Many Points of Me

by Caroline Gertler

  “It was dark early that night, so it must’ve been winter,” Theo begins. I only heard him tell this story once, at the shiva after Dad’s funeral, and that was more than enough times for me. But now it sounds like a story he’s told, either out loud or to himself, a thousand times before. “It was just Georgia and me, and Hank, and it was dark enough for us to see stars through his telescope.”

  Hearing Theo tell it brings me back to those nights. Dad’s biggest passion, aside from art, was astronomy. Studying the stars through his telescope on our balcony. He’d let us join him sometimes. Dad called Theo and me his binary stars: two stars that orbit around the same center and appear from Earth to be a single point of light.

  “And what did you ask him that night?” Mom prompts.

  Theo continues, “I asked him, ‘Have you ever tried to paint the stars?’”

  It hurts in my chest, hearing him repeat it now, a question that’s echoed in my head countless times since he first asked it.

  Immediately I wished I’d been the one who’d asked. Because Dad did that thing he did when someone said something that was important and interesting and really made him think: he got all quiet. He put his fingers to his lips and thumb on his chin and didn’t say a word.

  Other people might feel the need to speak, to answer your question right away. Not Dad. He knew it was okay to take his time, to find the right words. It made me sparkle inside, the times I said something that Dad reacted to that way. More often, it was Theo who said those kinds of things.

  “After a long pause, Dad—I mean Hank—said, ‘Not yet, Theo. But I will.’”

  Wait—did Theo just call him Dad? Sometimes he did that, by mistake. Because I always called him Dad, of course. And all he ever knew was my dad. Until we both lost him.

  But hearing Theo call him Dad now, even by accident, rankles me in a way it never did when Dad was here. I’m the only person who has the right to call him that. He was my dad. Not Theo’s.

  I want to go out there and yell at them all, to tell them Theo wasn’t that important to Dad. I was. But that’s not the truth. We all know it.

  The anger in my belly moves down into my feet, and I’m walking into the room before I can stop myself.

  Just as Mom says, “And he did, didn’t he, Theo? He painted the stars?”

  Tears of joy spring to Theo’s eyes as he nods yes. Actual tears. He swipes at them beneath his glasses. Harriet grabs his hand in hers.

  I can’t stand to watch anymore. I run back to my room before they look up and see me.

  I don’t need to hear Theo retelling the rest of the story. I know it. I lived it—I was there when Dad made those paintings.

  Dad didn’t paint the actual stars. Copying constellations wasn’t what interested him. Instead, he made up his own groups of stars: asterisms.

  Asterisms are patterns of stars that people recognize, like the Big Dipper, but that aren’t official, like constellations. Most people think the Big Dipper is a constellation, but it’s actually an asterism that’s part of the constellation Ursa Major, the big bear.

  Dad brought home giant canvases as big as windows, which made you feel like you were immersed in the galaxy. First he primed them in white. Then our house filled with buckets and buckets of black paint. Different types of black: bone black, carbon black, lamp black, roman black. Those cans of paint are still lined up on the wooden trestles Dad used to store his paints. Along with cans of every other color he used. They’re probably dried up and evaporated by now, but Mom doesn’t have the heart to throw them out.

  He laid the canvases on the floor, and he poured the paint directly from the buckets. Thicker and thicker and thicker onto the canvas, until it dried in crusts and waves and pools. Mixing those black paints to form his own unique background.

  And then he dug into the thick background with stippling tools, to create wells for the glowy-white mixture of paint he used to make the stars.

  He invented his own asterisms. Three of them.

  First Bird in the Tree, inspired by the birds of Central Park, which he’d studied for an earlier series he’d made. Then Sally in the Stars, for Mom. And third, Man on the Moon, his self-portrait.

  They’re powerful and majestic, and everyone said the asterism series was going to be his breakout work. The work that would launch him into being one of the greats. Whatever that meant. He said that he wanted the series to hang together in its own room or gallery space, like the Rothko Chapel.

