She took us back to her gallery, where the walls were covered with canvases filled with dripping splotches of brown paint.

  “You call these masterpieces?” I asked. “Looks like a lot of mud to me.”

  She shook her head. “This isn’t the gallery. The real gallery is upstairs.”

  She opened a door and took us up a narrow staircase into a huge loft. It must have once been a factory or something, because it had brick walls, and lots of windows—but those windows were all painted over so no outside light could get in.

  Surrounding us were dozens upon dozens of sheet-covered canvases, all five or six feet tall, and all resting upon heavy wooden easels. In the dim light of the huge loft, they looked like ghosts all facing in different directions.

  “These are the works of the masters,” she said, and began to pull away the sheets that covered them one by one.

  Any doubts I had were gone the moment I laid eyes on that first canvas.

  It was a landscape like nothing I had ever seen, and trying to explain it now is like trying to explain sight to a person who has never experienced vision. These were colors the human eye had never before seen. Colors that had no names, depicting a place too strange and surreal to be of this world.

  The second masterpiece was in a different set of hues, but just as incredible: a scene of clouds billowing upward toward a sun that actually shone, lighting up the room. Deep within the painting, golden winged beings seemed caught in a glorious journey toward that sun.

  The third was the most magnificent of all. A forest of impossibly exotic trees, swirling in a greenish mist. Hills rolled into the distance, and in the foreground the single limb of a tree curved downward, with a smattering of red leaves. It seemed so real I could almost smell the rich fragrances of the forest and feel the slow breeze that made the mist swim and shimmer. It was unearthly, and otherworldly, like the other paintings.

  “You wish to touch the painting,” said Ms. Prax. It wasn’t so much a question as a statement of fact. “You may do so. These paintings are meant to be touched.”

  I reached out toward one of those redder-than-red leaves to feel its velvet texture…

  … and when I drew my hand away, I was holding the leaf between my fingers!

  I gasped, and let the leaf flutter to the ground.

  Ms. Prax smiled. “The task of the artist,” she said, “is the creation of worlds. Very few succeed. Many die trying.”

  In a small room behind the great gallery was a paint-splattered studio, and in that studio were a palette, brushes, and about a thousand brand-new tubes of paint, all set up in front of a canvas the same size as the others in the gallery. Only this canvas was empty.

  Caleb stepped up to the canvas, standing just a few inches away from its surface, staring that blank stare of his, and Ms. Prax put a paintbrush in Caleb’s hand.

  “Do you believe in miracles, Shana?”

  To be honest, I didn’t know. But then my brother began to paint. Thick, heavy brushstrokes. In moments Caleb had begun creating a bright, wonderful work of art.

  Then I saw something out of the corner of my eye. There was something shiny in Prax’s hand. Shiny and sharp. I gasped and pulled Caleb away from the canvas as Prax brought the carving knife down… slashing through the center of the canvas. The fabric shredded from top to bottom.

  “No!” she screamed furiously at Caleb. “Look at those brushstrokes! This is Van Gogh!”

  I was so shocked, all I could do was push myself back against the wall in disbelief.

  Caleb screamed as if he himself had been stabbed and didn’t stop screaming until Prax brought another canvas. He quieted immediately and silently resumed painting. He dabbed his brush against the canvas lightly, creating tiny little points of light. Again, Prax’s knife came down, shredding the emerging work.

  “No!” Prax yelled. “This is Seurat.”

  Caleb wailed again and began to rock feverishly back and forth. Once more Prax brought a fresh canvas.

  I wanted to grab Caleb and run, taking him away from this ranting, insane woman—and yet part of me must have understood what she was doing, and why she was doing it. Because I stayed. I stayed to witness Caleb’s terrifying ordeal.

  “We’re not leaving here,” shouted Prax, “until we’re done.”

  On and on it went. I began crying, begging Prax to stop, but she wouldn’t. She shredded canvas after canvas—one that looked like a Monet, and another like a Picasso. Caleb barely had a chance to get down a single brushstroke before that awful knife would come down again, sending him into a screaming fit, each one worse than the one before.

