The Color Master: Stories (6 page)

She turned the slide projector off and rummaged in a drawer, returning with a photograph of a group of people.

“Let’s try this,” she said. “William, who are these people?”

“They’re a group of people,” I said.

She bobbed her head. “Mmm-hmmm. Okay. And what do these people do?”

“They’re all nurses,” I said.

“That’s right!”

I pointed to the bottom of the photo, where it said
Nurse Convention
on a black plaque in big white letters.

She nodded; her neck was so long that a nod for her took about four seconds to complete.

“And what can you tell me about any of the people in the picture?”

“They’re all nurses,” I said again.

“And how are they different?”

“They’re different heights,” I said.

“Okay.” She looked in my ear while I was talking.

“My ears feel fine,” I said.

“She’s checking your balance,” whispered my mother, sitting perfectly still in a stiff orange chair in the corner.

The doctor straightened the photo in front of me.

“Now, William,” she said, “can you tell me if any of the nurses are older than the others?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, are there elderly nurses in the photo?”

I peered at it. They all looked pretty old to me. I found one with white hair.

“This one seems old,” I said. “He has white hair.”

She looked over my shoulder at the photo. “Okay,” she said. “Good. And you can tell that it’s a man there.”

“Yes,” I said. “It’s an old man nurse, right there.”

“And what else can you tell me about them?”

“Nothing much,” I said. “A bunch of nurses in a photo. For a convention.”

She returned to the drawer and brought out another picture. The second photo was of a bunch of young men in the army.

“Soldiers,” I said, pleased with myself. I could tell from the camouflage clothing.

“Okay,” she said. “And?”

“And what?”

“And … how are they different?”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “From each other? They’re all soldiers.”

“For example,” she said, “are some happy?”

I looked at it again. They were moving around, some of them. “Sure,” I said. “I suppose some are.”

“Can you tell?”

“Not really,” I said. “You can’t ever tell for sure if someone’s happy or not.”

She pointed to the corner with her fingertip. “What about this one here?”

“What about him?”

“How is he doing?”

I peered closely at his face. “I don’t think he looks too good,” I said. “His expression is weird.”

The doctor blew her nose into a tissue. “He’s getting shot,” she said.

“Oh,” I said. “Huh. I didn’t see that part yet.”

“You didn’t see his torso?”

“No,” I said. “I was looking at his face, like you asked. Now that I look at his body, I can see that he is getting shot.”

“And so is he happy?”

“Well, I certainly doubt it,” I said. “I’m not a moron.”

“And are any of them dead?”

I looked again at the photo. It took me a long time. Several of the soldiers were lying down. One of the ones lying down had his face in the dirt.

“This one could be dead,” I said, after about five minutes. “But maybe he’s sleeping.”

She unscrewed the earpiece from her instrument and took the photo out of my hands. “Thank you, William,” she said. “Fine. Let’s take a break and try something else for a minute. Of your friends at school, whom do you like the best?”

I could actually hear my mother’s jaw stiffen behind me.

“I like them the same,” I said.

“Really?” she asked.

“Really.”

“And do you have friends at school?”

“I just said so, didn’t I? I have a couple of groups I float between; I’m not really in one main group.”

“And can you tell the two groups from each other?”

“Of course,” I said, ripping up the corner of the papery doctor-visit shirt.

“How?”

“They sit in different parts of school,” I said.

“I see,” said the doctor. “And is there a leader in these groups?”

“They change around,” I said.

I turned and glared at my mother. She had her head down, her eyes on the wall, the ceiling, the floor.

“Can we move on, Doc?” I asked. “Any more photos?”

The doctor wrote something on her clipboard and returned to the drawer to take out another picture, this one of a family. I wasn’t sure why she had all these group pictures in her drawer, but maybe she saw people like me all the time.

“How about them?” she asked.

“Yes?”

“What can you tell me about them?”

“They’re all black,” I said. “I can see that.”

“Can you pick out the grandfather?”

I looked for a while. No one had white hair. “No.”

“Can you pick out the baby?”

I looked for a while again, and finally I found a baby stroller, off in the corner.

“There,” I said. “A baby.”

“Can you find the young man?”

I stared at it, but I couldn’t find the young man any more than I could tell who was the grandfather. And just because someone was old didn’t mean he was a grandfather anyway.

“No,” I said. “And it’s not because I’m racist.”

She brought out a similar photo of a family of white people. All I got was the shape of the group made by their heights and the positions of arms and feet.

“This one is sitting,” I said, pointing.

The doctor looked at my mother now. They exchanged a meaningful look.

“What?” I said. “Do I have brain damage? What? Who cares who’s who? I enjoy the general. What’s so wrong with that? Why is this important? If I meet the person and talk to them, I’ll know who they are then.”

My mother was silent.

The doctor was silent.

“Why did you say that?” asked the doctor, after a minute.

“What do you mean?”

“Why did you just say all that?”

“Because I hate snap judgments,” I said.

The doctor folded her arms.

“But how do you know?” she asked.

“How do I know what?”

