“I don’t know,” I say, taking a seat at the butcher-block table. “I didn’t apply.” I frown at the banana, knowing that picking the thing up means I’ll have to eat it.
“Wait a minute.” Dad sets his mug down on the counter. “Why didn’t you apply? You worked so hard on your portfolio pieces. What happened?”
“You know what happened.”
Mom died and my dad started to drink.
We did what we had to do in order to get from day to day. Those things did not include essay writing and portfolio development.
Before he can try to initiate some kind of father-daughter-heart-to-heart thing, I shove back my chair, spring to my feet, and cross to the garbage. “It’s okay.” I drop the overly ripe banana into the can with a thump and shrug as if it couldn’t possibly matter. “There’s another project I’m working on. I’ll have plenty to keep me occupied this summer without being a part of City Art. And I can always apply next year if someone drops out. So it’s fine,” I lie. “Look, I’ve gotta go.”
“I can give you a ride to school,” Dad offers.
No. He can’t. Not without being late for work. It’s an empty offer and I can see from the slump of his shoulders that I’m not the only one who knows it. More than anything I want to call him out. But I bite back the angry words and instead say, “Rose said she might wait to walk with me. She’ll never forgive me if I don’t show up.” I shift the bag on my shoulder and make a beeline for the back door.
My hand is on the knob when my father says, “Meri, I’m sorry. I should have asked before about City Art. I know your future is on the line and I—I’m screwing it up. I’m trying to do better, it’s just . . .”
I glance over my shoulder. My father looks down at the coffee in his hand so I won’t see the tears. But I see them anyway, and even if I couldn’t I can hear the sorrow thickening his voice when he quietly admits, “I miss her.”
Everything inside me freezes. The red-hot anger I stoke like a life-giving fire suddenly extinguishes, leaving me cold and weak and raw.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t speak.
It’s like the moment I relive every night when I try to fall asleep—the one where the police officers come to the door with their serious, rosy-cold faces and stiff words, telling us about the vehicle that slid on a patch of black ice and couldn’t stop in time.
They were sorry. Everyone was sorry. My friends. My teachers. Our neighbors. The guy behind the counter at the market two streets over. Everyone told me first with their words and now months later with a shake of the head how sorry they were that the person who drove the vehicle too fast during a spring snow was alive and well and my mother, who had simply been standing on the sidewalk in front of a potential new design project, was dead.
We’re all sorry. So what? It doesn’t change a damn thing.
“I’ll see you tonight.” I yank the door open and head outside, clinging to the anger that once again sparks inside me. I hate the pain my father is in. I hate that I understand why he drinks, and I hate knowing that if I didn’t force him out of bed every morning he would drink himself into oblivion to forget what we have lost.
His work gave him two weeks off after the accident, and people looked the other way for the month after as Dad showed up late or in the same clothes he’d worn the day before. Finally, Dad’s boss came to the house with a warning that he had to do better or he would lose his job.
The drinking continued, but little by little, day by day, Dad seemed to be doing better. Surrounded by more grays and dark blues than shrouded in empty black. He didn’t have to reach for something to add to his morning coffee in order to face a world without my mother’s lopsided smile and observant gaze.
I hurry down the steps and around the house, toward the street.
A gray squirrel darts across the sidewalk in front of me and bolts under the moving van parked in front of the house two doors down. I used to watch every new person moving into a house on the block for signs of kids my age, especially in the last few years when so many older folks moved away for work or retirement—or just because they wanted something new. Now I was glad not to see any signs of teenagers in the back of the van.
Robins chirp in the branches of the fairly young trees lining the street. The city’s gardeners planted them only two years ago. Between the golden sunshine, this being the final week of school, and my dad’s less glassy eyes, I should be feeling positive about the day. Maybe if Dad hadn’t brought up the City Art Program I would find it easier to be happy about the little things, but thoughts of all the work I had done—the time wasted—what I had wanted so badly until my mother’s death—made it hard to find the good in anything.
I’d worked for months on my portfolio so that I could be one of the four sixteen-year-olds chosen to intern alongside the city’s design and beautification team for the next two years. Being chosen isn’t just an honor. Being chosen gives a student the chance to work with the very best imaginations in the city and maybe even assist in designing one or more of the city’s ongoing projects. It’s one of the sure ways to gain a coveted slot as a visual arts major. Without a visual-arts degree it’s impossible to secure a job as a working artist here in Chicago’s City Pride Department or in similar departments in other cities across the country.
Of all the government jobs, the City Pride Department’s were among the most important and prestigious. Years ago, a pilot program spearheaded by the best artists in the country was launched here in Chicago under the theory that people who lived in beautiful surroundings felt better about themselves and their futures, thereby causing them to make positive choices that would benefit not only themselves but the community they were so proud of. It was a radical idea, but the new City Pride Department was determined to make every part of the city beautiful—especially those most touched by neglect and crime, because the people living on those streets needed to see that they were worthy of beauty.
And it was working. Bit by bit. Block by block. The citizens here blossomed under the inspiration of the city’s new beauty. But the project is never ending, because the city is large and always changing. So often my mother worked long into the night to create the perfect mural for the side of a neighborhood market or select the ideal color palette for a sign intended to draw the community into embracing a new park. She had even received a silver plaque last year to celebrate the work she had done. She was one of the top designers. The work she uploaded into the National Elevation through Arts database was some of the most often downloaded for use around the country.
Was it any wonder that I wanted to capture beauty in an image the way she did?
Everyone assumes my mother wanted me to submit to the summer program. That she encouraged me to walk in her talented footsteps. I’ve let them think it because it’s easier than talking about the way, in the months before she died, she pursed her lips whenever I asked her opinion about my work.
Are you sure that’s the color palette you want to use, Meri?
Is that really what you want to work on or just what you think you should be working on?
Then finally the one I’ll never forget. When she fastened her hair at the nape of her neck with a long-handled, tapered paintbrush and turned to me, eyes shimmering with disappointment.