WHEN I GOT back home, there was an email waiting for me from the North American Portrait Society, which reminded me I’d forgotten all about it. It had a big long to-do list of action items before the juried show, and another copy of the rules and guidelines, including:
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Portraits must be on 30 inch × 40 inch canvas.
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Portraits must feature only one subject.
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Portraits must be of a live model—no work done from photographs.
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Portraits may be either oil or acrylic, but no mixed media.
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Portraits must be new work—painted within six weeks of the deadline.
Also there was a whole attachment about a component of the evening I’d evidently missed in the original email. Not only was the show a competition that would be judged in real time, it was also a silent auction. Our portraits would be bid on over the course of the evening and sold to the highest bidder—with the proceeds going to fund classes and education.
My first thought was That sounds nice.
Eclipsed immediately by Oh god. What if no one bids on my portrait?
It was, shall we say, a pretty good reminder to get my ass in gear.
I counted back through my calendar, and I’d frittered away fourteen days since learning I was a finalist. True, I’d had a lot going on. But the North American Portrait Society wouldn’t be left waiting. The portrait submissions for finalists were due three days before the actual show, and even though other people had to crate and ship theirs, and I could just Uber
mine over to the gallery, I still had just over three weeks left to get this done.
Three weeks.
Not nearly enough time for my old, fully functioning fusiform face gyrus—not to mention that I hadn’t even started painting. Or even really thought about it.
Time to pull it together. If I was well enough to marry Peanut’s veterinarian, I was well enough to paint one portrait.
But … how?
The portraits I did were classic, traditional ones. One of my art teachers in college had called me “a multicultural twenty-first-century Norman Rockwell.” I took all different kinds of subjects and gave them a Saturday Evening Post treatment—realistic, simple, easy-to-understand images with lots of warm rosy light and plenty of charm. Those were the style of portraits my mother had painted, too—and, in fact, I’d taught myself to paint by copying her portfolio. That’s what I did in high school instead of drinking: stayed in the art studio twenty hours a day and copied my mother’s brushstrokes.
I’d say, at this point, you could barely tell my work apart from hers, and that not only made me feel proud—it made me feel like I’d found a way to hold on to her.
But here’s the truth about portraits like these: They are all about the face.
Everything in a portrait like that is directing the viewer toward the face
—the lines, the angles, the framing, the colors. The face is where the emotions are, and where the story lies, and where the heart of the whole thing happens.
You can’t fudge it, is what I mean. You can’t put the subject in sunglasses. Or have that person facing away from you or hanging upside down or hiding under a hat. Not if you wanted to be good. Not if you wanted to win ten thousand dollars. You needed a perfectly rendered, so- detailed-it-feels-alive face—front and center.
I’d done it a thousand times. I’d crushed it a thousand times. Faces were my specialty.
But now?
I had no idea what to do.
And I had only three weeks left to figure it out.
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AT SOME POINT, in the wake of what Sue called my “facepocalypse,” she had kindly agreed to be my live model. I had a better shot with her face, she reasoned, since I knew it so well.
And plus, as ever, she’d be willing to do crazy stuff.
I called her after getting the reminder email, and I said, “We’re still on for tomorrow, right?”
“Of course,” Sue said.
“Don’t flake out, okay? I really need you.” “I never flake out,” Sue said.
She sometimes flaked out, to be honest. But who didn’t?
Sue worked as an art teacher at a primary school, and the plan was for her to come over after work every day for a week. We’d split some kind of takeout dinner, and her boyfriend Witt swore he didn’t mind her “working late.”
“You’re not really working, though,” I said. “Are you?” “Labor of love,” she said, letting us both be right.
I made Sue bring her red polka-dot dress with the ruffle sleeves. If the face was going to be weaker than usual in this portrait, then everything else had to be stronger. I’d need to render the silkiness of those ruffles in a way that made you feel them rustling against your own skin. Also, the red needed to be just right—rich and eye-catching without being overwhelming. I’d have Sue sit on the floor and frame the perspective from up above so I could fill as much of it as possible with that gorgeous fabric.
No question: that polka-dot dress had a lot of work to do.
Sue, I should mention, has a stunningly beautiful face. She has perfectly defined lips, an elegant nose, black hair so shiny she could sell shampoo, and monolid eyes with deep brown irises. I’d painted her twenty times, at least, and she was one of my favorite subjects.
In ordinary times, we’d already have this thing locked up.
But now, of course, things were different. Maybe I knew her face so well, I didn’t have to see it to paint it? Maybe I’d painted her so many other times, my hands would know what to do by muscle memory?
