The Art of My Life (33 page)
Read The Art of My Life Online
Authors: Ann Lee Miller
Tags: #romance, #art, #sailing, #jail, #marijuana abuse
Aly stared at the underside of the
deck in the moonlight filtering through the porthole. Emotions
careened through her as if she rode a carnival ride instead of a
boat lazing in a summer night.
Cal’s muffled voice filtered from the
other end of the boat. She wondered who he was talking to. He was
an addict, as he’d just reminded her. But for the first time, he
was getting help and set his course to stay sober. He was right.
They both needed more time to see if sobriety would
stick.
It wasn’t like she was flawless. There
was a virginal standard she’d decimated a long, long time ago. She
deserved herpes, a natural consequence of her behavior. And Cal was
willing to accept her the way she was. She thrashed onto her other
side.
Van Gogh put his paws on the edge of
her bunk and slurped her cheek as if to second Cal’s
opinion.
She pushed him down. “Eww.” But she
smiled at the dog and wondered if he understood what was going on
inside her.
Cal’s running was the thing that ate
at her. Even someone without her abandonment issues would think
twice about committing to a man who had been willing to leave her
forever. She rolled toward the hull, taking the sheet with her, as
if she could escape the hurt.
The sketch pads were all her and a few
pelicans. Cal loved her, planned to propose. She curled around the
warm glow in her stomach that somehow coexisted with her hurt and
fear.
Starr folded the last muumuu and laid
it in the banana box with the others. It was past time for her to
clean out Mama’s things. Jackson had offered to help her, but she
didn’t need him hovering over her, expecting her to fall apart at
any moment when the grief finally hit. It wasn’t going to
hit.
Cal needed some space to set up his
easel and paints while the Fishers were in town. Missy treated
Henna’s room like a shrine. It wasn’t healthy for a girl her age to
focus on death. Starr would store everything in the shed. Leaf
could decide what he wanted to keep—if and when he
returned.
Anger stabbed her. This was the story
of her life—Leaf MIA, mired in a marijuana haze or physically
missing. She kicked the box and it slammed into the bed. Jackson
was wrong. There was no point in letting yourself feel. She rubbed
her bare foot.
She turned to Henna’s dresser. Maybe
there was something small, a piece of jewelry, that she could keep
to remember Henna by. She flipped open the Romeo Y Julieta cigar
box that had set on Henna’s dresser for as long as she could
remember.
Instead of jewelry, she pulled out a
sealed envelope with
Starr
scrawled across it in Henna’s
spidery writing.
Her heart knocked in her chest. Maybe
Henna said something in this letter that would somehow fix her
childhood. That she was sorry she’d been such an uninvolved mother.
Sorry everything, including, marijuana, came before Starr. Just
sorry. Even an acknowledgement that Starr’s childhood had been
difficult would be enough.
The long, white envelope shook in her
hands. She should go get a knife from the kitchen to preserve
Mama’s handwriting. Like she had an ounce of sentimentality about
Mama. She tore open the envelope. The rip severed Starr’s
name.
She sunk onto the tie-dyed bedspread
and unfolded the single sheet.
Starry Starry Bright
, Henna had
written in the upper left corner. The annoying nickname grated
across Starr’s nerves. Her eyes skimmed down the page and she put a
hand out on the nubby bedspread to steady herself.
Finally, Henna had given her something
that mattered.
July 1
Sometimes art sends you a
different message than life does. What to believe? The beauty that
exudes from a work and makes your heart hope? Or the bleakness of
your personal reality? Perhaps the purpose of transcendent art is
to foster hope where there is none.
Aly at
www.The-Art-Of-My-Life.blogspot.com
The box air conditioner in Henna’s
room kicked on as Cal dabbed his brush to a river scape of JB’s
Fish Camp. Of all the hours of the day, night was the time he felt
the most peace. Even at Henna’s.
