Paint by Magic (25 page)

I set the painting and paint box carefully on the floor.

"Here, Homeboy," I said, rooting around in my pants pocket. "I'll tell you what's really the cat's meow." I tossed him the key chain. I could get Doug another,
no problemo.
"It's a
Star Wars
key chain. A lucky charm. Just hold it for a minute—see what happens?"

Homer stared down at the little Death Star like it was magic in his hand and then sucked in his breath when his palm warmed it enough to make it flash its red light.

I had nothing for Betty. I didn't want things to get gooey, but I was just standing there, just looking at her, and wishing I had something to give her. She reached out her hands suddenly to clasp mine. Her hands were warm, and then our arms were around each other for a quick hug, and that was a little bit of magic, too.

Finally I stepped away from her and looked around at them all one more time. "And now for my next act—" I said softly. Homer with the flashing key chain. Fitzy standing by his easel. Joanna on the couch in front of me. Betty with her arms folded tightly across heir body as if in defiance of magic.

I sat gingerly on the arm of the couch. I held the painting of the skylight by the canvas's wooden frame. I tucked the ancient paint box under my arm. Then I smoothed the folded sketch open on my knee. I took a deep breath and looked up at the skylight, a moonlit square on the ceiling.

"Good-bye," I whispered to everybody, to the room, to 1926, and I slowly rubbed my finger across Mom's outstretched hand.

The wind started blowing just as strong as before, but this time I was ready for it. I braced myself, clutching the painting and the box as tightly as I could. I opened my mouth to say something memorable or witty or special enough so that the Cottons would always remember me by it, but the wind was too strong. I couldn't talk, and I couldn't see, and I couldn't hear. I could barely breathe. I could barely think. I was falling now, falling—and I forgot where I was going or what I had been doing or even who I was. The icy wind swept me up and around, inside out—and away.

I
must have been sick for a long time,
I was thinking as I tried to open my eyes.
Maybe influenza or scarlet fever or something
. I felt so heavy and dizzy. I must have fallen out of bed onto the floor. The carpet scratched my cheek, and I could barely lift my head. There was something poking into my side, and I tried to shift away. A dark wooden box—

I struggled to sit up, and there I was in my bedroom, and my mom was sitting on my bed staring down at me.

"Connor!"

"Mom!"

She was on the floor next to me in a flash, and all over me with big hugs and kisses. "You're home! You're back!"

I couldn't stop hugging her. I felt I was waking from a dream. I didn't know what was real, and I drew back to stare right into her eyes. "Mom," I breathed. "Were you really, truly
there
? Were you Fitzgerald Cotton's
muse
?"

Mom reached out her hand. She touched my cheek very softly. "My own, dear Connor," she said. "I missed you very much while I was gone."

"And now
I've
been gone," I said, and it all came flooding back to me.

"Yes," she said. "How long were you there?"

"Just a few days," I said. "How long did it seem?"

She sat back and looked at me. "I'm not sure. I've been sitting here—frozen, I think. You know. But some part of me was terribly aware that you were gone. That you'd gone back, for my sake. The wind started blowing—"

"You could feel it, too?"

"Oh yes, it was that same cold wind I remember so well. And then you sort of just ... faded. Like in a film.
Fade to black.
"

It was creepy hearing her describe it.

Dad and Crystal raced into the room just then and stopped dead in their tracks when they saw me and Mom talking together. "The ambulance is on its way, Pam!" cried Dad, falling to his knees on the floor beside us. He took Mom into his arms and pressed his head to her chest, listening to her heartbeat. He fumbled with her wrist, searching out her pulse.

"I'm all right, Grant. I'm fine now," Mom said, her eyes meeting mine over Dad's bowed head.

Crystal was staring at me. "Con?" she asked. "What's happened? How did you snap Mom out of it this time?" She shook her head. "Wait a sec—where'd you get the weird clothes?"

I shrugged, completely without words just then to tell her anything. In my mind I was still with the Cottons, up in the studio. I could see them standing there, staring at the empty spot where I'd been sitting....

We could all hear the wail of an ambulance coming down our street.

"I'd better go tell them you're okay," Dad said. "If you really are okay, Pam. But I think you ought to let them look at you. This is happening a lot. It's not normal."

