Girls in Pants - Ann Brashares [71]
She turned away, and then turned back for a little longer. She was seeing more now. She was holding on to something. She took a deep breath, carefully keeping herself in this other visual dimension. This place where she saw but didn’t feel.
Her hand was finally connecting charcoal to paper. She let it fly. She didn’t want to bog it down with thinking.
Her father’s face was no more to her than a topographical map. The mouth was a series of shapes, nothing more. The downturned eyes were shadings of darkness and light. She stayed there a good, long time. She was careful not to blink too hard or too long for fear that this new way of seeing would abandon her.
She wasn’t afraid of him anymore. The scared part of her was waiting out by the mouth of the cave; the rest of her had gone in.
She saw something in her father’s mouth. A little tick. Another tick, and then a sag.
She wasn’t scared anymore, but was he?
The trick of drawing was leaving your feelings out, giving them the brutal boot. The deeper trick of drawing was inviting them back in, making nice with them at exactly the right moment, after you were sure your eyes really were working. Fighting and making up.
And so her feelings were coming back in, but they were a different kind this time. They were guided by her eyes, rather than the other way around. Tentatively, she let them come. A good drawing was a record of your visual experience, but a beautiful drawing was a record of your feelings about that visual experience. You had to let them come back.
She saw her father’s fear, and it so surprised her, she could barely contemplate it. What was he afraid of?
She could imagine if she tried. He was afraid of her disobedience. He was afraid of her independence. He was afraid of her growing up and not being the kind of girl he could feel proud of—or the kind of girl Bapi would be proud of. He was afraid of being old and powerless. He was afraid she would see his vulnerability. But also, she suspected, he wanted her to see it.
She felt her fingers softening around the charcoal. Her lines got looser. She felt sad and moved by these things she saw in his face. She didn’t want to make it hard for him to love her. But at the same time, she couldn’t deny who she was to make it easy.
Her fingers were flying. The muscles in her father’s neck quivered slightly with the great effort of holding still for her. He was trying. He really was.
That moved her too.
After almost two hours she set him free. “Thank you,” she said earnestly.
He pretended he didn’t notice so much.
She held the drawing board facing out as she left, so he could peek at the results if he wanted to. He didn’t peek.
But later that night, when she was going to bed, she tiptoed past the kitchen, where she’d left her drawing of him propped on a chair. He stood alone in the quiet room. And even though she just saw his back, she knew he was looking.
Win offered to take the wheel so Carmen could work the phone. Half an hour into the drive they had to stop for gas. He bought two Cokes and a bag of Corn Nuts. Carmen had never had Corn Nuts before, and she loved them. They could barely hear each other over the crunching, so they found themselves shouting, which they both thought was incredibly funny once they realized it. The laughter made Carmen’s eyes start running again, and the salt made her lips burn.
She was tired and punchy and worried and also happy that they were driving toward David and doing everything they could.
By her calculation they had four hours to find David and get back to her mom. He was only an hour away now. It would work. It had to work. She felt confident that Tibby could keep her mom company for the waiting part, and David and Carmen would be there in time for the inducing part, when the real drama started.
Win was a good driver. He was confident and sharp about it, and yet effortless too. For some reason, the look