Retreat to Love (14 page)

Can we say cold, and damp, and dangerous? I slipped on the uneven path every ten feet, while Zach laughed and Frank told me to buck up and walk confident so I wouldn’t fall. Bernadette was in front, with the flashlight. Every few minutes she’d pull our only light source away from its vital job of giving me some glimpse of the trek ahead, to skitter rapidly over some slimy limestone walls and the occasional glint of mica or something. I kept agreeing when she asked, “Isn’t it just amazing, Ashlyn?”

Later at camp, as we admired the brilliance of Zach’s A-frame fire building, I said I liked the stalagmites and Frank tousled my head and told me, no, there were only stalactites in that cavern, and Bernadette actually reprimanded Zach for laughing at me. And I suppose she thought it was a good idea to distract us with the scary stories, like it would be fun or something.

She was wrong.

We sat there, the back half of me cold from the dark air, eyes stinging from smoke that wouldn’t stay away, and Bernadette leaning into the fire’s glow for peak eeriness.

She told us one about a soul who’d died in an industrial accident, leaving it’s armless body to haunt the earth, Unable to do much damage without biceps, it had chained an axe to one shoulder and a machete to the other, and roamed the woods, seeking anyone who resembled the foreman who’d failed to save it, and killing them. Creepy, even my young heart didn’t race much.

Then, as the fire crackled and Frank hummed a haunting tune under his breath, she lowered her voice until we strained to hear. “That, dear children, was just a story, a fiction. You suspected, of course. But what I’m going to tell you now, I can swear to you, as your mother, is true.” She glanced between us, but my eyes never left her face. “We know most of the wildlife has left these woods, thanks to the encroachment of man. But there are places, pockets of the forest so deep and dark no city dweller dares to enter, where the wild creatures still reign over this land. Even in the very caves we visited today, through tunnels that may have looked to you like mere depressions in the rock, or the shadow cast by a stalactite,” Zach chortled but quieted quickly, “even there, the wild creatures live. I’m sure they watched us today, creeping stealthily to the edges of their hiding places, their eyes glowing in the dark but looking to us like just another flash of quartz. Noting our intrusion into their world.”

She grew silent for a moment, and I shifted a couple of inches closer to the smoky flames.

“One creature, in this ferocious kingdom, is revered above all of the others. Her thirst for human blood is legendary, to man and beast alike. For though urban people like us are scared to venture past these well-marked trails, enough brave, or foolish, hikers have been through the dark woods and survived to share the details about her wrath.” Frank’s tune dropped an octave, and the metronome of his swaying accelerated. “Much of the time her life is much like that of any other bear—oh, yes, she is an ursine foe, though she is twice as big and ten times as strong as the grizzlies living here a hundred years ago—but there are nights when the rage in her awakens, and her keen nose seeks out any human within eighty miles. And what, you ask, awakens her rage?” Frank abruptly stopped moving, then looked past me into the night. Bernadette leaned in closer. “Maybe you’ve guessed. It’s people doing exactly what we are now. Driving into her forest, burning the wood of her trees, desecrating the land where she and her fellow wild creatures are trying to live and survive. And when she scents these intruders, nothing will satisfy her except their complete and utter elimination!”

An opportune log fell, snapping with a jolt we all felt. Frank howled like a rabid wolf, I screamed, and kept on screaming, while Zach convulsed with laughter.

Bernadette just looked at us and shook her head slowly, smiling.

It wasn’t long before I was in tears, and though Frank patted at my back and said, “Oh, Ashlyn, you know it was just a story,” and Bernadette gave me a little hug but growled her way into a laugh in the middle of it, I couldn’t stop. I curled up with my tears all night, balling myself tighter and tighter with each rustle and whistle from the wide-open world around me. It was the last time I ever agreed to go camping, with them or anyone.

But it’s not, as Frank and Bernadette assume, the dirtiness or the discomfort or the bugs stopping me. I don’t mind the woods at all, for a day hike. As dusk falls, I can’t escape that feeling, the one of being a stranger in a land with hostile hosts, and not having a friendly soul to help you along.

