Art Something
6
First Drive
SCHOOL SETTLED into a routine and I started to focus on my studies. I wasn’t a bad student. But I’d lost the habit of leaving my art in the morning to go someplace. With Annette picking me up every day, I needed to leave the house. Mom even succeeded in putting my lunch in my hands before I left in the morning. And we didn’t simply get naked and pet at every opportunity. That was something special between us. After the first time I’d touched her in the spring, we’d gone all summer without a repeat. After the first day of school, it looked like we might go all winter.
Which isn’t to say that we didn’t go out each weekend and that we didn’t spend time making out each weekend. We just didn’t get quite so carried away. We had a lot to learn about each other. I even got dressed up and took her—she drove—to the Homecoming Dance. I still got red in the face when I heard people mention us, but lately I was hearing things like ‘cute couple’ instead of ‘who’s he?’ After the dance, she took me home and walked me to the door like usual.
“I feel bad that you have to walk me to the door and then go home alone,” I said as we stood in the lamplight. “I need to drive sometimes and take you home.”
“Okay,” she answered simply. “Next weekend you can drive.” I was surprised it was so easy. With Annette. It wasn’t so easy with Mom when I asked her the next morning.
“Art, honey, how long have you had your driver’s license?” she asked. I thought back. I got it soon after my sixteenth birthday.
“A year and a half,” I said.
“And how much have you driven in that time?”
“A little.”
“Very little. In fact, you haven’t driven at all since Morgan got her car six months ago. First, Morgan drove you everywhere and now Annette drives you. I’m not comfortable with you suddenly taking the car out on a date at night.”
“Mom, what am I supposed to do? Where do I go?”
“Well, that’s part of the problem. You don’t go anywhere unless you are being taken somewhere. You need more experience behind the wheel.”
“How am I supposed to get that?” I complained. She tossed me her keys.
“The car needs to be washed and cleaned. Here’s twenty dollars. On the way home, I have dry cleaning to pick up. It’s prepaid. Here’s the receipt.”
“But Annette is coming over this afternoon!”
“She’ll wait. I’ve been wanting to have a conversation with your young woman. Now go and don’t rush. Remember you are supposed to improve your driving skills so you can take her out next week.”
“Yes, Mother.” I rushed to the garage. What did Mom want to talk to my girlfriend about? She’d been very hands-off about our relationship so far. Even when Annette came to my room to study, she never interrupted us. Dad occasionally checked in, but we were just studying. Sheesh!
I cleaned the car, waited in the long line for the automatic carwash, managed to get the tire in the tracks—on my second try—and picked up the dry cleaning. Annette’s car was in front of the house when I got home an hour and a half later. I went to Mom and gave her the keys, looking around for Annette.
“Dents and scratches?” Mom asked.
“None,” I answered. “Where’s Annette?”
“Your room studying. Too bad you can’t help her with her calculus. She’s struggling. I suggested that it might be a good idea for you to drive to school Monday morning.”
“Really?”
“Do I ever say things that aren’t really?” Mom mimicked me. I grinned and sprinted up the stairs to my room.
Annette wasn’t studying calculus. She was sitting on my bed crying. I was about to go yell at my mom when I saw what she was looking at. She had a box of my paintings open and was carefully turning each one over onto a neat stack as she looked at them. She wasn’t sobbing. She just had tears running down her cheeks and an occasional sniffle. I went to her and knelt beside the bed. She dropped the painting in her hands and threw herself into my arms. I just held her as she quietly cried.
“Did Mom make you look at all my paintings? I knew she had some diabolical plan,” I whispered. She snorted and shook her head. “Have you reviewed my whole life in art?” She shook her head again.
“Just the last few months. Since our first date.”
“Would that be the one where we went to the movies as a group or the next week when I took you and Morgan to Burger Burner for a date and didn’t know what to do next?”
“That was a short date,” she laughed. “They got better.”
“Why were you crying? Are the paintings that bad?” I asked.
“You doofus! Bad? How can you even think…? I’m just so overwhelmed by the emotion on every page. How can you put so much on a sheet of paper in so little time?” she asked.
“Ms. Clayborn says that I have to consider these my artist’s sketchbook. I need to focus on producing real art that isn’t dependent on my dreams,” I said.
“She doesn’t like them?”
“She likes them. What I’ve shown her. She says that I’m so prolific with them and the medium is so cheap that there won’t be a good market for them. She wants me to paint canvases with oil or acrylic.”
“Arthur,” she turned in my arms and faced me. “I am not competing with Morgan!” She was so vehement in her declaration that I sat back on my heels and nearly pulled her off the bed. What brought that on?
“I’m sorry, Annette. I like you so much, but I know that I still put you second when I’m thinking about you and my sister. I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Listen to me, Arthur. I am not competing with her. Get that out of your head. I can see it in the paintings. I am never going to come between you and Morgan.” She suddenly tittered. “Well, if you sandwich me between the two of you, I might come.”