  And then Caleb just shut down.

  Prax put a new canvas in front of him, and Caleb didn’t move. He stood there, red in the face, staring at the white fabric with an expression of emptiness worse than ever before—as if he were staring through the canvas with no emotion. No mind. He didn’t even try to paint.

  “Now you’ve done it!” I shouted at Prax through my tears. “Now he’ll never paint or pick up a crayon ever again! You’ve ruined the one thing he can do, you monster.”

  Prax didn’t answer me; she just looked at Caleb, waiting. Then I heard the faraway jingling of bells, and Prax left to greet a customer who had just arrived downstairs. She closed the door behind her, and Caleb and I were alone with the horribly empty canvas.

  “Caleb,” I whispered. “Caleb, you don’t have to paint. You don’t have to do anything. We’ll get you home. I’ll tuck you in bed. It’ll be just like it always was. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  Nothing. Caleb didn’t even rock back and forth. Something was very, very wrong, and I cursed that horrible woman for doing this to him.

  That was when I heard voices outside the door. I opened the door a crack and peered out to see Prax—her slick, smooth self, leading a couple through the great secret gallery. The man and woman hardly looked rich enough to invest in great works of art. In fact, they looked poor, worn, and tired, as if they’d seen more trouble and pain than most.

  The man knelt down on the gallery floor, opened up a suitcase, and showed its contents to Prax.

  “It’s all there,” said the man wearily. “Every penny we could find. Everything we own.”

  “I’m afraid it’s not very much,” the woman apologized.

  Prax waved the remark away as if she didn’t even how much or how little it was. “Have you chosen a work that suits you?” she asked.

  The man and woman stepped toward the surreal landscape with the red leaves.

  “Ah,” said Prax, smiling her multicolored smile for them. “My daughter’s. I hope you enjoy it.”

  And with that I could see the look of world-weariness leave the couple’s faces. How would they carry it out? I wondered—it was such a huge canvas.

  I leaned back to brush some hair from my face, and when I peeked through the hole again, the couple was gone…

  … and a single leaf, redder than red, fluttered to the floor at Prax’s feet. My heart missed a very long beat.

  Prax immediately covered the painting with a sheet and turned.

  “Come out, Shana,” she said, having known I was there all along.

  I stepped into the gallery and helped Ms. Prax adjust the sheet on the painting so it hung just right. She sighed in satisfaction, then closed the suitcase. I noticed it only seemed to have a few crumpled bills.

  “This world we live in,” said Ms. Prax, “is kind to some, but cruel to others. For those who would rather be elsewhere, I provide… alternatives.” Then she smiled at me, and although her smile still seemed filled with many strange colors, I felt I could understand some of them now. “Perhaps there will come a time,” she said, “when everyone will have to choose a masterpiece.”

  The smell of oil paint seemed to grow stronger around me, and I turned to see that Caleb had begun painting. He was working feverishly at the canvas—and this time it was different from before. As I stepped back into the studio, I could see the speed at which his hand was moving. His fingers were a blur. Even the colors he was putting on that canvas seemed far brighter, far more special than the colors that came from the tubes of paint.

  All the time he stared through that white canvas as if the work was already there behind it and he wasn’t so much brushing on paint as he was brushing away the emptiness. Soon he threw the paintbrush away and began to use his fingers, spreading and blending the colors from corner to corner. For half an hour we watched in awed silence, and half an hour was all it took.

  “My God!” I said when it was done, but my words seemed far away, lost in the depth of the painting.

  It was something entirely new, nothing like what any artist anywhere had ever created. The world Caleb had made was both wilderness and city, both earth and sky. Wild winds swept through magnificent trees toward gleaming crystalline spires. Brilliant shafts of light spilled upon peaceful hills, and yet the light was balanced by deep shafts of darkness that swam with unknowable mysteries. Still, as new as all this was, it was somehow familiar. It was then that I realized that everything in this great work I’d seen before. A fragment on the refrigerator door. A sketch on Caleb’s wall. Everything Caleb had ever drawn was just a shadow of this, his great work. His one work.