“How do you know we’re making snap judgments?”

I unwrapped another candy. Green peppermint. “No reason,” I said. “My mother gave you a look.”

Now the doctor leaned against the wall.

“So you could see her look?”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Didn’t she give you a look?”

“Yes,” Mom said. “I gave her a look.”

“But you could
see
your mother’s look,” said the doctor. “Why?”

“Why?”

“You can’t see an old man. You can’t see a soldier getting shot.”

“I know my mother’s face.”

“Can you see it now?”

I looked over. Truth was, I couldn’t really see her face. I
could see big red lips because she was wearing lipstick because she likes to look nice for doctors.

“Make a face, Mrs. Robertson,” the doctor said.

She did something. What, I couldn’t tell.

“Can’t tell,” I said, sucking on the candy.

“But you could tell the earlier look,” said the doctor.

“Just sometimes,” I said. “Are we done?”

“Do you see me as a group?” asked the doctor then, in an all-too-friendly voice.

“I am not retarded,” I said, pulling my shirt back over my head. “I can see that you are one person, and that you have a ridiculously long neck.”

“William!” barked my mother.

“William, may I speak to your mother alone for a moment?” the doctor asked.

I stormed out. I emptied the entire lobby candy jar into my pockets and left the building. There was a candle shop next door, so I went in there and smelled wax for a while; the one that said it smelled like chocolate was wildly misleading. I have an excellent sense of smell. On the street, I tried to look at all the people walking by, but they just looked like walking people to me. I didn’t see why I needed to read their faces. Wasn’t there enough complication in the world already without having to take in the overload of details and universes in every single person’s fucking face?

The drive home was mostly silent. My mother didn’t wave at the drivers when she changed lanes, which is unlike her. In general, she’s at her best in the world with strangers, and gets great reassurance from a wave or a nod between cars. But
on this drive home she changed lanes on her own without acknowledgment of anyone and was quiet until we pulled into the driveway.

“I just don’t understand,” is all she said then.

My dad walked in from work late that night, as usual, and found some frozen pizza thawing in the refrigerator by accident. It had never been cooked, but he didn’t bother to heat it up and just ate it cold. “Cold pizza,” he said, smiling at me, as little flecks of cheese fell to the floor. “It’s not the same,” I told him. When he was done, my mother asked if she could speak to him in the other room. Ginny was playing hospital with her torn stuffed animals, and I skulked around their door as they settled in the bedroom and I heard her whisper to my dad that we went today to the doctor who did lots of tests and was very kind and professional and William has a real problem and the doctor diagnosed him with facial illiteracy.

“Wait, what?” I said from the hallway. I leaned in the door frame. “She said what?”

My mother’s eyes were enormous. Okay, I could see them. My mom only, sometimes. My father’s hair was a mess from exhaustive mussing, and he said: “Facial illiteracy? What the hell is that?”

“He cannot read a face,” said my mother, wincing. “He cannot recognize facial or, for that matter, bodily signals. He can’t read people at all. And, Stan,” she said, “it’s true.”

“Oh, what
ever
,” I said, kicking the door. “I bet the doctor made that name up right on the spot.”

“Go to bed, William.”

“It’s nine o’clock.”

“You’re a growing boy. Go to bed.”

“So what does it mean?” asked my father.

“I don’t know,” she said. “He may have to take special classes. On recognition. Of faces and people.
Go to bed
, William!”

I stayed by the door until she came and closed it on me.

Shoving my ear against the wood, I heard my father’s tones of mild protest and my mother’s rising pierce. “Soldiers!” she was saying. “All dead! He thought they were happy!”

At the TV, I found Ginny surrounded by her now mended stuffed toys, watching the sitcom about the people who work at the pet store and act like animals. She likes the boss, who talks like a monkey. I tried to look at each actor’s individual face, but all I saw were eyebrows and teeth. No one emerged from the parental bedroom for over an hour, and I fell asleep on the couch. That’s where I woke up with the first light of morning, covered with stuffed bears just barely held together by clusters of staples and tape.

For about a month, I went to classes across town taught by the long-necked doctor. They involved me and her in a dark viewing room, looking at huge slides of babies’ faces crying and laughing, and I had to tell her which was which. The doctor was stupid, because she kept using the same set of slides, and each time she’d tell me which was which, not realizing that every slide had a small gold number embossed in the corner. I just made notes on my leg: 14 is laughing, 13 is sneezing, 12 is crying, 11 is sleeping, etc. Within two weeks, I got eight out of ten on the test (I missed two on purpose), and she seemed very pleased with both of us. “Let’s see how you do for now,” she said, and she let me have my Saturday mornings back, which I used to climb roofs and mess with people’s TV antennae.

My mother did not pick me up from school again. She was back pounding the streets, looking for a job. She did interrogate me several times at the kitchen table when we were
home at the same time, but by now I’d learned my lesson. “His name’s John Gath,” I said to her, as I ate my fifth piece of toast. “He talks the most of anyone, and he is the leader of the group. I like him the best, except on the days when he’s in a bad mood.”