"It won't happen again," I said. I sank back against the bed, feeling totally wiped out. Maybe I was the one who needed the ambulance.

Mom ran her fingers through my hair. "My darling boy," she said, even though Crystal was right there, listening to every word. "I was never so frightened as when I saw you disappear—and never so relieved as when I saw you come back."

"Tell me what happened," I said weakly. "Tell me what you saw."

"Tell me, too," said Crystal. "Either I've entered the Twilight Zone, or else I've missed something
big.
Hey, no fair."

"Well, I sat there for a few seconds," Mom said, ignoring Crystal. She ran her fingers through her short, bobbed hair. "The wind stopped. Everything seemed very quiet. I tried to imagine you landing somewhere at the Cottons. I couldn't imagine how you would manage. I felt so afraid for you—meeting them, meeting Fitz—" She stopped. "Did you? Did you meet Fitz?" She pointed at the painting she'd picked up and stood against the dresser before I'd opened my eyes. "You must have met him. Did he paint this? Connor, what were you
doing
?"

"Oh, just trying to rescue
you,
" I said. I tried to stand up. Mom had to help me. I felt so shaky. I staggered over to the bed and sank down on it. The clock by my bed said 7:30.

Crystal let out a shriek. She hadn't noticed the painting till then. "Connor," she cried, "something really did happen to you, didn't it! In just those few minutes, while Dad and I were calling the ambulance?" She reached out for the painting. "But this is impossible."

"Yup—but watch it," I warned her. "It may be impossible, but the paint's still wet—"

"And what's that you're holding?" asked Mom.

I held it out to her. "His paint box. Not Fitz's—it belonged to a man who died back in 1479. His name was Lorenzo da Padova, but he can't hurt you now."

She took it gingerly. "Oh, Connor, tell me everything."

We had to wait until the paramedics examined her and pronounced her fit and fine, and said if she had any other seizures, she should not hesitate to call them again. Best to make an appointment to see her own doctor first thing tomorrow. "Yes, I'll do that," she said, but I knew she wouldn't.

Dad had to go downstairs with them to see them off, but he looked worriedly over his shoulder at us as he left the room.
Don't worry,
I thought.
We'll be here.

Mom and I just sat there on my bed. Crystal sat on the floor. We all knew we were waiting for Dad to come back. I stared around my bedroom like I hadn't seen it in a year. I felt like I'd been away for a very, very long time—longer than a few days. And I had such a strange feeling inside. Like something was missing. Like—where was Betty now? I could imagine her sitting with Homer, trying to tell their mother about the magic. I could imagine Elsie and Chess fast asleep in their rooms ... in their house that once stood exactly where our house stood now. Maybe this bedroom was in the same space as one of theirs had been. I tried to orient myself: If this was the boys' room, then Homer's bed would be over by the window, Chester's near the door. My camp bed set up over there, where my computer desk stood...

My room Seemed too bright, somehow. Too cluttered. I didn't like the spaceship bed as much as I had before I'd gone to the Cottons ... although I knew Homer would love it. I wished I could give it to him and have the narrow little camp bed back.

"It's hard, isn't it?" Mom said, watching me closely. "Hard to come back."

She knew. Thank goodness someone knew how I felt. But poor Mom—how hard it must have been for her after more than a whole year away, with all of us thinking she was so weird, and getting all mad at her about the TVs and stuff. I gave her a grateful smile.

We heard Dad's footsteps running up the stairs, and then there he was again. He sat on the floor with Crystal.

"Now tell me what is going on," he said. "Everything."

And then I started to tell them all that had happened from the moment I found myself on the floor in Fitzgerald Cotton's studio. But Crystal kept interrupting and making noises of total disbelief like,
Oh, yeah, riiiight,
until Dad shushed her.

"I don't believe a word of this, either," he said. "But then again, how can I
not
believe? Look at Con's clothes! And you saw what was happening to Mom! And now here's this painting—out of thin air!"

So Crystal finally sat back, leaned against the wall, and shut up.

I told them about the ancient paints and rumors of poison and the madman whose nickname was the Smiler. I told them everything I could remember—even about Mr. Riley and the plan to paint a pus-filled rash, and about flooding the kitchen and trying to climb through the skylight. I told them about roller-skating and swimming and building the fort and doing the puzzle.