Even worse: it’s having the soul you thought was your protector turn to you at your most crucially exposed, revealing her utter triumph and delight at your vulnerability.

A vulnerability against which no tent or lamp or Swiss army knife can offer protection.

I placed the
Mama Bear
patch next to my machine. It was a double-tipped needle of a gift: the beauty and strength from hours of my work, all to deliver what turned out to be a fantasy about being protected by a mom I’d dreamed up out of whole cloth.

Before breakfast on Monday, before coffee could kickstart synapses I was better off leaving unconnected, I slipstitched the
Mama Bear
patch to the back of Bernadette’s quilt. It was only post-caffeine I noticed I’d put the title behind the menacing shadows of the upper right, instead of the safe haven of the lower left.

Well, I wasn’t going to change it.

I took the time to be precise with my corners as I folded away both
Mama Bear
and
Chains of Love
, clearing my work space in anticipation of new energies coming in to accompany my new projects. I didn’t have the emotional or intellectual energy left for any of the pieces I’d conceived of earlier at FireWind, so I determined on lighthearted. The dark sketches from before were still on the drafting table, but I had a fresh pad ready to go.

Lighthearted. Light of heart. A heart seeking light. Down the left-hand side of the paper I listed my ex-boyfriends, names separated by a couple of inches.

There weren’t many. I’d dated infrequently in high school, not that I wasn’t asked out, thank you very much. I just never did find anyone in Porter who I wanted to hang out with, and I’d been stung by the way my best friend had deserted me for the love of her teenage life. It made the whole idea of steady boyfriends less than charming. She did come back to me when they were picking their wedding party, and chose flattering attendant’s dress to boot, finishing the work repairing our friendship. But back in school it had colored my opinion on boyfriends.

So there they were: Carlos, Daryl, Shawn, Eric, Jason, and Wig. What the heck was Wig’s real name? Something less bizarre but less apt: Eugene. Right. Anyway. Six men, a good third of my life, and what did I carry away from them? Carlos was the one who drooled and snored. I sketched a generic male head, prone, with spittle collecting at his chin. Then I flipped over to a new page and drafted a three by three grid, filled in the center section with the logo, ‘The Trouble With Men’, and put Carlos’s head in the top left square. Next to him went Daryl with a bottle of superglue trying to attach me to his side, then Shawn holding my hand but leering at a group of women. At the bottom went Wig standing on his head and juggling with his feet—which he never perfected but persisted in trying—then Eric with suitcase in hand and globes in his eyes, and finally dear Jason with me on a pedestal and shrines all around.

I erased myself and drew me back in as an outline, transparent. Then I added myself awake and staring into the night next to Carlos, and leaning against the wall rolling my eyes at Wig, and half-waving goodbye to Eric as he headed for the exit sign I sketched into the top corner of his square.

Breathing deeply, I stood. After a couple of minutes pacing and glancing out into the empty clearing, I went back to the sketchpad.

I smiled; I still liked it. I would play with the proportions, make the center section shorter, play with the letter style a bit—I was thinking of fashioning them like cut-outs from newspapers,
a la
ransom notes, though I hadn’t really delved into why. At any rate, I liked it.

Everyone was relaxed and chatty at lunch. Wren didn’t notice we came in together—Lizzy did but Caleb sat on one side of her and I on the other and the only thing she did was scootch her chair forward so we would have to lean around her awkwardly if we were going to make eye contact. So we just didn’t, which seemed to please her.

Angelica showed up without Theo. When Wren asked where he was, if he was coming to lunch, she tossed her head brusquely and said, “Oh how should I know? I’m not his damn keeper.” When we were done with our sandwiches and headed to his cabin for the showing, Brandon asked Angelica if she was coming along—she was headed out into the hall instead of towards the porch—and it was then I learned what it meant when someone was said to ‘bite your head off.’

“No, I have to go order dinner since his Divinity is busy preparing the unveiling of his supposed masterpiece.”

To his credit, Brandon just nodded and said, “Right, see you later then.”

Lizzy, Caleb, Wren and I headed out. “What the hell was that all about?” Wren muttered as we descended the porch steps.

“Beats me,” Lizzy replied. “Last night she was giggling and telling him she wanted to worship at his altar.”

