Читать книгу What Happens in Paris - Nancy Thompson Robards - Страница 12

Saturday, as I painted the finishing touches on a still life of foxgloves, Rita appeared in the doorway of my studio clutching her camera.

It was still hot outside—so much for the weatherman’s promise. The heady scent of gardenia wafted in, and I thought I heard the lake breeze whispering that relief from the stifling heat was just around the corner.

Be patient.

I was wrong. It wasn’t the breeze or anything remotely so romantic. It was merely the air-conditioning cycling on, its cold blast merging with the muggy outside air.

Rita stepped inside and closed the door before the humidity flooded in and took over. “Ready to shoot?”

She set her Cannon on the counter and stood there with a funny look on her face.

“What?” I said, laying down my brush and wiping cadmium yellow off my hands with a rag. “I recognize that look. You’re up to something.”

She nodded. Smiled.

“Before we get started—” She pulled a split of champagne and two paper cups from her shoulder bag. “I have a surprise for you.”

She set them on the counter, then handed me a plain white envelope.

“What’s this?”

She grinned, nearly dancing. “Open it.”

I did. Suddenly, I was staring at a check for seven hundred and fifty dollars—written to me?

“What’s this for?”

“Your sunflower painting.”

I squinted at her, confused.

“The sunflower painting,” she repeated. “My client loved it. She bought it— Is seven-fifty enough? I guess I should have asked how much you wanted for it. But that seemed like a fair price. If it’s not, I’ll—”

“No, it’s fine. It’s fabulous. I can’t believe you sold my painting.”

With a look of pride on her face, she popped the cork and poured two glasses of bubbly.

She sold my painting.

She sold my painting. As I stared at the dollar amount, I couldn’t fathom someone actually paying money for something I’d created.

Holding the check made me light-headed. This was enough for two months’ studio rent with a little to spare for supplies.

Rita handed me a cup and raised hers. “A toast. To there being more where this came from.”

Nice idea, but I was a realist. I painted for fun. I painted for me. But for seven hundred and fifty dollars I could be commissioned.

Holding her cup, Rita walked to the middle of the room and turned in a slow circle, surveying my new work that lined the wall; in some places they were stacked four and six canvases deep, starting to overrun the small space.

She whistled. “You’ve been busy since the last time I was here, huh?”

I nodded. Thirty-three new pieces since her last visit.

“It’s amazing how much I can get done when I don’t sleep.”

I set down my cup and shoved an empty plastic soup bowl—lunch from Panera again—into a sack and put it in the garbage as my sister walked over and flipped through a stack of paintings.

I watched her as she studied my work, and wondered what she was thinking. It suddenly seemed a little amateurish producing thirty-three paintings in the span of five days. Some artists agonized over a single painting for twice as long and here I was mass-producing them.

She paused to take in a brilliant pink camellia blossom, flipped past it and pulled out the close-up of the maroon orchid.

“Has Blake picked up his babies yet?”

I rolled my eyes. “He came by Thursday while I was here and whisked them away. The greenhouse is empty.”

She nodded absently and gestured to the canvas. “I really like this. Reminds me of Georgia O’Keeffe.”

My breath hitched. In O’Keeffe’s biography she said, “Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.”

I read that she painted fragments of things because they made a statement better than the entire object. She created an equivalent for what she felt about something…never copying it form for form. I borrowed the same philosophy in the dark, almost morbid lines of the orchid close-up. No harm in borrowing a style until I found my own.

“Thanks, Ri, that’s quite a compliment.” I pulled out a stool and sat down.

“I’m serious, Anna. These are really good.” She put the canvas back where she found it and picked up her purse again. “I have something else for you.”

I poured a little more bubbly into my cup. “The champagne and check were plenty.”

She nudged my hand with a slim packet of papers. “It’s an application. Here, take it.”

I did so, hesitantly, and set down the paper cup. “A job application? I have a job, Rita, and despite how I hate it, I’m not up for another major life change.”

“It’s not that kind of application. It’s for an artist residency in Paris. Is this not perfect?”

“I’m sure it’s perfect for someone, but I can’t go.”

