Chapter 48: About Heather

"Will gave you a hard time Friday, Heather," Anne said. "Why did you let him?"

She and Heather were showering before entering the sauna.

"Actually, he was just doing what all artists do, Anne. I've lived with it all my life. It's the price you pay for working in a new medium."

"You mean computer graphics?"

"Yes. And I guess it's not just artists that do it. I suppose, if you sell beans and a guy starts selling peas, you're going to think he's crazy and wonder if peas won't make you sick."

In the sauna, they spread towels on the top shelf and lay down. Saul came in, spread a towel and perched on the same shelf.

"Okay then," Anne went on, "how come computer graphics? Why not traditional media?"

"I never got a chance to try it. See, I got my first computer when I was eight."

"How come? I thought girls don't like computers," Saul said.

"Sexist thinking, Saul," Heather replied with a smile. "But I was also a special case. Dad's been in computers since Christ was a pup. He got one for my big sister, and when he upgraded hers, I got the old one. It's not just clothes that get handed down.

"Well, this clunker of mine had a paint program on it, and somehow, I started drawing, playing with the features and stuff. When Dad noticed, he started feeding me every paint program he came across. I learned them all, got some neat things going. By the time I was ten, I could work with all the vector graphic stuff from Corel Draw on up. I never took to CAD. By then, I knew I was an artist."

"What sort of stuff did you do?" Anne asked.

"Of course at first it was easy stuff, then graffiti, then the kind of work Peter Max used to do, psychedelics and stuff. But that bored me; it was too easy. Pretty. Joyful. But too easy... Don't tell Max I said that."

"I don't see him too often," Saul observed.

"Now, understand, I was good at it. I got all kinds of prizes and awards and stuff. But I got to a point where I really wasn't doing much any more because it wasn't much of a challenge, as I saw it. Mom and I talked about it a lot. She critiques my work, even today. She's not an artist, she teaches gynecology. But she has good taste, knows how to evaluate things. I really trust her because her responses are right from the marrow... She kept suggesting I draw the cat. Or a flower. Or anything natural. So, I tried."

"And?"

"Anne, the first three hundred times were awful. The second three hundred times weren't much better."

"Can't you scan things, the way Alex does?"

"Oh, sure. But that's not what I do, Anne. It's not art: Alex agrees. Oh, there's artistry in fine image processing, don't get me wrong. But my thing is recreating reality the way I see it, not the way someone took a picture and I scanned... Creating something new. For me, that's art. I do it with a computer. I don't know one end of a pencil from another, as they say... I've had enough. I'm out of here."

The three of them left the sauna through the outside door and showered in the fresh air. When they were cooled off, they went inside and stretched out on the Big Bed.

"Your folks are special people."

"Saul, so are yours, and they're all different. I could do anything I wanted, they backed me up as long as it wasn't clearly illegal, immoral or fattening. When it was, they let me know it wasn't acceptable. It happens I got good marks in school, but as long as they thought I was trying hard, they didn't care. They wanted me to be a happy girl, and I was. Still am."

"Lot of talk?"

"How else do you do it? We talked all the time, about everything. Dad told me all the scuttlebutt about computers until I was old enough to read the publications. I got hung up on the technology from The Media Laboratory until I figured out that Negroponte was just another Caesar.

"We talked and I drew, sort of like Will. They told me about sex before I had to learn it in school. They taught me to say words like penis and toilet and vagina without turning blue. I learned that sex is good for you, as long as you're careful. I also started to draw the body. Life Studies. And I practiced on myself a lot, because it's hard to get models when you're that age.

Sigrid and Alex came in from outside. They listened for a moment before taking off their clothes and settling.

"I was wondering where you got your open attitude," Saul commented.

"Well, I don't have any brothers, and my sister isn't the playful type. No, I learned the practical side of sex on my own, once I figured out that there was something interesting about it. I was a sort of tomboy, so when I started growing breasts and stuff, I had a bunch of friends who were mostly boys. It was very convenient."

Heather rolled over and sat up, her legs splayed, leaning back on outstretched arms. "There was one guy I liked because he could climb a tree almost as fast as me. We got talking about sex one day and told each other what we knew. I showed him mine and he showed me his. That was it for a while, but one day we put one and zero together and we both got an orgasm."