Arnaud smirked and went back to mixing paint, clearly pleased with himself. Mr. Carter visibly exhaled and continued passing out supplies.
“Paint what you want,” Mr. Carter said as he passed out extra colors, his phone playing some soft indie thing in the background. The room smelled of stale paper and radiator heat. Classic November in Rochester, all windows sealed tight, the heater wheezing like it hated its job.
“I think we should try expressing what we’re feeling in our artwork,” Carter went on. “Use the primary colors on your palette to show the world where you are mentally right now.”
“I don’t know,” Chip muttered, barely loud enough to hear. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”
Russell “Chip” Cornish was a weird one. Not weird in a bad way, just different. He always had a stat to share, some obscure fact he’d drop into conversation like it was normal to know how many defensemen in the NHL were called Walker, one, other than me, or which plant was poisonous and undetectable to taste. He had this little tic where he pressed his fingertips together constantly, as though he was counting something invisible. And he never quite looked me in the eye.
But damn, he was hot on the ice. His angles were always perfect. Tight turns, smooth transitions, and never in the wrong place. It was as if his brain was wired for geometry that the rest of us couldn’t see.
Right now, he was staring at what he’d started, and he was doing that finger thing again. “It’s all wrong,” he said. “My paper has a crease.” He pointed to it, and Mr. Carter agreed there was a crease and gave him a new piece.
Meanwhile, Arnaud dipped his brush into purple paint and began creating. I glanced over at Taft, a young dude, winger, with huge green eyes and scars on his forearms. Self-harm, obviously, but that was just an educated guess. Why he’d hurt himself was his business. He was already lost in slapping color onto his canvas. Quiet sort, he kept to himself, and that was cool. Not everything in life requires a fucking dissertation.
I stared at the big white space. Mr. Carter moved around the painters, making comments, smiling softly, telling each man how good his strokes were or how expressive his color choices were. When he came to me, he gave the blank canvas a fast peek, then glanced up to find me chewing on the end of my brush.
“Painter’s block?” I shrugged and chewed. “Well, sometimes it’s hard to open up that locked chest of emotions and splash them all over a canvas. If you’re not ready to delve that deeply, that is fine. Why don’t you create a scene from something in your childhood you recall vividly?”
“Seconding that, and not sure you want to see that comment.” His brown-green eyes flared, but I loaded my brush with brown and, then, made a circle. Then another one, smaller, with two pointy ears. He stood at my side, watching silently, the smell of his fruity cologne reaching my nose. I liked it. Subtle yet strong. Kind of like him. “This is Spearmint.” I added some whiskers and a long cat tail to the painting. “She was our cat when my sister and I were little.”
“She has lovely features,” he said as I added a pair of yellow eyes. “Do you like cats?”
“Love them.” I painted a pink collar with a bell. Spearmint never had a collar. She was a stray Harper and I fed on the sly. But I liked to think if things had been different, we could have brought her inside and given her a collar. “Some guys don’t like cats. I think they don’t because you can’t force a cat to like you. Not like a dog. Cat love has to be earned. I respect that. Affectionshouldn’t just be handed out. A person should have to work for that privilege. When you give it to people who don’t deserve it, you get kicked in the ribs.”
My brush paused an inch from the canvas. Mother. Fucker. I knew it. This therapy slash meds slash mental healing was making me into Bob Ross. Next, I’d be painting happy trees and cuddling with squirrels. Not that I ever watched his show to know he sometimes had pocket squirrels or anything. I looked around to see that all four of my fellow fucked-up Copperheads were gaping at me like codfish. “What? Mind your own damn paintings.” They all went back to creating masterpieces. I glanced down at Mr. Carter. He said nothing. Instead, he gave my back a soft rub as one would a child who had skinned a knee. I hated how much comfort that gave me. “I think I’m done.”
“No background?” he asked, and I shook my head. “Perhaps your back yard?”
“Nope, our yard wasn’t a nice place for cats,” I muttered before handing my palette to the teacher, then I walked out of the classroom. I needed air. Shoving through the doors, I sucked in a lungful of cold air, let it out, and watched the tiny fog cloud float skyward before disappearing. I paced, shook out my hands, and rolled my neck. The doors opened a few minutes later, and Mr. Carter stepped out into the chilly dusk. He should have pulled on a coat. If he wanted to step closer, I could hold him to warm him up.
“Are you okay?”
I stopped circling a park bench. “Yeah, I’m good. Aces. Just needed to get out of that room. Sometimes the heat makes me congested. Stuffy nose, you know. So coming outside clears my sinuses.”
“Yes, of course, that happens to all of us when the heat is turned on.” He tucked his hands under his armpits. “It’s going to be a fierce winter, I fear. If you’d like to come back in, we’regoing to clean up soon, then stroll over to the donut shop across the way for coffee and crullers.”
He motioned to Mabel’s Donut Shop. The shop had neon donut and coffee lights blinking in the front windows.
“No, thanks. I’m going to call my sister to come get me. Headache coming on.” That part was no lie. These meds were a nightmare at times. They helped even me out, yeah, but the side effects were trash. “Meds bring them on,” I tacked on when his brow furrowed in worry.
“Oh, that’s a shame. Seems that way at times. Taking something to help one malady makes something else worse. Well, no worries then, Walker. I’ll clean your brushes for you this time, but next class, you will be responsible for your own tidy time.”
Tidy time. Oh, holy shit. He was such a teacher. Had to be. “You teach little kids?”
“I do, yes. Oh, heck, that was a rather first-grade teacher thing to say, wasn’t it?” He chuckled softly. I liked the sound of his laughter. “My apologies. Sometimes these things just slip out.”
“No, hey, it’s cool. I think it’s nice for us, you know, a bunch of gorillas with problems.”
“You’re not a gorilla.”
“Oh no, I meant them obviously.” I threw him a wink. He smiled. “Hey, I mean, it will take my sister a long time to break free from what she’s doing. I guess I could come back in to partake in tidy time, then do coffee. I don’t want to be put in time-out or anything.”
That bit about Harper was a total lie. I’d not even called her yet.
“Ha, ha. Very funny. I don’t have a time-out chair big enough for your backside.”
With that, he scooted back inside. I watched the door shut behind him, a smile playing on my lips. I liked him. He had grit. And a kindness of the soul that spoke to something buried deep inside me. Also, he was just my type. So, even though my therapist suggested not dating anyone until I had my shit straightened out -- his words, not mine, but they could have been -- I sauntered back inside the community center to find Arnaud leading the chimps in a song while they cleaned up their paints.