  I reached toward it, wanting more than anything to reach into it—and instead I got my fingers covered with paint.

  Caleb smoothed over the smudge I had made with my fingers.

  “It’s not finished,” said Ms. Prax. “It needs a signature.”

  “But Caleb can’t write his name.”

  Ms. Prax shook her head. “That’s not the kind of signature I mean.” Then she leaned over and whispered into Caleb’s ear. “Go on, Caleb. Finish it.”

  And with that, Caleb reached forward and pressed his spread fingers against the center of his creation. He gritted his teeth. He squinted his eyes and pushed that hand against the canvas with all his soul, until finally his hand punched through the surface… into a world rich with colors. I could see the canvas changing, the flatness of it stretching out and back like a wave was rolling through it, until its depth reached the infinite horizon.

  Caleb looked at his fingers there inside his painting, watching the light playing off them… then he lurched forward and leapt into it. Once inside, he threw his hands out. He spun around. He was dancing—Caleb was actually dancing! And then, for the first time in his life, he turned his head to look at me. And he smiled. It was a smile filled with more colors than Ms. Prax’s. That was when I knew Caleb was finally where he belonged. Caleb didn’t waste time saying goodbye. He turned and ran, hopped, and skipped deep into his world, until he disappeared into a place the canvas did not show.

  My joy to have seen him so happy overwhelmed my grief at knowing he was gone. With my eyes full of tears, I reached my hand into that world too. I felt the warmth of that strange light. How I wanted to launch myself in there as well, but Ms. Prax had something else in mind.

  “I need a gatekeeper,” she told me. “Someone to decide whom Caleb would want in his world. Will you do that for me?”

  I didn’t answer her. Instead I went to a shelf, opened a sheet, and together we gently covered the canvas.

  That night we brought Mom and Dad to the gallery, to show them Caleb’s masterpiece—and although my parents can be dense sometimes, one look at the painting and they understood. My mother cried tears of both joy and loss, as I had. My father hid his feelings by comforting her.

  Since then, I’ve been taking my own art lessons. I still don’t know much about art, but I do know that there are places inside of us—palaces of glorious light and caverns of unknowable darkness. Magical places filled with brilliant, unimaginable colors that we suffer to bring forth.

  I know I could never suffer the way Caleb did—to imagine a place so perfectly that it becomes real—but if someday I can paint just a shadow of the possibilities… perhaps that will be enough.

  Retaining Walls

  On a morning full of cold clouds, my father sweeps me out of bed and into his pickup truck—as if I have nothing better to do with my Sunday than to sit at his work site and watch grown men play with blocks.

  “Have fun,” says Mom, as if that were possible.

  My dad smiles at her and waves as we drive off. It’s the warmest gesture he can muster, now that they’re divorced. Dad shoves a donut and a juice box into my hands as a makeshift breakfast, then he spirits me away to his work.

  Big walls. That’s my father’s specialty. He built his first wall when he was nineteen, in the basement of an old house. From what I heard, a mudslide had caved in the weak basement wall, and Dad had gone in with Grandpa to build a strong retaining wall to hold the earth back where it should be. Thing is, Grandpa died halfway through the job, and Dad had to finish it alone. Since then, he hasn’t stopped building walls.

  As we drive, I can see my father’s anticipation building. He likes his work—it invigorates him. You could say he lives for it, as if what he does has an importance beyond what I can measure. I always thought him small-minded to find such pleasure in the placement of stone. But then who am I to talk? I spend hours in front of a computer screen playing games. I guess the best I can say is that what he does is constructive, in the literal sense of the word.

  My ears pop, and I realize we are heading out of town, up into the hills. Out of the window, through the early morning haze, I can see our town below us, a grid stretching toward the horizon.

  “Nice view from here,” he says. “Even better where we’re going.” He grins at me with a glimmer in his eye. “You’ll like this one, Memo.”

