Page 46 of All That We Are Together
“Take a pill,” Sam advised me. “I have a lot of work today, but if you need help, come find me. And Leah, welcome.”
“Thanks.”
She left us alone in one of the empty rooms, looking at each other for a few seconds that felt eternal. I forced myself to react when the moment got uncomfortable.
“Come to my office; I need to get some things.”
Leah followed without complaint. She stopped on the threshold and gazed around, while I took a pill and grabbed a folder and my glasses. I put them on, and when I looked up, I felt her eyes boring into me.
“They’re glasses, not a clown nose,” I said.
“Sorry, it’s just…” She shook her head.
“No, please, say what you’re thinking.” I crossed my arms and rested against the desk.
“They just don’t look right on you.” And she started to laugh.
Throwing me off, as always.
The first long conversation we had years ago, back when she would barely speak, was about the ears of a kangaroo in an illustration I was wrapping up. It shouldn’t have surprised me, with the tension so palpable around us, that she would do somethingso unexpected, laughing with such vibrancy that I never wanted to take off my glasses again. I feigned indignation.
“You trying to give me a complex?”
“I doubt that’s possible.”
Her laughter stopped when we entered the area closed to the public, a kind of warehouse with concrete walls and floor where we kept pieces before putting them on display or after taking them down. Leah stopped upon entering to look at the works of another artist mounted on panels.
“May I?” she asked.
“Sure, go for it.”
One panel had two pictures mounted on it. She pulled it out to look at it more closely. They were two portraits. She never painted those anymore. Sometimes her works contained a girl’s face or the outline of a hand, but it was never anyone real.
“Who are these by?”
“Tom Wilson.”
“He’s good.”
“Yeah, he sells.”
“Are those the same thing?”
“Sales and quality? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Not always.”
“All this, your job here, it’s all interesting.”
I nodded while she looked at another panel.
“Why don’t you ever paint faces, Leah?”
She looked back at me over her shoulder, wrinkled her nose, and went on studying Wilson’s work.
“No interest. They don’t say anything to me.”
“You’d rather distort reality?” I smiled.
“I wouldn’t say that. It’s more about showing my interpretation. Isn’t that how everything is? I don’t think it gets any more real than that. Human beings are subjective; all of us have our own vision of each thing, each story. A different perspective.”