“Well, something obviously went wrong in the temple of love,” Caleb shrugged.

“I think it’s proof these impetuous retreat romances never work,” Lizzy said, pointedly turning to look back at me.

“I think,” Caleb countered mildly, “it depends on the people.”

We soon figured out the root of her problem. Theo’s studio was cleared of everything but one covered canvas on his easel—the desk was bare, the sinks empty, the brushes all cleaned and put away. He couldn’t stop pacing as we formed an arc around the painting.

“Okay, you know I’ve talked about the spirit of my work, and how I always just channel the divine inspiration I’m sent, right?” We nodded but he barely glanced at us. “So that’s what I do. I’m, well, I’m like a conduit, that’s the best way I can explain it. I never fully understood where the ideas come from, you know? I just take up my brush or my pens or whatever and suddenly, it’s just, well, There.” He stopped briefly and scanned us, counting, one two three four five—Rafael still doing the dishes or just plain not coming—and again mouthed ‘five’ before continuing, “So I’ve had people tell me I should plan things out more, should think about the overall intent or statement of my art, should somehow consider more, or be more considerate, or something. But it’s not like that. It just is the way it is, I can’t change it and still be an artist. I don’t control it or I would destroy it. Do you understand?” Again we nodded; this time he saw us. “You do. Good. It’s not something I can argue. It just is. I’m not in charge of what I produce; you can try and argue that I am, but you’d be wrong. Plainly wrong. That’s all there is to it. So. You said you understand that. You can’t argue it. No going back once I unveil, right?” A few shaken heads convinced him. “Right. Okay, then. Here we go.” He drew a deep breath and pulled off the covering sheet.

Frankly, I was moved. It was beautiful. The colors, the balance, the chiaroscuro, the skill of the brush—they all worked in such harmony. “Wow,” I said, and Wren added, “Yeah. Wow.”

Theo grinned like a kid with a new scooter. “Good wow, right? Thanks, great. Its title is
Angel by Starlight
. Tell me what’s good. And bad. Just be true to yourselves, to what you are inspired to say.”

I looked at Wren and Lizzy and they looked back at me and we all knew that we each knew what had pissed off Angelica Starlight. The painting—it was gorgeous. But it was a nude, for starters, which are a bit tricky to create only a week or two into a relationship. The composition was of a naked woman sleeping facedown on a double bed. She was relaxed, peaceful. Silver wings sprouted from her shoulder blades, folded in rest and coming to a point just at her tailbone. Beside her the window was open to the night sky—a few tree tops and about half of Orion were gazing down on her. The light in the painting radiated from the stars and her wings, so the far corners of the room were almost pitch black but the intricate weave of the bedspread and the stones of her earrings were finely detailed.

If I were Theo’s lover and had been for weeks or months or years, and he’d told me my beauty and care were this inspirational, I would have been flattered. I would have been dancing with the moon and performing sexual treats he’d only dreamed of. But if I were Theo’s lover and had only known him a couple of weeks and he’d told me I had nothing to do with his creation of something so deeply beautiful, that my relationship with him was divorced from his relationship with his art, my so-obvious presence in his canvas nothing more than coincidence, I’d have railed. I’d have argued. Maybe it was true with other paintings, maybe it was conceivable that his technique or his choice of layout was ethereal, but the use of my body, my name being transformed to idea, was a tribute to me. I’d have insisted that at the least it was an idea he’d grown himself, thanks to my presence.

And when he’d denied it, sworn I wasn’t involved, put my kisses and my jokes and my confidences and my name and my spine firmly into a different realm, I’d have been furious. Utterly, unutterably furious.

But this wasn’t relationship school; we were there to talk about the art. The girls, I noticed, were being as careful as I about their comments—nothing to do with subject or meaning, only style and color and view. Brandon wasn’t as cautious and got us subjected to another inspirational rant when he asked about the pose and referred to her as ‘Angelica.’

Tense as the whole thing was, I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t know how to draw Wren aside, engage her in friendly chat, get her alone, and confess. It made my brain hurt. It made me wriggle my toes in my tennies. It made me want to lean against Caleb for fortitude.

