The Orchid Sister

by LeClaire, Anne D.

  “Cut him some slack, Maddie. He’s a nice guy. He wants something special for Olivia. He wants to pick out one of your masks.”

  “As I said, you’re my dealer. You handle sales.”

  “You took some of your best pieces back to the studio for the piece they did on you for the Chronicle taping last month. As it happens, Olivia saw that segment when it aired, and she’s become fascinated with your work.”

  Maddie had had mixed feelings about agreeing to the Chronicle filming, but after the program had aired on the Boston ABC affiliate, there had been a sharp spike in sales. As well as constant reminders from Lonnie to bring some of the work back to the gallery. She just hadn’t gotten around to it. “So send her a catalog from the last show,” she said.

  “But the thing is, Maddie, Olivia’s sick. Stage-four lung cancer. She’s nineteen.”

  Nineteen. The age she had been when the life she had imagined had disappeared in flames.

  “I’ve known the family for years and watched Olivia and Jack grow up. After college, Jack moved away, but he came back this spring to help out with Olivia’s care. As I said, he’s devoted to her. He wants her to have anything that might bring her some pleasure, and he thinks one of your masks would do that.”

  Maddie thought of Kat and her years of devotion, her unwavering attention during the months at the burn unit and the additional months of rehab after. “Okay,” she said.

  “Thanks, Maddie. You won’t regret it.”

  “Right,” Maddie said. She was already regretting it. Once she gave in to Lonnie, it opened the door to a stream of potential clients, each one eating into the time she had to work. She promised herself she would finally return the masks she’d taken for the taping back to the gallery.

  Jack returned the next morning. Walking around the studio in silent absorption, he took his time. Often people, on looking at her work, felt compelled to remark immediately, but he studied each sculpture, in no rush to comment. The first models of various studies were displayed in a glass-fronted case. Clay, plaster of paris, wax-coated papier-mâché. Wood, bronze, and steel. Finished masks were hung throughout the room. On the far wall were her ritual masks inspired by the works of Alaskan natives and the artisans of Oceania. Her carnival masks were among the very first she had made, when she was only seventeen and just beginning to seriously study the history of masks throughout the centuries. Opulent with velvet ruffles, feathers, and colored glass, they were suspended over the archway. Above her welding bench hung a collection of highly stylized masks of porcelain: vapid faces of perfectly featured women fashioned in the manner of those crafted by Benda in the forties. Her fascination with the artist’s work had begun when she was a freshman in college and had run across a fashion spread in a vintage issue of Vogue and had seen that what had at first glance appeared to be the flawless faces of models were really his masks.

  Next to these were her fantasy pieces. “Tell me about these,” Jack had said. She had become adept at reading faces to discern whether people were sincerely interested, and Jack passed the test. She’d explained how for a stretch of several years, after she had finally returned to work following the accident, she had begun creating mythical beasts, grotesque animal-like monsters. He was a good listener, and she was surprised to find herself telling him how several critics had pronounced this innovation amusing, but really it had simply been a reaction to the sterile perfection of the Benda-inspired masks.

  He was skillful at conversation, at drawing her out. She found herself telling him that she had gone to art school in Providence. He told her he’d gone to Ohio State and majored in aeronautics. Unconscious that she was doing so, she took a step back from him. He told her that as a boy, he used to hang around the local airport on the weekends and how after school, when other boys were playing sports, he was doing chores in exchange for free rides. He said he’d had his private ticket by the time he was sixteen and his instrument rating at eighteen. All he’d ever wanted to do was fly. Now he was building up hours taking charters and sightseeing trips out of the local airport and hoped to sign on with a commuter airline within the year. She kept her face carefully blank when he told her this and did not tell him her father had been a pilot. Or that her parents had died in a plane crash.

  When he saw her stack of CDs on a side table, he had picked up the top two, Chris Botti and Wynton Marsalis. He held them in his palm, as if reading tea leaves. He told her his most prized possession was a battered trumpet that had once belonged to Cootie Williams.

