They all crammed into Willy’s car for a tour of the art shops. They visited elite shops with high-priced supplies, and lower-priced stores without the selection. They visited stores that sold only paintings. But not one place offered the range of reasonably priced supplies plus the full spectrum of pictures that Willy’s did—to say nothing of an art class. Willy also took them past two storefronts for rent he’d gotten wind of through a real estate agent.
At the end of the afternoon, the friends walked five abreast across a broad plaza to an old-English eatery Willy liked. Inside the dark tavern they continued to discuss their impressions of the day over prime rib, Willy’s treat. Everyone agreed there was room in that town for him. Ralf, feeling expansive because Willy was picking up the tab, praised the idea with unusual largess; and even Jillian, after the obligatory three-second pause, said Willy should go for it. Len was more hesitant because he didn’t want his best friend to move away. The men quaffed a few rounds of ale from big tumblers.
Then, just when Sevana thought they were ready to leave, the waiter burst forth from the kitchen bearing a white-frosted layer cake embellished with real rosebuds and flaming candles, and set it grandly before her. She looked in astonishment from the elaborate cake to Willy, and saw his beaming, self-satisfied smile. “Willy, how did you know?” she asked weakly.
“A bit of useful information gleaned from the shop records,” he said airily. “Happy eighteenth, Sevana Shanae,”—and kissed her hand with exaggerated elegance.
The others were just as surprised as Sevana—Willy wisely trusting the confidence to none of them—but they recovered more quickly. “My heartiest congratulations, Sevana,” Len said, pumping her hand after she’d blown out the candles. “I was eighteen once myself, but I got over it—although, of course, much more recently than Willy.”
“Don’t look so overwhelmed, Sevana,” Ralf put in, with a kindly quirk of his mustache. “Truth be told, this is just Willy’s excuse for the Saturday night he’s missing out at the Roadhouse.” He reached for the bottle of champagne.
“You two are incorrigible,” Jillian announced after a second or two, with a shake of her shining brown hair. “Happy birthday, Sevana. Here, Willy, let me cut the cake. You’re ruining the icing.”
All in all Sevana had to admit it was rather fun, even though she wasn’t used to her birthday being treated as a special occasion. When they left the restaurant, she carried a box containing the leftover cake and roses. Out on the darkening street Willy fell behind her, and she had a sense of some exchange passing between him and Len although she didn’t hear what it was. At the cars Willy said, “I think I need a cup of coffee before I attempt the road home. Do you, Len?”
“No,” said Len, looking straight back at him. “But then, I didn’t have four glasses of champagne.”
“All right, we’ll be behind you, but not for a while.”
“We can wait—” Jillian began without counting to anything, but was pushed into the sedan mid-sentence by Len.
Sevana, feeling something was afoot, nevertheless waved to the departing carload, and allowed Willy to deposit the cakebox in the Jaguar and spirit her to a nearby coffee shop. She didn’t especially crave coffee at the moment, but had a cup with him just for the uniqueness of being in such a fashionable little cafe in that new and stimulating city. A light snow was falling out in the street.
“The birthday party was so sweet of you, Willy,” she said. “I never dreamed you’d planned such a thing.”
“It wasn’t much. Just a small token to show your presence in my life hasn’t gone unnoticed or unappreciated,” he said. In the curio section he bought a chocolate moose in cellophane for her, an expensive cigar for himself.
He locked the candy in the car, then lit his cigar and began strolling down the street. Sevana followed patiently, wondering what he was up to. “Well, Sevana, what do you think of Calgary?” he wanted to know.
“It’s impressive,” she answered readily. “So big and sparkling—not at all dreary like some cities.”
“It’s a special place, all right.” Willy sounded dreamy.
They passed a closed craftsmen’s shop with three violins in the windowcase. Even in the dimly lit display, Sevana could see the gleam of their high-gloss finish. “Look, Willy—” she said in a tight voice, stopping him with a hand on his trenchcoat. “Aren’t they beautiful?” She lingered before the window, unable to tear herself away. Now that she knew the work that went into their making, she could appreciate their handcrafted fineness. “Did you know one violin can have as many as fifty coats of varnish?”
