“How did you get my name?” Melissa asked.
“From your grandmother. She was at my office earlier last week, visiting one of my nurses, and she dropped off some of her delicious cookies.”
Melissa would have to remember to thank her grandmother for the recommendation. She probably realized that Melissa would need some extra money to pay for the new apartment and could use the commission.
He offered her some refreshments. Then he handed her a photograph.
“This is my daughter Katherine.”
Melissa gasped. “She is the most gorgeous child I’ve ever seen. And I teach elementary school. Believe me, I’ve seen my share of them.” He smiled, but it was a distant, melancholy smile as if he were preoccupied.
The child had smooth, shiny black hair, pulled back at the forehead with a barrette, a peaches-and-cream complexion, and the most beautiful violet eyes Melissa had ever seen. They sparkled with life.
“Is she home tonight? I’d love to meet her in person. Or is she already asleep?”
The doctor took a step back as if he had been struck.
“Perhaps it was too soon,” he said and staggered toward the couch.
“Dr. Palmer, are you okay?” Melissa was stunned. “Did I say something wrong?”
“No, it’s not you. It’s just that…you can’t meet my daughter because…because she’s dead.”
Melissa was instantly apologetic.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“How could you have known?” he said. “She was killed in an automobile accident about six months ago. I have only recently been able to look at her picture without—”
Melissa could see that the man was still heartbroken. His tragedy put her own problems into perspective. When he broke out in tears, she joined him on the couch to comfort him.
“Thank you. You’re very kind.”
“I think I should be going now, if you’re not—”
“No. I told you. I want you to paint Katherine’s portrait. I want to remember her the way she was, not the last time I saw her. I want to surround myself with her face. I can’t keep on living in the past, but I don’t want to forget her.”
“You could never forget her. I would be honored to paint Katherine. Do you have any other pictures of your daughter?”
He seemed pleased with her request. Together they looked through the photo album, and as he talked about his daughter, she came to life in Melissa’s mind.
“Is this your wife?” Melissa asked.
“My ex-wife. She was at the wheel when it happened. She was driving drunk. We couldn’t get past that and the loss of our daughter.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It’s not necessary to apologize,” he said. “We weren’t right for each other. The best thing we did together was having Katherine, and now that she’s gone, there’s nothing left for us. I hope one day to get married again and have a houseful of children, the sooner the better.”
He hesitated. “I’ve said too much. I don’t mean to bring you down.”
“That’s perfectly okay. You like children?”
“I’d better. I’m a pediatrician. How long will it take to paint Katherine’s portrait?”
“That depends. What size did you have in mind?”
“I’d like it to hang right over there,” he pointed.
“Then I would recommend a 22-inch-by-30-inch size. I am free all summer, so I could complete it in about two months.” She thought she could manage it in twenty-five hours, but she didn’t want to promise something she couldn’t deliver.
“That would be wonderful.” They agreed on a price.
“Dr. Palmer,” she began.
“Please, call me Richard.”
“Richard. If it wouldn’t be too much of an imposition, when I’m done with Katherine’s portrait, I’d love to come back and do a custom oil painting of your home. No charge, of course. It would be good practice for me. I’m just fascinated by this style of architecture. You don’t see many of these houses anymore. It’s a lovely home.”
“How rude of me. I’ve been so wrapped up in myself lately. I’m not normally this antisocial. Let me show you around before you leave, and of course I’d love to have you come back to paint the house, but only if you’ll accept your regular fee. Hey, do you think it would be possible for me to stop by from time to time, just to see how things are progressing?”
“That would be wonderful. I can use the company. I’d have to clear out all the wedding presents, but—” She hesitated, not wanting to unburden herself to a total stranger. But she felt very comfortable with him.
“Are you getting married?”
“Past tense. Was getting married. My fiancé split with his secretary and left me at the altar, so to speak. Classic, huh?”
