Portrait of Allie Hurtz

My best friend Allie Hurtz is not my best friend at all but she sticks her hand out the window when she drives, palm facing the mountains. Her hair is streaked with “what if we…?” and she walks like there is never somewhere to be, only somewhere to go. I watch her footsteps like a rhythm to the beat of that one song we sang at a party and for a moment, God stops playing with me like the girl in calculus who used to twirl her hair around her fingers until the strands were permanently curled. I breathe and my breath does not hitch. My pulse is even.

The funny thing about artwork is that nobody can tell you you’re doing it wrong. There’s no “Deeya, try it like this” or “Deeya, use something else” or “Deeya when the fuck are you going to give it up?” I draw Allie’s portrait like I used to draw my best friend. Heartbeat first.

My best friend Allie has a little sister and a little brother and, if I didn’t stop her, would probably adopt the entire city of Providence because her heart is just that big and beating and real. When Allie collapses on my floor because she hasn’t eaten in five days, the first thing I check is her heart. It still beats, and I put my hand on my chest to make sure mine does, too.

My favorite painting I do when I am younger is on a real easel in a real American school in Augusta, Georgia with yellow school buses and teachers named “Heather.” Mom drops me off on the first day and I cannot let go of her hand, fingernails etching lines into her worn palm as we enter. Paints are poised on the little tables with little brushes set on the chairs and tears brim in my little brown eyes as she cups my chin and crouches to my height, the back of her thumb rubbing the crease in my eyebrows. She taps my chest before she leaves. I am here, she seems to say. 

15 years later, I uncover this painting in a box in the basement, the bright green slashes of the grass opposite the blue of the sky, sun in the corner and winking back at me. In the middle is my mother: a pink heart, big and pretty and lopsided in the middle of the easel paper. 

Heather titled it “Deeya’s momma.”

Allie’s mother feeds me penne pasta with basil from the garden and tells me I have the prettiest skin in the whole wide world. She tells me I look like a painting. I’m visiting Allie in her hometown and I am a flight and two drives away from my own, which I continue to miss with every bite. But I thank her and tell her she has a lovely daughter and I am honored to call her my best friend. Earlier, Allie drives me to her home from the airport, hand out the window and hair in her eyes. When I ask Allie about her mother she says that I shouldn’t be worried because her mother never beats the houseguests, and that there should be towels in the closet next to the bathroom and the lock sometimes gets stuck so to holler if I need her. Later that night, I call my mother and remind her that I left the pearl earrings she let me borrow in a bowl on her nightstand so they didn’t roll off and onto the floor.

There’s a section in the Cincinnati Art Museum that just has paintings of trees. Tall trees, overgrown trees, ones with leaves falling off and leaves coming in. I don’t have a favorite painting in the Cincinnati Art Museum, but if I had to choose, I assume I’d choose one of those. 

The first time I meet Allie Hurtz, she is climbing a tree. It is the middle of November and she is wearing pajama shorts and light pink Crocs. I watch her meticulously place the rubber soles on knot after knot, branch after branch until one of them gives and she tumbles to the ground, landing flat on her chest. I shriek, throwing my backpack to the side and helping her up. 

She laughs softly, brushes the dirt from her knees and stretches out her hand. “I’m Allie.”

My heart beats like it has something to say. I think that is why I can’t stop writing, and why my best friend doesn’t say anything anymore. I tell Allie about her, once. We are sitting on the carpet of my room and she is plucking at the fabric, eyes boring into mine. I tell her about my best friend and the beautiful drawings she used to make, charcoal smeared in all the right places, ink poignant with every slash. She was going to be an artist, and I was going to be a writer and we were going to create beautiful books for innocent children and dedicate them to our mothers. Allie looks away, fingers dug into the carpet.

My best friend did a painting for me once. It’s simple, and the arches of the trees hang over my desk, leaves seeping into the wall. I gesture to it and Allie asks where she is now, and if we talk a lot now that I’ve moved away. My breathing is even as I tell her that my best friend is buried in Woodsoul Cemetery, just up the street from my favorite coffee shop. 

Allie doesn’t ask anything more, and we never bring it up again.

Allie comes to my room in college and tells me that she has something to share with me. She looks down at her computer and says that she doesn’t know if she wrote a poem or a story or a memoir but she’s just gonna call it art and I’m “gonna hafta be okay with that.” I tell her okay. I tell her that the best thing about artwork is that nobody can tell you you’re doing it wrong.

As she reads it, I can hear it. 

Her heartbeat.