Guilt is a funny thing. You end up undertaking all kinds of things you didn’t picture yourself doing.
Brenda saw a posting about helping in the elementary school and got all excited. Something community service–related she could put on her applications. When she found out her assignment was helping second graders with an art unit, she convinced me to do the project with her. She didn’t mention how I blew her off at lunch, but it was still there between us. Agreeing to do the project with her seemed easier than saying I was sorry. Certainly less complicated.
Brenda, being Brenda, did piles of research on art history and artistic techniques such as perspective and horizon lines. She hadn’t counted on the fact that second graders are more interested in eating crayons than in learning how objects appear smaller when they are far away. There is a reason they make those things nontoxic. A group of second graders sat at our feet. A boy waved his arm madly. Brenda gave a sigh. He had already asked a few questions, and I could tell they weren’t the kind of questions she had been hoping for.
“So the guy, van Gooey, who chopped off his ear, did he eat it?”
“His name was van Gogh. Wouldn’t you rather hear about his paintings?”
“Did he chop off any other parts of himself?” He made some swipes in the air with his imaginary sword.
“Lots,” I said, drawing out the word. “By the end of his career all that was left was one eye and a thumb.”
“Cool,” he whispered. Brenda shot me a look. The teacher wasn’t paying any attention at all. She was sitting in the back of the room reading People. We could have taught a class on sex education and she wouldn’t even have noticed. We could have had a room full of second graders strapping condoms on some bananas and she wouldn’t even have looked up from an article on George Clooney.
“Claire is joking around with you. He didn’t chop off anything else. Maybe somebody else has a question about art?” Brenda looked around the room with a hint of desperation in her eyes.
“If you eat green crayons, will you poop green?” the same boy asked. The class burst into giggles.
Brenda gave up and slumped down on the stool the teacher had provided.
“No. Trust me on this, because I’ve tried. It also doesn’t work if you eat poster paints,” I said.
“Gross,” a little girl who had at least a dozen barrettes in her hair said.
“Very gross,” I agreed.
“Way back then it was a time of artistic turmoil with competing views of what made something art,” Brenda said, still trying to educate tomorrow’s leaders on more than ear chopping and colored poop. The kids all turned to look at her and then back at me for clarity.
“‘Turmoil’ means really screwed up. No one could agree. It’s like how some people think SpongeBob is funny and other people think he’s disgusting.”
“You know what, let’s skip the rest of the art history lesson and go right into doing our own art!” Brenda said, changing gears. She pointed toward their desks, which had been pushed together in little islands around the room. The teacher had covered the desks with large pieces of paper and there were jars of bright poster paints sprinkled around. “We’re going to break into groups and paint pictures. We talked about all kinds of art today—landscapes, still life, portrait, and abstract. You can choose to paint whatever you want. This is what we call artistic freedom.”
“Can I paint people chopping off each other’s ears?” Guess Who yelled out. I was starting to think that kid was going to grow up to be a serial killer. If I lived in his neighborhood, I would keep a close eye out for pets going missing in the area. Brenda looked at the teacher for some guidance. She had to clear her throat several times before the teacher looked up.
“No, Richard, you may not paint chopped-up people,” the teacher said in a bored voice before she went back to paging through her magazine.
“But then I’m not free,” Richard said, indicating that he grasped the concept of artistic freedom, which I would have guessed was way above the second-grade brain.
“That’s right. You’re not free. You’re in second grade,” the teacher said.
Richard kicked the carpet in frustration but went to sit at his desk. We stayed to help for a while. I would have stayed all afternoon. I like kids. It’s way easier to navigate elementary school than high school. Here I could be totally me. I didn’t have to worry about keeping up the Claire front. Being popular took so much energy. You had to smile at the right people, or risk being labeled a stuck-up bitch, and ignore the wrong people, or be labeled a loser lover. Besides, I like the way poster paints smell. When our time was up, the teacher gave us each a candy bar to thank us for coming down. Brenda tried to tell her that we didn’t mind at all, but I just said thank you. “Never turn down free chocolate” is one of my mottos.
I unpeeled the Kit Kat as we walked down the hall. I broke off one of the bars and handed it over to Brenda.
“Thanks for inviting me. It was fun, and not just because I got out of math,” I said.
“And you can put it on your college applications.”
“Right.”
“You know there’s still time to apply places.”
I nodded absently. I had a bunch of applications piled on my desk at home, but it seemed surreal that I was expected to just figure out where I wanted go, pick a major, and come up with some sort of plan for my life. How was I supposed to know what I wanted to do? How could the adults in my life, who didn’t trust me to choose to do the right thing after midnight, think I was supposed to make this kind of decision?
“I may take a gap year.”
“What would you do?” Brenda’s nose wrinkled up in confusion.
“I don’t know. That’s sort of the point of a gap year, isn’t it? To sort out what you want to do, have a gap.”
“You should apply to Boston University. Then if I get into MIT we’ll be in the same city.”
“Yeah, maybe.” I couldn’t imagine anything after this year. Everything had been about Lauren for so long that it was like I couldn’t imagine what would follow. Where my future should be, there was just a blank screen.
“We could get an apartment or something together after a year or two. My folks really want me to live in the dorms for a while though.”
“I don’t think you should count on me to be there for you,” I said.
Brenda looked over at me. “I’m getting that sense.”
“Look, it isn’t that I don’t want to hang out with you more. It’s just that I can’t. There’s all this stuff going on. Stuff I have to sort out.”
“So who hurt you?”
“No one hurt me.”
Brenda gave a disbelieving snort. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but I can still tell. You don’t let anyone get close to you. The thing is, no one can hurt you unless you let them.”
“If you think that, then no one has ever really burned you,” I pointed out.
“I don’t mean to make it sound simple. It’s just that if you hold on to a hurt then you never get over it. It’s like picking at a scab.”
“Let’s stop talking about my scabs, okay?”
“But if you want to move on then you have to let go of what is holding you back.”
“Look, Oprah, I asked you to drop it,” I snapped.
“Friends look out for each other,” Brenda countered.
“I didn’t ask you to look out for me. In fact, I specifically told you there was stuff I didn’t want to talk about, but all you do is push. Stop trying to make me into your friend.” Brenda stopped walking and looked at me, her eyes wide. “What? I thought things only hurt if you let them,” I said.
Brenda’s head snapped back like I had slapped her. I wished I could rewind time and take back that last sentence. If I was Helen I would, but I still had to be Claire. At least a bit longer. Lauren was so close to cracking. Brenda didn’t say anything else, just marched back toward the high school. Her shoulders drew up under ears and she started to do that weird Frankenstein lurch that she had just about given up. I watched her walk away, then kicked the wall.