The Stories We Tell (27 page)

“Hi.” I smile at the group. “I'm Eve Morrison, and we're in for a really fun day. I know you expected Max, but I'm your sub. So pretend it's middle school and you
want
a substitute teacher.”

The students laugh lightly. Gwen rolls her eyes and shakes her head.

I continue. “So Max and I work together at a company called the Fine Line, Ink, where we specialize in letterpress. Our focus is on card lines and invitations, but we also do branding and logos.”

A girl on the right, her hair a mash of dark brown curls, raises her hand but speaks before I acknowledge her. “So, so cool. I totally bought my mom a birthday card that y'all made. The one with the balloon…”

“Yes,” I say. “That's one of ours. And I have some other samples up here when we're ready to use the presses this afternoon.” I launch into my speech, the one I give every few months when I sub for Max. I end with my favorite quote: “Typography is to text what voice is to singing.”

The boy with the dreadlocks raises his hand. “Really, how long till we use the press?”

That's always the first question. The students don't come here to learn about the letterpress process; they come here to
use
the press. I get it. “Soon,” I reassure him. “You have to know a few of the basics before you can use it. Okay?” He's impatient, as they all are. I get that, too.

I open a box and spread cards and invitations, posters, and postcards on top of a long table. “These are examples of letterpress done by my company and by past students. We use three different machines in our shop—The Vandercook cylinder press, the Chandler & Price platen press, and, my favorite, the Heidelberg, which is the most versatile. This up here”—I motion to the machine at the front of the room—“is an Excelsior, a tabletop press we use for teaching.”

The student leans forward and I hold up both carved-wood and cut-metal fonts and offer a history. “These are fonts. This is one of my favorites,” I say, holding up a placard with the Elegy font. “It was crafted based on only three hand-drawn letters.”

A young girl, sitting in the back row, raises her hand and blurts out, “That's my favorite, too, but it's hard to read sometimes. I mean, if it's too squashed up or something.” She looks down, hiding from her own proclamations.

“You're right,” I say. “Which brings me to this point: Communication is the first thing you need to think about when choosing a font. Some fonts are for illustration, some for communication, and some for design. If you can choose what story you're trying to tell, finding the right typeface will be a whole lot easier.” I motion to them. “Come on up here and you can look at the examples.”

Chairs scrape across the hardwood floor and the students walk to the front. I'm here with the students and yet underneath the day there is the low-level hum of anxiety and worry about my family, as if I have my own weather system under my ribs. The boy with the dreadlocks picks up a card and rolls his finger across its edges. “This is my favorite,” he says.

“Good taste,” I tell him.

“Really?” He looks up, happy, like students can be, to know he's just pleased the teacher.

“Yes, really. It's part of a full line of cards called Ten Good Ideas.”

The older woman lifts a card with a misspelling—a book signing called a “book singing.”

“What do you do when it gets messed up like this? I mean, it's all pressed into the paper.”

“We try to make sure that doesn't happen. But if we do mess up in the beginning phases—and who doesn't?—we use something called blackout or black patch.”

“Which is?”

“When we place a special tape over the error and mask an area, leaving a window into which another element can be stripped.”

“I'm not sure I understand. Can you explain?” The middle-aged woman—her name is Donna—asks that question.

“Well, I'll give you an example. Last month, we did a wedding invitation, but I messed it up and put the information from another wedding onto the prototype layout. The client was on her way.”

“And?” Donna asks, leaning forward.

“I had to do something fast, so I covered the original information. I put tape on the prototype plate and repressed the typecast. She never knew. The final copy was perfect.”

I glance up when I've finished explaining and catch Gwen's gaze. Her finger holds a place halfway through her book. Her eyes are wide and knowing, as if I've spoken some secret, opened a magic door. Her face is young and smooth, calm with understanding. We move through the rest of the session, which includes pressing the platen over cotton paper. I help students design their own cards until the time is up.

