And Then There Was Her

by Tagan Shepard

  Raging didn’t make her feel any better. Cleaning up the mess only stoked her anger. The moment she finished rinsing and wringing out the cleaning rag, there came a knock at the front door. Her annoyance at the interruption was slightly tempered by her relief to be out of the studio.

  CS’s eyebrows knitted the moment Madison opened the door. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Why’d you knock?”

  “So you would know I wanted you to open the door.” She followed Madison into the cottage and across the living room to the kitchen. “Something’s wrong.”

  “I said nothing’s wrong. You own this place, you can just walk in.”

  CS waited while Madison stared out the window over the sink, twisting Robert’s necklace between her fingers.

  “Okay, I think I’m going to go back out and try this again.”

  She actually started walking away before Madison stopped her. “Wait. I’m sorry. I just…You don’t have to knock.”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s not why you’re upset, but I’ll keep it in mind.” She came close to Madison, but didn’t reach out for her, just stood close enough for Madison to know she was there. “Did Kacey call? Is it about Robert? Please tell me what’s going on.”

  Madison let her head fall between her raised shoulders. “Jada called.”

  “Did something happen with the show?”

  “The sneak peek went well. She’s scheduling the show itself for next week.”

  “That’s good news, right?”

  “It went too well.”

  She couldn’t look at CS while she outlined Jada’s call. Instead, she explained to the garbage disposal how the continued success of her career almost certainly required she leave Minerva Hills. How Jada wanted her back in Denver. How staying here might doom her to obscurity and missed potential.

  CS was an artist. She understood. Still, Madison didn’t have to look at her to feel how she deflated. She understood because the prospect of this happening had always loomed over them. Madison just hadn’t realized it until now. CS had. Even Laura had. She’d told Madison not to do the same thing to CS that she’d done, and yet here Madison was, contemplating exactly that.

  Given the circumstances, CS sounded surprisingly level when she asked, “Do you think Jada’s right?”

  “It would certainly be better for my career if I could attend my own openings. As far as moving so my studio is accessible to potential clients…” She turned at last, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning against the sink. “Rich people like to feel important, like they have access to the personal side of the artist.”

  “I know exactly what you mean.” CS flicked her hand in the air, gesturing to the cottage and, in essence, her whole life. “It’s why I built this amusement park and let strangers into my space, even though I don’t want them here.”

  All the fight left her, making Madison feel empty. She walked forward, her arms still crossed, and leaned her forehead against CS’s shoulder.

  “Do you think you made the right decision?” Madison asked, her voice muffled by dusty fabric. “Doing the whole open access thing here?”

  CS wrapped her arms around Madison, holding her close. She kissed the top of Madison’s head and spoke in a voice so bittersweet Madison feared her knees might give way.

  “It worked out pretty well for me.”

  Madison wanted to believe she was talking about the rave reviews and the high price tag on Minerva Hills wine, but the way CS held her like a precious jewel was impossible to ignore.

  “Take me to bed?”

  * * *

  Cold blue moonlight spilled across Madison, who was spilled across CS. Her head rested on CS’s shoulder, rising and falling with each low, steady breath, her arm across CS’s chest, just above the shallowly defined muscles of her abdomen. Madison could feel CS’s contentment. She felt it in the one hand settled on Madison’s bare hip and the rhythm of her other hand stroking Madison’s hair.

  There hadn’t been many perfect moments in her life, Madison thought as she drifted heavily toward sleep, but this one certainly qualified. She’d lain awake in bed more nights than she could count. Catching Kacey in the barrel room was only the latest cause of sleeplessness. Before that there had been Robert’s death and her parents’ indifference. More breakups than she wanted to think about and personal doubt on a scale only someone with an artistic temperament could fully appreciate. But Madison had never lain awake like this. Awake because she didn’t want this perfect night to end.

  She was watching CS’s chest flutter with each heartbeat, when CS spoke. Her eyes nearly shut, Madison struggled to keep her grip on consciousness long enough to hear the words.

  “You should go.”

  “Hmm?”

  “You should move back to Denver. Or to LA or New York. Wherever you want.” Madison felt more alert, but she still had to struggle to comprehend CS’s words. “Jada’s right. You can’t make a career for yourself here. Not the kind you want.”

  With a monumental effort, Madison forced her lips and tongue into forming words. “I can’t. I won’t do that to you. I won’t chose my career over my heart.”

  CS laughed, breathy and quiet enough to keep from disturbing Madison. “You need to stop talking to Laura. I’m an adult, I can deal.”

  “I don’t want this to end.”

  “Some things are meant to end.”

  “Not this. Not us. How can you say that?”

  “I may be a winemaker, Madison, but I’m also a farmer. Some plants grow forever. Perennials that propagate themselves and outlive us all. They’re amazing plants.”

  She stroked Madison’s hair and held her close. Madison was losing her battle with sleep.

  “Sometimes, though…” She pressed her lips against Madison’s scalp. “Sometimes the most precious plants are annuals. They grow for one season, put out the most beautiful flowers and the sweetest fruit, but they don’t last.”