She put her hands on her hips, and tapped the papers with her index finger’s deep-red acrylic nail. “Anna, this is Paris.”

She held it out again, and I took it.

Artist-In-Residence Fellowship—Call For

Applications.

The City of Paris, France, and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs seek applications from foreign artists of any discipline who wish to participate in an artist-in-residence program. The winners will receive a monthly allowance and a three-month stay in a workshop/studio at the Delacroix International Exchange Centre, a former convent in the heart of Paris. At the end of the residency, one of the finalists will win a one-hundred-thousand-dollar purchase award given by the French government. The winner’s artwork will become part of the permanent collection of the Museum of American Exchange in Paris, France.

By the time I reached the bottom of the first page, I knew there was no reason to keep reading. I shook my head and tried to give the papers back to her. She wouldn’t take them.

“If you went to Paris, I could sell your paintings for you.”

“You just sold one without me going.”

“I know, but that was a lucky fit.”

My heart sank. “A lucky fit. Gee, thanks.”

“Come on, you know you’re good, but it’s the whole French-mystique thing. My clients would just eat it up. The artist just got back from Paris.”

“Oh, validation. That sucks. My going to Paris isn’t going to change the way I paint. You know what Gertrude Stein said about a rose is a rose is a rose….”

“Right, but everyone finds Parisian roses a hell of a lot more appealing than the varieties we grow here. Come on, Anna, what’s stopping you?”

Oh, let’s see…my job. The fact that I was forty-one and broke and if I gave up that job, at my age I may not find another. And don’t get me started on the huge ocean between the States and Europe and the foreign language I didn’t speak beyond bonjour and au revoir. Even if I attempted to utter those words, I was sure some surly Frenchman would toss me off the side of the Eiffel Tower for butchering his language.

“I can’t.”

“Give me one good reason that doesn’t have to do with your being afraid of something you’ve always wanted.”

I closed my eyes and tried to put into words the litany of good reasons I’d just ticked off in my head, but all that came out was, “If I go I’ll lose my studio space.” Ridiculous—even I had to admit it. The absurdity hung in the air between us like a bad smell. Rita regarded me with a confused grin, as if she was waiting for the punch line of my bad joke.

“You’ll forgo Paris to keep your rented studio?” She looked around, and I could see her considering her words before she spoke.

“Paris, Anna. And you could sell your work to the French government for tons of money. What’s not to love?”

When I didn’t answer, she sighed. “They’re choosing twelve artists. You have to apply. Cross the bridge about going once they offer you the residency.”

I set the application on the table, feeling faintly sick.

“Just think about it,” she said. “You don’t have to decide now.”

Working at Heartfield Retirement Communities was like living in a scene from George Orwell’s 1984. My boss, Jackie King—or the Jackal, as I called her—was always on red alert, watching and waiting for someone to screw up so she could sound the alarm and shine a great big spotlight. No wonder the day before I returned to my job as assistant director of marketing, I had a giant panic attack over what I’d face in the wake of Blake’s arrest.

Exactly sixteen days had passed since the story appeared in the paper. I knew I couldn’t hibernate indefinitely. The longer I put off plunging back into the real world, the harder it would be.

Cold hard reality dictated that since I was getting a divorce, I needed this job. Selling a painting had only lulled me into a false sense of security. Even if my attorney negotiated a decent settlement, I’d still need an income to support myself. Unfortunately, that meant that keeping my job had taken on new importance.

Talk about adding insult to injury.

Jackie King would almost smile if she knew how she had me under her thumb.

The Jackal rarely smiled.

Three of us made up the Heartfield Retirement Communities’ marketing and advertising department: Jackie, the director of marketing, a real piece of work who had no life beyond her job; her administrative-ass, Lolly Rhone, who fancied she ran the organization; and me, the marketing misfit.

The Dynamic Duo. And me.

I’d been blackballed from their club de deux for a holy trinity of sins: my refusal to give my life to Heartfield Retirement Communities; my refusal to kiss Jackie’s ass; and my blatant refusal to play their game.

