The Chalk Artist

by Allegra Goodman

  She was doing her best work, and she was not the only one. Collin felt a surge of energy. His spirits lifted, even as he drew a crumpling nose, a blackening ear. He caught Peter gazing at his monitor, examining a series of degenerating eyes. Pupils gradually enlarged, eyeballs clouding, one lid drooping, pendulous, elephantine.

  Peter said nothing, but Collin didn’t care. He no longer waited for a verdict, a word of praise or blame. He no longer worried if Peter would use his work. The fact was, his art was necessary, and it was good.

  He showed off to Obi and Akosh, entertaining them. When they sprawled out on chairs or on the floor exhausted, he drew a couple of flip-books, a dragon hatching, an exploding face.

  “No way,” Akosh told Collin.

  “What?”

  “No way are you still drawing now.”

  He felt alive, awake again. He drew constantly, almost effortlessly. He did more than his share, accomplished even more than Peter asked. When the crisis ended, he was surprised to realize that he had been working three days straight.

  When Arkadia went live again, Tomas recognized Collin’s work, high-fiving him. Collin stood like a hero with his pod, as Viktor climbed atop a desk to speak.

  “May I say?” Viktor held up a hand to stop the cheering. “Can I just say? It isn’t curing cancer, but it feels that way.”

  Gamers flooded EverWhen and UnderWorld. They returned in a great wave, like migrating birds. Caverns rang with players and their avatars, and most Arkadians went home to sleep—but Collin went to O’Riley’s with his pod. The pub was warm and crowded, alight with televisions. He kicked back with Akosh and Obi. Even Nicholas came this time. Daphne challenged Tomas to a game of pool, and Peter paid for everyone.

  Drunk and almost happy, Collin drew another flip-book at the bar. Careless, he just drew what came to him. Wild horses with necks outstretched and flying feet.

  “Stop.” Daphne touched his shoulder with her cue. She was trying to warn him, but he didn’t understand.

  “I dub you Sir Collin.” She was chalking up his shirt.

  “Let’s have a game.” Nicholas offered Collin his own cue.

  But Collin had caught Peter’s attention. The ink drawings were simple, streamlined, but the horses unmistakable. There was the little gray, the chestnut with the scar on her back. Peter darkened as he watched Collin’s pen. “Where did you get those?”

  “What do you mean?” Collin looked up, surprised.

  He doesn’t even notice, Peter thought. Collin sat and sketched and people gathered around him as if he were jamming at the piano. He was like a musician sitting down to play by ear. An endless riff, a raw feed of images.

  But Collin spoke out. “I didn’t get these horses from anywhere. They’re mine.”

  Daphne held her cue upright, tapping it against the floor.

  “We’re using them,” Peter said. “They’re ours.”

  “These sketches? These horses in particular?”

  “We’re using these horses for a new game. Elysium.”

  Collin’s cheeks burned. This was the game in stealth mode; this was what Daphne had said he didn’t want to know. He turned to look at Akosh, and Obi, Tomas. Nobody spoke. Nicholas was playing nervously with his phone.

  “Why didn’t you ask me?” Collin said.

  “Because we didn’t have to ask.”

  “I mean why didn’t you include me?”

  “We had what we needed.”

  Right, thought Collin. As usual, you were collecting my work. “You said my horses were pretty,” he reminded Peter. “You said they just weren’t interesting.”

  “There was work to do.”

  “You really are a shit,” Collin said slowly. Even in the crowded bar, he sensed the hellions hush around him. He felt Nicholas’s hand on his arm and he looked at the sound engineer and wondered, Are you still warning me? Are you really so afraid? Collin feared nothing at that moment. He said the thing no one was allowed to say. “My work belongs to me.”

  Of course this wasn’t true. Collin had signed a contract. Peter said, “Your work belongs to Arkadia, as you know.”

  “I drew those horses,” Collin countered. “I have them in my hand. How can they be yours without me?”

  Peter didn’t deign to answer this.