“He sounds like a first-class idiot to me,” Dr. Palmer said, looking at her approvingly. “To let someone like you slip through his fingers. Look, I’m a good listener, if you want to talk about it. I’m rambling around in this big old house with no one to talk to. I guess that’s kind of obvious, the way I’m going on. I’m tired of living with ghosts. Have you eaten yet? Why don’t I take you out to dinner?”
She laughed, for the first time in a long time.
The next morning Melissa woke up in the mood to paint. She got out Katherine’s photograph and studied it. She was admittedly nervous, but still excited about the new oil painting. She wanted the portrait to be perfect, and as lifelike as possible, to serve as a tribute to a loving and cherished daughter.
Her new apartment was more than she could afford, but it was also perfect for painting. Her easel stood under a skylight that let in plenty of natural light. She loved working in this medium. Oils were very forgiving; you could paint right over them. They didn’t dry right away, so reworking would be easy if she got something a little wrong the first time.
She prepared to prime her stretched cotton duck canvas. She had purchased it triple primed, but before she started she wanted to reprime it with an extra coat of gesso to smooth it out and add a tint of color with a little bit of acrylic.
She arranged her materials. She had her palette to mix colors on, her tubes of oil paints—alizarin crimson, yellow ochre, cadmium yellow, burnt sienna, cerulean blue—a linseed oil mixture to thin out the paints, some round and flat oil paint brushes of varying sizes, oil-based turpentine to clean them, and her palette knife and painting knife.
She started by painting a rough background with the body shape and colors, mixing the colors to make the flesh. Then she would add more detail. She’d start with the skin and the eyes, those beautiful violet eyes.
Katherine had worn braces, but Richard wanted Melissa to leave the braces out of the picture so he could see what his daughter would have looked like after celebrating that milestone in her life. Once he had approved the final portrait, Melissa would help him frame it.
When the phone rang, she picked it up happily.
“Melissa, darling.”
“Grandma. I’ve been meaning to call you. Thanks for the cookies. I got them yesterday. They couldn’t have come at a better time. They went great with the ice cream, since I was eating everything in sight. The baby is really making me hungry. And it’s taking my mind off my problems.” But, she realized, for a day she had forgotten all about her worries. “Hey, thanks so much for recommending me to Dr. Palmer.”
“Dr. Palmer?” said Mrs. Rosenberg, perplexed.
“Yes. I’m doing an oil painting of his daughter. Grandma, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but he’s so handsome. I couldn’t stop looking at him at dinner last night. And he’s asked me out again for this weekend. He knows all about the baby and he’s fine with it. In fact, he loves children. I’ll have to tell you all about it at dinner Friday night. Well, Grandma, I’d better go and get some more painting in before I lose the light. Love you.”
****
After Melissa hung up, there was a long silence at the other end of the phon
e line. Mrs. Rosenberg couldn’t believe this was the same broken girl she had comforted the day before. And what was this about a doctor? She didn’t know any Dr. Palmer. Whoever he was, and wherever he came from, she wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Her granddaughter was happy. It was a miracle.
****
The old woman at the computer smiled when she heard the ping. “Another perfect match.”
Chapter Ten
Okay, so she was lonely. Where was it written that matchmakers can’t be lonely? Well, actually, it was probably written somewhere. But in her haste, Eva had left the Matchmaker Manual behind, along with her mother, her friends, her home, and the only life she had ever known. No contact, that was the agreement. Doors closed. Locked. Forever? For her protection, her mother had said.
And then the soul-rending kiss from the very handsome, very arrogant, very sexy “Mr. Emissary” had changed everything. And brought everything back.
As long as she didn’t think about where she came from, she was fine. She had a very full life finding love for everyone else. She was surrounded by love—in photos, on the Internet, on the telephone, on television, and in magazines when she had time to watch or read. But when she finally found a spare minute to face herself, she was looking at a very lonely—no, make that inconsolably lonely—and very frustrated matchmaker.
Okay, so matchmakers could feel sorry for themselves, and yes, matchmakers could cry, too. She had a wealth of knowledge and a heart full of love to pass on to someone, and right at the moment there was no one to pass it to.
