We worked together every day, at the Last Chance during the slow parts of the late afternoon, and in the evenings in his room. The portrait had been important to me, but increasingly, so was Norman.
This, of course, was crazy. But ever since that first night, when he’d brushed my hair out of my face, something was different. Maybe not for him. But for me.
It was little things. Like the routine we’d set up whenever we worked, falling into place automatically without even talking. And I’d carved out a space for myself in his room: beside the chair where I posed at night I kept my sunglasses, the water glass he’d given me the first time I said I was thirsty, and the remote for the TV that he swore he never watched except when I was there. There was something nice about having my things, and I wondered if he looked at them after I’d gone and thought of me.
I was getting used to his crowded room. He had hung the two sunglasses paintings—Morgan and Isabel, and the man leaning against the car—side by side. I’d sit in my chair, looking through my own lenses as they stared back at me, completed, hanging where my own image would be soon. When I passed through Mira’s back room I found myself examining her portrait, too, reaching out to touch the bumpy surface, wondering what I’d look like when he finished.
The first morning I saw Norman at the Last Chance with paint splattered across his arm I got this strange feeling, some sense of possessiveness, like we shared a secret. I almost wished the sitting would never end.
Sometimes he seemed to be looking at me just for form, as if I was a bowl of apples or a landscape. But there were moments when I’d catch him leaning his head to the side, the paintbrush not even on the canvas, those deep brown eyes really watching me and then—
“Hey, Picasso!” an irritated Isabel would yell from inside the restaurant. “I need some onion rings. Now!”
“All right,” Norman would say, putting down his brush. When it got busy he just stuck the canvas in the back of the car, folded up the easel, and went back to flipping burgers while I waited tables. When it slowed down we’d drift back outside and take up our places.
But he refused to show me the painting.
“Bad luck,” he said the first time I asked. “You’ll see it at the end.”
“I want to see it now,” I’d whine. This was one of our sticking points; like my mother, I had a hard time waiting for anything.
“Tough.” Norman could play hardball when it suited him. “It’s a mess now, anyway; it’s all still process. The finished product is what matters.”
Norman had his secrets. The phone rang almost every night when we were working, around the same time, 10:15. Norman never answered, and the man on the other end of the line never said a word. He just cleared his throat, as if waiting for someone else to make the first move.
I wanted to grab the phone, forcing the man—who I knew had to be Norman’s father—to speak. But I couldn’t. So I just sat there, night after night, gritting my teeth when it rang.
“Norman,” I finally said to him, “please answer the phone. Please? For me?”
He shook his head before answering the same way he always did. “Chin up.”
When we weren’t arguing about the phone, we listened to music. I was—to my horror—almost beginning to appreciate his hippie bands. Or I turned on the TV and flipped through channels, watching shows until Norman vetoed them. One night I came across the Kiki infomercial and introduced Norman to the Buttmaster, FlyKiki inspirational tapes, and Stuffin’ for Nothin’. I figured this was more than a fair trade for Phish and the Dead. Norman was intrigued. He even put down his brush to give his full attention to my mother’s Super Cal Burn.
“She’s really something,” he said, as she bent and toned, whipping the studio audience into a frenzy.
“I know,” I said. “Sometimes I can’t even believe she’s my mom.”
“Oh, I can,” he said easily, his eyes still on the TV. “I see a lot of her in you.”
“No way.”
“Yep.” He picked up the brush, dipping it back into the paint.
This was new to me. “Like what?”
“Chin up,” he said, and I rolled my eyes. When I did, he continued. “Like your face: it’s just like hers, heart-shaped. And the way you hold your hands when you talk, right at the waist. And the way you smile.”
I looked at my mother, beaming on national TV. “I don’t smile like that,” I said.
“But you do,” he told me, dabbing at something on the canvas. “Look at her, Colie. That’s not fake. On a lot of people it would be, but you can tell she loves what she does. Loves it.”
I looked back at my mother, listening intently as some woman asked a question about how to get rid of saddlebags. He was right: with my mother, what you saw was what she felt.
“You know,” he went on, “I think I knew you for about three weeks before I ever really saw you smile. And then, one day, Morgan said something and you laughed, and I remember thinking it was really cool because it meant something. You’re not the kind of person who smiles for nothing, Colie. I have to earn every one.”
I wasn’t smiling now. In fact, I was pretty sure my mouth was hanging open and I was blushing. Norman ducked back behind the easel and I swallowed, trying to compose myself.
What was happening here? I wasn’t even sure it was just in my head anymore.
“Chin up,” he said, and I locked my eyes onto his, even as I imagined him leaning closer, tucking the hair behind my ear, again. I’d smile, then. No question. “Chin up.”