  “I thought we were going to work on my pitching today.”

  “This is an important job,” he reminds me. “I’m on a tight schedule. We’ll do it next week.”

  Which is what he said last week, and the week before that. I only get to see him on Sundays—you’d think he’d be able to take that day off to spend with me, but instead of making time for me, he just squeezes me into what he’s already doing, whether I fit or not.

  We head up a dusty dirt path that seems to be made for things with feet rather than wheels. The cab of the pickup bounces, and I can feel the donut and juice sloshing around in my stomach like surf in a storm. Finally we pull off to the side of the dirt road, in the middle of nowhere, with a cliff to the right of us and a steep slope looming above us to the left. “We’re here,” he tells me.

  “Here, where?”

  “You’ll see,” he answers. Then he begins to climb up the side of the slope. I follow, feeling sleep still gnawing at my bones.

  As we come over the top of the hill, I can see half a dozen workers—Dad’s crew—busying themselves dusting and buffing the large boulders on a plateau. I see no house, no construction site. Nothing but a mountain.

  “What’s the deal here?” I ask him. “Where’s the wall?”

  “We’re doing boulderscape today,” he answers.

  I know about boulderscape. No matter how much I’ve tried to ignore my father’s work, some of it sneaks into my head. He’s done whole patios and pools that look like natural rock formations, when in reality it’s just mortar over chicken wire and rebar.

  “Can you tell which is real and which I put in?” he asks me, proud of his accomplishment.

  As I look around, I can’t tell—but the thing is, what’s the sense of putting fake rocks in the middle of real ones? I mean, usually it’s rich people who put in boulderscape. They have my dad build pools, and waterfalls, and hot tubs in fake caves to impress their friends and neighbors. But out here, the only things to impress are coyotes and rattlesnakes.

  He leads me to a sheer rock face looming above us, a dark granite mountainside that must have been here for eons.

  “The real rock starts about ten feet up,” Dad tells me.

  I stare at him, dumbfounded. “You mean…?”

  “That’s right,” he says. “This stone face is a retaining wall. We built it!”

  I shake my head, not getting it. “But… can’t a mountain retain itself?”

  Dad raises his eyebrows. “Apparently not,” he says, then goes off to discuss the progress with his crew.

  As I look around, I find a small spot that hasn’t been finished: a patch of bare chicken wire in the midst of the boulders and evergreens, like a small hole in reality.

  Humberto, Dad’s best craftsman, spreads mortar across the chicken wire, hiding its fine metallic honeycomb.

  Now I begin to notice the breeze. It’s been chilly, and breezy, but up here, on this strange plateau, it feels different from the dry mountain cold elsewhere. It feels damp—and there’s something about the smell. I take a deep breath and have a sudden flashback to a vacation we had years ago, in Florida. I don’t understand why at first, but then the reason strikes me. It smells like beach. It smells like the ocean.

  I hold out my hand to feel the breeze and notice that it’s not blowing down the mountain, but blowing up—as if it’s blowing out of the ground. I can feel it against my palm.

  I turn to see that the workers all carry caulking guns and are going around the base of the boulders, filling in the cracks with thick cream, the kind of stuff you put around a bathtub to keep it from leaking.

  I kneel down next to Humberto, and for an instant I think I see something through the wire framing of the boulder. I see a greenish-blue light. I see mist and clouds. I get dizzy, as if suddenly I’m looking down from a great height.

  “Whoa!” I say, grabbing onto a boulder for balance.

  “What’s the matter?” asks my father, coming up behind me.

  “I don’t know… I think there’s a cave down there… a pretty deep one.”

  “Really!” he says.

  “Yeah! I tried to look into it but—”

  “Did it look back?” my father asks.

  “Huh?”

  He grins. “Your grandfather used to say that when you look into an abyss, the abyss looks into you.”

  The thought gives me the shivers. I glance back down to peer in the hole, but Humberto has already smeared a thick patch of mortar over the chicken wire.