The Matchmakers of Minnow Bay (3 page)

“Really?” I start. I was being too pessimistic. My heart sort of twists up, relief mixing with surprise mixing with something else … maybe just a tiny shred of apprehension.

“At some point. Of course,” he says. “Not now, though, Lily. Not when we're working together professionally too. You know that's not good for us. It's too confusing. You painting, in my house, you'd have no privacy to work, I'd have no perspective on your work, it would muddy the waters.”

“I know that. But it's kind of … almost … an emergency,” I try.

Mitchell takes me by the waist and leads me to one of the armchairs that face his desk, sitting himself down and then pulling me to him. I feel like a child, even though I am thirtysomething. “Let's table this discussion for later,” he says. “Someday you'll be too big a star to keep down in my galaxy here.” He waves his arms to indicate the gallery spaces below. “That's when we'll talk about the next level between us. Now is the time for you to focus on your work.”

“But I won't have any place to work,” I say, feeling petulant.

“But of course you will,” Mitchell says. “Just because I'm not going to catch you every time you feel like you might be falling, that doesn't mean you can't catch yourself. And won't you feel better when you do?”

I shrug. “I guess,” I try, wondering if he's caught me mid-plummet lots of times and I just haven't noticed.

“You will. I promise.” Mitchell brushes something off my face and presses his lips to my cheek. “I have to get back to work now, but listen, we can talk about this later, right? Maybe after this show this weekend. It's killing me. I can't focus on anything else. This artist is completely outside his own mind. But the works … It's going to be spectacular if it doesn't fall completely to pieces.” He laughs. “I could say the same thing about you, Lily.”

He could,
I think. But it would be nice if he didn't. “I'm not falling to pieces,” I say aloud. “Or if I am,” I add quietly, “it's nothing new.”

Mitchell smiles at me as he takes his place back behind his desk, his crow's-feet appearing, his eyes positively twinkling at me with a lack of concern. “And I wouldn't have you any other way.”

*   *   *

Though it is only 4:00
P.M.
when I leave the gallery, I stop on the way home at Red or Dead, a wineshop that specializes in red varietals. I positively love this store. They sell one or two Chardonnays and some good Champagnes, but if you go in there demanding a Riesling they politely suggest you go fuck yourself.

The shop is owned by Annie and Jo, two of my friends from college who are living, breathing proof that some college relationships do last forever. Came in majoring in sex, left engaged to each other. Married November 20, 2013, the day Illinois legalized gay marriage.

“Hi, ladies,” I say when I see that both are working today.

When they see me they both start grinning. “Guess what we got each other for Christmas!” Annie sings out before the door is closed behind me.

“New glitter nail polish?”

Annie stretches out her fingers and Jo laughs. Their nails match, both purple with pink sparkles. Not for the first time I imagine my version of their evenings together, painting nails, watching
True Blood,
making out. I twist with envy. “Besides the nail polish,” Jo says. “Look up!”

I look at the ceiling. “What?” I say after a moment's inspection.

“Oh my God. Aren't artists supposed to be observant?” Annie asks. She points at the space between the copper ceiling tile and the brick fireplace at the side of the store, next to the South American reds.

“Oh oh oh,” I say. “You didn't!”

“We had to!” Jo cries out. “We couldn't let anyone else have it. It's too beautiful.”

My heart swells. It's one of my paintings, one that was for sale at Mitchell's gallery downtown. It's a night landscape—the view from my apartment window. Two hauntingly beautiful Chicago buildings, a sidewalk, a storefront. A private, quiet kiss I saw one day when the lights were on late in the store and one partner was leaving the other behind. Half the work is in movement—cars, stoplights, people, hands—and the other, buildings and row upon row of wine bottles, still like stones.

“You shouldn't have spent so much … I mean, I would have given you a piece if I knew you wanted one.”

“But not that one. It had to be that one,” says Annie.