Painting at Henna’s and facing her
absence had been bittersweet. He found comfort he hadn’t expected
just coexisting with the thousands of memories crammed into her
house.
The door knocked open and bumped
against the wall. Starr dropped a box of paint rags on the floor
next to his easel. “Brought these from the shed. We had boxed them
up when Missy moved in.”
She looked at each painting he had
stacked around the room, commented on line or color, sometimes
mood. “Why so many paintings of local businesses?”
“
Aly got the commissions
for me. I need to ask her if she wants me to deliver them or if
she’s planning on it.”
“
How much are you getting
from each painting?”
“
Five hundred.”
Mom’s mouth dropped open. “Wow, Cal.
You’ve got five thousand dollars sitting in this room. Make sure
you and Missy lock up.” She dropped to the edge of the bed. The
baggy shorts and canary yellow T-shirt couldn’t hide her dancer’s
grace. Maybe some day he’d paint her—some day when he didn’t mind
thinking about how small she made him feel.
Mom looked bemused. “You’re making
real money with your art now.”
“
Shocking, I know. It’s
because of Aly.”
“
How are things between
you two?”
He shrugged and faced the
painting.
“
You should tell her the
truth like you should have told me.”
He whipped his face toward
Mom.
Her eyes bore into him. “I found a
letter from Henna today. Why did you let me go on thinking you were
guilty?”
His heart stuttered. “Because I was.”
The uselessness of ever pleasing Mom washed over him. Why sugarcoat
the truth? “Maybe I’d never carry a Winn Dixie bag full of weed for
myself, but I smoked. A lot.” He sank to the stool, his shoulders
weighed down.
Mom waited as though she needed to
hear more.
“
I ran a delivery from
Henna’s to Leaf’s hotdog stand like I had plenty of times.
Everybody does errands for their grandparents. No big
deal.”
“
Everybody’s grandparents
don’t ask them to run drugs.”
“
Do you really think I
could send up Henna and Leaf?”
Mom leaned toward him. “You could have
told me so I didn’t think the worst of you.”
“
You always think the
worst of me.”
Mom clutched her stomach. “I deserved
that. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since I read Henna’s
letter.” She sighed. “How do I say I’m sorry for a lifetime of
criticizing you?”
“
You already apologized
that day you barged into my New Year’s hangover. Nobody’s perfect.
I know that more than anybody.”
She patted her stick-straight hair
that she’d started wearing down on her shoulders. “I told you
stories from my childhood when I visited you in jail, hoping you’d
understand what shaped me—why I was so hard on you. So you would
forgive me. I thought I was being a better parent than my folks
were, but I just screwed up in a different way.”
“
I forgave you the first
time you asked. I have too much of my own shit to worry about
grudges.” But after he said the words, he wondered if they were
true. Wasn’t he still expecting the worst from her? His mind
flashed to Fish, and he understood how hard it was to
forgive.
When he was a kid Mom would have
washed his mouth out with soap for using
shit
. But her gaze
held only fragile hope, as though his forgiveness were the most
important thing in the world.
She ran a knuckle under one eye, and
he realized he’d never seen her cry. “Thanks.” She took a deep
breath and let it go. “Going to jail for my parents was a noble
thing. I doubt I could have done it without blabbing to anyone who
would listen.” She picked at the hem of her bright T-shirt and
looked up at him. “I’m proud of you.” Her eyes glistened in the
light from the spot he had trained on his canvas.
Mom stood. “Can I hug you?” She
wrapped arms around him that felt like angles and planes. “I’m
going to hug you every time I see you.”
Cal laughed. Forgiveness, the reality
rather than the words, bubbled up in him. “Okay, Mom. Whatever.”
And he was going to be on the cover of
People
magazine.
But he felt hugged, none the
less.
He’d always performed below average on
the standardized test of life. Mom was perfect, he was the failure.
But the truth that Mom had been over-critical twisted inside him
like a kaleidoscope, changing the landscape of who he
was.
