Ashes (19 page)

A question that had two possible answers. Yes or no.

The artist always chose the third possible answer.

"Both," he said. "How's Henry?"

"I think he goes by 'Hank' now. At least that's what his boyfriend calls him." Karen wiggled her hands into the pockets of her blue jeans. Tightening the fabric.

John's fingers itched.

"So, how's the job?" he asked.

As if he had to ask. Accounting. The same as always.

"The same as always," she said. "I got another raise last year."

The ladder and how to climb it. Karen knew the book by heart, learned by rote at the feet of Henry who called himself Hank. Or was it Hank who changed his name to Henry?

Such confusion.

So many sharp edges and reflections.

"Why are you here?" John asked.

"I already told you."

"No. I mean, really."

She picked up a piece of colored glass, a remnant from a miniature church John had built and then smashed. She held the glass to her eye and looked through. Blue behind blue.

"I got to wondering about you," she said. "How you were getting along and all that. And I wanted to see how famous artists lived."

Famous artists didn't live. All the most famous artists were long dead, and the ones who swayed the critics during their own lifetimes made John suspicious.

"I'm the most famous artist nobody's ever heard of," he said.

She rubbed her thumb along the edge of the glass. "That's one thing I don't miss about you. Your insecurity."

"Artists have to go to dangerous places. You can't get too comfortable if you want to make a statement."

Karen put the piece of blue glass on the desk beside his mallet. She went to the portrait again. She pointed to the curve of her painted hip. "Maybe if you put a little more red here."

"Maybe."

She turned. "This is really sad, John. You promised you were going to throw yourself into your work and make me regret ever breaking up with you."

He hated her for knowing him so well. Knowing him, but not understanding. That was something he'd never been able to forgive her for.

But then, she wasn't perfect. She was a work in progress, too.

"You can't even finish one lousy painting," she said.

"I've been working on my crow collection."

"Crow collection? What the hell is that?"

"Shiny stuff. Spiritual stuff."

"I thought you were going to make that series of twelve that was going to be your ticket to the top."

He looked out the window. The room smelled of kerosene and decay.

She waved her hands at the mess on the workbench. "You gave up me for this."

No. She left him for Hank or Henry. John never made the choice. She wanted him to give up art. That was never an option.

"I guess I'd better get going," she said.

He thought about grabbing her, hugging her, whispering to her the way he had in the old days. He wanted her naked, posing. Then, perhaps, he could finish the portrait.

"It was really good to see you," he said.

"Yeah." Her face was pale, a mixture of peach and titanium white.

She paused by the studio door and took a last look at The Painting. "Frozen in time," she said.

"No, it's not frozen at all. It's a work in progress.

"See you around."

Not likely, since she lived two thousand miles away. The door closed with a soft squeak, a sigh of surrender.

John looked at the portrait again.

Karen here before him.

Not the one who walked and breathed, the one he could never shape. This was the Karen he could possess. The real Karen. The Painting.

He possessed them all. Anna under the floorboards. Cynthia beneath the canvas.
Sharon
in the trunk of his
Toyota
.

John hurried to the bench and grabbed up his tools.

The Muse had spoken. He realized he'd never wanted to build himself, or dream himself alive. Art wasn't about sacrificing for the good of the artist. Art was about sacrificing for others.

For Karen.

She was the real work in progress, the one that could be improved. The canvas awaited his touch.

John uncovered Cynthia and went to work. By midnight, The Painting was finished.

It was perfection.

###

SHE CLIMBS A WINDING STAIR

Outside the window, a flat sweep of sea. The ocean's tongue licks the shore as if probing an old scar. Clouds hang gray and heavy, crushed together by nature's looming anger. In the distance is a tiny white sail, or it might be a forlorn whitecap, breaking too far out to make land.

I hope it is a whitecap.

Because she may come that way, from the lavender east. She may rise from the stubborn sandy fields behind the house, or seep from the silver trees beyond. She could arrive a thousand times, in a thousand different colors, from all directions above or below.

