Being Roy Page 4

  “I felt it was important to focus my energy on my art. I am very disciplined in my work,” I told Mrs. Perry, using my best Erica Kane diction.

  “Your portfolio is very impressive, Aurora,” Mrs. Perry said, looking as though my art were about as impressive as diaper rash, “but our girls are expected to be well-rounded individuals with discipline in all aspects of their curriculum. This is a college preparatory school, you see, and we expect our students to continue on to the very best institutions.”

  “Roy.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “My name is Roy.”

  “Oh, I….” Mrs. Perry frowned and leafed through my file.

  “Aurora is my given name, but I go by Roy.” Mrs. Perry stopped leafing and looked up with a relieved smile. Her whole world would probably blow apart like a marshmallow in a microwave if one of her files proved inaccurate.

  “Roy? Isn’t that unusual. Very well, then, Roy.” Then she just looked at me, an invisible question mark hanging in the air. I was still on the hook for the whole transcript thing, so I decided to drop the BS and tell it straight.

  “Benbow is a very small town, Mrs. Perry, and poor as dirt. The class sizes at the high school are huge, and we don’t have a lot of resources, so there isn’t much individual attention from teachers. They teach to the lowest academic level so the graduation rate stays up. To tell you the truth, I just got bored. The classes aren’t challenging enough, so I either zone out or doodle. I know I could have worked harder, but I guess I just gave up after a while because nothing we were learning felt important. Hardly any kids from Benbow go on to a four-year college, and most don’t even try for community college. Half of what they teach is shop or home economics, and the other half is just enough to help you make a budget and know who wrote the Constitution. It makes sense, really, because unless you know a trade or can find a spot at the bottling plant, you’re probably not gonna get a paycheck in Benbow. Succeeding at school always felt like going along with the idea that nothing else was possible for me, and I’ve never believed that. That’s why I’m here today. It’s not an excuse, just the truth.”

  Mrs. Perry reached out to place a cool hand on my arm. I knew that look. It was the same look Mama Dot’s church lady friends gave me when they brought green bean casserole to my door and offered to buy me new shoes if mine started to wear holes. Dot couldn’t stop them, or wouldn’t. “Hell hath no fury like a Christian scorned,” she always said. “Just eat the damn beans and smile.” I did it for Dot, so she wouldn’t get a hard time for not teaching me manners, and because anything baked in cream of mushroom soup and topped with fried onions tasted amazing. I didn’t even mention that Reenie earned more driving her rig in a week than the church ladies or their husbands did in a month at the plant.

  “I’m aware of your circumstances, Auror—uh, Roy,” Mrs. Perry ventured, the lines around her mouth softening. “Benbow is not an easy place, as many of our girls bear witness to when they do their service projects over there. It must be very challenging for your mother to be a single parent. But what a trouper! A lovely woman like that driving an eighteen-wheeler, of all things. You’ll get a lot of enthusiastic questions about that at Winchester. We believe that there are many ways to be a feminist.”

  “You bet,” I said, biting my tongue on the fact that acting like it was a big deal that Reenie drove a truck was kind of insulting. Kind of antifeminist, like the whole cat using the toilet thing. She had two hands to hold the wheel and a foot to work the brakes and gas, just like any other human, but she was also pretty, and small. Smaller than me, since I took more after my father, or so I’d been told, so I guessed that was what got everybody’s attention. Not only was Reenie a woman driver, but she looked feminine, even with her Carhartts, lumbar support belt, and Timberlands on. There might be many ways to be a feminist, but there were plenty of ways to be sexist too.

  Mrs. Perry was smiling at me like I was her favorite little redneck, which made me way more uncomfortable than the sharp, prissy look she’d given me over my transcript. The knock at the door startled us both. “Enter!” Mrs. Perry called, and a willowy girl in a tiny skirt over cropped leggings slipped into the room. She was wearing a white V-neck T-shirt barely lighter than her skin, and her hair was in a messy topknot so that hanks of stick-straight blond hair fell around her face. Her neck and wrists bore enough woven bracelets to make a throw rug. A mess of cords around her neck held a jumble of pendants and pins so it looked like she had a little disco ball hanging between her pert, braless breasts. The fashion aesthetic at Winchester was hard to figure. There were no uniforms, and every girl I’d seen was dressed either in slapped-together layers or a variation on pajamas and sweats. There was a definite set of rules to the look, and some students wore these weird little faded beanies on their heads, even though it was almost eighty degrees outside. I was just relieved I wouldn’t have to parade around in some stiff-assed kilt to conform to an official dress code.