So I took it as a happy little miracle in my life when we left Theo’s studio, I turned to Wren, and Lizzy said, “Let’s get going while the sun’s still out. I need a diversion.”

“Go where?” Caleb asked after shooting me a quick glance.

“Lizzy’s going to teach me to row down on Hester’s lake. Did you know she was on a crew team in university?”

“It was just a society,” Lizzy amended. “They wouldn’t start a woman’s team because we didn’t have enough competition. The pigs.”

“Wow,” I said. “Well, have fun. I guess I’ll go check on Angelica, she could probably use some company.”

“Yeah. Poor thing. Tell her I think Theo’s full of shit, okay?” I nodded and Lizzy took Wren’s arm to pull her down the path to the lake.

I sighed as they went. “Can’t say I’m not glad, but what’re they up to? Or, what’s she up to, more like?”

“I dunno. Are you really going to see Angelica?”

I winked at him. “In a minute. Got a little detour to make along the way.”

He grinned. “Good.”

I was finding Caleb terribly easy to talk to. He was funny, too, in this fetchingly quiet way—understated, but right on cue. I had to explain a bit of the reason Angelica was mad at Theo—he thought it was embarrassment over the nudity—but once I pointed out the obvious he caught the nuances right away. Throw in the hot body, and the emotions in his eyes, and the timing of his touches, and the kindness and even vulnerability I could read into his history, and I was finding myself hooked.

But we still hadn’t talked past the next month. We hadn’t even talked much past the next couple of days. As we lay on his bed chatting, kissing, copping feels in a delicate, delicate way, I decided it didn’t matter. Not really.

I wanted it to matter to him; I wanted him to fall deeply in love with me and be my soulmate and support my work and help me follow my dreams and do all the vacuuming for the rest of our lives, but I decided to proceed as if it didn’t matter. I would follow my impulses and enjoy the moments and if it came down to us never seeing each other after May rolled around, I’d be satisfaction I hadn’t denied myself pleasure on questionably moral grounds. So I sat up and planted a big ol’ smooch on his cheek.

“Here’s the plan, Caleb Kendall. I’m going to talk to Angelica, then if there’s time I’m going to work some more, and I’ll see you at dinner. But before you go eat, bring some clothes for tomorrow and stash them in my room, and we’ll forget about talking to anyone tonight and finish off that bottle of wine instead. Deal?”

“Oh, most definitely.”

“Great.” The next smooch was a bit deeper and awakened some sort of gravitational pull between our pelvises. But I left it at that and hit the woods again.

Angelica and I hadn’t spent much time together, but she’d always seemed nice, in a macabre way, and to be frank I figured I could use an ally of sorts if I was about to alienate Lizzy and Wren on Caleb’s behalf. I hoped that wasn’t going to happen, but if it did, I didn’t want to be dependent on him as my only friend at FireWind. And even without that, and knowing this was a retreat not relationship school, I couldn’t just let her sit there knowing we’d all seen it and not tell her what the consensus on Theo was.

She was in her studio, drawing with heavy black lines. I almost laughed at the coincidence. Our mediums and artistic goals were yards apart, but turbulent emotion brought the angry sketcher out in us both. Instead, as she rubbed graphite off of her fingertips and looked warily at me, I said, “I can’t believe what an idiot he is—we all agree. What’s all this crap about conduits?”

“You all agree?”

“Well, Lizzy and Wren and Caleb and I all agree you’re obviously the inspiration, and he’s deluding himself to think otherwise.”

“Not Brandon or Rafael?”

“Rafael wasn’t there. I didn’t talk to Brandon about it but he did talk about the painting as if you were the subject and Theo went off on him.”

“What a jerk! Poor Brandon.”

I just nodded—I figured it was Brandon’s stupid mistake. But Angelica had perked up, and she grinned at me. “So what else did they say?”

“I don’t know, it was a great painting and all, very stunning, all of that.” I wouldn’t disparage the painting—it was marvelous—but she didn’t want to hear it. “But he also gave us this huge lecture about cosmic inspiration and divine intervention and I don’t know what-all kind of crap.”