I closed my eyes and tried to picture Sue’s face. But no luck.
I could see her hair. If I zoomed in, I could remember the bow shape of her mouth. The rich brown of her eyes. But all the pieces put together?
My mind’s eye drew a blank.
The old me would have had this thing in the bag. But I kept pushing that thought aside. Our thoughts create our emotions. I wasn’t going to make this harder on myself—it was hard enough. I wasn’t going to freak myself out. I would practice the art of self-encouragement if it killed me.
Sue showed up dutifully every day, like a champ.
After Monday, I had the basic framing. Then Tuesday and Wednesday, I worked on the details and the drape of the fabric. Thursday, I nailed down her arms and hands.
And then suddenly it was Friday. Time to ruin it all with the face.
I dreaded it all day long, staring at the canvas’s empty white face hole.
By the time Sue arrived, I was ready to quit.
“I don’t want to find out for sure that I can’t do this, you know?” I said. “I’d rather only suspect that I can’t do it. Doesn’t that sound better?”
“No. That doesn’t sound better. Because then you’re not painting. And you always get really crabby when you’re not painting.”
She wasn’t wrong.
“Even painting something bad,” Sue said, “is better than not painting anything at all.”
“Is it?” I asked. Guess we were about to find out.
“Maybe you’ll surprise yourself,” Sue said. “Maybe portrait painting is another brain system like reading emotions is. Or maybe you’re so good at this, you don’t even need your face area thingy. Wouldn’t that be amazing?”
I nodded.
“Just jump in,” she said. “I really suspect that the worst possible choice is to not even try.”
I suspected that, too. And so I tried.
I stood in front of the canvas, looking down at the dear face of my dear friend who I’d known so long, who I’d painted so many times … and I saw nothing but unintelligible nonsense.
But I pushed on.
My best strategy was to divide the face circle on the canvas into mathematical sections, and mark, in general, where the eyes and nose and mouth should be, and then focus on one puzzle piece at a time, plugging them in where each one ought to go.
It was a good plan. But it didn’t work.
When I finally finished the pencil sketch, I stepped back and realized that now it, too, looked like puzzle pieces.
I had just drawn that picture. But now I couldn’t see it.
I asked Sue to check it and see if I was on the right track. She got up all eager, but then slowed way down on the approach.
I couldn’t see her expression, but I could definitely read her emotion.
And that emotion was “Huh.” “Tell me,” I said.
“Do you want me to be honest?” “No. Yes. I don’t know.”
“It’s a little funky,” Sue said at last. “What does that mean?”
She paused. “It’s not photorealism.”
“We knew that already. What are you saying?” “It’s a little bit like a Salvador Dalí painting.”
“Oh my god, is your face melting? Like a Dalí clock?”
“No … the pieces are all technically kind of in the right place. Ish. It’s not surrealism, exactly. It’s just…”
“How bad is it that you can’t even find the words?” “It’s a little ghoulish.”
“Ghoulish!” I had my answer. “Ghoulish is super bad. Ghoulish is a catastrophe.”
But she came over and hugged me.
“It’s certainly eye-catching,” she said, trying to accentuate the positive. “Nobody’s going to be bored looking at this thing.”
But eye-catching wasn’t going to cut it. Not bored wasn’t what the judges wanted. And don’t get me started on ghoulish. This was a puppies- and-kittens type of organization.
These North American Portrait Society folks were about following the rules—not breaking them.
I stared at the painting and tried to see what Sue was talking about—or any face at all. But I just couldn’t. I squinted and concentrated and tried to make the pieces click for so long that frustration finally burst up out of my body like a geyser. I slammed my fist down on the paint table, accidentally hitting a book … that hit a glass jar of brushes … that went flying and shattered on the concrete floor.
“Shit,” I said, deflating.
I moved to start picking up the shards, but Sue stopped me. “Go sit down. I’ll get this. Take some breaths.”
I did as I was told.
Sue found a broom and a pan. “What about Chuck Close?” she suggested. “He was a portrait artist with face blindness. How did he do it?”
I’d been reading up on him. He was a face-blind artist who painted enormous photorealistic faces. But I shook my head. “He superimposed a grid over a photograph. But for this competition, it has to be a live model. No photos allowed. It’s in the rules.”
“What do other face-blind portrait artists do?”
“Shockingly, a search of ‘techniques of face-blind portrait artists’ does not turn up a huge number of results.”
“You’ve tried it?” “Many times.”
“Well, then,” Sue said, frowning again at the painting. “We’ll just have to get creative.”