  Madison couldn’t respond, couldn’t argue. She fell asleep to the sound of CS’s breathing and the feel of her heartbeat.

  She woke up alone. It was a common enough occurrence, considering how early CS liked to start, but it was jarring this morning. CS’s words still echoed in her ears, explaining their relationship with the life cycle of plants. It felt to Madison like she had only just finished uttering the last syllable, even though she was long gone. The conversation had an otherworldly quality in her memory. Maybe she’d dreamt the whole thing.

  Even after her shower and a breakfast of black coffee, her fog didn’t lift. She still felt out of place, disjointed and confused. She retreated to her sanctuary and it did not disappoint today. Just crossing the threshold into her studio made her feel better. All the frustrations of the previous day went away and sitting down at the wheel felt like coming home.

  She started off slowly, throwing a few of the simple designs that were so popular in the winery shop. She knew the inventory there was getting low, and she could fill up her shelves without expending the focus required for her gallery pieces.

  That’s how it started, anyway, but, as she continued to work, she found herself filled with the joy of these simple pots. The shapes sprung from her fingers with such practiced ease that she normally allowed her mind to wander and muscle memory to take over. Today she let herself enjoy the mechanics of creating art. It reminded her of when she first fell in love with pottery. The clean lines. Watching the shapeless, wet mass grow up and out seemingly by magic. Her slightest touch, precise and steady, coaxing shapes out of nothingness.

  After a half-dozen simple pots lined her shelves, she reached into her footlocker for a larger chunk. It was too dry, and she had to spend a few moments working water back into the clay. The texture of it reminded her of something, though she couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was. It wasn’t until she had the mound centered on her wheel and was about to start throwing that she realized what the image was, tickling the back of her brain.

  Madison
stopped the wheel and hurried to the sink to wash her hands. She dried her hands on her T-shirt rather than wasting time looking for a towel. Once in the living room, she had to drag the coffee table across the floor to get the height she needed. Even standing on the surface on the tips of her toes, she barely could reach the bottom of her old vine sculpture, but it was enough. She ran her fingers across the pieces of vine, memorizing the touch. The age of the wood. The gnarled surface. Flecks of bark came off in a shower of dust. The last piece of the puzzle settled into place. The last part of the masterpiece she’d been planning.

  She went back to her studio and started to throw. The texture would have to wait. She could spend the next day or so of drying time to figure out what appliqué she could use to create the grain. What she was after now was the shape. It would be a challenge, of course, but she lived for an artistic challenge.

  She was well and truly lost in her work when she heard the front door open. It was about time CS started coming in rather than knocking, like Madison had so often asked she do. Madison’s stomach growled and it was getting on to lunchtime now.

  Boots didn’t miss the way her face and shoulders fell at the sight of him.

  “Not happy to see me, Denver?”

  “I’m always happy to see you.”

  “Oh sure. You’re just frowning because your face is upside down.” He caught the towel she threw at him and laughed. “Let me guess, you were hoping I was someone else. Someone with soulful eyes and a surly disposition? Someone named after a disco queen, perchance?”

  Madison couldn’t help but smile. Of course Boots knew CS’s secret. He knew everything, including how she felt about CS. The blush was probably avoidable, but she didn’t try. “Maybe.”

  Boots let out a theatrical sigh and leaned against the kitchen counter, looking wistfully at the ceiling. “One day a famous artist will smile about me like that.”

  “I don’t know about famous.”

  “Whatever. Word is you’re taking the art world by storm. Even heard a rumor you were leaving us for glamorous digs provided by the Welch Gallery.”

  The smile was gone in a flash. “What did you say?”

  “Denver doesn’t deserve you. We’ll be seeing you in all the magazines soon bragging about how we knew you when.”

  “Who told you I’m leaving?”

  “CS, of course. She’s putting on a brave face, but…”

  “She told you I’m leaving?”

  “Just gave me a heads-up that you’ll probably need help packing.” He finally seemed to realize something was going on. “She was just looking out for you.”

  “She was trying to make decisions for me.” Madison didn’t bother to moderate her tone or hide her anger. “It’s not up to her to say anything. Especially before I’ve decided.”

  “I don’t think she’s trying to make your decisions. She’s just…preparing.”

  “I can prepare to move myself. If I decide to move at all.”

  “That’s not what I meant, Denver.”

  “What the hell do you mean then?”

  “Whoa, buddy, bring it down.”

  “I will not! I can’t believe she would try to control me like that.”

  “That’s not what’s going on. I’m sure of it.”

  “Then what’s going on, Boots?”

  He pulled out a barstool with a scream of metal on wood. “You know that look a person gets when they’ve been told they’ve got cancer but they’re forcing themselves to be okay with it? They know the end is coming sooner or later, but they’re trying to make the best of the time they have left. That’s the look CS’s got right now.”

  Madison didn’t have personal experience, but she understood what Boots was trying to say. She slumped against the counter beside him and finally stopped avoiding what she’d been feeling all day.

  “I don’t wanna go.”

  “But you know you have to, right?”

  She nodded, letting the tears fill her eyes and clog her voice. “I feel like shit.”

