by Annie Harper
It goes without saying that I am going to miss you a hell of a lot, Scott. You are the most important person in my life. And I would be lying if I said that you moving to a city like Toronto is the greatest idea, because I know you. But I also know that you would do anything for the people that you care about, and that you care about your wife (and best friend :P) very much. And who knows, I may join you sooner than you think, because, honestly, I’m not sure how much more of this country bumpkin lifestyle I can take. (Yes, I know, you are rolling your eyes because we both know I not-so-secretly love it here.)
Giving you the biggest hug, because I know you want it even if you complain,
Love,
Your crazy fucker of a best friend,
Nikki
What The Heart Wants
Naomi Tajedler
“Noam!”
Today, Noam thinks she isn’t living up to her name—it is not a day for being pleasant and sweet, especially if she has to wake up and leave the safety of her bed.
“Noam, put on your clothes, it’s time to go to school for your summer class!”
Noam buries her nose in her pillow and lets her body slowly awaken within the confines of her well-worn sheets. A smile slowly spreads on her face as she realizes: It’s not just any morning.
It is summer, finally. No more boring regular classes, no more giggling girls who point at her when they think she doesn’t see them, no more feeling alone whenever her friend is not with her—at least for two months.
“Nomka, I swear to God—” her mother exclaims, simultaneously knocking on and opening the door.
“You don’t believe in God, Mamushka,” Noam retorts, then throws off her beloved blanket and smirks at her mother.
Myriam Geffen is not a woman to be played with or mocked, and nobody knows this better than her daughters. However, as they’ve grown, she seems to have accepted the idea that she is raising two sarcastic young women. It’s not as though she hasn’t entertained the idea of carrying an “It’s called sarcasm” sign herself.
“Har,” she deadpans with a raised eyebrow, “hardy har har, bubby. Now get up and get ready; we’re leaving in ten minutes.” She points a manicured finger at Noam as she leaves the room. “Whether you are ready or not.”
“Aye aye, Captain,” Noam calls; her smile softens. “And good morning, fellas,” she adds sotto voce as her eyes roam over the posters that cover her bedroom walls: Albert Einstein and her favorite quote of his: “If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts;” Jackson Pollock captured in the middle of a dripping action; Leonardo da Vinci’s self-portrait; Uma Thurman in all of her Pulp Fiction glory; and a collage Noam made as a tribute to Natalie Portman.
Noam cracks her neck a couple of times and stretches like a cat until she hears her back pop. Now she can face the day.
In the shower, she goes through the motions as quickly as she can. Her hands cup her breasts in a strictly sanitary fashion—they just get in her way—and she towels herself dry as fast as she can without rubbing the raw patches of skin she scratched in her sleep. She ties her long red hair into a messy bun. One of these days, she’s going to cut it all off and be free from its tyranny. It’s not that she hates it—or her breasts, now that she thinks about them—but ever since puberty, she’s thought her body is no longer her friend. It has become barely more than an acquaintance she’s lost touch with, not an enemy per se but not something she can count on either.
Her outfit is waiting for her on her desk chair—a purple T-shirt with wide, reptilian eyes printed on it, her worn denim overalls and her graphic socks and sneakers. She hops around the room as she dresses.
“Noam!”
“Ready, Mother!” she calls back, stomping down the stairs with an angelic smile on her face. She reaches for her bag, which hangs from the handrail.
“Noam, you need to eat something,” Myriam says. Her voice carries the weight of the countless times this conversation has been held.
Noam looks away with a wince and is careful to mold her face into a neutral mask when she turns back to face her mother. It’s not that she doesn’t want to eat, or that she wants to starve herself. But she really dislikes breakfasts. And she knows, deep down, that some of the insults thrown at her by the “Geese Girls”—the girls at school who cluck like a flock of birds—have a factual leg to stand on.
Noam is tall and large, there is no way around it—she is her father’s daughter through and through. The only physical trait Noam inherited from her mother’s family is her hazel eyes.