  “Ah, Imogen!” Mrs. Perry sang, pushing herself up from her desk and then draping an arm over the girl’s shoulder. “Aurora, here is your escort to the art studio.”

  “Roy,” I said, sticking out my hand to shake. Imogen smiled, revealing even but yellowed teeth. The smile made perfect apples of her cheeks, and there was a beige mole by her aristocratic nose. Though she was pretty by anybody’s standards, there was an unmistakably rodent-like quality that emerged when you added up the ingredients of her face.

  “Moe,” the girl said, and she put her palm in mine. It was supple and limp as a dead snake. “Call me Moe.”

  “MOE” STRODE dead center down the corridor, splitting an onrushing stream of students like a steel hull. Like she owned the damn place. Some of the girls looked annoyed, but most of them looked longing, and maybe a little bit in love. “The art teacher, Mr. Gaines, has his own studio in DC,” Imogen informed me as she led me toward the art room. “He’s had shows at all of the major galleries, but he comes out here to teach to keep fresh. Not that he needs to. He’s so on the verge. People are going to pay thousands for something he wiped his ass on some day.”

  “On the verge of what?” I asked distractedly as plaques and old photographs, trophies and faded prize ribbons under glass blurred by on either side of us. Generations of Winchester girls, forever young and privileged.

  “Who, G.?” Imogen asked, pausing to let me catch up. “Total world fucking domination.” She brayed a self-amused laugh and swished toward a pair of oak double doors at the end of the corridor.

  “Do you do art?” I asked to be polite as she pulled open the doors leading to the studio. Be polite. That was another one of Reenie’s handy dandy tips. Imogen made a fake sad face and guided me past tables bearing silk-screening equipment and pottery wheels.

  “I’m more into art history. I’m actually a drama geek at heart, but theater here’s a joke so I don’t usually audition. I guess that makes me just a regular geek.” She brayed again, with all of the confidence of a popular girl for whom actual geeks were curiosities, like zoo animals. “And I ride,” she added. “But I take art electives when I can just to soak up some of G.’s brilliance. I hear you’re pretty hot shit, yourself.”

  “Heard from who?” I demanded, clipping my hipbone painfully on an easel as we rounded a corner and ran right into the legendary Mr. Gaines. I’d never seen a man like him before, with his long dreadlocks wound up behind his head like a big cheese Danish and a tree trunk neck to hold it all up. In his tailored trousers and crisp, button-down shirt under a paint-smeared apron, he was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen in person apart from Oscar. He had a space between his teeth you could stick a pencil through and cheekbones that could dice carrots.

  “You mean ‘from whom’?” he corrected in a deep, rusty drawl like molasses poured over bent nails. His voice had the wear and tear of a heavy metal front man. He was six feet tall if he was an inch, and the breadth of his shoulders blocked three windows behind him. “Imogen heard about you from me, if you must know,” he continued, “along with the rest of her Art and Culture class. You don’t mind, do you? Your portfolio contained some great examples of wabi-sabi, and that was precisely the lesson of the day. I’m Theo Gaines.” He stuck out his hand, and it was so big I didn’t know whether to shake it or shelter under it. When he flashed his gap-toothed grin, my chest squeezed. “Go on, I don’t bite,” Mr. Gaines teased, and I jammed my hand into his. He didn’t shake it, just held it while he looked hard into my face. I couldn’t think of one damn thing to say to ease the silence. What the hell was wrong with me? “The students call me Mr. G., which is fine. Imogen here just calls me G., which is blatantly disrespectful. I let her get away with it because she cleans my brushes as punishment, and she does a spectacular job.”

  “You love it,” Imogen said, rolling her eyes in mock exasperation. “Who else could get so many students to show up for your dreadful art salas?”

