Painting Kisses

by Melanie Jacobson

  He didn’t know that picking up that first tube of oils had been an act of insanity as much as it had of faith. And he didn’t know that my soul had stretched bigger and my doubts had yawned wider than they ever had before when I’d touched that brush to canvas. And he didn’t know that accepting his commission had brought me back to myself. But I didn’t owe him any thanks for it because that wasn’t why he’d demanded the pictures. He’d wanted what he’d wanted, and he’d written a check, not knowing or understanding what it was doing to me, not knowing that attempting the work could have undone me totally. He’d just wanted his pictures.

  I could almost hear Dani’s voice inside my head telling me I wasn’t being fair, but I pushed that away. I didn’t have to be fair when I was standing in front of a guy who, like Donovan and a thousand wealthy guys before them, had simply opened his wallet like it was the key to the world. And exactly like I had done for three years before wising up enough to save myself, I had danced to the bidding of money.

  And he had no idea that I knew he was behind it all.

  “Why did you pick these?” I asked.

  “An investor I was trying to sweet talk invited me to his place in the Hamptons. He had a smaller work by this artist, and I loved it, so I looked up more of her stuff. And I loved that too, so I started buying her pieces.”

  “The Hamptons? That seems like a strange place for a picture of mountains. Seems like it should be all paintings of sailboats or seascapes. In watercolor, like I paint.”

  “Good point. The piece I saw was in the guy’s library. The art overpowered the room.”

  “But you still wanted it?”

  “Yeah. It reminded me of here. This artist does a lot of pieces like this, with mountains and city kind of merged. Part of what I liked about her paintings was that I couldn’t ever decide if the merge was successful, whether I believed what she had painted or not.”

  “Why would you buy a painting you didn’t believe in?”

  “Because I understood it. It looked how I always felt when I had to meet up with some big shot in New York for something or other. I was there, but I wasn’t ever sure exactly how much a part of things I was. Inside I felt like a kid from suburban Salt Lake dumped out in the city and totally faking it.”

  His words resonated with me even though I didn’t want them to. As much as I’d longed for someone to understand my work, it shook me that he did. Victoria had come closest before, but she mainly had a trained eye to value my technique and an intellectual appreciation for the concepts I explored. It hadn’t reached inside her and twisted her guts like producing it had done to me.

  But my work had done that for Aidan. It must have for him to pay what he did for it and to keep it in his home, where he let only a select few up to see it. I was facing something every artist dreamed of: a patron who truly got what I did, who appreciated it at a level second only to the one I had to reach to create the work.

  And it scared me spitless.

  Donovan, who had never understood what I did, had only valued me as a commodity other people wanted. Aidan was still a question mark.

  They’d both won me over with easy charm. I’d had no defenses with Donovan, but I’d erected fortresses around myself after him. Aidan had breached them. Had I learned nothing? I wasn’t so sure he and Donovan were as different as I needed them to be. Could a guy ambitious enough to become a self-made multimillionaire before age thirty step out of the fast lane and settle down to a quieter life? He hadn’t exactly gone into retirement. The local news had reported pretty tirelessly on the vision Vanguard Development had for the Pine Peak resort. Aidan was Vanguard, and he was still pushing hard. When Pine Peak was all built and done, I couldn’t see him sitting back and calling it good. He’d be tackling the next big thing.

  The restlessness would take him like it had the workaholics in Donovan’s crew of hard-driving friends. Aidan was wired the same way, to feed off of closing the next deal, the high of the newest idea. No matter what he said, the high of the challenge was what had kept him chasing me.

  “What do you think?” he asked, slicing through the noise inside my head.

  I think I’m crazy. I think I need to leave. I think this is all too much. I think this can’t be real.

  “You don’t like it?”

  I couldn’t interpret his tone, a guardedness I hadn’t heard in a while.

  “Does it matter what I think?”

  He looked up at the painting nearest us for a long moment, then back at me. “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the world is divided into two camps, in some ways. There are people who get this, and people who don’t. And I connect to the first group more than the second.”

  “So you’re saying if I don’t get this art, if I don’t like it, that we’re doomed? We can’t be friends?”

  His eyes flashed. “I’ve never wanted to be just friends.”

  “But these two paintings determine that much for you? Who you’ll keep close and who you won’t?”

  “Sometimes. And sometimes it’s taking someone to dinner and seeing how they treat the waitstaff, and sometimes it’s watching how people handle my nieces and nephews or the way they talk to my employees. But right now, yes, I guess this is the test. And you haven’t told me what you think.”

  He’d done it again—transitioned from the laid-back guy with a bowling alley in his basement to the hard-eyed businessman who was weighing and assessing. And not one part of me wanted to prove anything to him.

  “I think it’s work done by someone who didn’t know herself yet as an artist. But don’t take it personally. It’s not like I’m an expert.” I headed back to the stairs.

  “Where are you going?” he asked, following me out. “Are you assuming you failed?”