I had nothing in common with Jackie, and she hated anyone who was different from her. She was a shop-at-WalMart-all-you-can-eat buffet-white-cake-bland kind of normal. Anyone too different, she mocked mercilessly (behind their backs, of course) for the term of her employment.

She cleansed her soul by going to church on Sundays and spending her vacations on mission trips to third-world countries where she built houses and shelters while her daughter stayed home with a sitter. Then she’d come back to work and treat anyone in her way like shit. But that was okay. She did church work.

She and Lolly were like two rotten peas in a pod. They traveled together, ate lunch together, socialized after hours. Jackie even baby-sat Lolly’s kids. Yes, the boss baby-sat the administrative-ass’s kids. In return, Lolly had her face so firmly buried in Jackie’s behind she couldn’t see their “closeness” bordered on incest.

We had our weekly department meetings—Jackie insisted the three of us have department meetings: one hour of hell consisting of a five-minute delegation of assignments for the week and fifty-five minutes of listening to Jackie’s harangue about how her boss, Ezekiel Bergdorf, had screwed up the previous week and how she could have done so much better. She wanted his job as vice president of operations so badly she nearly foamed at the mouth. I was willing to bet that over time she would systematically destroy him to get what she wanted.

Therein lay the irony. Jackie’s weekly rants left her wide open for me to cause her serious professional harm; it was as if she was playing career chicken, daring me to take her tirades to the brass. She knew I wouldn’t do it.

I didn’t rat on others (I’m sure in the catch-22 of her small mind she considered that a weakness) and I had no designs on her job.

Sad to admit, but I wasn’t ambitious when it came to Heartfield Retirement Communities. I did my job and did it well, but come five o’clock, I was gone. Contrast that with Jackie-the-martyr whose life revolved around the company. She was divorced, had a nanny for her daughter and spent more time on the road than at home. She couldn’t fathom why everyone didn’t sell their soul to the company.

My marketing job started out as a temporary gig that stretched to twelve long years. In the beginning it was a part-time position that provided enough flexibility that I could work while Ben was in school—he was in second grade when I started—and leave the job behind when I went home. It allowed me to keep my foot in the workplace, but still take care of our son—

Who was I kidding? I used to feed myself that line of crap when I started feeling bad about not being able to be the room-mother for Ben’s class or chaperon his field trips because Blake was adamant that I bring in my fair share of the livelihood. Heaven forbid that he be the sole supporter of his family.

Looking back, all I really wanted was to paint and be a mother to my baby (not necessarily in that order). My heart was never in marketing an overpriced retirement community. I suppose I should have left a long time ago rather than stay so long my boss regarded me as an inoperable tumor she was forced to live with because Heartfield never fired anyone—short of them murdering their boss.

No wonder Jackie had it in for me. She had no patience for a woman who preferred her child to climbing the corporate ladder.

Looking back, I should have done a lot of things differently. Now, all I could do was try not to look down as I crossed this rickety bridge over the canyon-of-major-life-changes. It was enough to make me contemplate curling up in a fetal position for the rest of my life. Instead, I walked in wearing my hair back in a tight chignon, the same as I had every weekday for the past twelve years. The place smelled of burnt coffee, carpet shampoo and office supplies, the same as it had every day for the past twelve years. I greeted our receptionist, Vicki, and started my approach to the break room to stash my salad in the fridge, the same as I had every day for the past twelve years.

“Oh! Annabelle.”

I stopped and glanced back into an uncomfortable pause that lasted a few beats too long. But I reminded myself to hold my head up and look her straight in the eye.

“Yes?” I said.

“Um…welcome back.”

“Thank you, Vicki.”

Then by the grace of God her phone rang, and I beat a hasty retreat down the long hallway that contained a row of offices on the left and a liberal sprinkling of cubicles on the right. I made it unscathed, stashed my lunch and made myself a cup of tea (no break-room coffee, thank you, because it looked like dirty water and tasted worse).

Clutching my cup, I started to my desk, looking each person in the eye, greeting them. My personal life was my business, and I dared anyone to ask. But as I wound my way through the maze of cubicles, my co-workers honored my privacy.

