Drawing Conclusions

My mother lit her cigarette and blew smoke toward the ceiling like a silver screen star. She enjoyed the drama of smoking back then. She used a fancy lighter with mother-of-pearl sides and small brass feet so that it stood on the coffee table like a delicate urn.

“Would you like me to sit for you, Sharon,” she asked, smoothing her dark hair.

I got a sketchbook from my room. Pencils were a problem. I’d left my good supplies at school that day. Mother always made sure I had quality charcoals, sable hair brushes, and a selection of premium oil paints. We abhorred acrylics. If I angled the sketchbook like an easel, I hoped she wouldn’t notice I was using ordinary No. 2 pencils. I didn’t want to explain how I’d hurried past my locker that afternoon because two eighth-graders were tonguing each other against the metal door.

“Well,” she asked settling into the green chair in the living room. “How do I look, daaarling?”

I laughed.

My mother was a beautiful woman. I first recognized this through the reactions of others. Men, women, children, even thumb-sucking babies, sat up and took notice when she walked by. And those too young to sit, simply lay there in their cribs and drooled excessively.

She had the dark hair and slender figure of Vivienne Leigh. She moved with the practiced grace of a charm school valedictorian. While other mothers did volunteer work or returned to the sorts of jobs they held before marriages and children, my mother was content to shop and drink and smoke her Virginia Slims, a then new brand designed especially for the delicate hands of a woman like her with her tapered fingers and red lacquered nails. People in Heuertown called her Betty the Beauty. Everyone said I took after my father.

“Like this?” she asked, tilting her face toward the light from the window.

“Perfect,” I said.

And then there was only the scritch-scritching sounds of pencil on paper.

That Monday in advanced art, Mrs. Olson told the class about a state-wide contest open to all junior high and high school students. Finalists would be shown in a gallery on the campus of the College of Fine Arts. Prizes included generous scholarship money.

“I encourage you all to enter,” she said seconds before the bell rang.

There was the usual crush of bodies as I worked my way toward the door, hoping to make it to the South wing before the next bell. My math teacher took a sadistic pleasure in punishing late comers with algebraic equations involving time and distance variables. I needed to hurry. Mrs. Olson pulled me aside.

“You really should enter, Sharon,” she said, trying to be discreet as other students pushed past. “Even though you’d be among the youngest, I think you stand a very good chance.”

She urged me to submit an oil pastel I’d done in her class, a bold, colorful composition of galloping horses, all shining muscles and manes in dreamy shades of blue and purple. I thanked her and hurried off. My math teacher had his hand on the door as I flew down the hall.

Mother wasn’t sure about the horses. Posing again on the green chair, she suggested we give it some thought. There was time.

I made several studies of her perfectly oval face before covering my palette with dabs of oil paints. My mother’s skin tone was a tawny pink with a touch of yellow. She’d recently traded her signature red lipstick for a more becoming shade of coral on my recommendation, and couldn’t understand why I didn’t “try to help” my own face with a little makeup. I told her Kennedy Junior High didn’t allow makeup. That wasn’t technically true.

“They let girls wear pants now, but not makeup,” she said. “It’s as though they want you to look ugly.”

I pulled a clean paint brush from the back pocket of my jeans and used its stiff bristles to blend a touch of burnt umber, carmine and zinc yellow into titanium white. For her eyes, viridian green.

“I wonder,” she said poking the air with her Virginia Slim like a pointer. “Do you find the horses a bit derivative?”

The principal introduced my art teacher who made the announcement at an all-school assembly. My painting was selected among hundreds of entries in the state to be included in a real gallery show in the city. Mrs. Olson also pointed out that I was the youngest of the twenty-five finalists. Only three would be awarded scholarship money.

“Please join the art department in congratulating this rising talent, ” she said.

Applause was polite. The exhibition would open on the third and run until the end of the month, she said. She hoped everyone would show their support and take advantage of the free-with-student-ID admission. She must have known as well as I did, no one would bother. None of them cared about art, or me.

“I am so proud of you, Sharon,” Mrs. Olson said after the assembly. “Word is both The Star and The Daily will be at the opening. Maybe even one of the local TV stations!”

Apparently, a Mr. something-or-the-other, a big shot patron of the arts college, wanted to pose for the newspapers with the three scholarship winners. A photo opp, Mrs. Olson called it. She couldn’t reveal if I was one of the recipients.

“But I suggest you dress appropriately,” she said.

She saw my discomfort. She knew I took a fail on an English assignment rather than face the required oral report. Mrs. Olson promised I wouldn’t have to say a thing.

“But if a reporter should happen to ask you a question, just answer it,” she said.

My mouth went dry at the very thought. But I nodded.

“Thank-you,” I said, searching for the right words. “Thank-you for understanding about, you know, the picture.”