  I whirled to face him, irritated beyond reason by his assumption that his opinion mattered. That was straight out of the Donovan Beckman playbook, and I couldn’t ever, ever forget that. “I don’t care if I failed. I wasn’t taking your test. I was telling you the truth.” I skimmed down the stairs to the front entry, and he stayed right behind me. “Thanks for the dinner and the ice cream. I’m going to go.”

  I opened the door. I half expected him to slam it shut and say his piece, but he only stood behind me with his arms crossed and deep furrows carved into his forehead.

  I couldn’t fake a polite good-bye, so I nodded at him and walked down to my car, thankful for his round driveway that let me pull out without a backward glance.

  I had no idea what this meant next. The nervous, angry energy inside me wanted to come out on canvas in wild color. But that canvas was his, bought and paid for. And that meant he had taken something significant from me. Before, I’d almost been angry that his money had forced me to face the fear of losing myself if I picked up a paintbrush again. And although I’d found myself instead, the anger was back, hot sulfur burning in the back of my throat; I couldn’t put everything inside of me on canvas for him. I wouldn’t be able to paint, not knowing that he would be able to see me so clearly in anything I gave him. I couldn’t offer to peel my skin off and pin myself down for examination.

  But what was I supposed to do with all the things inside of me pushing so hard to get out?

  For the moment, all I could do was channel it into a barely controlled race back down the mountain, whipping the car through turns, hugging the sides of the road like I was skiing a black diamond. I hated that all of this was his too.

  How was I supposed to take back my art? I couldn’t shut off the switch I’d flipped inside.

  After New York, I’d needed to quit it all. The quiet had been important. But quiet would suffocate me now. And yet I didn’t want to produce anything to do with Aidan’s commission or him or how he made me feel or the way he’d been able to stir up the inside of my head so much I couldn’t think straight. I needed my brush, and I needed to create something free of him.

  I gripped the steering wheel harder but eased off the speed. Ar
t needed to be mine again. The mountain series I’d been working on had helped me, but I wouldn’t have picked it to paint. It wasn’t something I’d started for the pure love of doing it. It was a connection to my old days, and even though Aidan had bought my work without knowing me or the Beckmans, he’d still collected it at a time when there was an irrational mania around my paintings, a hype that never would have happened without Donovan’s family’s connections.

  The only thing that could break me free completely from my doubts and Aidan’s money was to do work totally on my own and sell it on its own merits, without anyone knowing about the great Leandra Tate. It would have to be the work of Lia Carswell they wanted. Lia with no history, no track record, no nauseatingly thick file of vapid reviews.

  I would have to earn my way into galleries and museums all on my own. And Aidan’s work would have to wait. Maybe forever. The thought broke the grip of the chest fist, and the chaos inside me organized into a single, driving need.

  The colors came to me faster, snatches of imagery, memories of scents and feelings I’d cataloged for the last few years without realizing I’d filed them away. They wanted out. I could hardly wait to get down the mountain now. My vision was massive, and for the first time in years, I would be able to see whether I truly had the talent to match it.

  Chapter 19

  “What are you doing up?” Dani asked.

  I glanced at the digital numbers glowing on the microwave. It was past one in the morning. “I could ask you the same thing.”

  “I’m studying for an exam on Tuesday because my work schedule isn’t going to give me any other time over the next three days. But I also don’t have to be at work in five hours.”

  “I’ll survive. I’m not tired. I’ll probably go straight there and come home and crash.”

  “And Chloe will fend for herself like a feral child while you sleep? Cool.” Her tone was teasing.

  “Yes. Or else she can go play at Avalon’s house for a couple hours. I’m sure Tara won’t mind, and if that won’t work, I’ll inject caffeine straight into my veins and wait for her bedtime before I crash and die.”

  Dani stared at me through bleary eyes. “Sounds good. Are you doing anything right now, or can you help me study?”

  “Yeah, I can help.”

  She padded out on slippered feet and returned with the index cards she always made for quizzing herself. I flipped through them and groaned. “I don’t even know what any of these words mean. You so owe me.”

  “For this and everything. I know it. I can repay you in sandwiches now, and if I ever win the lottery, it’s all yours.”

  “Sandwiches are fine. I want one literally right this second though.” It had been hours since I’d downed the ice cream at Aidan’s house, hours fueled by nervous energy and the buzz of ideas I could barely harness.

  “Turkey coming up. You didn’t tell me why you’re awake. Anything more specific than insomnia?”

  “Oh, no reason. Reinventing myself is all.”

  Dani deposited the mayo on the counter and turned to face me, blinking a couple of times. It cleared the fog in her eyes, and her expression grew alert. She looked the way our mom used to when we were kids and I said something like,“I didn’t break the lamp” when lamps had not until that moment been under discussion. “You had a date tonight. How did I forget that?”

  “It can stay forgotten.”

  “Tell me what happened. Is this reinvention related?”

  “Yes. But not the way you’re thinking,” I added when she frowned. “I’m not turning into anyone new.”

  “Good, because you’re pretty perfect.”

  I drummed my fingers a few times, trying to figure out how to explain my thought process over the last few crazy hours. “I’m going back to the me I always was. The me who got hijacked a long time ago.”