Perhaps returning to work wasn’t so bad. It reminded me of a little kid going to the doctor for a shot. The more she dwelled on it, the more it scared her, until she’d built it up to be something so monumentally frightening that even the thought nearly paralyzed her.

I’d turned going back to work into the mother of all shots. This wasn’t going to be so bad after all.

Then I ran headlong into the Dynamic Duo.

There they were. Jackie was standing outside Lolly’s cubicle, which, like it or not, I had to pass on the way to my office.

Jackie darted a quick glance at me, but kept on with her canned let’s-pretend-we’re-talking-about-something-so-important-we-haven’t-noticed-Annabelle conversation. Good, maybe she’d let me pass without a passive-aggressive dig or contemptuous look. I was almost relieved, because I’d rehearsed this encounter in my mind, prepared several pointed comebacks I preferred not to use.

For instance, if one of them asked “How was your vacation?” I’d smile and say “Lovely, thanks.” Or if I felt strong enough to volley, I could say “Why would you ask me that?” Then stare them down until they crawled into their respective holes, and then as I walked away say “I am not in the mood for your crap.”

Good God, this was just like junior high school. Of course, since I was prepared, Jackie took another tactic. As I walked past she said, “Lolly, hold my calls. Annabelle, good morning. Please come into my office.”

Oh, shit. “Sure. Let me put away my briefcase and I’ll be right there.”

I was not prepared to deal with her one-on-one.

“Right. Take your time.”

Take my time? She almost sounded…What was that vaguely familiar tone in her voice? Was she being…nice? Jackie King was a lot of things, but nice wasn’t in her repertoire. She was too mean to be nice.

Oh God, maybe she was going to fire me.

Surely she wasn’t that mean? She liked to pretend she had a conscience, and firing me now, when I really needed this lousy job, would be unconscionable.

She told me to take my time, so I did.

I shut my office door, placed my purse and briefcase on a shelf in the small closet. I closed the bifold door carefully so it wouldn’t jump the track, adjusted the clip taming my long auburn curls, smoothed the back of my black skirt before I sat down at my desk and picked a piece of lint off my stocking before I started my computer.

The Windows logo had emblazoned the screen, and I had just lifted my mug to take a sip of tea when I spied Blake’s face smirking at me from the five-by-seven gilded frame perched on the left corner of my desk. A vision of the mug shot that ran in the paper flashed in my mind. My heart ached as the hole in it tore open a little bit wider.

I pressed my hand to my chest for a few seconds before smacking the photo facedown and sweeping it—like a dead bug—off my desktop into a drawer.

Tears stung my eyes. I dabbed them away and gave myself a pep talk: I was not going to cry. He was not worth it. I closed my eyes for a good minute, until the burning subsided, then I took a deep breath, donned my emotional armor and prepared to march into battle.

“Annabelle, come in. Close the door. Sit.”

Jackie’s lips curved down, even when she smiled. She looked at me, radiating a forced creepy-warmth that made me think of the funeral director who helped me make arrangements for my mother’s burial last year. An I-can-be-as-empathetic-as-you-want-while-you’re-giving-me-your-money kind of look, but it wasn’t money Jackie wanted.

Oh, no, no, no. It was details. I sensed it the minute I walked into her office.

She folded her hands on her desk, cocked her head to one side and looked at me. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

Liar. She didn’t give a damn about me. She wanted the inside scoop—big fat play-by-play juicy details of Blake’s arrest—and she was willing to make nice to get me to spill my guts.

“I’m fine.”

“I wanted you to know I’m here for you.”

Right. How about a pay raise and a transfer to another department? She’d never been there for me one day in the entire time I’d worked with her. And she’d be there for me now for as long as it took to get the goods and have a titillating oh-my-God-can-you-believe-that lunch with Lolly, because Jackie King was that kind of person.

It took me years to understand what this woman was made of—because there was a time in the beginning when I allowed myself to be taken in by her—and I’d rather ask Blake to move back and bring his lovers home than confide in the Jackal.

“Is there anything else?” My words were icy, yet I managed to curve my lips upward; not into a smile of gratitude, but one that closed this too-personal vein of conversation.

