Art-Crossed Love

by Libby Rice

“She is,” he corrected, his voice retreating with each syllable. “Listen.”

  Lissa went still. At first she heard nothing. Then, sinking into the rhythm of the house, she detected a low whir coming from below. The sound was reminiscent of the methods she’d used to drown out dorm-room chaos—nothing like a dishpan full of silverware at the base of a vibrating fan to morph a cacophony into white noise.

  “I take it that’s not the furnace?” she asked.

  “That’d be Rhea getting even fitter.” Cole stomped heavily in the entryway, looking down as though he could see his sister-in-law through the floor. “You’ll have to drag her from the basement. Stairs are behind the back side of the fridge.” With that he strolled out the open door toward the truck.

  Only a prolonged, rhythmic buzzing greeted Lissa’s shout from the top of the stairs. With each step down, she descended another foot into what sounded like an underground wind tunnel. At the bottom, she saw why.

  Rhea pedaled away on a stationary bike. Kind of. On closer inspection, Lissa saw the woman rode a real bike with the back wheel tethered to a steel stand. The green neon frame looked familiar—thin tires, fluorescent metal, black grips. The same cycle had carried Rhea toward Kate in the amateur hiking photographs Lissa had found in Cole’s basement.

  Earbuds added a nice touch to Rhea’s spandex—dare Lissa say unitard?—ensemble. At this range, the whole ride-my-bike-inside operation escalated to raze-the-basement loud since the bike stand relied on an attached resistance fan. Every pump of Rhea’s strong calves translated enough power to give the fan another whirling jolt.

  In a final effort, Lissa jumped off the last step and flailed her arms, screaming, “Hello!” and “Jesus Christ, why aren’t you ready to go?”

  Rhea’s head jerked from its slump over the handlebars. The infernal buzz wound down like a broken toy the second she kicked her feet from the locking pedals. “What a pleasant surprise.”

  Always, Lissa mentally snarked. How silly to assume Cole had called ahead. “Kent is asking for you.”

  One day Rhea might have to spruce up her poker face. The guarded gleam that entered her eyes did a poor job of conveying concern over Kent’s near-death experience or joy over his desire to see her now that he was awake.

  “Why?” Rhea asked, grudgingly canting her sweaty limbs to the side and sliding off the bike.

  Lissa shrugged. Obviously he’s bereft without your lively wit and caring personality. “He’s asking for me, too. For us both.”

  “Figures.” Rhea wiped her brow and tossed the rag into a basket near the wall. The movement drew Lissa’s attention to the whole of the room. Here, finally, was a reflection of the bungalow’s inhabitants. Perfectly spaced exercise equipment filled the floor, corner to corner. Beyond Rhea’s green road bike and stand, two mountain bikes and another road bike huddled near the far wall. Between Lissa and those bikes were free weights and benches, a treadmill, a stair stepper, hanging jump ropes, yoga mats, and a contraption that looked like a medieval torture rack.

  “Pilates reformer.” Rhea mumbled the title as she brushed by Lissa for the stairs. “Good for lengthening muscles.”

  Lissa turned around and watched Rhea’s unitard stretch over some damn perfect muscles with each upward step. Most women would kill for Rhea’s rear view—supple and fluid, obviously strong but never bulky. Kate had been the Marilyn Monroe to Rhea’s Tina Turner.

  Sometimes Lissa couldn’t open the spaghetti sauce. Most of the time, she left the push-up padding in her bras. Next to those two, Lissa felt flat and scrawny and weak.

  Swallowing a useless sigh, Lissa trailed behind sleek, taut calves, marveling at the bike riding, weight lifting, and Pilot-oga regimen that had ushered them into to being.

  Rhea’s trek across the house came to an abrupt halt in the living room. “You moved it.” She immediately knelt over the end of the couch and tugged Sisters a fraction of an inch further into view.

  Not quite unintentional, then. “You noticed,” Lissa acknowledged with a biting smile. Who was this woman who pretended not to care? “I couldn’t resist.”

  The admission seemed to shake something loose. Rhea stared at the revealed sliver of Sisters and shrugged. “Neither could I.”

  Meaning what, exactly?

  The inference sank in, bit by bit, while Lissa studied the unnatural reaction of her kind-of-boss’s sister-in-law. A smarter woman would have ditched the whole scene, but not Lissa. She took in the tense lines of Rhea’s throat and the way Rhea’s fingers began to curl inward and then relax, as though she knew any stress reaction might logically be assigned deeper meaning.

  An inkling hit without warning. “You’re pretending.” Lissa shouldered Rhea aside—lightly lest those well-formed muscles retaliate—and jerked the painting free from its hiding place. Propping the dust-greasy canvas on the couch, Lissa let her suspicions fly. “You act the injured party, even though everyone around you acknowledges Kate never touched your husband. I’ve been wondering why you persist, but I’ve been asking the wrong question, haven’t I? You damn well know Trevor was faithful. Some other reason prevents you from betraying any tenderness for your sister-in-law. What, Rhea? Why the arbitrary disgust?”

  “Nothing,” Rhea seethed, “about my feelings for Kate are, or ever were, arbitrary.”

  I know. That’s the point. “Then why relegate the heartfelt gift of a dead woman to a crevice behind the couch?”

  Rhea spun on her heel, striding for yet another wooden arch that likely led to bedrooms. When she returned, the unitard had been replaced with a pair of capris, a breathable T-shirt, and comfort-first clogs. REI all around.