“Annette! I don’t have any idea how to… What do you mean?”
“I love you, Arthur. I know I haven’t said that before and girls are never supposed to say it first because it makes them sound all needy. But I love you. The thing is, I love you and everything you love. I love your paintings. I love your parents. And I love your sister,” she whispered.
“You love me?” She nodded. “And you love Fay… Morgan?”
“Yep. Always have. Did you think setting me up to sit beside you in the movie was an accident? Morgan knows how I feel about her and about you,” Annette said.
“Why have I never known about this?”
“Arthur, you live in your own little world. Until last spring you were oblivious to anything that went on around you. Your sister and I have been hanging out with each other since you moved here. We’ve never done anything like sex. Well, we kissed a few times, but she never felt me up like you have. Inside my clothes,” she said. It seemed like every time she said something she added a qualifier.
“So, you’re not competing with my sister for my affection. You want to share me?” She did a lot of nodding. “Are you competing with me for Morgan’s affection?”
“I don’t think so. And I’m not using you to get close to her. Morgan and I were already close. Maybe not as close as I hope we’ll be one day, but we’re really close.”
I didn’t know what to say. They were certainly the two girls—two people in the world—who knew me best. I missed Morgan like crazy and couldn’t wait for her to come home for Thanksgiving. But Annette had touched something deep inside me. I could see it in the paintings.
I loved her.
I picked up Annette for school Monday morning and navigated Mom’s boat of a car into the school parking lot. It was a Mazda 5—a real soccer mom car. I’d never thought about it until I saw the line of cars dropping kids off at the gym. I breathed a sigh of relief and put my head on the steering wheel. Annette laughed.
“You did good. You really focused on driving,” she said. “I don’t think you heard a single word I said.”
“Did you say something?” We looked at each other and sputtered out a laugh. It was fun to laugh with Annette. My morning painting had been filled with anxiety.
“I said that driving is only part of the experience. You need to plan our date. You need to tell me what I should wear, even if you don’t tell me exactly where we are going. And you need to make sure the car is prepped. It was nice that you washed it for your mom on Saturday—it gave us a chance to have a nice talk. But I couldn’t help but notice the red light blinking on the instrument panel that says you need to get gas. Right away. This is real world dating, Arthur.”
“Gas? I’ve never offered to help you pay for gas! You’ve been driving to school for two months and I never contributed anything! What a terrible boyfriend!”
“There were other benefits,” she laughed. “You just needed to become aware.”
“I’m such a dope.”
“Arthur, you’re not,” Annette said as we walked across the parking lot hand-in-hand. “I’m not trying to change you, honey. I worry that it seems that way. I just know that our time sheltered by parents and teachers from the real world is coming to an end. In the spring, we’ll graduate. In the fall, college. I just don’t want the real world to slam you in the face without being prepared.”
“This is real, isn’t it? A girlfriend. Driving. School. Money. Responsibility. My art is really all a dream.”
“A beautiful dream that you share with the world. Art is reality, too.” I kissed my girlfriend on the steps and we went to our lockers.
“What gives?” Rob asked. “You are practically dancing in your seat today. You got a big test coming up?”
“No. Sort of. I need some advice.”
“Advice? What could I possibly know that I could tell you?”
“What to do on a date.”
“Dude! You and Annette going to do the deed?”
“NO!” Mr. Carlson looked up from his demonstration in physics.
“Perhaps this discussion could wait until lunch, gentlemen?” he said. Rob and I straightened up and paid attention to the rest of the demonstration of forces applied in different directions and how to calculate the point of equilibrium. Yeah. That’s what I need to find.
“What’s going on,” Rob demanded as soon as the bell rang.
“I need to plan a date with Annette Friday night.”
“What’s the big deal? You’ve been dating for months.”
“Yeah, but… She always plans them. She drives. She usually makes it sound like I’m helping, but really she just gives me a few options and I pick A, B, or C.”
“And this week you got ‘D—None of the Above’. Dude, I had no idea.”
“What should I plan? We just want to go out and have fun, you know. It’s not like it has to be something super romantic. We get enough of that, no matter what we do.”
“Karen likes to go bowling.”
“Huh? Who’s Karen?”
“My girlfriend. Where have you been this fall? I mean we haven’t exchanged class rings, but we’ve been dating for four weeks. I introduced you at the homecoming dance,” Rob said.
“Oh. Right. I remember her. I just didn’t realize it was serious between you two.” I looked down at my class ring. I hadn’t planned to buy one, but Morgan had convinced me last year that it was something I’d want later. The emblem of a chess piece on a sparkling black background in a gold setting. My initials on either side of the ornament. Reality. The school bell. Rob and I took our seats in English.
Am I supposed to give Annette my class ring?
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