Her funeral-director smile faded to a nearly expressionless mask of comprehension. She unfolded her hands and crossed her arms.

“There is something else,” she said as I started to stand. “I don’t like the direction you’re taking with the new marketing campaign.”

She opened the file on top of her desk and pulled out my preliminary design for the new brochure—the design I hadn’t shown to anyone yet. Where did she—

“Home is where the heart is…Heartfield Retirement Communities…?” She scrunched up her nose. “That’s a little clichéd, don’t you think? Come up with something else by this afternoon. We’re way behind.”

I glared at her in disbelief, trying to think of something to put her in her place, but as usual, my mind went blank with rage.

“Where did you get that?”

She wouldn’t look me in the eye. “I peeked at your files while you were gone. After all, some of us had to work these past two weeks.”

Some of us had to work? What the— Ohh, that martyr bitch. I was not out on a pleasure cruise and she knew it. She was just mad because I wouldn’t talk to her about it. Even worse, she’d snooped through my office and taken one of my files.

“I need that back.” I held out my hand and made a mental note to lock my desk from now on.

She closed the file and handed it to me, then started straightening the stacks of paper on her desk to avoid looking at me.

Coward.

Before I turned to leave, I stood there for a moment, towering over her, waiting to see how long it would take her to look at me. But she spun her chair around so that her back was to me and started typing on the computer perched on the credenza behind her desk.

She was a coward.

It dawned on me that the hardest parts of this crisis—telling Ben and going back to work—were over.

“You can leave now,” she said without turning around.

Yes. Yes, I could. Perhaps it was time.

I smelled the scent of gardenias before I saw the movement in my peripheral vision. My gaze snapped from my easel to the doorway and there stood Rita in the threshold of my studio. I nearly jumped out of my skin.

Yanking off my MP3 earphones, I said, “For God’s sake, you scared me to death.”

She smiled and waved a stack of transparency sleeves at me. “Sorry about that. I knocked, but you didn’t answer. Your car’s out front so I figured you were here—wait till you see what I have.” She sang the words as she shut the door and dangled a plastic sheet between two fingers. “I think you’ll forgive me when you see these.”

“The slides of my work?”

She nodded. “They look fabulous.”

I set down my brush, tossed the MP3 player on the table and met her halfway. She pulled a small slide viewer from her bag and popped in the first image. “Here, take a look.”

The boxy magnifier lay cool and light in my palm. As I pressed the button and the light engaged, the oddest sensation enveloped me that my future sat in my hand.

It was crazy—merely wishful thinking that I could make a living doing what I love, especially now that life was so messed up with Blake and I was ensconced in the new marketing campaign at work. All the ideas I came up with after Jackie vetoed “Home is where the heart is…” seemed trite and hackneyed.

I breathed in the heady scent of oil paint—I was experimenting with a new medium. It comingled with the gardenia essence that had marked my sister’s entrance. I peered into the light box and saw the lavender foxgloves I’d painted last week. The delicate purple blossoms dangled from the stems like glorious pieces of amethyst standing out bold against the rich emerald background.

My breath hitched. I loved foxgloves and these looked good, if I did say so myself. There was a whole planter full of them across the courtyard from my studio. The slide reminded me of how soothing it was to lose myself in the painting process.

If nothing else, at least I had my art. Something to call my own, something constant in this world of madness.

Rita handed me another slide, and then another until we established a silent rhythm of viewing and changing. My discard pile grew. Her handoff pile waned. We sank into the comfortable silence that sisters weren’t compelled to fill.

When I’d viewed the last slide, Rita said, “They look good, huh?”

“Yeah, they do. Thanks for photographing them, Ri.”

She nodded, chewing her bottom lip as if she had something else to say.

“What?” I asked, putting the slides back into their sleeves.

“Don’t kill me, okay?”

“Why would I do that? You’re not going to tell me you’ve slept with Blake, too, are you?”

She scrunched up her nose. “Ew. No.”

“Oh, I forgot, you’re not his type. You don’t have a penis.”

My sister didn’t laugh.

