at the house.
I tried a softer tone. "We don"t have time for this today," I said. "You can come with us next time."
"That"s what you said last time!" she said. "You promised!" Quick tears slipped in straight lines down her cheeks. Sarah and I exchanged a look. It was clear she wasn"t going to leave without a scene, and if we didn"t get out of there soon, no one would be going anywhere.
"You can"t ride in the boat without a life jacket," I said with an exaggerated sigh. "Mom says." I folded my arms. "Go on, get one. And hurry up."
Lindsay leaped up and made a sprint for the porch, her small feet thudding gleefully against the dock"s wooden planks. And while she scurried, we scurried, too.
"Wait!" she cried, returning just in time to see Sarah pulling in the b.u.mpers as I steered the boat away. "Come back-please-wait for me!" She poked her head through her life preserver and frantically clipped its buckles, demonstrating her readiness. Then she stood on the end of the dock and waited, long after it should have been obvious we weren"t coming back. Sarah took the seat beside me, I hit the throttle, and neither one of us turned around. But in my mind"s eye, as we sped away, I could still see her standing there: just a tiny blond head atop a bright orange puff.
At night, it only got worse. Dad bought us a tent that summer and set it up on the pine needles between our cottage and the lake so we could sleep in our own front yard but feel as if we were camping. We loved that tent-a Coleman Deluxe All-Weather Two-Man. But with Lindsay, it was three. Sarah and I did our best to ignore her as we discussed the important innovations Zack and James Zimmerman had been introducing us to. Most recently, it was spin the bottle.
"Are you supposed to stay for more than a minute?" Sarah said.
"Only stay for as long as you feel like," I said. "Personally, I wouldn"t give James more than two seconds. One, two-you"re out!" I sliced the air with my hand, and we both laughed. Zack and James were fraternal twins, fourteen, and handsome. They were handsome, we"d decided, not cute. They tanned faster than we did, skipped rocks farther, and water-skied better-they could slalom, and jump the wake. Once they bought us candy necklaces at the Old Country Store and then tried to bite off the candy while they were around our necks.
I crawled forward so our foreheads were almost touching. "Zack stuck his tongue in my mouth," I said.
"He did?" I couldn"t tell if she was delighted or repulsed. I nodded gravely. When it happened, I wasn"t sure if I was delighted or repulsed myself. But in retrospect, I"d decided I liked it. It seemed the mature thing to do. Besides, I liked Zack, sort of. I mean, it was strange that he and James were twins; they were so different. Zack was the more attractive one, with bold hazel eyes and long, elegant fingers. His mother loved to tell the story of how when he was born, the obstetrician had said: "This boy has the hands of a surgeon or a pianist." And his father had added: "Or a pickpocket."
James, with pale auburn curls, was the sweet one. "Are you sure you want to?" he"d asked both Sarah and me before we started. Zack had gone looking for an empty bottle on the other side of the island, where older teenagers made campfires. "We can always go for a boat ride, or do something else." He spoke in a low voice, as if afraid Zack might hear him.
"We"re sure," I said quickly, worried that any hesitation would make us look bad.
"Well, just remember," he said, but then he stopped.
"What?" His expression was so contorted, I laughed.
"Nothing," he said. He started to walk away. "Meg," he began, turning around, but before he could get to the rest Zack came bounding out of the woods, brandishing an empty gla.s.s bottle with curvy white lettering.
"Got it!" he said. Then he winked and handed the bottle to me.
Sarah still couldn"t believe the part about the tongue.
"Did you ... like it?" she asked. Her gaze pa.s.sed back and forth between my eyes and my mouth, as if my lips could answer for me. I cracked a smile, and we both burst out laughing.
"What do kisses taste like?" Lindsay"s voice from the corner of the tent came as a surprise. She"d been so quiet, we"d almost forgotten she was there.
"This doesn"t concern you, Thumb," I said. I swung the flashlight toward her. "And don"t you dare say one word to Mom."
Of course, camping was only a camouflage. As soon as Lindsay fell asleep, Sarah and I bypa.s.sed the noisy zippers and pulled ourselves out of our sleeping bags like snakes shedding skins. We hurried along the dirt road, crickets chirping and a full moon overhead. The Zimmermans lived ten houses away, and Zack and James had arranged to sleep out in their boathouse. I pinged my finger against the screen. James materialized first.
"Sorry we"re late," I said.
"No worries," he said. "It"s not like we had somewhere else to be." Behind him, Zack was putting something in a cooler. We heard a loud noise that sounded as if it came from the house, and everybody froze. Zack put his finger to his lips, and I rolled my eyes-as if we didn"t know. We remained motionless for another few seconds, then Zack brushed past, tapping my elbow.
"Now or never," he said.
The Zimmermans had a white and silver Sea Ray with cushioned seats and a chrome steering wheel. It was a sleek boat, perfect for water-skiing behind during the day. But tonight we had something else in mind. Zack knelt in the bow and paddled us away from the dock-we didn"t dare start the motor this close to the house-while James spread out a blanket so the rest of us could lie down. Once we"d reached a safe distance, Zack turned the ignition key, and we began speeding through the dark water.
James took off his sweatshirt and handed it to me. "Your lips are turning blue," he said. Sarah and I hadn"t thought to wear more than cotton shorts and T-shirts. I was so grateful that in my happiness I shared it with Sarah, draping it across both our legs.
When we reached the middle of the bay, Zack cut the motor and let the boat ghost across the lake"s gla.s.sy surface. Everything was still; only a few loons wailed in the distance. It sounded as if they were mother loons calling for their children, and I began to think about my mom. About how lately she"d cry at nothing, and how she seemed anxious all the time. In my dreams she was tiny, small enough to fit in the palm of my hand, and I would cup my fingers around her and rescue her from stampeding herds and fiery buildings.
The boat swayed as small waves lapped at its sides. James put a ca.s.sette in the tape deck, and a ballad by Journey started to play. Zack tossed back another blanket he found in the bow, where he was rummaging around with the cooler. Sarah, James, and I lay under the blanket and stared up at the sky. The black silhouettes of pine trees put a jagged frame around its glittering endlessness. My uncle had been teaching me about photography, and I wondered if it would ever be possible to do justice to this simple sight. Something about the water all around and the sky all above gave me a real sense of being on the planet.
"We"re on planet Earth," I said.
Zack let out a long whistle from the bow. "Are you high?" asked his disembodied voice.
James turned to me. "There are so many stars, but at the same time, it"s all so ... precise. You know? As if each star is necessary. As if everything happens the way it"s supposed to happen," he said.
That"s not true, I thought. My mother isn"t supposed to be so unhappy, and everything isn"t meant to be so broken. I kept quiet, though, because I wanted him to say more. But James was silent. Then I remembered his other silence, the one on the island, and I was about to ask him what he was going to tell me that day, before Zack came bounding out of the woods, but I couldn"t, I couldn"t ask him anything, because a second later the silhouette of his head blocked the stars, and I could feel him breathe, and then he kissed me-a real kiss. It wasn"t like spin the bottle at all. It was different-sad or something. Sad but great.
After he lay back down I turned to him, but he kept his eyes pinned to the sky. He reached over and took my hand. To this day, I can"t explain what made that night seem so magical, or why I felt such a stab of affection when James Zimmerman took my hand. Maybe if I could, I"d be able to explain why on the way home, once Sarah and I were alone on the dirt road, I began to cry. I wept softly, wiping my nose with the sleeve of his sweatshirt.
"Everything"s going to be okay," Sarah said, which only made me cry more. We walked the rest of the way without speaking. When we got back to the tent, Lindsay was gone.