“You’re kidding,” said Willy, puffing away on the cigar. “Come on, I want you to see the river.”
Still in a daze, Sevana followed him inattentively down the street.
They came to stand on the bank of the river flowing through the center of the city. There was ice at its edges but the middle ran free, shimmering over the gravel in the streetlights. It was a pretty river, but Willy wasn’t seeing it. “I’m going to do it, Sevana,” he told her. “I’ve made up my mind.” His voice was full of excitement.
“I wish you all success, Willy.” She meant it in all truthfulness. He was extremely talented; if anyone deserved widespread recognition, he did.
“Don’t just wish me success. Come with me, be part of it,” he coaxed. “You will, won’t you?”
“I—might.”
“I need you, Sevana.”
“Oh Willy,” she said honestly, “I still don’t know what I should do.” Away from the routines of Lethbridge she felt even more misplaced—dislodged from the patterns she’d become entrenched in, so that she was almost overcome by the sense of homelessness she felt. Seeking a center, she found herself gazing north into the night, and had a swift intuition that Joel was thinking about her at that very same instant. Was it true, or just the product of a desperate imagination?
“Sevana!” Willy’s voice exploded into her thoughts. “I wish you would stop trying to make this more complicated than it is. Why can’t you see things the way they are?”
“Don’t think I haven’t tried!” Her eyes mirrored the night’s stormy darkness as she looked up at him through the sifting snow, tiny crystals catching and glimmering on her hair. “But I can only see one thing, and everything else eludes me.”
“And what is that?” he asked, waiting for her to elaborate.
She knew he deserved the truth, even if he wouldn’t go for it. “I want a life that is lost.” Her voice was quiet, yet deliberate. “It was everything I could wish for. And even though it’s not meant for me, yet because of knowing it once, I have an image of what life can be like…an ideal I can’t let go. Nothing else measures up.”
Willy blew out a trail of smoke as he pondered it. “It makes sense, you know,” he said. “Artists live for beauty—for pictures in their minds. It’s natural, Sevana, to find a beautiful place and make it an object of idealism. I can understand that—I’m an artist, too. But I can also see life for what it is. Believe me, I see what you are doing plain as day, and I don’t want you to get hurt. While you are dreaming, the real opportunities you have will slip through your fingers, and you will be left with nothing—nothing!” He broke off with a wave of his cigar, waiting expectantly for her to acquiesce.
What he said cut her to the quick. The idyllic days of summer had vanished—and what good were dreams that couldn’t come true? She knew she was still clinging to them, not quite able to dismiss them and turn away from them for good. But it was time to do that: it was time to let them go without any more lingering attachment. She could no longer afford to court the things that had stepped in between her and her original goals. She sighed inwardly. It all came down to talking yourself out of what you really wanted, and convincing yourself you wanted something else more.
“So the dream world wins?” Willy taunted, misinterpreting her silence. He threw down the stub of his cigar and crushed it beneath his heel. “You would fight against all that
can be yours—throwing it away with both hands—while you persist in hanging onto some notion at all cost, despite all reason, and whether or not it is even true?”
“No,” she said, looking away from his confrontive stare. Her guiding force had always been her art career. Maybe she had lost sight of that for a while. But that must not stop her. She had to go forward blindly until she regained some sense of vision. She could not just stand there waiting in the dark. “No, it doesn’t win. I know I have to move ahead, even if my heart is going a different direction. And I will, Willy,” she said, with a kind of desperately wrought conviction.
“Look, Sevana,” Willy said more kindly, sensing her genuine distress. “I think it’s still a question of the familiar versus the unknown. You’ve never had a life in Calgary, so naturally you don’t miss it. But once you give it a try, you might like it better than anything else. How will you know unless you do?”
“I won’t, of course,” she admitted. Inside her coat pockets, her hands were balled in tense fists. “I agree with you, I need to stop hesitating and make some plans.”