“Was it a fortune?” I am not always privy to the pricing of my art at the gallery until after it sells.
If
it sells. Frankly, once it's in Mitchell's hands, I think of each piece of art as gone forever, never really knowing where it all goes next. I wish I could know, could even have some say, but if I were any good at pricing and marketing, I would be a gallery owner, not an artist, and therefore have no need to sign what Renee calls a “draconian” gallery agent's agreement. But, as Mitchell is happy to remind me, our professional relationship relies entirely on trust.
Trust and autonomy,
that's what we always say. That's how we make it work. Right?

“No, no, not a fortune,” says Jo. “Okay, maybe a tiny fortune. So worth it, though. Most of our customers have noticed it right away. And the insurance assessor thinks we made a good investment.”

“You have to insure it?”

Jo says, “Girl, aside from that case of '63 Bordeaux that
someone,
” she levels a glare at Annie, “ordered four years ago, this is the most valuable thing we own.”

I smile and blush. “You have very expensive tastes, Annie.”

She laughs. “Unfortunately, I seem to be the only one in Chicago who is willing to spend for the finer things. At least in the wine department. In the art department we very nearly missed out on this piece.”

“Really?”

“Really. While we were there for the showing someone came in asking about it. Said she saw it on some art blog that morning. Another day and it would have been gone.”

“Wow.” I go to great lengths to stay off of the art blogs. I even blocked a few of the URLs on my browser. This is a fickle business and I don't need editorial chatter in my head when I'm trying to work. But I am honestly surprised this quiet landscape is getting any kind of special attention from the media. I've painted similar ones for the last six months, and Mitchell has actually passed on a few of them. All the same view, pretty much, though never looking much the same on the canvas. I think I'm working something out. Well, I hope I am.

“Wow,” I say again. “Maybe I should buy one of those fancy bottles you were telling me about.”

Jo shakes her head at me. “You absolutely may not. That wine is not going to be swigged out of a juice glass on my watch.”

“I could use a coffee mug instead. I think there's a clean one in my cupboard right now.”

Annie looks faint. “How about we find you something wet and red in the $15 price range.”

I shake my head at myself. “You know my tastes so well.” They pick out a wine and tell me things I should notice about the bottle. I tune them out until they tell me what it costs. Affordable enough to leave room on my last working credit card for a couple nights in a suburban hotel and some groceries.

“Should we add a sliver of brie and some honeyed figs?” Annie and Jo are brilliant enough to sell a few good cheeses, chocolate truffles, and dried fruits in a case by the register. By the time you've tasted two or three bottles to find something you like, the cheese is pretty much a done deal.

“Maybe more than a sliver,” I start, thinking of the credit cards and the eviction and the weird reality that though my art is selling, I won't get a check from my gallery until the end of the next quarter. April 15th. It's January 2nd. I have to be out of my apartment by the 7th.

“I have some bad news,” I blurt out.

Annie and Jo both swivel where they stand. “What is it?” they ask almost in unison, as if neither hears the other start to speak. I look from one woman to the other and then to my painting, which has been shown so much love here, which I can come see whenever I want to be reassured that someone truly looks at my artwork, that it is more than just wall filler for Wall Streeters. I change my mind. “I'm a fraud. That art is worthless,” I say, instead of telling them about the eviction.

They both laugh gaily and my heart breaks. “Tell it to the appraiser. In the meantime, I think we'll just leave it up and keep loving it all the same.”

*   *   *

When I get home I have arms full with the bottle of wine, cheese, figs, and several empty wine boxes bound up in twine from the shop. I live lean, so they should be enough for all my fragile possessions. The clothes will fit in my two suitcases. The paints, pastels, and brushes already have huge Rubbermaid bins to call home. The canvases themselves will be the only real logistics problem.

In the past, whenever I finished a painting I was proud of, I would take it, by hand, to Mitchell's gallery, in a big black Hefty bag. If he liked it, great. If he didn't, the painting and I would come back together on the L.

