“Maybe you should teach art lessons to little kids. There are tons of summer camps. I’m sure you could find one.”
I don’t say anything.
“Not interested?” Alexa asks. “I’ll keep thinking.”
She crosses the room and peers through the doorway, and I get out my sketchbook and start drawing. Alexa comes back and whispers, “Jasper looks super focused, and Meg gave me thumbs-up, so I think things are going okay.”
She looks at my drawing, then over to Bev.
“Bev, you have a pretty neck,” she says. “I didn’t really notice it until Colby drew it.”
I shake my head. My drawing doesn’t even compare. But more than that I’m angry at myself for drawing her. Over and over. As if there isn’t anything or anyone else that can distract me from her. But Bev just flashes Alexa a brief smile and turns back to the binder—I’ve been drawing her forever, she’s used to it by now—and my face feels hot and I need to think of something else to say.
I’m about to ask Alexa to show me her notebook full of professions when Bev says, “Oh my God, Colby, look at this.”
She’s staring at a page in one of the binders. She doesn’t turn the page toward me, so I slide onto the sofa next to her. Laying the binder across our touching thighs, she says, again, “Look.”
I’m not sure I want to sit here, together, but even after everything that’s happened it doesn’t feel different to be close to her. Her body feels the same.
She points, but she doesn’t need to. In the binder is an image I’d recognize anywhere: a bluebird perched on a telephone wire, holding a bouquet of red flowers in its beak. A rain cloud hovers right above the bird, but the raindrops part above its head, leaving the bird dry and content.
“What is it?” Alexa asks.
“Holy shit,” I say.
“How could it have gotten here?” Bev asks.
I shake my head. “I have no idea,” I say. “This is impossible.”
“I know, right?” Bev says.
“What?” Alexa says.
“This is my dad’s old album cover. It’s exactly like this except that across the top of the tape it said The Rainclouds.”
“Someone’s obsessed with your dad’s band?” Alexa guesses. “Or maybe the picture’s been used on other things?”
“I don’t think so,” Bev says. “Colby’s mom painted this just for the cover.”
“The painting’s hanging in my dining room,” I add, and I think of us all sitting at the table, eating dinner together—first my mom and my dad and me and sometimes Uncle Pete, and then all of us and Bev, too, who in eighth grade started to join us at least a few times a week. We spooned countless bowls of carrot ginger soup and ate hundreds of plates worth of grilled vegetables and tofu and rice and spinach salads, and we did it all under the gaze of this fortunate, blue-feathered bird.
I reach into my pocket for my phone, and have to lean into Bev a little to do it. The image of the tattoo appears on the screen of my phone and I snap the picture and send it to my dad.
“Send it to your mom, too,” Bev says.
A moment later the phone rings and it’s my dad saying, “This is wild!” And as we’re talking my mom texts me back with IS THAT A TATTOO!? Alexa takes out a journal and starts writing, probably notes for her play.
Bev sends Mom more details because I can’t text and talk to my dad on the same phone, and then Bev takes her own picture of the tattoo and sends it to Uncle Pete, who writes back with, NO WAY! And it’s all very fun and chaotic, with several conversations going on at once, but as Dad tells me about the concept for the painting and Mom describes her amazement over the idea of her artwork being permanently on someone’s body and Uncle Pete keeps appearing in my call waiting—I’m thinking about how we used to all be together. How after dinner Bev and I would go back to my room to talk and do homework and record ourselves singing while Mom and Dad and Uncle Pete would hang out in the living room with the record player spinning, listening to music from when they were young and trying to hide the marijuana smell by holding their joint out the window. If this were a year or two ago, Bev and I would have put ourselves on speaker phone and talked to the three of them gathered together in one room, and I wouldn’t have to avert my eyes when I caught myself watching her, and this conversation would not be in any way lonely.
A little later, Jasper walks into the waiting area.
“Meg’s in the bathroom,” he tells us, taking the chair I was sitting in before I moved next to Bev. “She did great.”
“How does it look?” Alexa asks.
“Check it out for yourself,” he says.
Meg emerges from the back with a sunrise and a rainbow on her chest. Her makeup is smeared under her eyes but she’s glowing.
We gather around her. Meg: her own piece of art.
“Rad,” Bev says.
Alexa smiles. “It’s like an affirmation or something. You’ll never have another bad morning.”
“It looks even better than the original,” I say to Jasper.
“The original’s on a piece of wood,” Jasper says. “This one’s on a hot girl. Ready to get bandaged up?”
Meg nods yes.
“So, hey,” I say. “How long have you worked here? I have a question about something.”
“Sure, come on back,” Jasper says. I perch on a stool while he covers Meg’s tattoo with gauze and tape.