When the class is over and everyone has filed out, I pick up the cards and my leather books. Evening light—my favorite—waves across the hardwood floors like water, an outgoing tide. I gather my things, click off the light, and lock the door. The hallway echoes with our footsteps.

Outside, the gas lamps flicker into the dusk, glad to take over from the sunlight that has outdone them all day. The brick sidewalks, cracked and crooked, unroll along the side of the road. Live oaks, holding their arms above the street like a protective demigod of tiny coarse green leaves, shadow our slow drive through the Savannah streets.

“Were you bored out of your mind?” I ask Gwen, who is quiet and still next to me.

“No. I actually liked it.”

“What? The part where the guy in the back row flirted with you?”

“He was not,” she says, but she laughs. “He didn't understand the difference between a platen press and a rotary press, and I needed to explain it to him.”

“Explain it, I'm sure.”

“Whatever, Mom. Plus, I learned something new.” She plays with the automatic window and then she says, “Blackout.”

*   *   *

While Alison Krauss sings “Dimming of the Day,” music floats up into the studio rafters with Saturday's quiet ending. I wanted to pick up a few loose ends before dinner, and Gwen came with me. I like to think that she wants to be here, that this isn't just a condition of her “parole,” as she calls it. Then again, I like to think a lot of things.

I'm scrolling through my e-mail and she's looking through the latest designs. She lifts number nine:
Forgive.
“You don't have this design yet?”

“Nope,” I say.

“What about a heart here? That would be good for someone to send when they want to make up with someone or fix things.” She smiles at me a little shyly before continuing. “I don't mean like a Valentine red heart, but something artsy like Francie draws, something with messy edges and…” Gwen closes her eyes. “I can see it.”

“Here.” I hand her a pad of thick cotton paper and a set of colored pencils.

She yanks her ponytail tighter. The small feather peeks out, wavering against her skin. She absently reaches back to touch it, as if she can feel the quill landing gracefully on the arch of her neck. Gwen is left-handed, like my mother once was, and I watch her fingers grip tightly as she moves the pencil across the page, at first lightly and then pressing harder. Her sketch appears from hand and imagination. I sit back and let time slip away without my clocking of it, without giving notice to its existence at all.

I'm not sure how late it is when we hear the crunch of tires on gravel and Max and Willa enter the studio. “Hey,” Willa calls out, and comes to us, hugging Gwen first. “What are y'all doing?”

I wave my hand in the air, run it over the table. “Working. And you”—I point to Max—“I thought you were out of town.”

“I was. Just got back, and Willa needed a ride to the grocery store.”

“God, I hope they let me drive soon,” she says.

Max glances at the table. “The heart. Did you do that, Gwen?”

She nods.

“That's really good. It looks like an Ed Hardy tattoo.”

She laughs fully. “Tattoo. That's a bad word around here.” She feigns a whisper.

Max makes a cute face, somewhere between embarrassed and entertained. “Sorry.”

“But thanks. I'm glad you like it.” Her smile is wider than I've seen in months.

Gwen yawns, stretches. “Mom, do you mind if I go back to the house? Dad just texted that he's home.”

“Go on. I'll be there in a few minutes.”

“I'm gone, too.” Willa turns to Max. “Thanks. I owe you.”

The silence, which isn't quiet at all, settles between Max and me. Gravel crunches. A horn honks far off. A crow screeches, its call irritating and high-pitched. He sits with me at the table. “So how did class go?”

“It was great. I always sort of dread doing it and then it all works out great, you know? It's nice to talk about the basics again. Always a good reminder.”

“You know,” Max says, “I think that after a few more sessions at SCAD, we'll be able to hold our classes here.”

“Cut out the middleman,” I say. “I like it.”

“Or in this case,” Max says “the middle school.”

I roll my eyes. “Yeah, okay, smarty pants.”

“This will be great visibility for us, Eve.”

“I agree. We'll be able to grow our customer base with our student base. And maybe we could put in a sort of gift shop—a kiosk or something to sell the cards.”

“I like the way you think, boss.”

