Leah started painting on Friday night. I was taking my last sip of tea with a book in my hand when I saw her stand up slowly and approach the blank canvas. I watched her out of the corner of my eye, lying in the hammock a few feet away.
She grabbed a brush, opened the black paint tube, and took a deep breath before letting whatever was in her head come out. I was amazed as I watched her, attentive to the soft movements of her arms, the strength with which her fingers grabbed the brush, her tense shoulders, her furrowed brow, that energy that seemed to push her to paint one line, then another, then another. I held back my desire to get up and see what she was doing as I saw her mixing paint to come up with different tones of gray.
I had felt that way before too, but so long ago I was incapable of recalling the exact occasion. It had been in Douglas’s studio, on the afternoons that I spent there with him, feeling…feeling everything, maybe because back then I didn’t think too much and the final result didn’t matter much to me, whether I did a good or a bad job. It was enough to talk with him for a while, drink a beer, and let it all flow.
When Leah finished, I got up.
“Can I see it?” I asked.
“It’s horrible,” she warned me.
“Okay. I’ll try to deal.”
A smile pulled at the edges of her mouth as I came over and looked at the painting. There was a dot in the center, round and alone, frozen in the midst of an eddy of paint that spun around it., the bubble and the rest of the world following its course. For once, I didn’t just notice the content, I also saw the technique, how she had captured the circular movement. So real, so her.
Once Douglas told me that the complicated part of creativity isn’t having an idea or an image in your head you want to reproduce; the hard thing is getting it out, making it exist, managing to find the thread that runs through the imaginary and the earthly so you can manage to express your thoughts, your sensations, your emotions…
“I like it. I’ll take it.”
“No! Not this one.”
“Why?” I crossed my arms.
“Because…I’ll make a different one for you. One day. I don’t know when.”
“Fine. I’ll hold you to it.” I stretched my arms up high. “We should get to bed soon if we want to go diving tomorrow.”
“You didn’t say anything to me about that,” she replied.
“No? Well, I am now.”
Leah wrinkled her nose, but she didn’t complain. She cleaned her brushes and put her things away. I told her good night, left her there, and went inside.
* * *
Julian Rocks is one of the most famous places to go diving, and it was just twenty minutes from home. We packed some of our stuff into the back of the pickup. The rest we would rent at the diving center. I started the engine and turned up the volume on the stereo. It was a nice day; the temperature was pleasant and warm for wintertime. While we left behind the almost-wild beaches and the tropical woods, I remembered why I felt so bound to that part of the world.
“You’re going fast,” Leah whispered by my side.
“Sorry.” I braked a little. “Better?”
She hardly said anything when we arrived and started getting ready, but I liked seeing her concentrated and resolute. There were surfers on the beach when we got into the boat along with several other people and pulled away from the coast. Leah stayed pensive beside me, and I talked to an old acquaintance who was the diving instructor. We stopped shortly.
“Are you ready?” I looked at her.
“Yeah. I…I’m excited.”
After working out the last-minute details, I looked over her gear. “You first, all right? I’ll follow you.”
When her turn came, after two other young people dove in, she sat on the edge of the boat, her back to the water, and let herself fall in. I felt something strange as I watched her sink. Uncertainty. A fucked-up, anxious feeling. I liked it and didn’t at the same time. It was strange and not quite rational.
“I’ll go now,” I told the instructor.
I saw her right away, just a few yards from me. The sea was calm. Julian Rocks is a marine reserve with immense biodiversity thanks to the mix of warm and cold currents. We quickly saw a leopard shark and manta rays. Leah stretched out her hand to a school of clown fish that dispersed when we approached them. I followed her when she stopped to delight in a huge turtle and when she floated there in the midst of thousands of fish, surrounded by an explosion of color in the middle of the ocean. The image was engraved in my mind as if I had taken a mental photograph, the peace it gave off, the blended tones, the beauty of something so wild…
Back on land, we ate at a Thai place. We ordered noodles, rice with vegetables, and the soup of the day.
“What time are we going back?”
“Why do you ask? You in a rush?”
“I told Blair that maybe…maybe I could have a coffee with her this afternoon.”
“You didn’t tell me. Sure, I’ll take you wherever as soon as we finish eating. What about the diving? Did you like it?”
Leah smiled, a real smile, still excited and content. “I almost didn’t remember what it was like. All those colors…” she said as she stirred the noodles they had just served to us with her chopsticks. “Yellow and orange and blue fish…and the turtle, that was amazing. I love turtles, their little faces…”
“Goddamn this is good,” I said, licking my lips.
“You’re always like this, aren’t you?”
“This cool?” I raised an eyebrow.
“You enjoy every moment.”
“Yes and no. I’ve had my bad times.”
“Have you ever really suffered?”
“Of course. Lots of times. Like everyone. It’s inevitable, Leah. And it’s not a bad thing. There’s no reason why it should be; life is like that. There are good times and bad times. I think the secret is trying to push through the bad ones and enjoy the good ones. There’s not much else.”
“Aren’t you going to tell me what happened to you?”
“Depends. What do I get in exchange?”
“From me? I doubt I’ve got anything that interests you.”
“What is that, some kind of compliment?”
“Fine, we’ll make a deal.”
I liked watching her joke around even though we both knew we were talking about something serious. I stretched my legs under the table and they almost touched hers. The Thai place was very small; there were just five wooden tables, and we were in one in the corner.
“There’s something I’ve been asking myself for months.” I rubbed my chin. “How is it possible that you’re still listening to the Beatles every day? It’s a direct connection to them, to your parents. And you’ve been doing it from the very first day, when you used to spend the whole afternoon in your room with your headphones on.”
Leah looked away, slightly nervous. “I needed it. I couldn’t…I couldn’t leave them behind; I had to take them with me. I don’t know, Axel. I don’t have a rational answer; I don’t even see the logic in half the things I feel or do. I contradict myself all the time.”
“We all do now and then.”