I can almost her hear now, her soft footsteps on the stairs, the whisper of her ragged lace, the mouse-quick clatter of her fingerbones on the railing.

Almost.

It's not fear that binds my limbs to this chair, for I know she's not bent on mortal vengeance. If only I could so easily repay my sins.

Rather, I dread that moment when she appears before me, when her imploring eyes stare blankly into mine, when her lost lips part in question.

She will ask me why, and, God help me, I will have no answer.

I came to
Portsmouth
in my position as a travel writer on assignment for a national magazine. In my career, I had learned to love no place and like them all, for it's enthusiasm that any editor likes to see in a piece. So neither the vast stone and ice beauty of the Rockies, the wet redwood cliffs of Oregon, the fiery pastels of the Southwestern deserts, the worn and welcoming curves of the Appalachians, nor the great golden plains of the central states tugged at my heart any more or less than the rest of this fair country. Indeed, much of my impression of this land and its people came from brief conversations and framed glances on planes, trains, and the occasional cab or boat.

So the Outer Banks held no particular place in my heart as I ferried across
Pamlico Sound
to Ocracoke. To the north was the historic Hatteras Lighthouse, the tallest in the country, which was currently being moved from its eroding base at a cost of millions. I thought at the time that perhaps I could swing up to Hatteras and cover the work for a separate article. But assignments always came before freelance articles, because a bankable check feeds a person much better than a possibility does.

So on to bleak
Portsmouth
for me. At Ocracoke, I met the man who was chartered to take me to
Portsmouth
. As I boarded his tiny boat with my backpack and two bags, my laptop and camera wrapped against the salt air, he gave me several looks askance.

"How long you going to stay?" he asked, his wrinkled face as weathered as the hull of his boat.

"Three days, though I'm getting paid for seven," I said. "Why?"

"You don't look like the type that roughs it much, you don't mind me saying." His eyes were quick under the bill of his cap, darting from me to the open inlet to the sky and then to the cluttered dock.

"I'll manage," I said, not at all pleased with this old salt's assessment of me. True, I was more at home in a three-star hotel than under a tent, but I did hike a little and tried to be only typically overweight for a middle-aged American.

The man nodded at the sea, in the distance toward where I imagined
Portsmouth
lay waiting. "She can be harsh, if she's of a mind," he said. Then he pushed up the throttle and steered the boat from the dock in a gurgle and haze of oily smoke.

We went without speaking for some minutes, me hanging on the bow as the waves buffeted us and Ocracoke diminished to our rear. Then he shouted over the noise of the engine, "Hope you brought your bug repellent."

"Why?" I said, the small droplets of ocean spray making a sticky film on my face.

"Bugs'll eat you alive," he said.

"Maybe I can borrow some at the ranger station," I said.

The man laughed, his head ducking like a sea turtle's. "Ain't no rangers there. Not this time of year."

"What do you mean?"

"Hurricane season. That, and federal cuts. Government got no business on that island no way. Places like that ought to be left alone."

My information must have been wrong.
Portsmouth
was now administered by the National Parks Service, since the last residents had left thirty years before. An editorial assistant had assured me that at least two rangers would be on duty throughout the course of my stay. They had offices with battery-operated short-wave radio and emergency supplies. That was the only reason I had agreed to take an assignment to such a desolate place.

Not for the first time, I silently cursed the carelessness of editorial assistants. "The forecasts are for clear weather," I said, not letting the boatman know that I cared one way or another.

"You should be all right," he said. "Least as far as the weather's concerned. Still, they blow up quick sometimes."

I looked around at the great blue sea. The horizon was empty on all sides, a far cry from the past glories of this area's navigational history. In my research, I had learned that this inlet was one of the first great shipping routes in the south. Decades before the Revolutionary War, ships would come to the shallow neck and offload their goods to smaller boats. Those boats then distributed the cargo to towns across the mainland shore. Spurred by this industry,
Portsmouth
had grown up from the bleak gray-white sands.

"A lot of shipwrecks below?" I asked, more to keep the old man talking than to fill any gaps in my background knowledge.