I didn’t mind. It gave me some time to think.
I’d been hoping—so hoping—that the edema would magically resolve before I really got down to the wire and had to paint this portrait for the show. Every morning I woke up and shuffled to the bathroom mirror, squeezing my eyes closed for a silent prayer before finally peeking to see what I could see.
And every morning, of course, my own face was just a jumbled pile of disconnected features.
I missed it. I missed seeing my face.
But I’d been instructed not to give up hope, and I was nothing if not obedient.
It would come back, I kept telling myself. There was a very good chance, at least.
But now I was at the point, with just over two weeks before the portrait deadline, when I had to trudge forward—fusiform face gyrus or no. I mean, even if I magically resolved my face blindness tomorrow, I’d still need time to paint the painting.
It was a make-it-work moment.
And so I’d been researching the brain. I’d been reading up on painting techniques and neuroplasticity, and how creativity worked. I’d been hunting through different strategies for making lots of different art. My best idea was to try to bypass the fusiform face gyrus altogether, if I could. To use other senses rather than sight. To sneak around my own assumption that I had to see faces the way I’d always seen them before I could paint them.
Maybe there was another way of seeing.
Maybe if Sue described her face to me in words, the words could make a new path for me to follow. Maybe I could capture her face before my fusiform face gyrus figured out what I was up to. Another idea was to try to turn Sue’s face upside down, or maybe sideways, so that my brain didn’t realize it was a face. Maybe if we just thought we were doing shapes and colors and lines, the FFG would never have a reason to cause trouble. And then, if neither of those worked, I’d turn to math. My least appealing option, since I was quite math-challenged. But artist Chuck Close had mapped photographs with faces using a grid. Who’s to say I couldn’t do the same thing on a real face?
If worse came to worse, I might draw an actual grid on Sue’s actual face.
She didn’t know that yet, of course.
But these were desperate times.
* * *
AND SO THERE they were. Countless late nights of research, distilled down into my best three ideas. Or more accurately, my final three shots in the dark. I knew I couldn’t paint the way I’d always done it. My only remaining chance was to try something new.
And what if none of them worked?
Well, I wasn’t going to think about that.
Anyway, that’s what I was planning as Peanut peed on every clover flower between my building and the bayou: all the crazy new portrait techniques I’d try tonight with Sue. I had the canvas all ready and a measuring tape and a projector with a grid. We’d start with words and go from there. Maybe it would work better than I feared. Maybe my fusiform face gyrus would surprise me.
I was giving myself that pep talk when a fat plop of rain hit my nose.
Followed by another on my arm.
And then I lost count completely as some dam broke in the sky and Peanut and I had to race-walk the half mile home through what felt like a waterfall of rain.
By the time we made it back to the building lobby, I looked like I’d just climbed out of a swimming pool in all my clothes. My hair was plastered down on my face, and my shoes were squishing like they were full of Jell-O.
Peanut and I slid through the elevator doors just as they were closing—only to look up and see two people already there. Joe in his jacket. And a faceless woman.
Standing next to each other.
“Whoa,” Joe said at the sight of me.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
Peanut shook himself out and sprayed them both with rainwater, which made Joe laugh and the woman beside him recoil.
And that’s when I smelled Poison.
Ugh. Just my luck.
Joe took a step closer to me. “Can I help you out somehow?”
He started to unzip his jacket, like he was going to give it to me, but the zipper got stuck.
“It’s fine,” I said as he yanked at it. “I’m already drenched.”
But Joe was determined, and when he couldn’t get the zipper to give, he pulled the jacket off over his head.
It really was too little, too late—but I didn’t stop him. Mostly because the sight of him wriggling was so entrancing—as his T-shirt came up, too, revealing the stripes at the waistband of his boxer briefs—that Parker and I both just stood there, enjoying ourselves.
A rare moment of unity.