  “Who?” she’d asked.

  “That guy was there,” he said, his voice reverent. “He knew early jazz, knew the black tradition. Hell, he was the black tradition. I mean the man played with Armstrong, with Ellington. He had this jungle ferocity with real sophistication behind it. He practically invented the plunger mute. He could make a horn sound like it was talking. Man, he was the ace.” He laughed. “Sorry. I get carried away.” He put the CDs back on the pile. “So tell me, why masks?”

  She shrugged, hesitated, discomforted by a sense of intimacy that was building, a glance held a half second too long. Beneath the conversation, something that had been there throughout the morning was growing. An awkward tension, a slow dance, a dance she feared she could get lost in.

  He waited in the silence. Finally, both to break the silence and because she sensed his authentic interest, she returned to the earlier subject and shared more about her research, about death masks and theatrical masks and how some cultures believed that a mask held the soul of whoever had worn it.

  How could she really explain? How could she tell him how it felt to see faces, to take them into her hands, feel their imagined flesh beneath her fingers, explore and absorb the structure of their bones until, in some mysterious way, the faces became a part of her? Or how she could feel ancient stories and cultures coming alive in her own hands, of the old mask makers who would transform stories and souls into art? “I dream about faces,” she finally said. “I see them as masks. I have since I was a child.”

  His eyes held hers. “What do you see in my face?”

  He was closer now. She could smell the scent of his aftershave, a mix of spice and something close to medicinal but not unpleasantly so. He was younger than she had first thought. Midtwenties, she guessed. Heat, she thought. I see heat. The air between them shifted. She took a step back, ignored his question, and let her glance sweep along the far wall of masks. “Well, what do you think?”

  He hadn’t turned to the masks, just continued to look at her. “I know this is crazy, but if you really want to know . . .” He paused as if considering whether to continue and plunged on. “What I was thinking was that I’d like to kiss you.”

  She gasped at the audacity of his remark, then saw by his face that he, too, was surprised at his own words.

  “Jesus,” he said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.” He gave a sheepish grin. “Talk about no filter.”

  I was thinking I would really like to kiss you. The spark of that word—kiss—lingered in the air.

  “You must think I’m some kind of asshole,” he continued. “Or creep.”

  “It’s okay,” she said.

  “Truly,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Forget it.” As if it were possible to retrieve his charged sentence and the desire that incited it. She was relieved when he turned his attention back to the masks and she could again breathe almost normally. She guessed he would choose one of the ritual masks, but he surprised her by pointing to one of the fantasy beasts. “That one,” he said. “I’d like that one.”

  “Are you sure?” It was dark, composed of wood and shells and shards of brass.

  “Yes. That’s the one.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s powerful and full of mystery. And unexpected. Olivia has always been drawn to the unexpected.”

  “She sounds special.”

  “She is.” There was no missing the pride in his voice. And the sorrow. “Do you take ch
ecks?” He didn’t ask the price. When she quoted it, he said, “It’s worth more.”

  As she went to the storage closet to get packing material, the memory of the kiss that had never happened dimmed, as if she had dreamed it. When she returned, she saw Winks circling his ankles, a surprise, since the cat was shy with strangers.

  “Who’s this?” he said.

  “Winks.”

  “As in tiddlywinks?”

  “No, Winks as in blinking.”

  He raised a questioning eyebrow.

  “When I first got him, he was so shy he used to hide under the bed for hours, and when he came out, he would be blinking in the brightness of the light. So I called him Winks.”

  He observed the cat. “I think it fits him. Unique. Like his owner.”

  Oh, please, she thought. Can’t you come up with a more original line? Maybe he was right in his own assessment when he’d said she would think he was some sort of an asshole, the kind who delivered a smooth line and expected women to fall over at his attention. She wrapped the mask in bubble wrap, hesitated, then tucked her card in with it, and saw him off. Well, that’s that, she thought and exhaled, although she had been unaware she’d been holding her breath.

