“I think this will explain it, Richard,” my mother said, and she passed the notebook back to my dad.
In my own defense, I can only state that, for better or for worse, we live in a capitalistic society. I was merely enacting my rights of individual initiative by supplying the public—in the form of most of the female student population at John Adams Preparatory School—with a product for which I saw there was a demand. You would think that my dad, who is an international economist with the World Bank, would understand this.
But as he read aloud from my German notebook in an astonished voice, I could tell he did not understand. He did not understand at all.
“You and Josh Hartnett,” my dad read, “fifteen dollars. You and Josh Hartnett on a desert island, twenty dollars. You and Justin Timberlake, ten dollars. You and Justin Timberlake under a waterfall, fifteen dollars. You and Keanu Reeves, fifteen dollars. You and—” My dad looked up. “Why are Keanu and Josh more than Justin?”
“Because,” I explained, “Justin has less hair.”
“Oh,” my dad said. “I see.” He went back to the list.
“You and Keanu Reeves white-water rafting, twenty dollars. You and James Van Der Beek, fifteen dollars. You and James Van Der Beek hang-gliding, twenty—”
But my mom didn’t let him go on for much longer.
“Clearly,” she said in her courtroom voice—my mom is an environmental lawyer; one thing you do not want to do is anything that would make Mom use her courtroom voice—”Samantha is having trouble concentrating in German class. The reason why she is having trouble concentrating in German class appears to be because she is suffering from not having an outlet for all her creative energy. I believe if such an outlet were provided for her, her grades in German class would improve dramatically.”
Which would explain why the next day my mom came home from work, pointed at me, and went, “Tuesdays and Thursdays, from three thirty to five thirty, you will now be taking art lessons, young lady.”
Whoa. Talk about harsh.
Apparently it has not occurred to my mother that I can draw perfectly well without ever having had a lesson. Except for, you know, in school. Apparently my mother doesn’t realize that art lessons, far from providing me with an outlet for my creative energy, are just going to utterly stamp out any natural ability and individual style I might have had. How will I ever be able to stay true to my own vision, like van Gogh, with someone hovering over my shoulder, telling me what to do?
“Thanks,” I said to Lucy when I ran into her a little while later in the bathroom we shared. She was separating her eyelashes with a safety pin in front of the mirror, even though our housekeeper, Theresa, has told Lucy a thousand times about her cousin Rosa, who put out an eye that way.
Lucy looked past the safety pin at me. “What’d I do?”
I couldn’t believe she didn’t know. “You told on me,” I cried, “about the whole drawing thing!”
“God, you ‘tard,” Lucy said, going to work on her lower lashes. “Don’t even tell me you’re upset about that. I so totally did you a favor.”
“A favor?” I was shocked. “I got into big trouble because of what you did! Now I have to go to some stupid, lame art class twice a week after school, when I could be, you know . . . watching TV.”
Lucy rolled her eyes. “You so don’t get it, do you? You’re my sister. I can’t just stand by and let you become the biggest freak of the entire school. You won’t participate in extracurriculars. You wear that hideous black all the time. You won’t let me fix your hair. I mean, I had to do something. This way, who knows? Maybe you’ll be a famous artist. Like Georgia O’Keeffe.”
“Do you even know what Georgia O’Keeffe is famous for painting, Lucy?” I asked, and when she said no, I told her:
Vaginas. That’s what Georgia O’Keeffe was famous for painting.
Or as Rebecca put it, as she came ambling past with her nose buried in the latest installment of the Star Trek saga, with which she is obsessed, “Actually, Ms. O’Keeffe’s organic abstract images are lush representations of flowers that are strongly sexual in symbolic content.”
I told Lucy to ask Jack if she didn’t believe me. But Lucy said she and Jack don’t discuss things like that with one another.
I was all, “You mean vaginas?” but Lucy said no, art.
I don’t get this. I mean, she is going out with an artist, and yet the two of them never discuss art? I can tell you, if I ever get a boyfriend, we are going to discuss everything with one another. Even art. Even vaginas.
Catherine couldn’t even believe it about the drawing lessons.
“But you already know how to draw!” she kept saying.
I, of course, couldn’t have agreed more. Still, it was good to know I wasn’t the only person who thought my having to spend every Tuesday and Thursday from three thirty until five thirty at the Susan Boone Art Studio was going to be a massive waste of time.
“That is just so like Lucy,” Catherine said as we walked Manet through the Bishop’s Garden on Monday after school. The Bishop’s Garden is part of the grounds of the National Cathedral, where they have all the funerals for any important people who die in D.C. It is only a five-minute walk from where we live, in Cleveland Park, to the National Cathedral. Which is good, because it is Manet’s favorite place to chase squirrels and bust in on couples who are making out in the gazebo and stuff.
Which is another thing: who is going to walk Manet while I am at the Susan Boone Art Studio? Theresa won’t do it. She hates Manet, even though he’s fully stopped chewing on the electrical cords. Besides, according to Dr. Lee, the animal behaviorist, that was my fault, for naming him Monet, which sounds like the word no. Since changing his name to Manet, he’s been a lot better . . . though my dad wasn’t too thrilled with the five-hundred-dollar bill Dr. Lee sent him.
Theresa says that it is bad enough that she has to clean up after all of us; over her dead body is she cleaning up after my eighty-pound Old English sheepdog.
“I can’t believe Lucy did that,” Catherine said. “I’m sure glad I don’t have any sisters.” Catherine is a middle child, like me—which is probably why we get along so well. Only unlike me, Catherine has two brothers, one older and one younger . . . and neither of whom are smarter or more attractive than she is.
Catherine is so lucky.
“But if it hadn’t been Lucy, it would have been Kris,” she pointed out as we trudged along the narrow, twisty path through the gardens. “Kris was totally onto you. I mean about only charging her and her friends.”
Which had been, really, the beauty of the whole thing. That I’d only been charging girls like Kris and her friends, I mean. Everyone else had gotten drawings for free.
Well, and why not? When, as a joke, I drew a portrait of Catherine with her favorite celebrity of all time, Heath Ledger, word got around, and soon I had a waiting list of people who wanted pictures of themselves in the company of various hotties.
At first I didn’t even think about charging. I was more than glad to provide drawings to my friends for free, since it seemed to make them happy.
And then when the non-English-speaking girls in my school got wind of it and wanted portraits, too, well, I couldn’t very well charge them, either. I mean, if you just moved to this country—whether to escape oppression in your native land, or, like most of the nonEnglish speakers at our school, because one of your parents was an ambassador or diplomat—no way should you have to pay for a celebrity drawing. You see, I know what it is like to be in a strange place where you don’t speak the language: it sucks. I learned this the hard way, thanks to Dad—who is in charge of the World Bank’s North African division. He moved us all to Morocco for a year when I was eight. It would have been nice if somebody there had given me some drawings of Justin Timberlake for free, instead of staring at me like I was a freak just because I didn’t know the Moroccan for “May I please be excused?” when I had to go to the bathroom.