Picture Us In The Light

by Kelly Loy Gilbert

  I draw so many iterations of Sandra. But my fear comes through in all of them, and she looks saintly and flattened, leeched of her real self. I draw for days, all through the first two of the four latenights and then at home in the apartment all night, my dad asleep in the living room and my mom gone, the building quiet. I’ve never choked like this before—just had nothing right up against the last minute. It makes the whole world feel slippery and thin in my grasp.

  I can’t shake the certainty that I’m a fraud. A lucky fraud, up until now, but luck runs out eventually, and then you have to face yourself.

  The night before our last latenight it’s nearly one in the morning and my eyes are burning. I don’t put my pen away yet, though; once I do the accusations on the periphery will come oozing back in. I feel desperate. I draw Mr. X—Mr. X sneering at my lack of talent, Mr. X pleased about my family leaving our neighborhood, Mr. X in the principal’s office telling them he has some information about a student’s fraudulent enrollment that they might like to know. I imagine how he’d look to them, they who don’t know him—a polite neighbor, a clean-cut elderly gentleman. I draw him a mild, deferential I’m-in-public-talking-to-other-white-people expression. And that’s when it happens.

  This is what I’ve been doing wrong all along with him, why those drawings never came alive over all these years despite how vivid he’s been in my head: I’ve tried to turn him into a cartoon. I’ve tried to make him look evil. But the real power he has over me is that there was nothing especially extraordinary about him. The worst things you fear aren’t the rare or distant ones. The worst things you fear are the ones so close they take up residence inside your head and whisper to you in the background all the time; the worst things you fear are that there’s so much darkness lurking inside the nicest people and the safest places that you know. I sketch him out (his face is so familiar to me) and I keep the hard anger of his eyes, but this time I make him kinder-looking, his smile genial, and then, only then, does he finally look as menacing as he always has in my mind.

  And that’s it. After all this time, after all those moments I was afraid I’d never draw again. When I finally check the time it’s past two o’clock in the morning. My eyes are burning and my hand is cramped. I have to be up in just over two hours.

  But this was it. It’s lifted.

  I flip to a new page, shapes forming in my mind. And I think of something else then, too, the thing I’ve been trying to draw my whole life: that look on my mom’s face when she told me about my sister. Maybe that’s the reason I could never capture that one, either: because I kept trying so hard to make her look so sad. I missed the other dimensions, the guilt and maybe the hope, too, that it would be better with me, it would be different with me, because after everything, that was the part that crushed me. Those things you want to capture in someone else—the darkest ones hide.

  I think about how Sandra was mean sometimes, and funny, the things we used to laugh at together, and then I let myself think about all the horrible things you think about that never go away. I think about her parents and how they have to wake up each day and do crap like—get honked at in traffic, or get guilted for not flossing better at the dentist, and how pointless and enraging it must all feel.

  I’ve grown up knowing how when you leave the world—however it happens, however it went with my sister—you take a part of it with you, like when water dries up in a creek for the summer and it’s silent and lonely and parched. This is something I know now that I didn’t then, though: that almost all of us have wanted to leave it before. Maybe you always do when your days feel like one endless night closing in on you and you lose the light, grope around in darkness before it starts to feel easier to just let it swallow you altogether.

  But I also know you can try to rope off that idea that somehow you’d be better off gone and set your compass to some shore beyond it. I know it can be done. Since March I’ve seen it more than once. Like how Ahmed’s parents made him go see a counselor and he thought she was a hack, and then he went through three or four others until he finally landed on someone he liked and now he literally lists her number in all his profiles in case anyone else needs it. Or like how Mina Lee started taking antidepressants and it made her feel like herself again. Or how—he told me this a few days after she died—that night I found him outside at Yosemite was one of the times Harry felt that same darkness creeping over him, and plans starting to form. Maybe it takes everything you have, every last atom, to sail past that dark idea, and then on arrival all you have to offer the world is your exhausted, battered self. But that’s everything. You know? It’s enough.