  “I sold a mask today,” she’d told Kat when her sister phoned that night.

  “That’s great,” Kat said. “Which one? Who bought it? Give me details.”

  Maddie smiled. Kat was her most passionate supporter, eager for specifics of every sale.

  “One of the fantasy ones. For a girl named Olivia. She’s nineteen. She has lung cancer.”

  “Oh, how horrid.”

  “Terrible. I didn’t meet her. The mask was a gift.” She hesitated. “From her brother.”

  Kat, who knew her so well, picked up on something in her voice.

  “A brother, huh? Tell me more.”

  “There’s nothing to tell.” She did not mention Jack’s good looks or his genuine interest in her work and certainly didn’t say a word about the spark he had ignited. Nothing that would encourage Kat. Her sister and Lonnie were both always pushing her to date, to give Match.com a try. And what would I write in my profile? Maddie had cried in one of the few instances she gave vent to bitterness. If you’re looking for a sideshow freak, I’m your gal?

  “He was cute, right?” Kat said.

  “He drives a motorcycle,” Maddie said, as if that explained everything. “He won’t be back. He bought the mask. It was a one and done.”

  But it wasn’t. Jack returned the next morning. When she opened the door, he held out a small box and automatically she received it. “What’s this?”

  “Open it,” he said. Inside was a small stone heart. “From Olivia. My sister. She wanted you to have it.”

  Maddie lifted the stone from its cotton nest, felt the smoothness of it beneath her fingers.

  “It’s quartz. Olivia said to tell you it’s a power stone and purifies spiritual, mental, and physical energies. It also protects.”

  “She needn’t have.” The heart took on the warmth of her palm.

  “She said to tell you she loves the mask. She had me hang it on the wall by her bed.”

  Maddie slid the stone into the pocket of her jeans. “Please tell her I said thanks.” She moved to shut the door. “I’d better get back to work. Thanks again. I appreciate your dropping it off.” Three expressions of gratitude seemed more than adequate.

  A day went by and he turned up again, this time in the late afternoon. She had left the studio for the day and was about to empty Winks’s litter box when the bell rang.

  “Yes?” she said at the door. She wanted to be annoyed at the intrusion but instead found herself wishing she had shampooed her hair that morning. The flash of warm weather had passed, and a sea breeze was coming in from the southwest. He wore a leather jacket.

  “I want to buy another mask.”

  She allowed herself a sigh. “Your sister?”

  “This one’s for my mother.”

  “I’m not your personal gallery, you know,” she said.

  “I wish,” he said. Again with the killer grin.

  She tried to stare him down, but he wouldn’t look away. “Fine.” She led him back to the studio. “Tell me a little about her. What’s she like?”

  He thought a minute. The grin faded. “Before or after?”

  Before or after? Did everyone have a before and after in their lives? “Whichever you want.”

  “She used to be so steady and laughed a lot. Now, mostly, she’s sad. And scared. She keeps up a pretty good face in front of Olivia, but she’s not good at hiding how she feels. Never has been.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Natalie.”

  Maddie considered her full collection and pointed to the last one in the row of the carnival masks. It was opulent with velvet and colored stones and feathers. It had always made her smile. “How about that one?”

  He studied it. “Yes,” he said. “It’s perfect.”

  When Kat phoned that night, the first thing she said was, “How’s Motorcycle Man?”

  “Who?” Maddie said, stalling for time. She should be used to her sister’s weird prescience, but it always took her by surprise.

  “The guy who bought the mask for his sister. Has he been back?”

  Maddie forced a laugh. “You’ve been watching too many soap operas,” she said. Uncharacteristically, she was reluctant to share her every thought with Kat. She wasn’t ready for her sister’s questions, queries she couldn’t even answer for herself. “How are things in DC? Are the cherry trees in bloom?”