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I ASKED DR. Nicole about it when we had our first meeting outside the hospital.
I’d been supposed to start twice-a-week sessions with her the day after I came home. But in my Pajanket stupor, I’d missed that first appointment. And then the next two. And I was seriously considering just never going at all when she started calling me—stalking me, really—until I finally gave in.
I Ubered to her office.
Which wasn’t an office at all. It was a 1920s bungalow in the Museum District.
It’s not a stretch to say that I fan-girled Dr. Nicole with the same intensity that I was now madly in love with Peanut’s new veterinarian. This whole brain surgery thing seemed to have really turned up the volume on my emotions.
In the hospital, she had seemed to glow with comfort and compassion. Now, here in the real world, as she opened the door in a belted maxi dress, dangly gold earrings, and open-toed flats … she was even better. Her short, naturally graying hair seemed to ring her head like a halo.
“Hello, Sadie,” she said, taking my hand and giving it her signature squeeze. “Come in.”
What was it about her? She was so damned together. Her voice. Her calm. So balanced and solid and like she had it all under control.
The opposite of me, basically. Especially now.
“I’m sorry I missed all those appointments,” I said, now that I was finally here. “I didn’t want to leave my apartment.”
“I understand,” Dr. Nicole said.
I’m not going to lie. My life lately had me questioning everything. And Dr. Nicole Thomas-Ramparsad, Ph.D., just felt like a person who had all the answers.
“Nobody has all the answers,” she said when I told her that. “I’m just here to help you ask the right questions.”
Exactly what someone who had all the answers would say.
Her office was bright and breezy. It had a little bit of an Old Hollywood vibe to it, with plaster walls and a wrought-iron staircase rail. Big windows. A lazily spinning ceiling fan with basket-weave blades. Potted palms and rubber trees all around—and, outside the window, positively basking in the sunlight, a cheery forest of birds-of-paradise everywhere.
Dr. Nicole made us tea and brought me a slice of coconut bread—warm with melting butter. Did neuropsychologists bake bread for their patients? Was this a thing?
No matter. Dr. Nicole clearly made her own rules.
Plus, I was so starved for comfort, I didn’t care. My eyes filled with tears at my first bite.
“How is the facial perception?” she asked. “Any changes?” I shook my head. No change at all.
“It may take some time,” she said. Then, “How are you coping?”
“I don’t think I’m going to win any coping trophies anytime soon,” I said.
I told her about feeling like I was on an alien planet. I told her about not feeling like myself. I told her about being so terrified of not recognizing people—and then running into Parker. I told her that I wanted to be the kind of person who could think of prosopagnosia as a superpower—but I just didn’t know how to get there.
“Well,” she said, “getting there is the fun part.” From anyone else, that would’ve been insulting.
I told her about trying to paint Sue’s portrait, and what a total disaster it had been, and how the thought that I’d worked so hard for so long only to finally get my big break and then totally blow it was keeping me up at night.
“Why do you want to win the competition so badly?” Dr. Nicole asked. “Because it’s ten thousand dollars—and I’m broke.”
She nodded, like, Fair enough. “Any other reasons?” “Because it could change my life,” I said.
Dr. Nicole waited, like she knew there’d be more.
“Because I could use some encouragement,” I said. “Because I’m ready to get something right. Because I’m just so tired of failing.”
That felt like a pretty big confession, right there. But Dr. Nicole just waited, like there was more.
“I guess I should mention,” I said then, “that my mother was also a portrait artist. And she also placed in this same competition thirteen years ago. But she, um…” I took a sip of tea. “She died suddenly the week before the show.”
Dr. Nicole sat back in her chair.
Now, at last, I’d said something real. “We should probably talk about that.”
I wrinkled my nose and shook my head.
Dr. Nicole gave a little have-it-your-way shrug. “What’s your dream?” she asked then. “What do you want from your career?”
“My dream?” I asked. This felt like a trick question. “What does the life you want look like?”
I shrugged. “I’d like to be successful.” It felt weird to say that out loud, in a way. Like I was being greedy. But what on earth had I been hustling for all these years if not to be successful? Did anyone ever try like hell for years to not be successful? “I’d like to make a living. A good living. Maybe some job stability. And to just wake up every day and paint. I don’t need to take over the world. I don’t need diamonds and yachts and furs. But I’d like to get my car back. Or—okay, maybe a better car. I don’t want to want too much. I think I could be satisfied with just, like, a functioning car and enough money to pay my bills.”
Dr. Nicole waited, like I wasn’t trying hard enough.