  I rub at my eyes with the heel of my hand until they’re dry. I pick my pencil back up.

  I don’t have time to draw a portrait made up of all the carefully pieced-together objects I usually do, but somehow it doesn’t feel right this time, anyway. I leave gaps where I can, as much empty space as possible, and draw with spare, quick strokes. And I watch her emerge.

  Afterward I feel hollowed out, not tired so much as drained, kind of the way it feels to give blood. I tape the picture to the wall and look at it, trying to imagine what Regina will think of it and whether it’s the kind of statement and impact she wants. I make a few small adjustments, then lie in bed, my whole body aching, and watch the sun come up.

  Art doesn’t change the ending. It doesn’t let you lose yourself that way—the opposite, really; it calls you from the darkness, into the glaring, unforgiving light. But at least—this is why it will always feel like a calling to me—it lets you not be so alone.

  That’s what I can do here. I can give form and shape to what everyone’s feeling, a picture of her that feels as true as anything else has this past year. Maybe that’s the only way you heal.

  Or maybe that isn’t quite true, either—you never quite heal. But at least you get to say you’re sorry.

  I pull Regina aside at the latenight to give her my picture, all nerves. She doesn’t say anything for a long time. Finally I stick my hands in my pockets and say, “What do you think?”

  Her eyes go wet. “Oh, Danny.”

  I nudge at a rip in the carpet with my foot. “It’s all right?”

  “Thank you,” she says. “I mean it. Thank you.” Regina’s not a hugger, but—impulsively—she hugs me. When she does, something lifts off my shoulders, the ground leveling underneath me. She lets go and wipes her eyes, and then I can see her gathering herself, plunging whatever was behind those tears and that hug back down inside. “I’ll go scan it. I’m almost done with the layout.”

  We’d talked about all the different things we could include in the center spread, interviews or hotline numbers or a photo collage, but in the end Regina wanted something stark and simple, lots of white space. Before we send it off Francesca guards the door to make sure Mr. Renato doesn’t come in and we all gather around the computer to see how it came out. There’s an essay Regina wrote about the day she watched from across the academic court as they cleared out Sandra’s locker, shoving everything into a garbage bag that they knotted closed, and on the opposite page, the full page, is my drawing of her. We left my name off it, just in case, and it feels better that way, too, less like I was doing it for my own sake.

  Our gamble is that the administration will let it go. (And maybe a part of Regina’s gamble, I think, is that they’ll feel shamed by the knowledge that they would’ve stopped us if they’d known about it. Or maybe she doesn’t care either way, maybe she wouldn’t mind getting in trouble for it.)

  When we’re finished that night, all the lights off and all of us dispersed through the dark parking lot, Harry drives me home. We still have to look up how to get to my new place.

  I’m exhausted. Usually getting the paper sent off to the printer in time is a rush, but it was more subdued this time, and my energy is sapped. Harry’s quiet as we drive down Bubb toward the freeway, and at first I think it’s just because he’s tired, too, but then when we turn onto Stevens Creek he says, �
��You know Regina knew, right?”

  “She knew what?”

  “Sandra talked about it sometimes.” He stops at the light before 85, and when we go under a streetlamp the shadows carve deep lines in his face. “She’d say things like she’d rather be dead or how it would be easier to just kill herself. Regina never thought she meant it.”

  My organs all constrict. I don’t have to ask why Regina thought that. It seems obvious now, now that we’ve sat through all the assemblies and panicked every time anyone seemed especially down about something or bombed a final or had a bad breakup, but before that I couldn’t count the number of times I’ve heard someone say basically the same thing. I probably wouldn’t have taken it seriously, either.

  “No, I didn’t know that.”

  “Yeah. When she told me—it was a few days after—I had this feeling she was just never going to be okay again.”

  “You still think that?”