At the last minute, at Mother’s suggestion, I’d ditched the uninspired horses and instead submitted an oil portrait. It was of her looking pensive in the afternoon light from the series we’d come to call, with mocking self-importance, The Green Chair Period. Mother smoked throughout the entire sitting but insisted I paint over her cigarette because, she said, schools could be so pedantic. I knew Mrs. Olson preferred the horses but she didn't object to the portrait.

“I am confident whatever you enter will be a winner,” she said.

The night before the opening, I barely slept. I woke several times in a panic unable to breathe or, more precisely, convinced I had forgotten how. These things happened. Lungs collapsed. Kidneys failed. Hearts stopped beating. My grandfather went to sleep on a Wednesday night and woke up dead on a Thursday.

Around three a.m., I laid out an A-line skirt, a crisp, white shirt and blue blazer. I tried the skirt on twice before deciding on my best khakis instead. Then there were socks. My loafers looked a disaster.

I don’t remember falling back to sleep but I awoke muzzy headed to the clanky clang of my alarm clock. I felt slightly queasy. When I stood, I thought I might vomit.

I found Mother already sitting at the kitchen table with her coffee. The morning sun, filtered through the haze of cigarette smoke, caught the sheen of her silk satin robe. I stood in the doorway, holding the frame for balance.

“I don’t feel well,” I said.

I told her I wasn’t sure if I could go to school that day, let alone make it to the opening. I said at very least, I should skip first period and see how I felt after that. It might be the flu. She told me to get dressed. I told her I didn’t want to go. She said I was being silly.

“It’s a student gallery,” she said shooting smoke from her nostrils with a slight snort. “No real gallery would host a four o’clock Thursday opening.”

She said she’d pick me up from school at three o’clock and we’d head straight into the city.

She was late. I stood by the main entrance worrying she’d gone to a side entrance by mistake. I scurried down the hall to check. She wasn’t there. I worried she’d driven up to the main doors while I was at the side entrance. I hurried back through the hallway. My loafers slapped against the waxed linoleum. A bunch of guys in football gear, laughing and shoving their way out of the locker room, turned at the sound of my flapping feet. Instinctively, I looked down at my shoes. My hair fell over one eye. A thick-necked guy in a dingy jersey said, "Whoa, dude needs a haircut." They all laughed like it was the funniest thing they'd ever heard. I tucked my hair back behind my ear and kept going.

Mother finally rolled up, twenty-seven minutes late, as though we had all the time in the world. I opened the passenger side door before she came to a full stop.

“You’re late,” I said, pulling the seatbelt across my lap.

“I thought you were going to wear a skirt,” she said.

She wore a new green and cream knit dress with gold buttons and nude t-straps. Her makeup had never looked so polished.

“I dropped by the cosmetics counter at Saks,” she said turning the rearview mirror to admire her lips.

“You drove to the city this morning?”

“That girl at Estee Lauder has the eye of an artist.”

“Please, can we just go?”

She reached over and tousled my hair as though I were a kid.

“Stop,” I said pushing her hand away.

“Stop? I thought you wanted me to go? Should I stop now?”

“Go! And leave my hair alone!”

“I’m just trying to give you some volume,” she said. “Sheesh.”

I combed it smooth with my fingers.

By the time we got to the city, through crosstown traffic, and found the right building at the College of Fine Arts campus, the organizers were frantic. A plump woman in a flowing caftan rushed us at the door saying, "Sharon? Good! This way. Hurry. We had to start without you." I had no idea what, exactly, had started but obediently matched her pace. We dashed down a hall. Papers tacked to a bulletin board fluttered in our invisible wake. A janitor in a gray uniform steering a bucket on wheels, stepped aside to let us pass. Ammonia fumes burned the inside of my nose. Mother, who refused to be rushed, fell gracefully behind.

As Ms. Caftan turned the corner she called out, "She’s here! She’s here!" Five photographers standing in a clump at the back of the gallery looked my way. "About time," one muttered. "I got a four-thirty at City Hall." Ms. Caftan, all nervous apologies, ushered me to the front of the room where an elderly man in a gray suit and two high school kids holding stretched canvases waited. She squeezed me between a boy and the girl in a daisy-print mini and black tights. The gray suit man congratulated me. The teenagers said nothing. My framed portrait of Mother lay propped up against one wall. Mother had insisted on having it professionally framed. Ms. Caftan thrust it in my hands. She squared off my shoulders. A photographer told me to hold the painting higher. Gray suit man placed one spotted hand on the shoulder of mini dress girl. He said, "Say fromage." The others laughed. Everything after that was just bright flashing lights and faceless voices barking orders. Turn this way. Look over here. Would it kill you to smile, kid? Then the gray suit man addressed me directly, "Why so glum little artist? You look like you're thinking of cutting off an ear!" Big laughs from behind the blinding lights. And then it was over.

The boy artist thanked no one in particular and went off to join his parents. Daisy dress girl slipped away with her dark and brooding boyfriend after kissing him way too long on the mouth. Ms. Caftan fussed over the big shot donor in the gray suit. The photographers talked F-stops and film speed as they packed lenses in camera bags. I looked around for Mother.