  But he couldn’t keep them together—we needed the money to live, Mom explains, and each of the three paintings sold for a lot of money: Bird in the Tree to a private collector, Sally in the Stars to the Met, and Man on the Moon to the Whitney Museum. I don’t know for how much, but enough that Mom and Dad would giggle at night about how they didn’t have to worry about bills and expenses the same way anymore. Mom said he should make a hundred asterisms, so she’d never have to work again. But Dad said four was a good number for a series. One more and he’d be done.

  Dad primed the canvas for the fourth asterism. But then he got sick and was gone before he could paint it, and that plain white unfinished canvas still sits in the corner by his paint trestles, where he’d left it to dry.

  Blank—a big empty question mark.

  The day Dad died, Mom held me close and whispered things in my ear, between sobs, about how much he loved me. She said Dad told her that he’d planned for his last asterism to be of me.

  But there’s no real proof of what Dad planned. Nothing on paper.

  Mom says the asterisms came pretty much fully formed to Dad. He worked out some details for the first three on random scraps of paper as he painted. But he didn’t make any actual studies for them, like he did for his Bird series. So there aren’t any sketches for the last asterism to show what he was planning to do.

  Maybe what he told Mom was just an idea. Maybe he would’ve changed his mind. Maybe he never really said that and she made it up, to try to make me feel better. Because he left nothing—nothing that can be put on display in the Met and written up in the catalogue to show that he meant to paint me.

  At first, after the funeral and shiva and all, Mom turned that unfinished canvas to face the wall. She said she couldn’t stand it looking at us. But we both thought it was worse seeing the back—the wooden frame, the staples tacking the canvas to the stretcher. So Mom turned it to face us again.

  Eventually she decided that there’s something nice about wondering exactly how the last asterism painting would’ve looked, like there’s still an open conversation we can have with Dad in our heads about it. But for me, it’s just a reminder of the emptiness. Like a tombstone.

  As the months—and then a year, and more months—passed, the canvas became kind of invisible. It faded into the background, becoming a part of the white wall behind it.

  Until now.

  Until Theo tells that story about how he inspired Dad.

  Which makes my throat tight and my eyes burn, and I bite the inside of my cheek to keep myself from crying. I wish Dad had wanted to make an asterism of me. But without any proof—I won’t let myself believe it. Sometimes Theo and I talk about it, and he’s sure it would’ve been me, to complete the family.

  But who’s to say it wouldn’t have been Theo?

  Though I’d never say that out loud to Theo. I don’t want him to think he might’ve been that special to Dad. That important. Even if he was.

  Chapter

  Three

  Sometimes, people change. Or the way you feel about someone or something changes. It could be lots of little things that make your feelings change. Or one big thing. Or a combination of both. That’s how it is with me and art.

  In school the next day, Monday, there’s a flyer printed on green paper, stapled to the bulletin board at the entrance to Mr. Butterweit’s art studio. The announcement of the annual NYC ART competition. Now that we’re in sixth grade, we finally get to enter, and I’m supposed to be excited. Instead, I feel like I’ve
swallowed a rusty anchor.

  NYC ART is a super-important citywide art competition for sixth through twelfth graders. Ten winners from each grade get their entries displayed in an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the spring—this year, the same time as the opening of the Hank Rosenbloom exhibition. And they win a one-thousand-dollar award to use for art classes or supplies.

  No one’s more determined to get into NYC ART than Theo. He wants to go to Evergreen, a specialized arts high school, for ninth grade, and he thinks that if he gets into NYC ART three years in a row, it’ll make his application an ace. Not to mention that he’s been keeping a list of what he could do with that thousand-dollar award. His mom doesn’t have a lot of extra money for art. He relies on me to share my endless supplies.

  “Self-portrait, that’s a good one.” Theo reads the theme of this year’s competition over my shoulder. I catch a whiff of pretzels and hummus on his breath, and that, combined with the glow of copper—the color I’d use to paint Theo—jars with the minty green of the NYC ART flyer. My stomach clenches with queasiness. I used to want nothing more than to get into NYC ART, but now I’m not so sure.