  “I don’t know.” The light turns green, and he eases the car onto the freeway. “I think Regina keeps thinking about—you remember that one woman who came to talk to us from Stanford psych or whatever? The lady who made everyone put the crisis hotlines in our phones? Honestly, partly I think she was full of shit because she doesn’t understand what Sandra’s family was like, but I think Regina keeps thinking how she said if you’re depressed enough to kill yourself it’s a treatable illness. So Sandra died of a treatable illness. And, I mean, how do you get past that, right? How do you not just lose yourself in all the ways it could’ve gone differently? I hope—” His voice cracks and he smiles a little, embarrassed. “I hope Regina gets what she’s looking for in this. You know?”

  I do know. I say, “You think it’s a good idea?”

  “No.” He taps the fingers on his left hand gently against the steering wheel. “But I still want her to have it.”

  If they really love each other, if they’re right for each other and they flood all those empty spaces around one another with enough warmth and light to hold at bay all the worst trappings of the world, then if I care about them, that should be enough for me. I know that. And I hope I’d be a big enough person to let it lie.

  But I just—I don’t see it. And I know you can see things as you decide, shift the objects in your world so the light falls on them the way you want it to, but there are different ways to love someone and I’m pretty sure Harry feels the same way toward Regina as I do.

  We go by the Vallco exit, a few minutes later the exit for the Winchester Mystery House and Valley Fair. “Okay, seriously,” Harry says, his voice lighter in a way that seems not forced, exactly, but something maybe closer to determined. Harry believes in positivity. “How are we still not to your house? We’ve been driving like thirty years.”

  I don’t quite have it in me to match that level of jokiness, but I give it my best shot. “We’ve been driving, like, four freeway exits.”

  But then we both lose the energy for it, I think, and we’re quiet again. We pass the 880 interchange, the point where it always starts feeling like you’re leaving the boundaries of the known world.

  “Every now and then at night,” Harry says, “when I’m trying to sleep, I’ll feel all weird and I swear to God, it’s knowing that you’re, like, ninety miles away.”

  Something catches in my heart. I try to keep my voice steady. “It’s not even twenty miles. It says it right there on your map.”

  “It feels like ninety.”

  “It does.” Except there are only ten more minutes now before I’m home and he drops me off and leaves. I wish it were ninety, just for tonight.

  I lean back against the seat. We go under an underpass, into what starts feeling like the heart of San José to me. I feel that same spreading, frightened sadness of being home by yourself after dark, something I don’t usually feel when he’s there.

  “So you still don’t know why, huh?” Harry says. “You never found out if you were right about your parents trying to run out on their debt?”

  “No.”

  “Did you ever find out more about those people your dad was obsessed with?”

  “Not really.”

  “Who are they? I wanted to look them up.”

  “I did that already.” I reach out to change the radio station, but Harry swats my hand away.

  “So who are they?”

  I give him their names only because Harry’s stubborn; I can’t imagine actually saying no and then expending the necessary energy to stave him off until probably the end of time. When I do, a weird expression goes over his face.

  “Like, Clay Ballard as in that billionaire guy in venture capital or whatever?”

  “Yeah, that one.”

  “Dude, I know them, kind of.” He sits up straighter. “Or my parents do. The guy donated to one of my dad’s campaigns.”

  For some reason this never occurred to me—that Mr. Wong might know them. I should’ve wondered. He knows everyone, and, especially if you’re up at a certain level, I think, the Bay Area’s only so big. “You know him? You’ve talked with him?”

  “I met him once at one of my dad’s fund-raisers. He was hosting it at his house. That’s…really strange it would be him. He was kind of weird.”

  “Weird how?”

  “Just like, socially awkward. He has this really harsh laugh that sounds like a machine gun.” Harry demonstrates: ehh-ehh-ehh-ehh-ehh. “And he cornered me and gave me this long spiel about how he has Chinese American daughters and how important it is for his daughters to get to see Chinese American leaders and how he’s very passionate about China and Chinese Americans in America. I was like, um, all right, thank you?”

