The Color Master: Stories (10 page)

“You weren’t that powerful, kid,” he cried. “You died, didn’t you?”

And yet, even as he said it, he realized, with new clarity, that Hans had killed himself. And that it did not seem like an act of fear or great despair. It seemed almost like some sort of trick. The vampire’s child, from that horror film, had been a creature thousands of years old. Perhaps Hans had thought he would live forever, would curse and be cursed forever, would rule the world with his mind, forever. No one could ever prove to Hans now that he was as mortal and helpless as the rest. He had circumvented the question.

It altered the taste of the brother’s spit, thinking this. He took his hands off the headstone and wheeled away. It was beginning to rain anyway, and a heady mossy smell overtook the grassy hills of the cemetery. He wheeled as quickly as he could, past the chapel, through the iron gates, to the steadying relief of slick wheels on hard concrete. He popped open his
umbrella and fixed it to the arm of his wheelchair. The rain was loud and pointed.

Had we left him here, the bitterness would be where we saw him last and maybe where he died, for wherever we see him last is where we assume he will stay forever. But we will not leave him there. Soon after the visit, his mouth relaxed, and within a week, there were tears, and the tears changed the muscles of his face, because they were not bitter tears but tears of sadness—sadness at the parents who had died long before, tears for Hans and his desperate delusions, tears for his country’s impossible recovery, tears for the fact that life happened once and choices were exactly what they were. Hans was still dead. The world went on perfectly fine without him, just as the war had started, happened, and ended without his playing a role as either hero or villain. One could not spend one’s life in the imaginings of another life; if the brother spent too much time with that, the wheelchair would crowd out all other thoughts. So he poured himself a glass of cold coffee from the coffee jug which he had put, unlidded, into the refrigerator, and the caffeine relaxed him, clarified his sight, as he looked out the window into the rainy afternoon. He would not call the auburn-haired woman who had been so kind, because what they had shared had been completed. But he could keep his eyes open now for the next point of meaning. He could watch the sky all day long. He could return to the restaurant with the fine herb omelettes where he had deliberately left his umbrella because he hadn’t wanted to leave. There was love to be felt, and discovered, still. There was a powerlessness that was kind.

I was at the Bev with Sylv and we were eating Chinese food takeout from Panda Express and I said about how the chicken chow mein would be a good street, like Chow Main? Like a Main Street in a food part of town? Get it? And then Sylv said she had to go to the bathroom and she left for a really long time. And I got nervous because she was gone too long and I thought maybe she’d even left the mall. Because maybe she is part Chinese and I just didn’t know? Her hair is black. And maybe I had totally offended her with my Chow Main Street idea; Mein and Main are not the same and here’s me, trying to make the Chinese into something American, and that is offensive, right, like I was that loud American taking over all the Chinese words, like saying it was Ciao Main or something, like Italian Chinese? And Chow is our word for eat—chow—but in China it’s probably something really different. So I was feeling really bad and really racist by accident and she came back and sat down and it had been I swear twenty minutes? and I said, Sylvia, I just wanted to say I’m really, really sorry about the Chow Main comment, and she looked at me through her new blue eyeliner which I noticed just then and said, What? And I said, Just I didn’t mean to offend you with the using of Mein as Main, I know that’s different, and she
said, I don’t know what you’re talking about, Louanne. And she took a big sip of her Diet Coke. Behind her, by the movie theatre, two girls from school who are bitches strolled by; Sylv didn’t see, she was going on about how she’d checked her messages and Jack hadn’t called even though he said he would but maybe he was caught in traffic. Even though he has a phone? But I’d never say that out loud. Sylv’s the first friend I’ve had in a long time who really is way high on the friend pyramid, and the way she dances! She bops around really energetically but she’s also still. Like she’s moving her torso but her feet don’t move, and then sometimes she’ll take one step, and it feels like a thesis statement. Like it is a topic sentence about her butt.

And then I couldn’t help it, I made another Chinese joke! Because I said that the popcorn shrimp would be good to take to the movies. And she was quiet and I thought: Oh my God, I did it again, didn’t I? Why do I do that? And I was about to say I was really sorry again when her cell rang and I could tell it was Jack because her whole face got all shimmery. It made me feel a little bad, actually, to see her face change like that. Because I think I’m pretty good company and I even have a few jokes I keep stored in my mind just in case there’s nothing to say but from the look on her face it was like she was released from jail. And she giggled to Jack, and I thought maybe the popcorn shrimp joke was okay because there were no Chinese words in it? And did she have a Chinese cousin somewhere or what? But it didn’t matter if she did or not because this is America so she should be offended anyway, on behalf of America. I should have offended myself. And I just thought maybe it was in bad taste, because movie popcorn is an old tradition but doesn’t take a whole lot of skill but popcorn shrimp, for all I know, could be passed down from many years of Chinese
cooking classes and generations only to show up here at the Bev food court for all of us to enjoy. I really liked mine. I ate it all and it was kind of sparky in my mouth and then I ate two of hers, and I would’ve eaten more but she gave me that look with her eyebrow up and then she threw them out in the trash, which was hard for me just because they’re so delicious, but I wasn’t going to pick them out of the garbage or anything. Even though the garbage looked pretty clean.

Before we left the food court, I made a point of waving to the cute little Chinese food lady over at Panda Express who was wearing a chef’s hat, just in case she’d heard me, but she didn’t see me waving anyway because she was serving orange chicken in a rice bowl to some old guy who probably didn’t appreciate her good service at all.