  “Another word and I’ll revoke your membership, Miss Thing,” Mr. Gaines responded. His mouth smiled, but his eyes glittered. Were they flirting? No, that wasn’t the vibe, but it definitely wasn’t what I was used to at school. Talking like that to a teacher at Benbow High would get you a week’s detention without even trying.

  “What’s wabi-sabi?” I asked, drinking in the bounty of paint, molding clay, stretched canvas, and metalworking materials that stuffed the floor-to-ceiling shelves lining the studio. My nose stung with the smell of turpentine. Once they let me loose in here, they’ll have to drag me out by the hair, I vowed silently.

  “Wabi-sabi is what you do,” Mr. G. said, finally releasing my hand. My palm was moist, from me not him, and I rubbed it on my pants as I shoved it into my pocket. Since when did my palms sweat? “To grossly oversimplify,” h
e continued, “it’s the Japanese art of the imperfection.”

  “But I don’t do Japanese art,” I said. “I don’t know anything about it.”

  Imogen snorted, hovering like cloying perfume. “It doesn’t have to be Japanese to be wabi-sabi,” she said. There was a nasal quality to her voice when she said her vowels, like the “ah” sound in wabi-sabi. The girl was getting on my last good nerve, but I didn’t give a shit if she thought I was a dumb hick for asking. I was here to learn, and she could go get dragged behind a horse for all I cared.

  “Stand down, Imogen. I think I can take it from here,” Mr. G. said, checking his watch. “Shouldn’t you be in fourth period?”

  “It’s my free block, you know that,” she said. “That’s why they asked me to show Roy around. Don’t worry, though, I got everything set up at your place during lunch.”

  “Lord, child, you’re like the town crier today. Discretion is the spice of life, remember.” Mr. G. quirked an eyebrow at Imogen, then looked at the door, but she didn’t take the hint.

  “I came early and walked around,” I interjected, giving Imogen my best church lady smile. Mr. G. and I were on the same team when it came to giving Immy the boot. “This is my last stop, then I’m taking off, so you’re free to go. Thanks!” Imogen’s mouth thinned for a second before she shot me a gushy smile of her own and flounced off on her perfectly beat-up Keds. “See you tonight, G.,” she trilled. “I’m bringing fresh meat.” Her words knocked me for a loop as she squeaked away down the hall. “Your place”? “Fresh meat”? What the hell kind of school was this?

  “So, Roy—it is Roy, isn’t it?” Mr. Gaines said, perching on the edge of a table and swinging one long leg like a metronome.

  “Yes, but how did you know that? Imogen, er, Moe, didn’t introduce me.” Mr. Gaines raised an eyebrow.

  “Moe? Well, that’s a new one.” Mr. G. smiled fondly, like he was recounting the antics of an untrained pet. “‘Roy Watkins’ is how you sign all of your work, or don’t you recall?”

  “Oh, right. I keep forgetting you’ve seen my stuff.”

  “Your ‘stuff’ is why you’re here today, and make no mistake,” Mr. Gaines said, his face getting serious. “That and your cracker cachet. Goodness knows it’s not those grades, child.” I bristled. “Cracker” was what the black kids in Benbow called the rednecks when they wanted to get a fight going. “Take it easy,” Mr. G. chuckled, grasping my shoulder and giving it a shake. “I’m just being real with you. There are legions of girls behind you clawing to get into this place, and they’ve all got something they’re good at, but none of them have a trucker mama and sleep in a trailer. That’s solid gold, baby. Own it. Use it. I sure did. Had to. I was all gift, no grades, just like you.” He nudged my shin with a shiny, boat-sized loafer. I didn’t know whether to respond with a swift kick or thank him for being the first grown-up to talk to me like an adult.

  I raised my chin at him in that way that drove Reenie and Dot crazy. “My grades suck, but I can do better if I try.”

  Mr. G. plucked at invisible lint on the front of his trousers, unimpressed by my bravado. “Well, try, then. I think you’d be a great addition here at Winchester, as long as you don’t think you can coast on your talent. Students can only sign up for studio time outside of class if their grade point average is 3.0 or above. Otherwise, it’s class time or no time.” Talent. He’d said I had talent, and he was supposedly some big deal artist himself!