  “That’s awkward. How well do your parents know him?”

  “Not very, I don’t think. I can ask. I’ll ask.”

  “Yeah, no, don’t. You ever see him besides that one time?”

  “Not that I can remember.”

  I think about that fear that sparked in all the lines of my dad’s face when I asked about their debt. “Did he seem threatening? Can you picture him trying to ruin someone’s life if they owed him money?”

  “I didn’t get that vibe. Maybe a little bit cutthroat like every VC ever, but he was also kind of—earnest. He’s that guy who genuinely thinks the startups he’s investing in are going to change the world. He was weird but in the way that like—I don’t know, like Mike Narvin will probably grow up kind of weird. Like a rich white guy kind of way.”

  “I love Mike Narvin.”

  “I know you do. But he’s a little weird, right? Picture him twenty years from now with a shitload of money and a hot wife and a job where all day people tell him he’s all smart and important, and that’s Clay Ballard.” Harry pauses. “Honestly, he doesn’t really strike me as the kind of guy your dad would know. He was like…really Silicon Valley.”

  I take a second or two to answer that. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means—” He winces. “Come on, Danny, not like that. You always think I’m such an elitist. He was just like extremely venture capital-y, you know? I can’t imagine your dad, like, getting steaks with him in Palo Alto or whatever. Do you think maybe your mom—didn’t you say for a while your mom—”

  I stare at him hard until he looks away. “Didn’t I say my mom what?”

  “Nothing. Forget it.”

  He means, obviously, did my mom ever clean their house or something. Mrs. Wong is the VP of some tech firm, and I remember how she tried to cover her surprise when she asked what my parents did. At the time I definitely kind of hated her for it, but in a way she was right—my mom runs herself ragged working and look what good it did her, did any of us.

  Harry chews on his lip for a few seconds, then he says, “Danny, I didn’t mean—”

  “Forget about it.” I guess it’s not entirely outside the realm of possibility. “I should just stop speculating, probably. What’s the point.”

  Harry starts to say something, stops. I say, “What?”

&nb
sp; “Nah, never mind.”

  “Okay.” I know him well enough to know if I don’t take the bait he’ll probably just say it anyway. I’m right; it takes about forty seconds. He clears his throat. I say, dryly, “There it is.”

  “Yeah, shut up. I was just going to say if it were me and I really thought it had something to do with why my parents moved me to the boonies or if they were really trying to hide out, I wouldn’t let it go. But I guess you’re you.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing. It doesn’t mean anything. I can just see you letting it go, that’s all.”

  “I’m too tired to feel insulted, but check back in the morning after I’ve slept.”

  He laughs softly. “You don’t sleep anymore. You have to be up in like four hours.”

  We’re on my street now (it will never feel like mine) and he turns into the parking lot. The unprotected left I hate is easy when it’s late at night, when you wouldn’t mind it taking longer. I say, “Thanks for the ride.”

  “Yeah, anytime.”

  “You won’t fall asleep on the way home, right?”

  “Nah, I’m good.”

  I’m reaching to shut the door when he says, “Hey, Danny, wait.”

  And I turn back, something in his voice drawing my pulse faster a few ticks. He says, “Ah—I go right out of the parking lot, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  He was going to say something else, I know. I heard it there. But he doesn’t; he smiles kind of tightly and then lifts his hand in a goodbye and waits for me to close the door instead.

  When I get home it’s empty, and there’s a note on the table saying my dad won’t be home until three in the morning. I am, it turns out, more hungry than tired; also, I have a hard time sleeping when it’s just me here. I boil water for instant ramen and crack a few eggs into it, and then throw in some frozen broccoli, too, which always feels kind of like a bid for karma. I microwave some frozen dumplings and then lose my appetite two in. They’re better when my mom cooks them. She actually uses a pan.