“Do you see anyone to pass it to, Cupid?” she said, scooping up her perfectly groomed, right out of a Goya masterpiece, best friend and only companion Bichon Frise from the couch, hugging the dog to her and twirling her around. “Do you? And, before you say it, where is it written that matchmakers can’t talk to their dogs?”
What was it her mother had said? “Sometimes love finds you.” Well, that hadn’t happened and, let’s face it, was never going to happen, in the back of a dusty, dingy photo shop that really didn’t exist on any map in the middle of a speck of a town in coastal Maine. She was never going to get a message on her computer that said, “I have found the one for you!” She sent those messages to others. So no matter how many times she wished that someday her prince would come, she knew he wouldn’t.
Damn that man. Who did he think he was? And what gave him the right, where did he get the audacity—no, the gall—to kiss her like that? That most certainly was not the way things were done. It was not part of the contract. Maybe a handshake. But not a kiss. And naturally it would remind her of the last time, the first time, she had ever been kissed. Now the two kisses melded together in her mind so that she couldn’t distinguish them anymore.
And it had left her even more lonely—with longing, isn’t that what her mother had called the feeling she was experiencing?
Men! She didn’t know much about them. A man had never been a part of her life. She never knew her father. And she had accepted that. He must have left when she was very young. There was always her mother and her grandmother, of course. Come to think of it, the same was true for every other family of matchmakers she had ever known. She had come from a distinguished line of matchmakers, and nowhere in that line was there ever made mention of a man.
Of course, there must have been men along the way. Matchmakers didn’t just spring from the head of a god, like Athena from Zeus. They weren’t born full-grown from the foam of the Mediterranean Sea and blown to shore on a shell by the winds, like Venus, were they? The matchmakers worshipped at the heels of the goddess of beauty and love, the creative force that sustains all life. But they came from the loins of a man. Zeus had had many love affairs with both goddesses and mortal women, and Eva had seen such things depicted by artists in many paintings in the museums throughout Europe.
The first time her mother had ever mentioned the existence of a man in her life was that day after the horrible count, with his beautiful son, had come calling. The day had been both the happiest and the saddest of her life. It was the first day she knew true love and the last day she had ever seen her mother. Eva’s emotions ran hot and cold. Some days she wished she had never seen the count’s son. Some days she thought she would die if she never saw him again.
So where would the next generation of matchmakers come from? Or was she the end of her line?
Whenever she felt melancholy, she cooked or comforted herself with her surroundings. The storefront was nothing to speak of, but her home was really quite marvelous. She had a large, beautiful bedroom, like a wing in a museum, painted in a soft blue and milky white color scheme. Her furniture was decorated in the ornate and decorative style of Rococo. Adorning the walls were some of her favorite paintings. When she was restless, like tonight, she paced, her slippers sounding their lonely rhythm on the hardwood floors.
Above her bed was a copy of the Birth of Venus signed by Sandro Botticelli, the Florentine master himself, presented to her mother for services rendered. In fact, the likeness of Botticelli’s Venus to her mother was quite remarkable. It must have cost her mother dearly to part with that treasure.
There was a version of Venus and Cupid, executed by the French Rococo painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard, one that never made it to the collection of Louis XV’s young mistress Madame du Barry. Eva and her mother had been to Frago’s studio in Grasse in the hills of the Midi many times. It was written that Fragonard understood the human heart, and that was certainly evident in his intimate, erotic, lighthearted scenes of courtship, flirtation, and lovemaking.
One of her favorites was a signed, small-format oil sketch of the full-length Portrait of the Duchess of Alba in White, a gift bestowed on Eva’s mother by the Spanish court painter, a very grateful Francisco de Goya, in appreciation of the love match she had made between himself and his desirable and impetuous mistress. In the days when people rarely married for love, Eva’s mother and grandmother had arranged love matches for most of the royal families of Europe.