  “You try to draw them.” Collin held out his pen. “You show me what you know. Show me. Show me now!”

  The others tried to talk to Collin, but he wouldn’t listen. “Look, we’re all tired,” Nicholas said in his conciliatory voice.

  Collin wanted to fight. He wanted to write all over Peter’s face, but he would gain nothing by it, except immediate satisfaction. Peter owned his work; he could use it forever, and Collin could not get his drawings back. All he could do was make new art. His fists clenched, but he did not touch Peter. He turned around and left instead.

  —

  He had no ride back to the city, but he didn’t care. Snow fell lightly, but he brushed it from his eyes and kept on walking, oblivious to slush and cold.

  “Collin!” It was Daphne coming after him. She was holding his coat.

  “He knows what’s good,” Daphne pointed out. “You could take it as a compliment.”

  Collin shot her a look.

  “Okay, yes, he was a shit in there,” Daphne conceded with her impudent smile.

  But Collin did not believe in Daphne’s disobedience.

  “Here.” He took his coat and pulled his slate from the pocket. “Take this back to him.”

  He went home and slept until eleven in the morning, and when he woke, he felt entirely empty. He started rummaging for food. Emma and Darius were out, and the refrigerator was nearly empty. Collin ate all of Emma’s leftover bulgur wheat salad, although this would infuriate her. He didn’t care. Nicholas had texted, but he didn’t answer. There were other messages. There were piles of junk mail on the floor, a note from Dawn about people coming to look at the boiler.

  The bulgur salad tasted like nothing. The piles of mail were indecipherable, like relics of some other person’s life. He felt numb until he took a shower. Freezing water jolted him awake. That was when he decided he would bike to Emerson.

  —

  “Collin, honey? Is that you?” said Mrs. Solomon from behind her desk.

  He took off his helmet and signed in. Under “purpose of visit” he scribbled, Meeting.

  He wanted to catch Nina at lunch, but Mrs. Solomon said, “Oh, no, you can’t do that. She has her evaluation!”

  Upstairs in the Resource Room, Nina was sitting down with Jeff and Mrs. West, and Mr. DeLaurentis. They were meeting at a wood-grain table and Jeff was looking sympathetic—always a bad sign. He offered Nina a bottle of spring water.

  “No, thanks,” Nina said.

  “Our goal is objectivity,” Mr. DeLaurentis explained, by way of introduction. “This is why we stress the online evaluation system. By looking at the numbers we build a strong foundation.”

  Nina gazed at her printed results.

  “One of your strengths would be your knowledge base,” said Mrs. West. “As you can see in column one, almost ninety percent of students feel that you show knowledge of your subject area. On the other hand—a full eighty-two percent of students feel somewhat, very, or extremely uncomfortable asking for help.”

  Numbers blurred on the page. Could this be true? Nina’s students called her all the time. Miss? Miss? They wanted this, they wanted that. Were they actually afraid of her?

  “Before we dive into the details, I want to look at a couple of other issues,” Mrs. West continued. “On page two in classroom management, forty-five percent of students feel somewhat or very distracted by their classmates, which is concerning. Sixteen percent characterize the atmosphere as chaotic.”

  “Wait,” Nina said.

  Mrs. West looked up. Everybody waited.

  “The students are distracting each other and now they’re reporting it?”

  Jeff said, “They’re reporting on your clas
sroom management.”

  “We’ve supplemented the questionnaires with classroom observations,” said DeLaurentis.

  “I’ve provided all my notes,” said Jeff.

  “The question of favoritism,” Mrs. West said. “Look at page three.”

  Everyone turned to page three. “Sixty-four percent of students feel that you occasionally favor some students over others. Twelve percent feel that you often do.” Mrs. West paused. “That’s high.”

  Now Nina’s cheeks began to burn.

  “Are you aware of this perception?” Mrs. West asked.

  Nina wanted to say no, but at that moment she was acutely aware of what she had done. She was not only a rookie, but a rule-breaker as well—singling out Aidan, protecting and manipulating him, forcing him to learn.

