Chapter 29

Gus was not answering Nora's texts. It didn't take a genius to figure out why, but stupidly, she had not scheduled time in her day to pick him up. She'd assumed he would meet her at the art studio like he'd said he would, but now she wasn't so sure.

Her anxiety prompted her to fly home from the garden to shower and dress quickly, then speed across town to his apartment.

It took several knocks on his door before Gus finally answered, reeking of alcohol and sweat. His hair stood on end, and his T-shirt hadn't been changed in what looked like weeks. "We have a painting class, remember?"

He blinked, his eyes going wide. "Sure, I remember. But man, I thought you said... eight."

She shook her head at his lie. "You can't go like this."

His smile faded. "Give me a few minutes."

"Gus—"

"Give me five minutes. Just wait."

She waited, taking stock of his pitiful living conditions. It seemed the bottles had only multiplied since she was last here. When he came stumbling out of his bedroom, he still looked a wreck. "Let's go paint," he said, trying to sound cheerful.

They loaded into her car. As she pulled away from his apartment complex, she asked, "Did you find a meeting?"

He kept his gaze straight ahead. "I was going to, but..." He rubbed one big hand over his face. "It's the darkness, Nora. It, like, edges in, and everything feels bleak, so..." He shrugged.

She understood deeply what he meant, and it filled her with sorrow. "You know what's not bleak? Painting."

"You know what else isn't bleak? Your T-shirt."

Nora laughed. She was wearing a T-shirt she'd found at the thrift store. The graphic was a grid made up of nine Darth Vaders, all identical. The caption above the grid read "The Expressions of Darth Vader." She thought Jack would appreciate it if she ever saw him again.

"Remember that time we took Aunt Roberta's tablecloths and made capes?" Gus asked.

Nora instantly recalled that cold winter day. They'd been around eight years old—too young to resist impulses, but old enough to know better. "And painted them with the symbols of our make-believe space tribes?"

"She was so mad." Gus laughed.

"Furious!" The tablecloths had come from Harrods in London, which had somehow infused them with Great Importance. "I was grounded for two weeks—in my room."

Gus laughed and inadvertently belched. "But it was fun, right?"

"It was so much fun. I mean... until it wasn't."

"Like most things. Let's have some fun, Nora. Until we don't."

***

The studio was tucked behind a salon in South Austin. It was on the second floor, and Gus labored up the steps. The room was small and packed with aspiring artists. Nora and Gus squeezed into the last row, their easels so close they were touching. Nora could smell the sour mix of Gus's body odor and liquor. The poor guy literally reeked of loneliness.

The instructor—a young, wiry man with dark corkscrew curls—introduced himself and directed them to sketch pads at their places. He said the first exercise was a simple one. "It's a quick five minutes, so don't overthink it. I want you to imagine one shape that represents your life and sketch it. For example, my shape is a door." He held up a drawing of a simple door, shaded red. "I feel like I am always going through one, you know? This exercise doesn't have to be complicated—it's all about getting you to think in terms of shapes. Art is shapes. Life is shapes. Life and art intersect."

Gus immediately bent over his sketchbook. Nora stared at hers. A rush of images flew at her. She remembered lying in the golden field after she'd died and all the things that had come to her then. What was the shape of regret? Gus lifted his head. He smiled at Nora and held up his sketch pad: a bottle.

"Oh," she said weakly.

"I'm sure there are other things, but that... that is the shape of my life."

The man next to Nora had drawn a prism. Someone in the row ahead of her had drawn a tree.

"Time," the instructor said.

Nora quickly drew the shape of her life. A circle. Flat. Uninspired. A blank space to be filled. It was the shape of the ghost of Nora, which was no shape at all.

The instructor went on to talk about how the exercise would play into the first lesson—how their shapes would form the cactus they would attempt to paint tonight. He held up a finished version of the cactus. But Nora hardly heard a word he said—she'd drawn a hole where a life should have been.

At the end of class, she and Gus each had small paintings of a cactus—round petals in little red pots. Gus had decorated his pot. Nora had left hers blank. They agreed they hoped that they would improve and looked forward to the class next week when, the instructor said, they would begin with an exercise that captured their mood before painting that class's picture.

Gus seemed happy on the ride back to his apartment. "That was fun. I'm going to hang mine."

Where? Behind all those empty cans and bottles? Nora loved Gus so much, but how was this helping him? Someone had once told her that the way you supported an alcoholic was to be there for them. Did this count as being there? Or was this merely pretending it could all be fixed by calling him more and taking him to painting classes and attending AA meetings with him? What he needed was treatment. What he lacked was money. And maybe a desire to be sober. She didn't know.

What he really needed was someone to care about him enough to make him care about himself.

When they reached his apartment, Gus started to get out of her car, but Nora stopped him with a hand to his arm. "Gus... I'm sorry."

He looked confused. "For what?"

"I think I've really let you down."

He seemed even more confused. "No, you haven't."

She squeezed his thick forearm. "Do you know what Grandpa would have said?"

"About our paintings?" He sounded nervous. "That mine is better than yours."

"Not that."

Gus sagged against the passenger seat. He swallowed hard. He gripped his hand into a fist to keep it from shaking. "I don't want to do this right now, Nora. I had a good time tonight. Can't we leave it at that?"

"Sure. But when are we going to talk?"

He looked out the passenger window for a long moment. "What would he have said?"

"That you can't do this alone. And that he was there for you."

Gus snorted.

"He's not here, but I am. You really can't do this alone, Gus. Let me help you."

He chuckled darkly. "Thanks, but no thanks. No offense, but this is what you do—you say you're going to help, and then you don't. And come on, it's not like you don't have your own problems. You can't just wave a magic wand and—voilà—no more depression."

His words stung as much as Lacey's had. It was so difficult to acknowledge the truth of how she'd checked out the last couple of years. "I know. But I'm different now, Gus."

He laughed darkly. "Because of your near-death, yada, yada."

That stung too. "Exactly because of it. Just... just give me a chance." She was saying that a lotthese days.

Gus sighed and rubbed his forehead. "But how can you be so sure that you won't disappear again?" He dropped his hand and looked at her. "How? You're acting like you're cured."

"I'm not cured. Depression is a lifelong battle, I know that. Still, this time it's different. I don't know how to explain it, but it just is."

"Yeah," he said. "Forgive me if I'm a little skeptical." He gave her a thin smile. "I gotta go. I'll talk to you later." He got out of the car and took his cactus painting with him.

She had a feeling that regaining Gus's and Lacey's trust was going to be one of the hardest things she'd ever done. Ranking right up there with learning to trust herself.