So desolate was she, so haunted her lovely face as she looked up to him, that all at once Willy said in a completely different way, “Look, Sevana, it’s your birthday; we shouldn’t be talking shop. I’m sorry I brought it up. It’ll all work out, you’ll see! Put your heart into something—why don’t you paint a masterpiece, and we’ll feature it at our very own art show.”
A faint shine crept into her eyes. “I could try.”
Willy gave her shoulders a squeeze with an intimate look that cut her to the quick. She knew she was hurting him by her reluctance to accept his generous offer. And really, it was nothing short of lunacy to refuse what he was holding out to her in that city of golden opportunity, just because her heart lay somewhere in the western ranges beyond.
As they climbed the hilly street Willy kept his arm around her. “Do you want to go back to Lethbridge tonight—or shall we get a skyrise suite and celebrate your first day of being eighteen in grand style?” His voice had turned soft and caressing, his head bent toward hers.
The question startled her, that he would have such a thing in mind to suggest it. And unbelievably, for long seconds the unknown glittering skyscrapers and his worldly, debonair presence beside her wanting to entertain her in royal manner, attracted her. After all, she was on her own and free to do as she pleased. And perhaps her heart could find a measure of solace by forgetting everything else and turning to him. But then she thought of Joel’s repeated insistence that she take care, and even Jillian’s friendly warning—and knew if for no other reason, she couldn’t accept the lavish invitation. “Thank you, Willy, I’m sure it would be fun, but I’d like to go home,” she said as nicely as she could.
Willy acted as if it didn’t matter, and talked of trivial subjects on the drive home. Sevana joined in the chatter with an attempt at cheerfulness—but in her heart nothing had been resolved for her.
She couldn’t know that far to the north in another unending Yukon night, Joel was also facing matters unresolved and tormenting. He felt as one for whom events had avalanched, leaving him blindsided. He was torn by doubt and upheaval, and a great sense of bereavement. He had agreed to give up his land, the thing that had been the one invariable in his life. He had acted in haste, and now felt betrayed by his own actions. And the more he thought of his coming marriage to Chantal, the more he saw Sevana’s face before him. But it was a bit late to be seeing all this with starkly clarified vision. He stuffed another green stick into the fire amid the cloud of choking smoke that escaped the poorly crafted stove whenever he opened it, and with burning throat and eyes took his seat next to its feeble heat again, while his father slept on.
CHAPTER 46
“Look, Willy,” said Sevana, bringing a new painting into the shop a week later. “Do you like it?”
“Like it?” He inspected the snowcapped rocks stained by the sunset’s fiery alpenglow, painted from a memory that could not be forgotten. “It’s incredible. When did you do this?”
“This is my ‘masterpiece’ for the art show. You told me to paint one, didn’t you? Well, here it is. I’ve been working on it all week.”
Willy continued to marvel over it until she asked him to help her pick out a frame for it. Then obligingly he found just the right one, and together they admired the finished effect. “Were you serious about putting on an art show?” she asked.
“Absolutely. We’ll invite all the artists in the surrounding area, host it here at the shop. Saturday, end of March—how’s that sound? That should cure our cabin fever.”
Cabin fever. Maybe that was what was wrong with her. She felt grounded, confined to a limited sphere. She’d been to several car lots, and in a kickback to a childhood liking of her father’s army jeep, had decided to buy one for herself. It would be rugged enough to take her into that fin of mountains she could see over there on the Divide—get away from the city now and then and explore some backroads, find some forests and whitewater streams, build a campfire and sit alone by it just as Joel had done all summer. She had talked to a dealer who assured her he could find a used jeep in her price range, if she just gave him a little time.
But for now she was still afoot, hindered from carrying out her idea of visiting the sheep ranch. She couldn’t ask Willy to take her, or he would tease her unmercifully and again accuse her of living in a dream. Which she wasn’t. These were real sheep who ate hay and had names she knew. There was nothing illusory about a flock of sheep. Finally, after a furtive study of the map in the telephone book, she decided to take the city bus as far as she could, then walk the rest of the way. Saturday would be a good time, for with the new year had come the proposed change of schedule: Willy deeming her worthy to work by herself on Mondays, while giving her Saturdays off.