  Mrs. West did not mention Aidan. She made no specific accusations. She crushed Nina with simple moral force. “All our students need us. All the time.”

  As Nina tried to catch her breath, Mrs. West marched on, plucking startling numbers she had highlighted in yellow. “Let’s turn to the last page.”

  Trembling, Nina turned, and yet even then she hoped for something decent, at least average. What she saw was a composite score of 69 out of 100, and the verdict, FAIR.

  “You look surprised,” said Mr. DeLaurentis.

  “I just thought…”

  “You’ve made progress,” Jeff consoled her. “Seriously.”

  She looked at him and wondered—progress from what? Total disaster?

  Mr. DeLaurentis said, “Shall we look at your self-evaluation now?”

  No! Nina screamed inwardly. She couldn’t bear the comparison. The process was so humiliating. “I imagined I was doing better.”

  “That’s why we look at the quantitative results,” Mr. DeLaurentis repeated.

  She didn’t cry. That was her one comfort as the meeting ended: She hadn’t let them see her cry, although she had come close. How had she deceived herself all year? Had she mistaken her slow progress for success? Had she imagined knowledge and goodwill would win the day? She was reaching some students. Apparently that was not enough. She had connected with a few, but that was favoritism. She couldn’t win!

  These were her thoughts as she walked past Collin in the hall.

  “Nina,” he said.

  Startled, she turned toward him. Was something wrong? Something must have happened. She hadn’t seen him in so long. She was concerned and affronted by his presence, but mostly confused.

  “Could I just talk to you?”

  The bell was ringing and eighty-two percent of Nina’s students were afraid to ask for help. Concentrate, she told herself. Do you even remember your lesson?

  “Just for a minute?” Collin said.

  “I can’t.” She shut the door.

  Handing back her students’ work, she thought, I’m just a know-it-all. I came here to bestow my knowledge and I’ve failed classroom management. Even now her kids were talking. Twice she had to tell them, “Settle down.” Some quieted. Others kept on talking.

  Nina shouted, “What do I have to do to get your attention?”

  Silence. She had never raised her voice like that before. For a moment Nina felt powerful, then she realized that she had miscalculated yet again. Cold and offended, her students gazed up at their desperate teacher. They were not accustomed to this treatment—not from her. Conversations continued in a whisper.

  Wearily, Nina began passing back vocabulary quizzes. “Let’s start again.”

  Her kids had done well on their tests. Most of them had learned the words. Before her evaluation she would have delighted in these scores. Now she dwelt on her mistakes, current and cumulative. She presented a fair lesson on Walt Whitman because there wasn’t anybody else to do it. She tried to spark discussion of Song of Myself.

  Fiercely, she taught to the last bell, and as her students streamed out into the hall she called after them, “Final drafts due Monday! Revise and proofread! Don’t forget!”

  —

  Just outside her door, Collin saw her long hair curtaining her face as she picked up a paperback Twelfth Night. For a long moment, she seemed a stranger, tall, elegant, the girl from far away.

  She drew back when he stepped inside. How long had he been watching? She retreated behind her desk.

  Hurt, he said, “Don’t worry.”

  “I’m not!” She was polite, as though she didn’t know him.

  The distance seemed to stretch between them. Collin near the door, Nina behind her Steelcase desk. “I just want to talk to you.”

  “What do you want to talk about?” The question sounded like, What else is there to say?

  He approached her desk. “I know you don’t want explanations.”

  “Collin,” she said. “I can’t think about this now.”

  “I just have to tell you something.”

  She studied his face. He looked so nervous.

  “I miss you,” he began, but then he stopped. “That’s it,” he told her. “That’s the whole thing. I miss you. I need to be near you.”

  She said nothing.

  “I was stupid. I was overwhelmed.”

  “Don’t say that,” Nina burst out. “Don’t say you were overwhelmed and so you had to hurt me.”