“We’re late already, Mamushka,” Noam says softly, shouldering her messenger bag and clenching her fingers around the strap. “I’ll eat twice as much for lunch, promise.”
Myriam grimaces and cups her youngest daughter’s cheek. “Take a pack of crackers to eat in the car—please?” She pats Noam’s lower back as she passes by.
As Noam reaches into the cupboard for one of the dozens of packs of saltines they always stock, Myriam shares a look with her husband, who has just entered the room all sleepy-headed and sporting a frown of concern born from the years of raising his daughters.
“Have fun, munchkin,” Alan tells Noam, throwing an apple at her. He claps his hands when she deftly catches it. “Star Wars tonight?”
Noam looks at her mother with a raised eyebrow before looking back at her father doubtfully.
Myriam raises her hands in defense. “I am not here tonight,” she reminds the pair. “All you’ll have to do is manage Dana’s disapproval.”
Noam dances around the kitchen and snuggles up to her father. “With any luck,” she whispers, “Dana will be busy with Jackson.” Noam elongates the first vowel of the name in imitation of the affectionate tone her older sister uses when talking about her boyfriend.
“With any luck,” Alan repeats softly. “And, if worse comes to worst, she’ll fall asleep da moment da credits start anyway.” He kisses her forehead, his Chicagoan accent coming at full-force this morning. “Now go, and make us proud.”
Noam rolls her eyes but blows him a kiss as she follows Myriam out of the kitchen.
“I’m proud of you no matter what,” Alan tells the empty kitchen.
The classroom looks different than it does during the rest of the year—all the tables have been pushed to the side to make room for easels and stools, which are set up in a circle around an empty stage.
“Nomnom, over here!”
Noam waves at her best friend. Charlotte—Charlie, as she prefers to be called—is, in many respects, Noam’s complete antithesis. She is dark-skinned where Noam is practically see-through, loud where Noam is quiet, outgoing where Noam keeps to herself and short where Noam is, seemingly, all limbs. The girls are on opposite ends of a spectrum, and yet they had immediately connected, feeling a bond beyond blood, religion or looks.
Noam kisses the top of Charlie’s head and grabs the closest stool. “How on earth did you manage to get here before me, Miss Montceau?” she asks and is already pulling pencils and chalks from her bag.
Charlie gives her a look and plays with the one long braid saved from her latest haircut. It’s the kind of look Charlie keeps strictly for her best friend, when Noam seems particularly unperceptive.
“The Colo-onel,” she replies, and Noam winces in support.
A retired colonel from the French army, Charlie’s father applies his military upbringing to the way he and his wife Karen raise Charlie and her three brothers—two of whom have already left for college as far from home and as soon as possible.
“He made Andy drive me here at too-soon-o’clock to make sure I wouldn’t be late,” Charlie adds with an eye roll so emphatic it nearly gives Noam a migraine.
“Too-soon-o’clock, huh?” Noam doesn’t try to hide her laughter. “Is that military lingo, or…?”
Charlie slaps her shoulder. “You’re not even funny,” Charlie says under her breath, but her dimples show.
The two girls keep up their banter,
and Noam starts doodling with chalk on the side of her easel as they wait for their teacher and more students enter the room.
“What do you think we’re going to start with?” Charlie asks, rolling a pen between her fingers like a miniature twirling baton.
Noam shrugs. “No clue, dude,” she says, with a thoughtful look. “Still life, maybe?”
They slowly turn their heads toward the platform in the middle of the classroom, far from anodyne in Noam’s opinion, and Charlie’s smile turns predatory.
Noam turns back to her doodles—half abstract patterns, half elaborate phoenix—in an attempt to avoid her best friend’s inevitable nosiness.
“Aw, come on, Nom,” Charlie whines, standing to wrap her arms around Noam’s chest and hook her chin over Noam’s shoulder. “Models! Nude! It’s going to be fun!”