  “Gloriously,” Kat said.

  They chatted for a few more minutes, the subjects nothing special on either end. Just their touch-base call.

  “Talk soon. Love you,” Kat said. Her usual sign-off.

  “Love you, too.”

  The next day, Maddie found herself listening for the roar of a Harley in the drive while she fingered the quartz heart she had taken to carrying in her pocket. But Jack didn’t come, and she knew her disappointment was not a good sign. When he showed up the following day, she was determined to be aloof. “What is it this time? A cousin?”

  He laughed and handed her a bottle of prosecco. “From my mother.”

  “Really, this is not necessary.”

  “She sent one instruction. She said to tell you that you have to share it with me.”

  “Did she really?” Skepticism coated her voice.

  “She did.”

  What do you want from me? Instead she said, “How old are you, anyway? I’d guess probably midtwenties. Right?”

  “Does it make a difference?”

  Yes, she wanted to say. A big difference. She wasn’t one of those women looking for a younger guy. What were they called? Panthers? Some kind of wildcat. Cougar. That was it. She wasn’t looking for a man at all. She had a life. She had Kat. She had Lonnie, her all-in-one rep, movie buddy, and friend. She had her work.

  She took the wine. She got two glasses.

  When Kat called that Sunday, Maddie told her Jack had come back.

  “Motorcycle Man? Did he buy another mask?” Kat asked.

  “Well, yes. In fact, he did. For his mother.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No. And the next time he brought a bottle of prosecco. He said it was from his mother.”

  “You mean he’s been back twice? And you didn’t call me with details? So, give it up now. What’s he like?”

  “He’s really nice.”

  Kat laughed. “Nice? Hardly a glowing recommendation, but I guess it’s a start.”

  “Well, no, I mean, he’s more than nice.”

  “Okay. More with the dish. Good-looking? Funny? Because believe me, funny is more important than you can imagine.”

  “Yes. He is. He makes me laugh.”

  In the days that followed, Jack wooed her with persistence and patience. He found out that she liked high-end dark chocolate sprinkled with sea salt and brought her a
pound from the local chocolatier. He located an out-of-print book on the history of masks and bought it for her. (She suspected he had an ally in Lonnie, who must have been feeding him info like a spy, although she’d denied it.) One day, after he’d picked her up for lunch, he stopped by his family home and introduced her to Olivia and Natalie. His mother embraced her as if they had known each other for years. Warmth and openness apparently were Moroni family traits. They were easy to be with. They broke through her usual reticence.

  Just as gradually, Jack broke through her fragile resistance, one built on their age difference (eight years, she learned) and her belief that nothing good could come of this except possibly a brief fling, and that she did not need. He was proper and gentlemanly. No more talk of kissing. She was confused.

  “What do you want from me?” she asked one day, giving voice to the question she had had from the beginning. It was that slip of time between evening and night, the sky a promising red in the western horizon. They had gone to a clam shack for dinner, then bought ridiculously overpriced frozen yogurt and walked to the windmill park to sit on a bench in the growing dark and finish their cones.

  “This.”

  “What is this?”

  He looked up at the billowing sails of the mill. “Friendship.” The creaking of the mill’s blades whispered their ancient song.

  “Friendship,” Maddie said.

  “For a start.”

  “Okay,” she said, even while wondering why she agreed when she didn’t at all know how she felt about that. She tossed the last of the cone, now sodden, into a trash barrel by the bench. A boy and his father walked past. The boy held a leash tethered to a black lab.

  “And . . . ,” Jack said.

  “And what?”

  He stared straight ahead, as if afraid to look at her. “And I still would, you know.”

  “Would what?”

  “Like to kiss you.”

  His lips were cold from the frozen yogurt. He tasted just as she had imagined he would. When she opened her eyes, she saw the boy with the lab watching them. “Let’s go,” she said.