"And you liked Mabel and Edgar?" Mom asked. "And what about Joanna?"

I said they were all wonderful, and they were all doing fine—and that maybe now Joanna was doing even finer than before. "I think she was in love with Fitz," I said. "And didn't dare tell him. And he was in such a black mood after you left, he couldn't even see her. But now..." and I told them about Joanna's sitting with the rose for her portrait, and how it was coming out so much better than the portrait he was trying to do of Mom. I told Mom about the horrible painting of her frozen, the way I'd left her, and how it seemed to turn uglier and more agonized every minute.

"Poor Fitzy was obsessed," Mom said. "But more than that—he was possessed. I understand it now. And it makes sense of why I stayed so long. As long as he was painting me, I was compelled to stay. But, oh, how I missed you and Crystal."

She didn't forget us! She had missed us!
"And Dad?" I said softly.

"Even Dad," Mom said, glancing over at him. "Yes, I missed you, Grant darling. Things weren't working out very well for us before I ... was taken. I had even talked about wanting a divorce. But being away from home gave me a new perspective on what's important." She reached down and took Dad's hand.

He pressed her fingers to his lips. I wasn't used to seeing my parents touch, but it made me feel warm and happy. "Tell me how it happened, Pam," Dad urged. "The magic."

Mom's eyes grew distant. "I was on my way through the living room, heading for the door, when my cell phone rang in my briefcase. I dumped my purse on the coffee table and opened my briefcase to get the phone, and somehow I knocked the pile of art books the decorator had put there right off the table. My boss was on the phone, reminding me to be early for a meeting. So I was in a hurry, and I scooped the books back up as fast as I could, and a sketch flew out of one and landed on the floor in front of me. The person in the old sketch looked so much like me, I was amazed! I had to stop and pick it up." She took a deep breath. "And the way the hand is reaching out in the sketch—it just makes you want to touch it, doesn't it?"

I nodded. "And so you did."

"Yes," Mom said slowly. "I rubbed my finger over the drawing ... And there was somehow a freezing wind in our living room, and I felt I was being blown around and around in a sort of whirl ... Connor, you must know exactly how strange it was. The strangest feeling I've ever had in my life. I thought for a second I was fainting, or that I was dying, I don't know ... And I just had to close my eyes and sink down onto the floor. But after a few seconds when I stopped feeling so dizzy, I realized that the stuff under me wasn't
rug
anymore—but
grass.
" Mom looked at Dad wonderingly. "Grant, it was grass, and somehow I was outside, and not in the living room anymore. I thought for a second I must have been blown out into our yard without realizing it, but when I looked up, I was in a garden, and there was a man sitting a few yards away, waving a piece of paper at me. 'The spitting image,' he kept saying. 'The spitting image!'"

"It was this guy you're talking about—Fitzgerald Cotton?" asked Crystal.

"Indeed it was," replied Mom.

"And you went home with him?" Crystal shook her head in disgust. "Mom, after all you tell us about staying away from strangers?"

"It didn't seem strange, dear, and I was dreadfully confused." Mom shook her head, the soft curls bobbing against her cheeks. "The whole time I was there I felt I was under a spell. Or in a daze. It's hard to describe. I just enjoyed the quiet pace of life there with the Cotton family. Mornings in the studio, afternoons with Joanna and Mabel, cooking and cleaning, sewing and talking together. Playing with the children. Taking long walks around the beautiful countryside ... It looked so different around here then, Crystal, you can't imagine. The same hills, of course, but groves of lemon trees in the valley, and walnut trees and almond trees ... No freeway at all! No big roads ... Only Mount Diablo looked the same."

"I know," I murmured, remembering how glad I'd been to see it.

She heaved a big sigh. "Anyway, it wasn't until Fitz went away for a few days to San Francisco to buy more supplies—you know, paints and canvases, artist things—and wasn't painting me, that I started to remember my family and the life I'd left behind. When he wasn't painting me, my memory returned, and I remembered you kids and Dad and everything! I thought,
I've got to get home again!
I knew I couldn't tell all of you what had happened to me, because who would believe it? I wasn't even sure how I'd arrived there in the first place. I went over that morning in my mind, tried to remember what exactly had happened. Getting ready for work ... answering the phone ... knocking the books on the floor ... finding the sketch ... And that's when it hit me. The sketch!"