I went on. “But if you’re asking what I want? Deep down, what I long for? I want my paintings to sell like hotcakes. I want to be admired by my peers. I want to really, truly be okay, and not just pretending. I want to be kicking ass. I want to be thriving. I want to prove that I was awesome all along.”
“Prove that to whom?”
Whoa. This lady could use whom in conversation. And make it sound right. She was literally the coolest. But I didn’t know how to answer that question. “I don’t know. People.”
“Which people?” But I just shrugged.
Dr. Nicole changed her approach. “What would you get if you were successful?”
“What would I get?”
Dr. Nicole nodded. “Emotionally.”
Ah. Emotionally. Suddenly I knew what she was asking. “You know,” I said, “I don’t really think that we need to do a whole lot of deep emotions in here. I’m really just here for the neuropsychology tips. You know? To snag a few coping techniques. I don’t need to, like, delve into my dark past or anything.”
She looked at me—and, again, I could feel this without seeing it—very kindly said, “You know it’s all the same, right?”
“What is?”
“Emotions. Coping tips. Your dark past.” Ugh.
“You’re very in your head,” she said. “I’d like to see you dip into your heart.”
“I like it in my head.”
“But that’s not really where we live.”
“Are you trying to tell me I’m emotionally closed off?” I said. “Because I have lots of emotions. I’m great at emotions! I’m a huge fan of you, for example. I just fell madly in love with my brand-new veterinarian. I cry at life insurance commercials.”
“Real emotions, I mean.”
“Are you telling me that love isn’t real?”
But Dr. Nicole pulled rank on me then. Pausing a good while before saying, “Is that a question designed to get us closer to the truth or to steer us away?”
God, she was good.
“The thing is,” I said, “I don’t talk about it. My dark past. Not even with my dog.”
“We don’t need to talk about it,” she said. Then she added, “today.”
Then she shifted topics. “What are your strategies for interacting with people?”
“I’m just going to hide in my apartment until the edema goes down.” “Why don’t you want to see people?”
“It stresses me out. I’m embarrassed.” “Embarrassed that you can’t recognize them?”
“Yes.” Embarrassed I couldn’t recognize them. Embarrassed I couldn’t see them. Afraid of hurting their feelings or snubbing them by accident or seeming like a bitch. Humiliated to not be myself. Disappointed to no longer be a brain surgery poster child. Mortified, ultimately, to not be so not okay that I couldn’t even hide it.
“What if you just told people?”
That question didn’t even make any sense. “Told people what?”
“About what you’re dealing with right now. About what you’re going through.”
“What? Like, wear a T-shirt that says, ‘I can’t see you’?” “That’s one option, I guess.”
“Never,” I said. “Never?”
“I will never tell anyone about this face thing. Not voluntarily.”
Dr. Nicole leaned forward like that was the most interesting thing I’d said all day. “Why not?”
“Because that’s need-to-know information.” “It might help you feel more comfortable.”
“The whole world doesn’t need to know that I’m malfunctioning,” I said, like that settled it. But Dr. Nicole didn’t seem satisfied. So I added, “I just want to be my normal self.”
“But you aren’t your normal self right now.” She mercifully did not add, And might never be again.
“I’m just going to take a fake-it-til-ya-make-it approach.” That’s what I’d been doing my whole life. “If I can’t be okay, I’ll seem okay.”
“Seeming okay and being okay are not the same thing.” “Close enough.”
“In fact,” she said, leaning in a little, “they might cancel each other out.”
“Are you saying I should just walk around wailing and weeping?” “I’m saying,” she said, “that it’s better to be real than fake.”
I could have argued with her. But I had a feeling I’d lose.
Dr. Nicole went on. “It might help people to know what’s going on with you. It might help them help you.”
“Have you met people?” I asked. “People don’t help other people.”
Dr. Nicole let that land for a second. Then she said, “I can think of a few teachers, firefighters, nurses, loving parents, and Good Samaritans who might disagree with you.”
The Good Samaritan.
And just as I remembered him, Dr. Nicole said, “Didn’t someone save your life recently?”
Ugh. So this was gotcha therapy. “Yes.” “Was that not ‘helping other people’?” “That was an emergency,” I said.
“Ah,” she said. But it was sarcastic.
I took a bite of coconut bread and contemplated that.
Then a thought lit up my head like sunlight breaking through clouds. “Dr. Nicole?” I asked, trying not to sound suspicious. “When you were
arguing with me just now, were you … teaching me how to argue with myself?”
And then I could see her teeth—but also feel her big smile—as she said, “You’re smarter than you look, choonks.”