We talk this way for a while, back and forth about our grand plans; then we dial it down a little and talk about work and due dates and which machines need repair. That's when Max smiles, shakes his head at me.

“What?” I ask.

“Even when you're sitting here with your hands all prim and folded in your lap, serious and focused, I can see that there is a big laugh in the back of your throat ready to break out at any second. I'm always trying to find a way to get it out of you.”

I laugh loudly.

“There, like that.” He touches my arm and then pulls back.

“Not much to laugh about lately.”

I stare at him and that kiss comes back to me in a rush. It unravels something in me. I turn away. Wanting him isn't just wrong but unethical, ridiculous, and needy, too. A cliché. “I gotta go.”

I leave him sitting there at the table. What else am I to do?

Walking back up the pathway, I find myself on Willa's front porch, knocking. She doesn't answer, so I knock again then hear the shuffle of feet, the click of an opening lock, and then she is standing there in her robe, her wet hair dripping onto hardwood floors. “Hey.” She smiles. “You should have just come in. I was in the shower.”

“Did you and Max have fun today?” I'm surprised by how harsh I sound.

Her face closes in, and she walks away from me toward the kitchen. I follow her in silence as she puts a teakettle on the stove, pulls down two cups, and opens a box of chamomile tea bags. “What's wrong with you, Eve?”

“What?” I settle back onto the counter, my hands behind me, grasping the granite edge.

She turns to me, her face clean and wiped fresh, like the sky after a storm. Her green, green eyes, the ones I'd always wanted as a child, bore into me, hot. “What is wrong with you? I mean, don't you know what you have?”

Tears spring up. “I know. I know. It's like there's something bro—”

“Don't you dare say ‘broken.' That's not what I mean at all.”

“Sorry…”

“You can't see what's in front of you. You can't. I'm the one who's supposed to be having problems seeing the truth, and here you stand, and you can't see what's right in front of you.”

“And what, exactly, is that?”

“You have it all, Eve. And you're scared to death of not having anything.”

“‘Have it all'?”

“Your work. A beautiful daughter who loves you and doesn't want to disappoint you. A good man in love with you. These are the things we all want, and you stand there, scared to see anything at all.”

“I know what I have. I know Cooper is a good man.”

“Not Cooper.”

“What are you talking about?” I ask. But I know.

“Max. That's what I'm talking about. He's in love with you, Eve. I've been hit in the head, but even I can see that.” She rolls her eyes. “God only knows how long he has been, but he's got it bad.”

“That's not true,” I say. “It's not like that. It's our work.”

“Yes, it
is
like that. You don't think I'd want him to look at me the way he looks at you? Don't you think I'd want him to talk to me with that soft voice? He's gone.”

I turn away. “Stop.”

“And Cooper. You believe his shit. I don't get it.”

“What shit?” I bite down hard on the last word just as the teakettle whistles. I jump, knock a mug to the floor, where it shatters. I turn on Willa. “Believe his story? Yes, I do. This situation, Willa, it's nothing new. You said you wanted to get your life together, but really? And your dreams. Should I just tell Cooper that he's a liar because you had a weird dream about a dead man? Because you'd heard a woman's screechy voice before?” I take in a long breath and kick at the remaining pieces of mug on the floor. “Should I break apart an entire family because you can't remember a night when my husband had to take you home?”

She stares at me. “Yes.”

“What?”

“Open your eyes.”

“I don't understand why you're being so mean.” My throat clenches around tears I won't shed now. Not here.

“I'm not being mean. I know that you and Cooper gave me a place to live and you've helped me through this hell. And I will be forever grateful. I will.” She turns off the gas stove and then takes a step closer. “I love you, Eve. I'm not being mean.”

“You're wrong—about Cooper, about Max. It's not like … that.”

“Just because you don't want something to be ‘like that' doesn't mean it isn't. I know my emotions are all over the place and that something weird happened in my hippopotamus or whatever the hell it's called. I know that these images and songs and dreams are all mixed up in my head.” She hollers the next sentence. “I know all of that.”