This means I have a small but formidable stack of rejected canvasses that I like too much to paint over. I usually work large, so we're talking about four-by-six-foot pieces, unframed, in stacks against the wall. I've never hung any of my own works—that would be too vain for words—but I do put my favorites face-out. You know, for when guests come over. In case they want to admire me, just a bit. That's not vain, is it?

I contemplate the sum total of my adult life. The art will fit in my hatchback, with the suitcases, I think. That means the rest has to go into storage or into a new place asap.
A new place.
When I look around at my battered thrift-store pots and plates—the same things I took with me to college, by and large, I think maybe it would make more sense to start fresh. If I had any money to start fresh with.

Still, most of this is not worth the cost of storage, and since I won't be able to afford first and last months' rent until after April, what doesn't fit in my car doesn't have a place to go. I pour myself a juice glass of wine and start dividing the keeps and the giveaways.

As my body works on sorting, my mind works on my next steps. I could go home. My stepbrother and his wife live together in my parents' house two hours west of here. Charlie runs our dad's Dairy Dame and Carrie does the books. We have a muddled history. Before Carrie, Charlie needed constant handouts to stay above water. Every time I had a dime, he asked for five cents. But Carrie is the opposite, responsible to the point of rigidity. I should be grateful to her for stopping the hemorrhaging, but now Charlie and I hardly have reason to talk at all. Whenever I call, the first words out of his mouth are always, “Who died?”

Even so, they have to take me in on account of me being family. But Carrie will expect me to work behind the counter to pay my way. I can just imagine what Mitchell will say about his girlfriend selling milkshakes and slushies. I suppose I just won't tell him.

I won't need pots and pans at my brother's house—or my dignity—but Charlie and Carrie will need some warning. Three days should do. I have five more days in this place, so that gives me maybe two more days to think of a better plan, and, if I can't, three days to gird my loins that I am moving home.

What will I need for five more days? I am no kind of cook. In half an hour the room is down to a microwaveable bowl for soup, a mug, a spoon, and my bread knife. Four cabinets and three drawers of silverware, dishes, gadgets, and Tupperware is whittled into one solitary box. What doesn't fit, goes to the curb.

The fourth and final drawer in my kitchen is where I've stashed “important” paperwork for the last decade. Basically every time I have a tax return or health insurance statement or paid credit card bill, I put it in there. I can probably throw away half of it, if I just sit down and face the pile. One glass of wine into the packing process, I can think of no better time than now.

I refill said glass and make myself a little plate. Good bread from the bakery, topped with cheese and fruit. It is, with a spread like this, impossible to feel poor. After savoring a couple bites standing up, my food and wine and I sit down together on the kitchen floor for a spell to deal with the mess of my life.

*   *   *

Twenty minutes later I find it.

It's in a manila envelope—the same one it came in ten years ago. It says:

State of Nevada, IMPORTANT, OPEN IMMEDIATELY

and the minute I see it I think,
Oh no.
Like I'm watching it on YouTube, I remember that day, the day that envelope came. I had been back from Las Vegas for a month, and the whole ridiculous trip was already a distant memory. Renee and Nic's wedding was the very next day—so it must have come on a Friday. Back then I waited tables on Thursday nights at a long-defunct club renowned for its uptown martinis and downtown waitresses. Almost all of us were artists, waitresses, or novelists. Or wanted to be. The owner told me to look “edgy, but no tattoos.” I've always been more Nashville than Flatbush, but he seemed happy enough with that.

Bartime was 3:00
A.M.
, but we didn't always go home. There would be these boys there, boys just waiting for the last call to bring out the big guns. I was twenty-two and nursing a bit of heartbreak—my best friend, after all, was marrying my college sweetheart—and the boys seemed so helpful to my healing process, with their ready cash, easy confidence, and total disinterest in commitment. The other girls were all just the same as me, happy to party, as lovely as they were ever going to be and with no place to be in the morning, if you didn't count long-held promises to ourselves to finally start working on the audition monologue, or first chapter, or gallery scene. We didn't.