  “You mean before . . .” She trailed off, the look on her face suggesting she didn’t know if she wanted to pull the trigger on He Who Should Not Be Named.

  “Donovan? Yeah.”

  She leaned back against the counter and studied me. “I don’t even know what to ask.”

  “You don’t have to ask anything. I’m going to paint as me, as Lia Carswell. And I’m going to paint what I like. And I’m going to see if it’s good enough.”

  “Of course it’s good enough.”

  “Says my sister who can’t draw a stick man. But thanks for saying it.” I flipped my laptop around to face her. “The Park City Arts Festival is happening in a month. I have a week and a half to produce something for the juried exhibit, and I’m going to enter. We’ll see.” Juried exhibits meant that the pieces were judged by people with trained eyes. Gallery owners, art teachers, other artists. I’d have to be good enough to make it in, which I was fairly sure I would. And then I’d have to be good enough to win.

  I had no idea what I was going to paint yet, still not sure what to pull out of the impressions swirling inside me. I had no idea if winning was a reasonable hope, but I didn’t want to be reasonable. I wanted to be wild and impulsive and create. And I wanted people to love it, whatever I painted, and to find an answer in it to questions they didn’t know they had. And I wanted it to be all mine, to belong to me and the people who viewed it without any taint of Victoria or Aidan or the other elite who’d decided what was good in New York.

  Dani looked at the home page for the festival and grinned. “You’ll dominate.”

  “Thanks, kid. Now make me a sandwich.”

  An hour later, even I was groggy after running her through her note cards several times. I knew the 6:00 a.m. alarm would go off way too soon, but it would be my last day at the diner for a while, and I could grit through one more morning with Mr. Benny and Red Hat and anyone else who came in for hot coffee and bacon.

  Almost anyone. The diner had better stay Aidan-free.

  * * *

  I threw a painter’s cloth over the second Aidan piece in the garage and pushed it to the side, shifting that obligation out of the way to paint what I wanted. I set up my smaller canvas, this one only three feet across, and stared at it, at the whiteness of it, and wondered if this was how writers felt before they made the first keystroke in a new document or how mountaineers felt when they stood at the base of Everest. Exhilarated but not letting their minds wrap completely around the task ahead of them because thinking too far out would steal away the breath they couldn’t afford to give up.

  I didn’t have to paint a mountain, much less climb one. I could choose to never think in mountain analogies again if I wanted to. And knowing I had the freedom to paint whatever I wanted made the challenge bigger still, so big I couldn’t even sense the boundaries with my mind. A touch of panic crept in, but it was the top-of-the-roller-coaster panic, not fear.

  I picked up a brush. The picture in my head had grown from the feeling I’d woken up with to an image so clear I could barely see past it to take care of my customers earlier at breakfast. Relief had crossed Tom’s face when I’d asked for a week off.

  I touched the brush to the canvas, and a smear of red appeared exactly as I wanted it. I could build a papier mâché bridge to the moon with the pages that had been written about how great art grew from conflict. Maybe. My other-life art had, for sure. But this was not a painting about that. It was a painting about the joy of a little girl who finds a butterfly to chase—about the joy of loving a little girl like that.

  Every now and then, Chloe, who was playing dolls in the corner, would glance at the canvas and ask what I was painting. “Wait and see,” I said each time. By the time Tara pulled up to collect Chloe for her playdate with Avalon, the only friend Chloe would play with, the core of the painting was there. It was still days out from being done, but the soul had shown up already. Chloe ran over to hug me good-bye, and she stopped and stared at the painting. “Dat me,” she said, her voice as certain as it was when she shouted the answers that Dora the Explorer demanded every morning.

  “How do you know?” I wou
ldn’t have expected a three-year-old to recognize herself in a neo-expressionist piece.

  “Dat feel like me.”

  She had art in her for sure. Regular three-year-olds couldn’t sense stuff like this. No way. Her words made me happier than anything the New York Times had ever printed about one of my shows. I crouched and hugged her. “I love you. Be good at Avalon’s.”

  Tara’s van door slid open, and she waved while I buckled Chloe into her car seat. “I’ll drop her off before I start dinner. Thanks for letting her come play.”

  I used to feel bad when someone took Chloe for a couple hours, but I’d learned once her own friends came over that in a lot of ways, it was easier to have two kids to watch than one. They entertained each other and needed less of my attention. But nothing beat a solid couple hours of no-kid time every now and then. Tara and I were helping each other out, although I was getting the bigger favor, but I’d return it soon.

  They pulled out of the driveway, Chloe already in a conversation with Avalon that involved lots of flailing arms, and I turned back to the canvas. I should sleep. That was the whole point of the playdate: to give me a chance to catch up on the sleep I hadn’t gotten when my brain wouldn’t shut down last night. But I didn’t want to. The work was better than a drug. Maybe I would pay for it later, but right now, it was time to paint.

  I was deep into flow when the sound of the phone ringing intruded like an especially persistent housefly. I ignored it and tried to dip back into the gap where the world stopped and art started, but after a minute, the phone rang again.