I held up the transparency of the foxgloves to the light and looked at it again, and when I looked over at her she shot me a weird sort-of smirk.

“You know it would be really good for you to get away from here. Go somewhere fresh where the word penis doesn’t automatically evoke nightmares.”

“What are you talking about?”

I nudged the last slide into place, skimmed the sleeve to the center of the table and turned my attention to Rita.

“You know I shot two sets of slides, right?”

“No, I didn’t know that. Is it a problem?”

“Only if you hate me for sending them to Paris…with the artist-in-residency application.”

I crossed my arms in front of me. “You did what?”

“I sent your work—”

“I heard you the first time. I just— Rita, I can’t go to Paris. I told you that. That’s why I didn’t send them myself.”

She pulled out a stool and perched on the edge of it. “I know you did. Your mind is kind of on automatic pilot.”

I threw up my hands. “Well, I’m kind of preoccupied trying to figure out how I’ll take care of myself after I’m divorced. As of right now, that plan does not include moving to Paris for three months.”

She looked disappointed and lowered her voice the way our mother used to when she tried to win us over to her way of thinking. “Why can’t you see that would be the very best way for you to take care of yourself? A change of scenery, a change of career.”

I hated this logical side of my sister. I walked over to my easel and picked up my brush. “Okay. Okay. Fine. I’m not going to fight with you over this. Thank you for thinking enough of my work…for thinking enough of me—”

The words burned the back of my throat, and made my eyes water. I swallowed hard.

“Thank you for doing that for me. But you know, you have to stop—”

I shook my head and stabbed my brush in the gob of cadmium yellow on my palette so hard the bristles flared.

“What were you going to say?”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Rita stand.

“That I have to stop interfering with your cocoon-building? Well, I’m not going to, Anna.”

I swiped a slash of yellow across the canvas. “This is not worth fighting over. Tell me where I can find a telephone number and I’ll call and withdraw.”

“Withdraw?” She laughed and stood behind me, but I didn’t turn around. “If you feel the need to withdraw, then you think you might win a spot.”

I shrugged, and dipped my brush into the black paint. “I don’t. I don’t know what I think. Just stop.”

“Why would you not go for this?”

A funnel of fear rose and whirled around my stomach, but I ignored it, focusing instead on how I should’ve been mad at my sister for putting me in this position; for going against my wishes and entering my work in that contest. And I would’ve been mad at her if I hadn’t been so numb. But despite the numbness, deep inside in the very center of my soul, down in the tiny little speck of heart that hadn’t frozen solid, I knew she was right. Only, there was a wide cavern between what I should do and what I was capable of doing just then.

“Well, Ri, I’ll add painting in Paris to my to-do list right behind finding a decent divorce attorney and securing another place to live because Blake is barking about putting the house on the market.”

She clucked her tongue and sighed. Loudly. As if she’d just learned I’d pierced my nipples and planned to shave my hair into a Mohawk.

“Look, it’s easy to judge when your ass isn’t on the line,” I said over my shoulder.

“Yeah, I guess so. And I guess it’s easy to use Blake as an excuse for not living your life. As big a bastard as he is, he’s not the one keeping you from Paris. You’re doing this to yourself.”

I whirled to face her. “That is so unfair.”

“I know it is. The entire scenario that’s brought you to this juncture sucks. But Anna, what would really be unfair is if you used this crap as an excuse to curl up into a little ball and fade away.”

I turned back to my canvas before the first tears broke free and meandered down my cheek. I wiped them away with my sleeve.

“You blame Blake for taking away your life. Don’t give him your soul.”

I heard Rita’s sandals clicking on the concrete floor, walking away from me. I wanted to shout at her, If I’d wanted to go to Paris I would have sent in the damn application myself. Well, okay, I wanted to go to Paris. Someday. Just not right now.

Arrgh. Too much. Too much. Too much was coming at me too fast.

“I have a challenge for you.” My sister’s voice was softer. I glanced over to see her hitching her purse up on her shoulder.

“Don’t withdraw. Just let the application ride. Toss it up to fate and see what happens. Okay?”