  Boots rubbed his hand across her back. “Sometimes life makes us feel like shit.”

  Chapter Forty

  Madison didn’t confront CS about talking to Boots. She saw the look he’d told her about and decided on the spot that she was going to follow CS’s lead on this one. After all, she was the one who’d screwed up. She was the one who didn’t listen to Laura. Besides, following CS’s lead had always served her well in the past, Madison had more than enough reason to trust her judgment now.

  It sort of worked too. The next few days were bittersweet, but, as always with CS, the sweet far outweighed the bitter. Madison even occasionally managed to forget how much her heart hurt. She knew it wouldn’t last forever, especially since Jada was actively pursuing a new studio for her in Denver. She went with it for now, distracting herself with the twisted vase.

  The project had taken on a life of its own. She wasn’t really sure what she was trying to accomplish with it, but what she had at the moment was like nothing she’d ever made before. She generally liked making her gallery pieces in the old-world shapes. Amphora, bottle vases, urns, and cylinder vases, but with a contemporary form straddling the line between ancient Greece and modern chic.

  This was something totally different and the change both frightened and excited her. It was meant to be more of a bottle vase, with a wide belly tapering to a thin neck. What she ended up with was a wide body and a double opening. Maybe it was the view out her windows that changed everything. The rain had ended abruptly with the arrival of summer, and the vineyard was dry and dusty, little sand devils picking up in the rare breezes, the stony ground bleached to nearly white by the unforgiving sun.

  While an undergrad, Madison had done a summer exchange program at Diné College on the Navajo reservation in Arizona. She’d learned more in those three months than she had in the three years she’d been at school, and she loved every minute of it. But she hadn’t used any of the Navajo techniques. There was enough cultural appropriation in the American west without Madison being a part of it. Still, she’d always dreamed of making use of what she’d learned then.

  Working with the Navajo unity vase form, she’d attached the handles and was now working on the carving. This was what gave it the twisted, vine-like appearance. Without adding too much bulk of extra clay, she’d been able to give the impression of what she saw in the field last fall. After the harvest but before the pruning, the vines were stripped of ornamentation and exposed to the elements. The way they grew, twisted around each other and up the lattice, was the shape Madison had re-created. Once it was glazed, the depth and contrast would be the final element. The vase would become two branches of the same vine, twisting around each other before branching off to create the twin spouts.

  Madison had just taken the vase off the wheel when she heard a knock at the front door. She shook her head with a smile, but hurried to answer it. It would be a miracle if she could get CS to stop knocking and just come in. No matter how many ways she asked, she always received a polite refusal. CS just shrugged and said she didn’t want to interrupt Madison’s life, and, if she was busy, CS could just leave and come back later. It was probably just teasing, but Madison always dropped everything when she heard the knock.

  The one positive aspect of having to answer the door was the chance to pull CS into a lingering kiss in the threshold. CS wasn’t much for public affection, so even though there was never anyone around to see, she always squirmed when Madison kissed her here. Today she squirmed even more.

  “Don’t, I’m filthy.”

  “Not yet, but I intend to get that out of you soon.”

  Even better than her squirming was her blushing. Spots of red ran up her neck from underneath her collar and Madison knew from experience that her chest flushed red too.

  “You’re relentless.”

  “Only when it comes to you.”

  “I…um…” CS looked over her shoulder, avoiding Madison’s eye and indicating Viole
t, tied to the porch railing in the shade on the far side of the house. “I just came by to see if you wanted to have dinner with me. I was on this side of the vineyard.”

  This was what their relationship was becoming, tap dancing around how deep their feelings were to make the inevitable parting easier. Any careless word could bring a cloud over their time together. Considering they hadn’t spent an evening or night apart since their afternoon in the woods, the excuse was even more disingenuous. CS wanted to come inside, and Madison wanted exactly the same thing.

  “Why not lunch?”

  “I shouldn’t. I have work.”

  Madison didn’t bother to counter the weak argument, just grabbed CS’s hand and dragged her inside.

  “Just give me a minute to put my pot on the shelf and I’ll make us something.”

  CS followed, of course. “Do you even have food here?”

  “Probably.” She pushed aside the curtain from her drying shelf as she passed. “Someone keeps buying it for me and putting it in my fridge.”

  The carving she’d just done on the vase was fresh enough and the clay still wet enough to make moving it difficult, so she was being even more careful than usual with it.

  “That’s incredible,” CS said from over her shoulder. “May I?”

  Madison stepped away, letting CS get a look. “It isn’t nearly finished.”

  “It’s already incredible,” she said, kneeling down next to the wheel to get a better look. “I’ve never seen a shape like this.”

  “It’s a Native American design called a unity vase.”

  She didn’t tell CS the cultural significance the vase had to the Navajo. How the unity vase was also called a wedding vase. How a couple traditionally drank, one from each spout, at their marriage ceremony to symbolize their shared love and lives or the fact that it was purposefully shaped like the human heart, another vessel with two chambers working as one. Madison hadn’t allowed herself to examine the implications or even considered her own motives. She didn’t think these days, she just acted.