  “I didn’t think that I deserved you.”

  “So you went out to prove it?”

  He didn’t know how to answer that. “I’ve never known anyone like you,” he said at last.

  “I don’t play games,” she told him. “I can’t play games with you.”

  “Remember when we went sledding? Remember when we walked down by the river?”

  She did remember skimming down the hill and walking in the cold. She remembered his hands in her coat pockets.

  “All of that was real.”

  “It was real at the time.”

  He wanted to say, No, that day will last forever—but if happiness could last, what of anger? Pain?

  “Remember when I knelt in front of you right here and embarrassed you?”

  Her anger flared. “How about the time you covered the blackboards with chalk pictures and ruined my lesson?”

  “I was trying to apologize!”

  “You picked a hell of a way to do it.” She turned her back to gaze at the dusty board.

  “I was arrogant,” Collin admitted.

  Almost inaudibly she said, “Me too.”

  He walked over to her side of the desk. She didn’t turn toward him, but she didn’t ask him to leave either. She blinked back tears, and he pretended not to notice. He just leaned against the desk and they gazed at the board with its vocabulary list. Trill, defile, nimbus, manifold.

  “I’m sorry,” he said at last.

  She closed her eyes.

  “Nina?”

  She leaned against him ever so slightly. Subtly, almost imperceptibly, he felt her weight shift.

  He said, “You were right about Arkadia. It’s crazy there, and I’ve made such a mess.”

  Her eyes opened. “What happened?”

  “I quit.”

  “Well,” she said slowly, “you can still do the thing you want to do.”

  “Unpaid?”

  “You can say that you’re an artist. I can’t say I’m a teacher.”

  “Yes, you can.”

  Not next year, she thought. Not if I’m looking for a real job. “My evaluation was so bad.” Her voice broke a little and she almost laughed, because she had worked so hard and cared so much and failed in so many ways—and it was such a relief to tell him. “Either they like me and they don’t respect me, or they just hate me.” Softly she admitted, “I’m just not good at it.”

  “But that takes years and years.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You’ll get old like a real teacher. You’re already bitter—and you’re getting strict. I could hear you from the hall.”

  “Oh, God. I lost my temper.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  �
��No, you don’t understand.”

  Actually he understood pretty well. When she’d lost her temper, she’d done it for real. She didn’t know how to lose it theatrically, how to shout and scream and stamp her feet and keep her sense of humor. And now she told him, “I was terrible.”

  Instinctively he touched her arm, but she shrank back. He began to speak and stopped. What could he tell her? I love you. I worship you. Those were words anyone could use. He wanted to give her something of himself. He pulled a flip-book from his pocket.

  “What is it?”

  He showed her how to flip the pages with her thumb.

  The drawings were black ink, sharp, and stylized. A horse running riderless, fast and faster, ears back, neck outstretched. The moving picture was so fluid, the running horse so elegant, that without thinking Nina flipped the book again. “Is this for a new job? Who is it for?”

  He was surprised she had to ask. He gave her another flip-book, and said, “Just you.”

  This time the horse approached a fence, coming at it flying, mane and tail streaming. In one fluid leap he took the jump and landed on the other side. Nina flipped the book again and yet again. The tiny animation was so beautiful, the horse leaping, the line drawing come to life. She felt absorbed in this brief story. Each time the horse swept her away, flying at the jump. “I like this better than the Ghost Horse.”

  Drawing closer, Collin watched her face. “You’re glad I left.”

  She glanced up quickly. “Not if it’s on my account.”

  “Don’t worry.” He was so close. His lips brushed hers. “I would never do anything for you.”

  He nearly kissed her, but she pulled away. “Oh, wait! I have a student coming.”

  —

  Too late. Aidan had already spied them through the window in her classroom door. Collin talking, Nina listening. Although they had their backs to him, they were standing too close for ordinary conversation. Aidan could tell they were together, so he kept on walking down the hall, downstairs, and out into the winter day. Zipping his old ski jacket, he started walking home.