When Sylv got off the phone she said Jack would meet us downstairs at the MAC store, so we took the escalators down, and I was feeling kind of gross from the popcorn shrimp but still I wanted to eat more so I had this weird balance of feeling like sleeping and also like eating for another hour, and then going up the escalator in the other direction were those two girls from school again, and Sylv saw them and hissed, Did you see? It’s Barb and Nature, and it was and is; I do not like Nature, she was a bitch to me in fifth grade when we were partners together on the make-the-book-diorama project and she said, Let’s make a mirror into a lake for
Swan Lake
, and I said, There’s no book
Swan Lake
but we can do another book with a swan, like
The Trumpeter of the Swan
? by the man who wrote
Charlotte’s Web
about the spider? SOME PIG? And she said great so I read it and I made a little swan out of Fimo clay which had even that red stripe on the beak that all swans all
have but everyone forgets. And I was supposed to go to her house to finish it but when I did she opened the door like why was I there. And I held up the clay swan and made a trumpet sound and she said, Why are you here? And I said, For our book project? and she pulled twenty dollars out of her pocket like they were magic jeans that worked like an ATM machine, and she said, Can you just finish it for both of us, please, Louellen?
Louanne
, I said, and her eyes were all tired and droopy and slitty. Did you even read the book? I asked, and she said, Take the money and run, kid. And I took it, not because I wanted it but because she told me to take it and because she called me kid which was nice in a weird way even though we were and are the same age. Nature is like that; you just sort of do what she says because her hair is that shiny light swaying-field color that makes your brain get all puffy. Like it turns your brain into yeast. I didn’t look at her as she went up the up escalator and I don’t remember what I spent that twenty dollars on but we got an A on the project even though Mrs. Humfield took me aside and asked me directly if it had been uneven, the work sharing, and I said no, it was all exactly even, and Mrs. Humfield sipped out of her mug that had a hippo on it which I thought was a bad idea for a teacher who is not super skinny. Last month Nature sent a valentine to Sylvia saying Let’s Be Best Buds! with a drawing of a pot leaf on it, but Sylv didn’t answer which I thought was so cool. Except then Sylvia and her do sometimes stop to talk in the hall which means I wait behind and look at the sky. But the sky is interesting, it changes all the time.

And then, because everything happens at the same time, Jack came bounding up as we hit the bottom of the escalator
and he grabbed Sylv and kissed her right in front of me which is okay but I saw his tongue going into her mouth and that is just disgusting. And then they walked ahead arm in arm and I thought about the boyfriend that I am going to have; he’s going to go to a different school. I’ll meet him by accident in a crosswalk. And then I walked by a pretty black lady in pink high heels and I forgot to smile at her which means she might’ve thought that I didn’t smile at her because I am racist because, in case she happened to notice, I smile at everyone. I turned around to smile at her retroactively but she was walking ahead, fast, swinging her bag from Restoration Hardware. Maybe she bought herself a new faucet for her sink that makes the water really smooth. I think it’s good to smile at everybody so that everyone knows you love everyone. It’s good for human pacifism. That’s why I even smile at people who give me mean looks, like just then there was a man with long mucky red hair without any bags walking by who looked really mad at the world, really fucked up, but we were heading over to Macy’s to try on makeup and I smiled at him, too. He looked surprised; probably no one ever smiles at him anymore. I might be the first person who smiled at him in like thirty years. Definitely the first girl. I like to smile at the men who look mean so they know I believe in their better selves. That makes a difference in the world. This is how you might be able to reform a possible rapist without ever going to psychology school.

In front of the Gap, Sylvia and Jack stopped at a bench and fell into it and they just made out right there. And we were right near Macy’s and right around then I started to remember deep down somewhere in my head that there are no windows here at the Beverly Center. I went over and made a little
ahem sound but they couldn’t hear me and I sort of watched Jack’s hand go over Sylvia’s shoulder and he was almost on her boob. There are two pregnant girls in school but they are both still in classes and they said how they’re fat as an excuse but I can tell it’s not regular fat especially because one of them is spending all her class time knitting a blue bootee. I only have kissed two guys and even then it was short, not a long time. And Sylvia seemed pretty good at it and I couldn’t really stop watching and then Barb and Nature walked up swinging their shopping bags and they went over and stood right over the bench and Nature said “AHEM!” just like I did only a hundred times louder and Sylvia pulled her face away from Jack’s and her mouth was all smudged and soft-looking and she laughed and said “Hi!” And they hugged. Even though didn’t we all just not see each other deliberately on the escalator? And Barb was quiet but she made a naughty scoldy look at Jack and I went over and no one really looked at me but I stood there too because I was Sylvia’s ride. So, if people were cars, in a way, I was the one kissing Jack, if you were to think of it that way. And Nature was talking about some party and Jack pulled Sylvia into his lap so there was bench room and Nature sat down and crossed her legs and waggled her foot around and her toes were painted dark red like she was forty years old, and then it was just me and Barb standing there and Barb said she wanted to go look at the new Gap sweaters with the zipper front. Barb is independent like that. She’s taking an independent-study class in school to learn Portuguese which you’d think would make her ineligible for popularity. Did you know they speak Portuguese in Brazil? I don’t understand why that is. And I stood there and Nature was holding Sylvia’s hand and Jack kept grabbing it back, and then Nature took it
again and they were like a sculpture:
Bad Homework Partner plus My Friend plus Her Boyfriend on Mall Bench
.

“We’ve been here for hours,” I said.

“What?”

“We’ve been here since three,” I said.

“I had to get some presents,” said Sylvia, leaning her head back onto Jack’s shoulder.

“How are you, Louanne?” Nature asked me.

“Me?” I said. “I’m fine. How are you?”

Nature laughed, and she brought Sylvia’s hand to her mouth and kissed its back. She was wearing light-pink lipstick from the MAC store and it left an imprint like on an old CD cover. Sylv laughed her little tinkling laugh. Jack made a whimpering sound.