Eva’s mother had even loaned Cupid to the master for the portrait. The little white dog barely reached the hem of the dress of the duchess. And she wore a foolish red bow on her leg to match the one the duchess wore on her bodice. Some said the duchess was a witch, but the truth was she had bewitched the artist and nearly driven him out of his mind during the course of their love affair. It seemed that she had certainly captured his imagination as well as his heart, for her face appeared everywhere in his paintings. On the wall was also a copy of All Will Fall, Number 19 of Goya’s Caprichos, featuring an old matchmaker and a birdlike creature with a woman’s head. A head that looked oddly like the Duchess of Alba.
Cupid was also immortalized by Goya in his oil on canvas, The Love Letter, seeking the attention of his mistress as she pored over the love letter she had just received. A copy of that painting hung in Eva’s study off the bedroom. There were other paintings, intimate sketches in pencil and india ink wash, whimsical etchings, cartoons, and tapestries depicting scenes from classical mythology, and delicate and fanciful pictures of people frolicking in gardens.
“That’s you in that picture, Cupid, do you remember?” Eva sang wistfully as she spun the dog around. Cupid barked and seemed to understand.
Sometimes Eva’s memories caught her unaware—snatches of song, celebration smells, glasses raised, dancers passing each other in circles, and always the gentle pull of the ocean, tugging at her heart.
Eva’s home was perched high on a cliff, with a large bay window overlooking the ocean, because her mother knew she loved the water and could not survive without it. It reminded her of the tiny seaside village where she had grown up.
In her home was a modern, spacious, very functional kitchen right out of a magazine. She hadn’t done a thing to deserve such luxury. She had just been deposited here with the zinc countertops reminiscent of a French sidewalk café, and custom maple butcher-block and Carrara marble surfaces on a large central island for chopping foo
d and preparing pastries. The cooktop, with a cluster of copper pots and pans suspended over it, was already here when she arrived. The latest stainless steel appliances, faucets with a contemporary brushed-nickel finish and heavy granite countertops were almost dwarfed by the high, curved ceilings and warmed by the painted porcelain tiles and hardwood floors. A soapstone sink, deep drawers and cupboards, a large pantry, and finely crafted light-oak-and-etched-glass cabinetry rounded out the design.
The only anomaly was the broom closet, with its simple, old-fashioned, witch’s style broom, which Eva really used to sweep the hardwood floors. That reminded her most of home and her mother, who would always hide in the closet when she wanted to keep watch over her without appearing to. Sometimes she thought she heard her mother rustling around in the broom closet, but then Eva always did have an active imagination. More likely it was just Cupid’s sharp nails clicking on the parquet.
Her cooking space was more than a kitchen, really. It had a big brick fireplace that was always roaring in a large keeping room big enough to accommodate guests, a large, comfortable couch and chairs, and off to the side, a niche with her office and computer.
There was no dining room table because she never entertained large groups. There was always enough seating room in front of the fireplace or on stools around the kitchen table.
The main equipment that ran the computer was sealed off in another room. She had no need to go in there. If anything ever broke, she wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to fix it or who to call. It had been there when she got there. She was proud that she had mastered the computer. That was the way things were done in this country. Her mother had never used it to make her matches. So the whole idea of technology was foreign to Eva.
Luckily, everything in the house was in working order—except her heart. That was broken, and she didn’t know how to fix it.
Chapter Eleven
She rose from the foam like a mermaid, her golden hair shining in the sun and rustled by the wind, her unclothed body glistening. She was perfection itself—a magnificent vision, a goddess, a true daughter of Venus. He knew he shouldn’t stare, but he couldn’t force himself to look away, and his breath hitched in the back of his throat. She was tall, by most standards, although he towered over her, so he thought her the perfect size. Her limbs were long and slender. She was as radiant and real and angelic as the mythological creature in a Botticelli painting. Like the copy of the Birth of Venus that hung above her bed. As she emerged from the ocean she walked—no, glided—toward the house, bending gracefully to pick up a large seashell which she held up to her ear. Then she wrapped a thick white towel around herself as she headed for the elevator that would take her back up to her lofty retreat.
Someday My Prints Will Come Page 5