The closest I had come to finding something that lit me up was in a summer gifted-and-talented program, just before my senior year. In an art course there, I made a graphic novella of the night my mom threw an ottoman at my dad, laboring over how the glass patio door shattered, shards tumbling in an arc of beauty into the green holler bottom below. I painted a textured oil backdrop to simulate the night air wadding itself into a tornado: the Horror of ’89, which touched down that very night in regions of East Kentucky, West Virginia, and the golden triangle of Kingsport, Johnson City, and Bristol, Tennessee. The instructor, upon seeing it, complimented me but grimaced. Said, “I like the little cartoons, but how about we fit your skills into a more serious framework?” And pushed a pamphlet for architecture school at me.
McIntosh scared me as much as the rest of Ballister did. He was a serious artist, or had been at one point—a sort of eighties gallery darling whose decline had acted as a chute into teaching, a profession for which he had no real passion. “Oh yah, McIntosh is intense,” said the senior VA major who’d given me a tour at orientation. But McIntosh was more than just intense. He was a carnivore who loved to eviscerate freshmen, a real crinkle of joy seaming his mouth as he did. We were instructed to bring a sketch to the first class for discussion, and McIntosh made a blonde with perfect posture, daughter of a D.C. diplomat, tear up when he put her sketch of a woman striding down a crosswalk on the projector. “I want you to pay attention here,” he told us. “This is a case in point as to the importance of exactness in your line work, and the price paid when you become sloppy.” He took his laser pointer, made circles around the figure’s smudged face. “What a deeply confusing expression. This woman looks constipated. Was that your intention, Margaret?” He put his laser pointer down as she began to sniffle. “Well, don’t feel discouraged. This is Ballister. There’s always room for one more prelaw student.” I felt lucky when he glanced at my sketch—an old lady who’d ridden the train with me until Charlottesville, Virginia, asleep with an opened bag of Planters in her hand—wrinkled his nose, and said only, “In bad need of discipline.”
During the third class, McIntosh put another one of my assignments up on the projector. It was a sketch I’d done of a dog chained to a stake in a yard. I didn’t realize it until it was on the wall, but the yard appeared to be on the side of a mountain. It took me the distance from my chair to the screen to realize it: I had drawn Kentucky. I looked at what I’d done, glowing large in front of the class, and felt homesickness wrapping itself around my throat, my eyes growing hot until McIntosh said, “Good. Some rather inspired pencil work here, and here.”
It would be the only nice thing he would say about me all semester. I was shocked out of crying. Everyone turned, subtly, to look.
The only person I’d spoken to on campus for more than fifteen minutes was a boy from Kansas named Zack. Zack was also a VA major and was obsessed with M. C. Escher. Accordingly, I was in love with him. I incorporated his form into the bright lights of what I supposed my future would be, staking all my hopes on him. My drug of choice at eighteen: the quiet devouring of boys in my head. In the secret back pages of my sketchbook, I had even drawn him.
Zack was also in McIntosh’s class. My eyes automatically drifted to the left, where he sat at a neighboring table. If I hadn’t looked in that direction, I might not have seen Mel.
She was perched at a high table with her upper body craned over the desk, wiry arms and legs folded like a praying mantis, looking at me through frayed blond bangs. One dirty Chuck Taylor pressed the floor, bouncing nervously. She looked sleep-deprived—rumpled clothes, an evident ink stain on the knee of her jeans, little lines around her eyes the rest of us didn’t have yet. This was the girl over whom McIntosh went into raptures the first couple of classes—she was, apparently, his sole exception to inhaling freshmen. Session one, she brought in a sketch of a man on a front porch, raising what looked like a mug in the shape of a cowboy boot to his lips, and there was this look the man was giving, so salty you could almost eat it. Funny and sly and even, in the cocked eyebrow, a little angry that someone thought they could spy on him like that. “Expression,” McIntosh trilled, rocking on his heels. And we could see it, too, even if we didn’t know how to say it—it was excellent. Steady, confident lines, delicate shading. It was work that had a good enough idea of itself to be playful.
Her second sketch was a color-smeared cluster of kids in torn T-shirts, safety pins, snarls, all collectively clobbering the hell out of each other. Punks, genuine enough to make me lean away in awe. The look was harsh yet soft, dreamy and glazed, curves creamy. The group fought as a cloud of dust, the result of their scuffling, rose above their shoes. “A little overboard with the blending,” McIntosh said, “but the look of it is really something. And there’s a degree of fun here, too, yes? Some daring? Who were these people, Ms. Vaught?”