  “Self-portrait, ugh.” I’ve been making self-portraits since I first learned to draw a stick figure at the age of two. It’s only the most common art-class assignment ever. But now that it counts for something—a competition—making a self-portrait seems like the worst possible idea.

  “C’mon, self-portrait is so easy,” Theo scoffs, flicking his head to sweep the rusty hair out of his eyes.

  “I was hoping for still life.” Copying a bunch of objects on a table—that’d be easy. In French they call it nature morte, which literally means nature dead. The whole point of a still life is that it doesn’t move. It doesn’t change. It just is. Unlike people, who never seem to stay the same.

  I take a deep breath as we read through the competition guidelines:

  ☐ All submissions must be original work.

  ☐ Entries must be submitted by a teacher—maximum four entries per grade.

  ☐ There may be more than one winner per school, but no more than two per grade level.

  ☐ All media are acceptable, and creative use of materials is encouraged.

  “We’ve got this, G. We’re in it together, right? Team Theo-Dare–Super G!” Theo puts out his hands for a double fist-bump secret handshake, but other girls are filing past us now—Harper Willis, Violet Avilez, and Chloe Chen—and I pretend I don’t notice.

  I inhale the smells as we walk into the art studio—the mix of oil with pine and clay and charcoal. Smells that offer comfort in their familiarity, and worry. Worry that I’ll never make the kind of art everyone expects of me. The kind of art Theo can make, that Dad made.

  Mr. Butterweit looks up from the papers he’s flipping through at his large metal desk at the front of the room. “NYC ART!” he says to us. “You two ready to begin? The countdown is on.”

  Entries are due in two weeks.

  Theo gives a thumbs-up. I roll my eyes. I’m not sure I want to begin. Can begin.

  Other kids ripple around us, dropping their backpacks and taking their places at the stools along both sides of the drafting tables.

  Mr. Butterweit’s made it clear from the beginning of the year that Theo and I are the best artists in sixth grade and should be aiming to get into NYC ART. Theo because, no question, he’s the best. And me, because, yes, I do have skill. Or did. But mostly—I bet—because of who my dad was.

  Mr. Butterweit’s eyes popped out of their sockets on the first day of art when I confirmed that I am Georgia Rosenbloom, daughter of the Hank Rosenbloom.

  “I love Hank Rosenbloom. Adore his work,” Mr. Butterweit said, rubbing his hands together like he couldn’t wait to get a piece of Hank Rosenbloom.

  I gave back the tight smile I’d learned to give to people saying things like that. First, it shows how weird things get when people talk about artists in the present tense, like Dad still is. Even when he isn’t. Second, someone like Mr. B thinks of Dad as his art, as a product, like a beautiful thing you can buy in a store.

  But he was my dad. He sang me “Moonshadow” at bedtime and “Morning Has Broken” to wake me up, taught me to ride a bike, flipped blueberry pancakes for weekend breakfasts, and hugged me tight in his arms whenever we said goodbye.

  Except for the last time. Because he couldn’t.

  I swallow down that thought, biting the sore on the inside of my cheek that’s come from so many months of holding in tears.

  Theo and I go to our seats at the drafting table. He sits on the window side, all the way at the head of the table, as close to Mr. B’s desk as possible. I sit a few seats down, diagonal from him, on the side facing the windows. I like to look up and stare outside when I’m thinking. Theo doesn’t need to look anywhere but at his own work.

  I’m relieved to get away from Theo and his copper color and hummus breath and hair flicking. And his concern for me. When he’s not trying to be funny and saying things like “Georgia, reenter the orbit,” and telling me about the latest adventures of Theo-Dare and Super G, he’s asking me if I’m okay.

  I’m tired of it.

  And I like that the new girl, Harper Willis, chooses to sit next to me. That we’re becoming friends.