  “I will try,” I said, throwing my shoulders back so I didn’t feel so dwarfed by his bulk. “I don’t intend to waste this opportunity by slacking off.” Mr. G. reached behind him and picked up my portfolio, which I recognized by the cheap, imitation black leather and broken clasp. I refused to feel ashamed of it. That was just the packaging.

  “I’d like you to tell me a little more about some of these,” Mr. G. said, handing the portfolio over to me and motioning for me to lean beside him against the table.

  “Which ones?”

  “Whichever ones you want. Just talk me through them.” I thumbed through the clear plastic sleeves that held my drawings, paintings, and photos. I wish I’d taken a minute before I opened it, because right away, there was Oscar staring up at me with those eyes like puddles of hot fudge. I hadn’t included too many of him because I didn’t want anyone to think I was some horndog with nothing but boys on the brain, but my drawings and paintings of him were my best work. I could show Oscar just like he was without having to puzzle over how to offset his perfection with something else to make it shine. I’d picked one sketch and one painting of him, and in both, he was looking at me like he loved me senseless. For the life of me, I couldn’t turn that page.

  “This is very impressive realism,” Mr. G. said, leaning in to get a closer look so that one of his braids tickled my ear. “Is this subject someone you know, or is it from a photograph?”

  “I know him,” I said, my voice scratchy like Mr. G.’s.

  “Your depictions of him are different from the other pieces you included, like the vandalized Virgin Mary statue with the thumb broken off, or the morning glories twined around that chain link fence.”

  “You mean because they’re of a person?”

  Mr. Gaines shook his head, and I remembered that I’d also put in a sketch of Reenie doing her back exercises on the floor of the trailer and a photograph of Leon bending over his junker Caddy. These were both executed so that the sun damage on Reenie’s left cheek, and the botched tattoo on Leon’s forearm that he got in the Coast Guard were the only things in sharp focus. I’d made these elements really precise, so that everything around them was more like a frame.

  “I mean because it’s one hundred percent realism, with nothing emphasized or blurred in a certain way like you do with your other work,” Mr. Gaines said, tracing the detailing of curls at Oscar’s temple with one tapered finger. “Why did you make that choice?” His voice was coaxing, hypnotic. I blinked to clear the burning haze in my eyes and flipped the page to give me some breathing room. I couldn’t think with Oscar staring up at me like that.

  “Because he’s already perfect,” I said. “He doesn’t need any tampering to make him shine. Everything’s right there front and center. You don’t have to puzzle out what makes him right. He just is, so that’s how I drew him.”

  Mr. G. slapped his thighs. “And that’s it, young blood… or should we just stick with Roy?”

  “Roy’s good,” I said, daring to look at him again. “What do you mean ‘That’s it’?”

  Mr. G. grinned, the back of his tongue pressing into the space between his teeth. “Wabi-sabi. The perfect imperfection that makes a thing shine. That concept speaks through everything you create. It’s unusual for an artist to develop that clarity of voice at such a young age. It takes a lot of confidence to take on a signature like that. That’s what intrigued me more than anything else. An artist without confidence isn’t likely to stick with it long enough to realize their full potential. I see a lot of potential in your portfolio.”

  No one had ever said anything like that to me before. Sure, Dot and Leon made a big deal of my stuff, and Reenie was always taking it to the frame shop to get mounted even though we didn’t have any wall space to hang things. “These are going to be worth a lot of money someday,” she’d say, cramming yet another painting into the storage slot under the dinette. “I’ve got to protect my investment.” But here was someone who knew, and he was telling me I wasn’t wasting my time. I wouldn’t ever admit it to anybody, because confidence was kind of my thing, but every time I created something, I started hating it within a half an hour. The real reason it bothered me when Reenie swiped my stuff to get framed was that art under glass was a lot harder to set fire to. I spent 80 percent of my time making art, and 99 percent convinced that I sucked at the only thing I loved to do. Mr. G.’s praise felt like a commuted death sentence, and I would do anything, even putting up with snotty Imogen and her ilk, to get more of it.