For the first time, the question at
the bottom of his being,
did he have what it took
, came back
yes.
A hand clamped onto Cal’s bicep, and
he took his eyes off his niece and nephew playing a pre-school
version of Frisbee beside the river.
Aly’s eyes spit fire at him. “We’re
going to talk. Now.”
“
Well, okay then.” He
waved at Kallie to let her know he was signing off Frisbee rescuing
for Jillian and Chase. “Kids, I need to talk to Aunt Aly. Go play
near your Mom for a sec.”
Aly marched him along the river away
from the Edgewater Fourth of July celebration with an iron grip on
his arm. She halted and dropped her hand.
He squinted at her in the afternoon
sun. Dread and anticipation churned in his gut.
“
Just when were you going
to tell me you went to jail for your grandparents?”
“
Would it have made a
difference?”
“
You told your
mother
, and you didn’t tell me. I thought we were friends. I
thought we didn’t have any secrets. You even know I have herpes.”
Her eyes pooled with hurt and passion.
“
Henna left Mom a letter.
I didn’t see the point in telling anyone. Look, it’s not a big
deal.”
“
It’s a huge
deal.”
Sun caught the water still clinging to
the tops of Cal’s toes. “They laugh at me at Narcotics Anonymous
and say there’s no such thing as marijuana addiction, but when I
couldn’t deal with life, I smoked. A lot.”
He looked up at her. “I smoked
everyday during our disconnected years, a lot of days, multiple
times.”
He glanced across the river and back
at Aly. “I tried to quit when I got out of jail the first time, but
I couldn’t do it without NA. I’m no saint.”
Aly’s fingertips touched his forearm.
“But you were a hero to Henna and Leaf. You didn’t even try to
implicate them. All it would have taken was one police officer to
take you seriously and search Henna’s house.”
A lump formed in his
throat.
Aly’s fingers whispered against his
skin, then tucked into the pockets of her shorts. “If you’d been
stopped with your own weed, the amount would barely have earned you
probation. But you did jail time without complaint to keep your
grandparents out of trouble. You’re a hero to me.”
The lump grew and he tried to swallow
around it. His gaze locked with hers. A fish jumped in the water
behind Aly. Breeze ruffled her hair. “Thanks for that.”
She gave him a shaky smile.
Behind her, the river ran with
hope.
Fish knocked on Henna’s door. Music
pulsed out.
Grateful Dead
. Missy must be sending up
Henna.
He and Missy hadn’t communicated—other
than his graduation kiss—since Henna’s funeral three months ago.
Yeah, he’d decided to stop things, but Missy hadn’t contacted him
either. It was weird. Before the funeral they’d texted daily,
e-mailed, talked on the phone, grabbed coffee.
Since his family had been in town,
they’d run into each other a few times at barbeques, and such. It
rankled that Chas always seemed to be hovering around Missy. But if
he wasn’t willing to pull the trigger on marriage, he couldn’t
blame Chas for going after Missy.
And he hadn’t made any progress
working through the idea of marrying Missy. Between working and
spending every spare second with his family, he hadn’t even had
time to sign up for law school classes yet.
He hated the thought that out of
neglect he’d done something to piss her off or hurt her. He knocked
again.
He fingered the small Killman Jewelry
box in his pocket. He wasn’t screwing up her birthday this year. He
rapped his knuckles on the door jamb harder this time.
She had the music turned up too loud
to hear him knock.
He’d been inside Henna’s house dozens
of times when Cal lived here. He tried the door knob. It twisted in
his palm. He shrugged. At most he’d startle Missy. When he’d texted
her yesterday that he’d stop by today, she’d answered
K
.
He pushed open the door and stepped
inside. “Missy!”
No answer.
He shut the door and started across
the living room.
The bathroom door opened, and Missy
halted, framed in the hall, wearing a towel turbaned on her
head—and nothing else.