Noam stays silent and her face warms, and Charlie leans forward. “Better get used to seeing a cock before you have to do anything with it,” she whispers. Noam neatly elbows her in the ribs.
Charlie’s insistence on talking—lewdly, at that—about Noam’s non-existent sex life is her only flaw, as far as Noam is concerned, but it is a discomfiting one, and one that she cannot simply brush under the proverbial carpet as a simple “Charlie-ism.” The sharp intake of breath brushing her ear tells her that Charlie knows she’s just gone one step too far.
But before Charlie can apologize, their teacher comes in and wins all of Noam’s attention.
All year long, Mr. Siski has nurtured and encouraged Noam’s love for art and her burgeoning talent. He’s given her various contacts in New York to consider for an internship in the summer between graduation and college and college brochures—including some from overseas schools—so she can figure out what type of artistic career she wants to pursue. He has also taken a special interest in her habit of making quick sketches of her classmates. Some students—mostly the Geese Girls—once implied that the bond between the art teacher and his teenage student was not strictly professional. But luckily for him, Alojszy Siski’s stellar reputation at New Trier—along with his open gayness—had nipped that rumor in the bud.
Noam smiles warmly at the teacher who commands all seventeen juniors and seniors simply with his presence.
“Good morning, students.” Standing on the platform, he greets them in his warm voice. Most of the teenagers reply. “Ready to unleash your inner artists?”
That earns him a couple of laughs, and he smiles benevolently. There’s a good reason he’s a student favorite.
“Now, this morning, we’ll start with some basics,” he tells them, “so I can judge your abilities and your strengths.”
“Basics?” Charlie calls, her hand raised, and Mr. Siski nods.
“Basics, like the tools,” he replies. “Graphite, chalk, charcoal, all on still life for now.” As he enumerates various drawing techniques, the tall man pulls apples, oranges and a container of berries from his bag with his long fingers. For not the first time this year, Noam sketches his long, slender silhouette on a corner of her pad, trying to capture the elegance that radiates from her teacher, from his mane of hair to his bushy eyebrows down to his slim torso and the strength of his legs, vowing to come back to his face and to the way his blue eyes shine as he gets more animated.
“And then?” Charlie pushes, tapping her pencil rhythmically against her easel.
“And then, Miss Charlotte,” Mr. Siski replies, his voice growing louder, “those of you who can use their pens will start working on models in this room. The others will have a catch-up course next door.”
Charlie smiles at him and makes a little whooping sound—and she’s not the only one to show enthusiasm for the upcoming portion of the program.
“Perverts,” Noam mutters.
“All right, all right, keep your hormones under control.” Mr. Siski arranges his fruit on the stage. “Now, do your thing, I’ll be walking around if you need help.”
They start hesitantly, but after the first twenty minutes, the only sounds in the room are the scratching of pencils on paper and Siski’s whispers when a student asks for help.
Noam draws several compositions on the same sheet of paper—just one apple, all the apples, a strawberry with heavy shadows—before trying her hand at the whole composition on a new sheet.
Next to her, Charlie sketches in what Noam can only describe as an art brut style: strong lines crisscrossing and even punching through the paper in Charlie’s enthusiasm. Even if this isn’t Noam’s favorite style, it’s not without interest. Art has always been something that the two friends have shared; they first became friends when they reached for the same red crayon in kindergarten. And throughout the more recent years, whenever classes have become too hard to handle, whenever Charlie can’t deal with her father’s strictness, they have used a common sketchbook to talk via their doodles in a drawn conversation in which one finishes a sketch started by the other.
Thirty minutes fly by before Mr. Siski calls for a break. With a carefree smile, Noam studies the drawings her classmates have produced. Not everything is good, naturally, but everybody has the same sparkle in their eyes from satisfaction at being able to draw to their hearts’ content. To know that she shares this feeling with her classmates, to see with her own eyes that other people are just as passionate about it as she is, is a revelation and a relief.