  Today there are handheld mirrors at everyone’s places in addition to the usual drawing paper and baskets of sharpened pencils and gummy erasers. The unexpectedness of the mirrors creates a wave of chatter and giggles. The noise rises to a roar in the room as kids make funny faces at themselves.

  “Quiet down, class! We’re going to start our study of self-portraits today,” Mr. B says as the voices fall to a hush. “The NYC ART competition theme has just been announced, and while only a few of you will enter, we’ll all be working toward completing self-portraits. So let’s start by taking a look at yourselves.”

  “Your hair is getting longer,” Harper whispers, holding up her mirror, distracting me.

  My almost-black hair has always been chin length, with bangs cut straight across, just above my eyebrows. I never cared much one way or another until Harper started telling me I should grow it long. “It’s your best feature,” she says.

  Now my hair falls to my shoulders, and I like how I can see it out of the corner of my eyes when I turn my head to look in the mirror. I like how growing out my bangs and tucking them behind my ears or clipping them to the side means that my green eyes pop like sea glass. Like something Harper would’ve found on the beach where she grew up.

  Most of the kids at our school have been together since kindergarten, but Harper’s family moved here this year from California. Right away everyone noticed her. It was hard not to. Especially because she came after the school year started, just before Halloween.

  There’d been five days of rain and wind, bringing a heavy gloom to the city. When it cleared, Harper arrived. She was all brightness and light with her golden-brown skin and long, curly brown hair that looks like it’s never been cut. It falls past her waist. And it isn’t just one shade of brown. Sun bleached, it has so many colors in it, from oak to bronze to ash.

  When I first met Harper, I was certain that the color I’d pick to paint her would be marigold. Bright and sunny. It was like Harper brought the sun with her.

  I knew who she’d become friends with, and it wasn’t me and Theo. She’d fit right in with Violet Avilez and Chloe Chen, the prettiest girls in our grade. The girls who get the starring roles in the school plays, with their shiny hair, eyeliner, and quick way with words. They made a seat for her at their table in the cafeteria and got her a mermaid costume to match theirs for the middle school Halloween party in the gym. Chloe was the pink mermaid; Violet was purple. But I liked Harper’s mermaid best: aqua. Not the marigold I would’ve chosen, but once I saw her as aqua, I realized almost any color could work for her. Her colors keep changing.

  Theo and I dressed as artists, which was kind of pointless because everyone already thinks of us as artis
ts. We were Theo and Vincent van Gogh. He was Theo, of course, and I was Vincent, with a bandage taped over my right ear. Theo was so proud that he found the perfect blue hat lined in black faux fur to order on the Internet and a green overcoat of his mom’s that I could borrow to wear, so I looked just like the real thing. I carried a paint palette and Theo held a blank canvas, and we’d form these vignettes around the room where I’d actually paint on the canvas that he held up for me.

  It was all kind of fun until the Mermaids noticed us, and I saw the look on Violet’s and Chloe’s faces. And I suddenly felt like a total weirdo dressed as a man who’d chopped off his own ear. For the first time, I cared what those girls thought. I ran to the bathroom and pretended to Theo that I’d gotten sick and had to go home.

  Theo walked home with me and offered to bring some toast or saltines from his apartment since our moms had gone to a faculty party. I said he’d better keep his distance because I didn’t want to get him sick. But the fact is, I didn’t want to end up telling Theo the truth. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings because he wasn’t embarrassed by our costumes. I gave him back his mom’s coat, but he insisted that I keep the blue hat, to remember how great our costumes were. I stuffed it on a top shelf of my bookcase because I didn’t want to remember, but every once in a while I get a glimpse of it, and I feel that embarrassment all over again.

  Now I tune back in to Mr. B asking us what we think it means to make a self-portrait. “Why would an artist be compelled to draw or paint their own image?”

  Luca Banks raises his hand, bouncing off his stool. “Because he thinks he’s the best-looking guy he knows!”

  Everyone laughs. Even Mr. B chuckles.

  “Faces are hard,” Chloe calls out. “Maybe they like the challenge?”