On the appointed day she boarded a bus on a street far from Calihan’s Classics, after anxiously scanning the passerbys and seeing not a flash of Willy’s playful grin or lazy mocking eyes. Walking out a long country lane in a skiff of snow, she passed more than a few ranches before she found the one she was looking for—and all the while she kept expecting Willy to come speeding along in his car and discover her there, even though she knew he was running the shop today and her fears were wholly unjustified.
Confound him, she thought suddenly, she shouldn’t let him tyrannize her. She had a perfect right to be on that road. And she shouldn’t let him pressure her into a relationship she wasn’t sure about, either. Oh, it wasn’t always outright compulsion, but it was there all the same. Whenever she looked into his eyes, she saw the expectation in them, and felt he was merely waiting for her to give into him—with every confidence she would. If she moved to Calgary, it would be more of the same subtle coercion. She didn’t think she could keep up her resistance indefinitely. It was either surrender to him, or remove herself far from his persuasive powers.
Her mind circled back to that thought. Maybe she should give in to him. She liked him well enough. If she had never met Joel, she probably would have said yes to Willy and his considerable charms long ago. But she did know Joel, and that posed an unsolvable dilemma in fostering more than a friendly regard for Willy or anyone else.
Proceeding toward the log arch she’d spied reading Ownbeys’ Sheep Ranch, she tried to think things through. The most logical plan would be to continue her education by getting a full-fledged art degree. Maybe she had learned all the basics, or maybe there was more—she didn’t know. But college was a place where she could continue to practice until she’d gained enough experience to launch out on her own.
As she turned up the dirt drive, she stopped plotting her long-range plans and started wondering what she was going to say in the next minute or two to the man in a denim jacket setting fenceposts along the lane up ahead.
She returned to the bus stop several hours later in a very conflicted state of high elation mixed with deep self-accusation. She had used all her Christmas money to buy Goldthread,
Hawthorn, Thistle, Gyrfalcon, and Blazingstar. Once she had spent some time in the field with them and saw how they remembered her, running over with their ears pricked up and tails wagging to see if she had brought them any violets today, she knew she couldn’t let them be sold to strangers. Gyrfalcon in particular had stared up at her with such piercing awareness, he seemed to be pleading with her not to leave him in that strange place but to let him go home. So she’d paid the price Mr. Ownbey named, and arranged for him to continue to board them until some future time when she could keep them herself.
She knew it wasn’t even remotely excusable, but she couldn’t help the soft spot she had for those now-grown lambs. They were in that awkward yearling stage, but they were as adorable as ever to her, for she couldn’t see them without remembering how they’d looked when she’d first laid sight on them. And Mr. Ownbey, a leathery outdoor man with a twinkling gaze that nearly disappeared into the deep planes of his face when he smiled, had not questioned her, even though never before had an apartment dweller come to buy sheep they couldn’t keep. “I am a sheepman—you think I don’t understand?” he told her, when she’d apologized for the unusual request by explaining that she’d spent some time with them out in the pasture last summer. “They are like people; they become your friends.”
Well, she excused herself, if it became apparent that buying them was a mistake, she could always sell them. But it was worth it for now, just to know they were safely hers. The jeep would simply have to wait a little longer.
The next Saturday, Sevana was sufficiently delighted with her recent purchases to go back to the ranch and spend a whole afternoon grooming their thick winter coats with a brush she’d bought—again in mortal fear of being seen by Willy, this time in a pet store. But it brought her a measure of comfort to have some living, breathing part of the summer in her possession…to know that not everything from that time had evaporated into thin air. She tried to console Gyrfalcon by whispering in his ear that she’d do all she could to find a way to keep him. And she held her cheek against Goldthread’s little muzzle (he was still smaller than the others) and told him how much she’d missed him.
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