Art classes during the year had not been suffused with the same unity of spirit, nor were Noam’s classmates as outgoing about that animating passion as she was. And Charlie, though she loved art, was not consumed by it as Noam was. But from the smiles on their faces now, the relief shown in their slowly relaxing shoulders, Noam realizes that maybe she’s not as alone in her love for art as she had thought.
The morning is over before Noam knows it, and she has a dozen drawings on her pad—drawings that she will work on over and over. No matter how much she works on her drawings, lines and colors, she’s never satisfied. Noam aspires to be like her idol, Jackson Pollock, and just give in to an action painting, just accept that a first sketch can be her final work, but she also is aware that she needs training first. Pollock went through classical training, didn’t he? All in good time, that’s her motto.
All in good time.
Charlie has to trot to keep up as they walk to the food trucks near the school entrance to get their lunches. Noam doesn’t walk fast, but her long legs definitely give her an advantage.
“Taco Nano?” Noam asks. Charlie nods enthusiastically; tacos are always good, in her book. It is an unspoken rule of their friendship that the Mexican dish is a peace offering.
As they get in line behind most of their classmates and the other students attending different summer classes at the school, Noam turns to look at Charlie.
“Look, nugget,” she says softly to keep the conversation between them, “I love you, and I know you mean well. But,” she warns, raising a finger before Charlie can open her mouth, “stop trying to embarrass me into punching my V-card.”
“Oh Nom,” Charlie replies, frowning. “I don’t… I don’t mean to embarrass you. I just—I think… I only want you to know what it feels like, to love someone and have them love you back.”
Noam smiles sadly at her friend. “But love is not necessarily linked to sex, is it?”
They move forward in line and Charlie shrugs. “Of course not,” she replies slowly. After a pause she adds, “But it’s a damn fine bonus.”
Noam rolls her eyes and bumps Charlie’s shoulder with her elbow. “You would know.”
“Are you calling me a slut?”
“I would never,” Noam retorts innocently, hand on her heart.
Charlie frowns before letting out a bark of a laugh. “All right, then. I was afraid for a moment.”
They both explode into peals of laughter, which earn them startled looks from the other people in line.
“Hey, chicas,” the taco vendor welcomes them with a wide smile. “What can I get you
?”
“One hard-shell, carnitas taco for that one,” Noam says, pointing her thumb at Charlie, “and one complete breakfast taco for me—please,” she adds as an afterthought, smiling with all of her teeth to make amends for her lapse of manners.
“Anything else?”
“A side of rice and beans—extra chili,” Charlie calls, “and two apple juices.”
“All right, girls. Wait on the side; your order will be coming right up!”
Charlie hip-checks Noam out of the way to pay for them both—“Puh-lease”—and they move aside to wait for their food.
They’re not alone. Noam spots their teacher, deep in conversation with a tall man who has his back turned. As he picks up his own lunch, Mr. Siski sees them and gives them a smile.
“Did you enjoy this morning’s class?” he asks, passing an avocado-covered taco to his friend.
Noam nods enthusiastically, and Charlie smiles at the stranger. “Well,” she says with an angelic smile, “it was fun, but I’m looking forward to this afternoon.”
Noam tries to make her stop, but the two men laugh at her attempt to flirt. “We’ll see if you’re still so emphatic at the end of it,” their teacher says, while his companion snorts into his taco. “Noam, Charlotte, this is Gordon Chevrar, our model for the week.”
“Gordy, please,” Gordon corrects and nods at the two girls.
Charlie beams at him, but Noam’s mind jumps to deconstructing the tall man’s figure into shapes and lines. His skin is lighter than Charlie’s, but a thousand times darker than Noam’s, which only serves to make his green eyes even more remarkable. He’s built like a swimmer, all shoulders and tiny waist. Noam pictures him as a triangle, as a shape with shadows and lines.
“I, for one, am glad that we’re going to see you every day for the next month,” Charlie says. “Right, Nom?”