Pincushion

 It’s been five years today since Noodle died. First thing in the morning, I carry my coffee and sketchbook and phone and headphones out onto the balcony and start drawing a picture for her. I feel a drop or two, and look up in surprise. It rarely rains in July here- and while there are a few scattered clouds, they don’t look like rainclouds. What happens next surprises me even more. A rumble of thunder rolls over the hills, followed by a flash of lightning. The rain picks up and my page is soon speckled. I close my sketchbook and place it inside. but continue to sit on the balcony in my bathrobe. The thunder continues but I don’t see any more lightning. When the rain slackens I listen to Elliot Smith sing Rose Parade and am finally able to cry a little.

On a whim, I head out to Hillsboro. It’s a nice long train ride and there is an antique place I enjoy rummaging around in, even if the aisles are too narrow for me to use my scooter comfortably. A soon as I get off the train, I see a bunch of tents set up. They are having some kind of chalk drawing festival, with a couple dozen artists lined up and down the barricaded street. 

When we were kids, we often drew with chalk on the sidewalk in front of our house. We were poor, and a box of chalk was cheap. I won third prize in a chalk drawing contest in West Park when I was perhaps nine or ten. I have no memory of what I drew, and oddly my parents didn’t take any photos, but I remember kneeling on my assigned square on one of the paths that circle the park. And I clearly remember picking up my prize with my father at city hall. I won a plastic yellow carousel designed to hold Crayola art supplies.

Noodle and I would go to West Park occasionally. I’ve always loved it there; it’s a small city park, with a wide variety of trees and a bandstand and a spectacular fountain with frogs and gargoyles that spout water. They used to hold a yearly art fair in the park, with tents of arts and crafts just like the ones I’m walking past now. We used to talk about buying a tent and selling our art at one of these fairs, but we never got around to it. Chances are it would have been depressing; neither of us made the kind of art that people at a street fair are looking for. Still, I wish we would have done it. I wish we still could.

The theme of this chalk fair –or La Strada di Pastelli, as it’s called, in an attempt to sound classy, I guess- is outer space. Many of the drawings look similar, and I wonder if the artists had a choice to use a pre-made picture. They’re mostly rendered in a smooth, realist style. I overhear one of the artists talking about using Photoshop. Though it’s ostensibly a family event, here are a lot of portraits of sexy astronauts, the kind that used to grace the covers of sci-fi paperbacks. Most of the artists have teenage assistants kneeling on sheets of cardboard, drawing and blending. 

I scarf down a platter of okay enchiladas at the okay Mexican place, then roll down to the coffee shop. I have to be careful to keep from being bowled over by the distracted families strolling up and down the street. I sit at a picnic table and drink my cold brew and watch the passerby. A young woman scribbles intently at a cat in a space helmet, her shorts and legs smeared with pigment. I think of Noodle, covered in paint as she crouches on the floor of my apartment. I picture her kneeling in the street before me, drawing her big expressive figures, possibly wearing space helmets. 

Oh Noodle. I miss you so much. 

I stop at the antique mall, hoping to find some cheap trinket to commemorate the day. Noodle loved going to junk shops. I find a beige pincushion studded with silver and pearly pinheads that shine like jewels. It’s the same size and shape of a sea urchin with the spines turned inward. I was hoping for more, but it’ll do.

As I roll back to the train station, I pass a car covered with chalkboard paint for kids to draw on. I take a stick of chalk from a bucket and draw my usual cartoon of Noodle. Like all these pictures, it’ll soon be erased, by time or rain. Even though the sun is blazing, I feel the drops beginning to fall.