I found her in a dim hall posing on a staircase for a guy wearing three cameras around his neck and a canvas bag slung over one shoulder. They ignored me. The photographer patted the bulging pockets of his safari vest, feeling for additional film. He raised the largest camera to his eye. Mother smiled into the lens.

“Beautiful, Betty! Beautiful,” he said, shutter clicking. “Now turn around! Put your right foot on the first stair.”

I thought Mother would admonish him for being so rude. Instead she complied, coyly looking back over her shoulder like a fashion magazine model.

“Good! Good! Go to the top of the stairs,” he said. “Then come back down, eyes on me.”

Mother laughed coquettishly. She glanced my way.

“It will only be a minute,” she scolded as though I’d complained. I’d said nothing. I stood in the shadows, waiting.

“Kid, get out of my frame! You’re in the frame,” the photographer growled. “Go stand over there. Keep going. Keep going. Further. Further. Near the door.”

I shuffled a few yards down the hall to stand beneath a glowing green exit sign to wait.

The photographer seemed satisfied. He turned his attention back to mother.

“All the way to the top stair, Betty,” he said, camera focused on her backside. “Slowly, slowly. Oh, that’s good. That’s real good.”

Mother ascended, hips swaying. Her right palm rested on the oak banister, sensuously sliding it up and down with each step. She kept going until all I saw were her slender calves and heels through the railings.

Suddenly, the photographer bolted down the hall straight at me, cameras swinging in all directions. He grabbed my left wrist. My flesh twisted and burned in the crush of his grip. He body slammed the emergency exit door and yanked me with him.

“Noooooo!”

I wedged half my body into the door jam and kicked him in the shins with my hard shoes, kicked him with everything I had. He swore. The cameras around his neck thumped against his chest, and his shoulder bag dropped with a jerk to his elbow, startling him. I kicked him again. He stared at me with eyes the color of cats’. Something cold and evil passed through the bones of my body. I felt it.

Suddenly, he released his clutch and I fell backwards and hit the floor hard. I became aware of Mother’s screams for help. She teetered down the stairs in her heels, gripping the railing. Ms. Caftan and the janitor came dashing through the hallway. They asked Mother in alarm, "What's wrong? What happened?"

Still on the floor, I watched my would-be kidnapper run across the campus grounds until he disappeared behind a brick building and the exit door clicked closed.

I started to shake. I couldn’t breath. I heard Mother’s quavering voice.

“I thought he was with the newspaper," she said. "He took my picture. He had a notebook.”

Ms. Caftan fluttered about Mother like a nervous bird. "There, there," she said. "There, there." The janitor said he’d get a glass of water for Mother. Ms. Caftan told him to hurry. Mother crumpled in slow motion. Her hand slid down one railing, until she sat on the third stair. Ms. Caftan pulled tissues from a mysterious pocket and handed them to Mother saying, "Everything will be fine. The ruckus is over. The rascal is gone."

Mother dabbed at her coral-colored mouth to stop the trembling of her lips. It had all happened so fast. She twisted the Kleenex in her hands. My knees shook as I struggled to stand.

Four men came running then, the photographers. They asked, "What is it? What happened?" They huddled around Mother where she sat on the stairs. Ms. Caftan explained that a man posing as a news photographer took pictures of Mother.

“He has my address, my phone number,” Mother said, still in a daze. “He said he needed it for the newspaper. He said he was with the newspaper.”

One of the men said, "I knew there was something fishy about him." Another said, "He knew jack about lenses." The first guy agreed. A third man with slicked back hair, nodded in Mother’s direction and said, "Well, I can’t say I blame the guy for trying." A strained silence followed.

Mother looked up from where she sat on the stair. A cool composure began to settle over her, as familiar as December snow. She ran her hands down the front of her knit dress. She smoothed the hem and allowed her long, slender legs to slide across the floor. She crossed her ankles.

“I could use a cigarette,” she said.

The photographer with slicked back hair pulled a red-and-white soft pack of Marlboros from his inside breast pocket. The cellophane wrapper crackled. He tapped the bottom and shook it until three cigarettes rose from the peeled back foil opening, a choice of offerings.

Mother’s tapered fingers formed a V-shape around the cigarette. Another photographer flipped open the top of a cheap Zippo lighter. He held it toward Mother. She rested her left hand upon his as though to steady the lighter, and leaned in to touch tip to flame. She inhaled deeply. Then, throwing her head, blew smoke toward the ceiling.

“There’s nothing like a cigarette after a little excitement,” she said.

They all laughed, even Ms. Caftan. Mother smoothed back her dark hair with her left hand. Only a faint band of pale skin remained on her ring finger. She saw that they saw and smiled. They stood at the bottom of the stairs in a semi-circle before my mother, while she leaned back on her elbows, languidly smoking.

I shoved open the door. Outside the air felt clean and cool and I set out across the green, green grass listening to the door swinging slowly on its hydraulic hinge until it click closed. And still I kept walking.