She narrows her eyes. “You thought wrong, sugar. Draw me.”
I shrug. Feel around for a pencil. Limp over to the drafting board to pluck one out of the coffee cup.
“Don’t see you using that thing much,” Mom says.
“I’m taking a break.”
It’s weird, sitting with a sketchpad again. I finger the pencil, feeling ungainly. Could I ever really do this? I look at the pad, then up at her.
She stares back at me. Lights a Doral. “Well?”
She’s lowered herself into the canvas Ikea chair she claims hurts her ass, crosses her legs. I do a survey. Sweatshirt, jeans, puffy sneakers, glasses on a chain against her chest. Her neck is a latticework of lines, folded skin. Deep webbing around the eyes, the seams linking nose to mouth, the hill where the chin ends and the neck begins.
Mom was beautiful when she was young. All milky and blond, none of the Kisses swarthiness. A very seventies kind of beauty, full and bawdy, an era in which imperfect teeth failed to impede sex appeal. We drew her in this way for Irrefutable Love—the tornado scene as the toppling point for my mother’s prettiness, before she started to wear, long before I learned about line or contour or critically identifying those things in anyone. I feel badly for thinking this. But her face is better than pretty. It is an interesting face, one with depth and contour that requires skill, care in replication. It calls for a study. What Mel always said: The beautiful face is the simplest to draw.
“Come closer,” I say.
She moves next to me on the couch. I fold my leg carefully underneath me, study her nose. “Been a while,” I tell her, making preliminary marks, “since I picked up a pencil.”
“Well, I reckon it’s time to get back on the horse.”
“Try to keep still.”
“Can I still smoke?”
“Yeah. Just move your arm. Try not to move anything else.”
She goes quiet. Mom has been in New York City for six weeks. She’s no longer afraid to stay in my apartment by herself. We’ve both gotten used to her being there. I’m going to the studio later to watch Wild at Heart with Ryan and Tatum. It’s nice to have plans, gives a warm sort of momentum to this sketch: Here are the things I have to get done before I go out and spend time with my friends.
“I’m gonna go back home,” she says.
I stop. “You are? When?”
“Next Saturday. Kent got me a ticket. He says hey, by the way. He says when you come to visit again, he’ll bake you all the pies you want. Between you and me, I think you’re his favorite.” She takes a drag, exhales a plume of smoke. The cloud tapers. She looks at me from the corner of her eye. “You’re back on your feet. You’ll be okay.”
“I was always okay.”
“I know.”
I lean back into the sketch. The division, or melding, between chin and neck will be a challenge. I try to see if there’s a common stream, a line to follow, and instead find five, all diverging. “Running out into traffic wasted,” I murmur, “is far from the worst thing that’s happened in our family. You people dance shamelessly with the devil.”
She appears to give this a think. “You’re right,” she says finally. “Or you ain’t wrong. Let’s say.”
She puts out her Doral, lights up another. She’s got something to tell me, and she’s going to stress-smoke it out. “I saw Irrefutable Love.”
I halt, pencil trembling in my fingers. “You did? When?”
“Just the other night. Found a copy in your DVDs.”
“Oh.” It takes a force of will for me to put pencil to paper again.
“I liked it,” she says.
“Really? What did you like about it?”
“It was funny. Real funny. Even when it was sad, you know? The sadder it was, the funnier it got. It was funny like you’re funny. I knew it was you. You were all over that thing.”
“I’m funny when I’m sad?”
“Yeah.”
“Good to know I’m Steamboat fuckin Willie when I’m suicidal.”
She sighs. “Don’t get like that, goddammit. I’m trying to give you a compliment.”
No wonder I’m so uncomfortable. “Sorry.” More silence. More tracing.
“It was real inneresting,” she says. “I have to say, I don’t know anybody else who thinks the way you do, Sharon Kay.”
“Heh.”
“And you like shitheads.”
“Come again?”
“You don’t like good men. The ones you date. It don’t seem like.”
“Well.” I fuck up the chin curve. Erase, try again. “It might be as much me as it is them. Or so I’ve come to believe.”
“If they don’t like you, they’re shitheads,” she says firmly.
I try tracing her neck again, the loose, silky swoop of skin there. Wait for her to finish. “I’m not sure,” she continues, “but maybe there’s something I shoulda told you, that I didn’t. Somewhere along the way. And I’m real sorry for that. Because I think it’s made a lot of trouble for you.”
“Try to keep still.” Neck, neck, sternum under the sweatshirt. Can’t see a firm line for the back of her neck; it’s all ponytail end, then spine. No line is straight.