Picture Us In The Light(49)

I won’t lie, though—there’s a sense of asymmetry at having something like this happen when I still can’t draw the portrait for Regina. In a fair world I don’t think it would’ve gone this way.

But, of course, it’s not like I’m going to say no. Harry drives me into the city over the weekend to deliver my submissions. I lie and tell my parents, who are anxious and distracted but at least in ways that don’t seem aimed at each other, that I have Journalism stuff.

“I’ll be gone all afternoon,” I say. My mom’s going over a pile of bills again, and my dad’s eating shrimp chips and watching TV.

“Be very careful,” my mom says, not looking up.

“Okay.”

“Be home for dinner,” she adds. “We’ll have—” She frowns at a line in their ledger, pulling the checkbook up closer and squinting. “Joseph, what does this say?”

I swallow my guilt and slip out the door, squinting when the light hits, the sunlight bright against my guilt.

In the car, though, Harry’s excited—it’s infectious, like it always is, especially because it’s about my art. He’s pumped it got accepted, pumped people are going to see it, pumped he gets to be there to see it, too. Turning off my street, though, he glances at me. “Why aren’t you totally flipping out about this? I would be.”

“Eh, I don’t know.” I reach up and pull the sunshade down. “Just stuff at home. I’m pretty sure as soon as I left my parents started fighting again. My mom just had that tone.”

He winces. “That sucks.”

“I really thought it was going to be, like, this thing that sucked for a few weeks, maybe a month, and then he’d be on to the next thing. I really did not expect it to be this complicated. And also—”

I hesitate. Harry says, “And also what?”

“And also I found out—you remember the files my dad had? I found out the people in them have this debt collection company and I’ve been reading up on how the whole system works and it’s, like—extremely easy to get taken for all you have. And I’m worried my parents got tied up in something ugly. They keep making all these ominous comments that feel sort of out of proportion for one person losing their job.”

“You think?” He makes a face. “I kind of doubt that. Your parents are smart, right? If they were in financial trouble why wouldn’t they have just declared bankruptcy or gotten a loan or something?”

Something hot stirs in my chest—the kind of flippant way he says it, maybe, like he knows anything at all about bankruptcy loans. “Yeah? They teach you about that at your country club?”

He laughs in that way he does when he’s embarrassed. “Okay, fair enough. I’m just saying. I don’t think it makes sense.”

“Yeah, well, that’s because you always want these neat elegant explanations for things. You think the world is an orderly place where everything eventually works out.”

“No, I don’t.”

I roll my eyes. “Yes, you do. You have as long as I’ve known you. And my parents are the perfect counterpoint. Sometimes they just react in the worst possible ways and torpedo their own lives because they can’t do the most basic logical things to change course. They’re in debt in Texas, so they move to one of the most expensive places in America and my dad gets fired.”

“But you think they’d really do that? You don’t think that in itself is weird?”

Obviously I think it’s weird. We’re having this conversation because I think it’s weird. But weird can mean so many things, most of them innocent, most of them just that people aren’t always rational, that sometimes you don’t hit on the right path the first time you go into the woods.

And, mostly, I’m done talking about it. I shouldn’t have brought it up.

“They’re just like that,” I say. “It’ll be fine. It’s always been fine before. They’ll figure it out.”

We pass through the hills on 280, the grasses all tawny and golden from their winter deaths. There’s fog creeping over the Santa Cruz Mountains, pouring between the soft peaks. I watch the movement of it, try to still each moment in my mind. It would probably be like everything else, though: nothing I could tame from the world long enough to get onto paper.

“For the record,” Harry says around San Mateo, his voice quieter than usual, his eyes trained on the road, “I don’t believe everything always automatically works out.”

In the city, we find parking a few blocks over after circling for a while and driving past three spots Harry swears are too small (they aren’t; he can’t parallel park). It’s bright out today, the city closing in as soon as we get out.

Harry jabs me as we’re walking in. “You excited?”

“I guess.” I am, obviously. I’m also scared. What if it’s not enough, or what if it was all some joke, or what if they made a mistake and next to all the other work it becomes clear I’m a fraud, etc., etc. Or what if my dry spell doesn’t wear off in time for RISD and in fact never wears off and this is when I peak and I will literally never pull this off again.

I take a few long breaths. I wish, kind of, that I’d figured out a way to get here by myself first, to see how everything looked once it was up and make sure it was actually something I’d want people seeing. But it’s too late; we’re already inside.