  “I don’t like you, Lissa.” Rhea wore a serene look she’d no doubt wrestled into place while getting dressed. Yet despite her smooth features and clean, picnic-ready outfit, anger radiated outward from the woman in waves, stressing the meager control she’d garnered during her absence.

  “You don’t like anyone, Rhea.”

  That did it, Lissa could see. Rhea’s mouth opened and closed like a snapping rubber band. Over and over she tried to speak, but each time, she swallowed the words.

  “Isn’t that right?” Lissa pressed. “From what I can tell, you don’t think highly of Cole or Kent. You especially enjoy baiting your own husband. And of course you hated Kate—poor, innocent, dead Kate who somehow deserves your eternal vitriol.”

  Rhea lurched forward, agitated but clearly fighting the hell out of it. She stopped just short of too close. “Interesting,” the redhead murmured, almost in Lissa’s ear, “somebody doesn’t like it when her paintings aren’t given pride of place.”

  The accusation hit hard and squirmed through Lissa’s conscience. Like the crescendo pitch of an operatic high note, she rejected the noise, even though she knew it might have merit. “How’d you two jump from sunrise hikes and sunset margaritas to ‘I don’t care if you’re dead’ in the space of one man’s mistake?”

  Rhea slammed the painting back behind the couch with a look that said as if. “The day I’d hike with that woman.”

  The discarded Nikon in Cole’s basement begged to differ. “You—”

  “Hate was your word.” Rhea stepped away and yanked at her ponytail. “I simply told you that most, excluding me, ‘loved her like family.’ The last thing I ever wanted was Kate for a sister.”

  “A shame, then”—Cole’s restrained hiss blew in with the wind through the open doorway—“that in the end you got your wish.”

  Chapter 21

  Lissa’s next few weeks passed in a blur. After Rhea’s vicious admission, Cole “invited” his sister-in-law to stay the hell away from Melina indefinitely. Lissa explained Rhea’s baffling reaction to seeing Sisters moved a fraction of an inch—a part of the conversation Cole had missed—and argued that Kate must have meant something for Rhea to be so in tune with Kate’s gift.

  To Lissa, a woman who didn’t care also didn’t notice.

  Cole remained incensed. To him, rejecting Kat
e as a sibling was tantamount to treason. Rhea didn’t deserve even the most peripheral place in the Rathlen clan.

  Of course, the initial trip to the hospital was a disaster. Cole and Rhea prowled around each other like wild animals, while Trevor and Kent looked on in confusion. Kent threw question after question at Lissa. A few showed a clear effort to regain memories that dangled out of reach—things like the date of Lissa’s arrival at Melina and the details of each time he’d visited—but most betrayed a salacious interest in the state of affairs between Lissa and her grudging landlord. The third time Kent slyly asked whether Lissa had slept well the night before, she knew he’d not forgotten her two previous yeses.

  With Rhea, Kent showed more finesse. Veiled inquiries implied—or at least guessed—at convoluted connections between members of the Rathlen clan. Lissa didn’t know whether Kent’s insinuations were purposefully vague or whether the grasping frustration in Kent’s eyes meant the man himself didn’t quite understand his own drive for certain answers. He admitted that the morning of his heart attack had fallen to the murkiness of oxygen deprivation, but later, after Trevor and Rhea had taken themselves home, Kent owned up to feeling a strong, and yet vaguely inexplicable, urge to interrogate.

  Rhea deflected Kent’s onslaught with fuzzy evasions, relying mostly on the standard defense that Kate hadn’t been the woman she’d seemed. Cole’s flinched at the implication. “How the hell would you know?” he accused.

  Rhea didn’t seem to grasp that the more she clung to her irrational anger over a non-existent affair between her faithful husband and Cole’s faithful wife, the less trust the Rathlens could extend.

  When Cole finally gritted, “My wife never fucked anyone but me, Rhea, ever,” Rhea grew superior.

  “Why is it,” she asked in a voice throbbing with the authority of secret knowledge, “that all anyone cares about is what Kate did, rather than what she wanted to do?”

  Symbols.

  Jeopardy theme.

  “Let’s say Kate’s imagined transgressions were forgiven”—Trevor cleared his throat—“about the time she introduced herself to the wrong side of the nearest cliff.”

  “Of course,” Rhea answered stiffly, “forever the martyr.”

  The observation offered an irresistible invitation. Go ahead. Prove otherwise. Say you’d feel the same had Kate lived, that you’d still see her as a victimized angel.

  Cole’s shoulders bunched beneath a cheek that twitched spasmodically, antagonism in every beat. “Interesting word choice—‘Martyr.’ What cause did she die for? What belief won the day?” When Rhea didn’t answer, he added, “Because I don’t think ‘martyr’ means a woman who snapped under the weight of retracted accusations and extended anti-depressants.”

  Rhea clamped her mouth shut and crossed her arms. “You get the point.”

  Cole blinked. “I get nothing.” And with the flip of a switch, he turned the hot seat on his uncle. For fifteen minutes, he gilled the man—meds, release, diet, exercise, further tests. By the time Cole stopped, Kent looked plenty leery about his future lifestyle at the hands of two overprotective nephews.

  With a terse nod, Cole sought the door. On the threshold, he stopped. “I’ll be over to clear the fridge.” Another step. “And the cupboards.”

  Then he was gone, leaving Lissa to chase after her ride.

  The hospital released Kent two days later, and it wasn’t long before his mad cap of white hair hit Melina with bags full of groceries like nothing had happened. Cole balked and called the service unnecessary—secretly Lissa begged to differ—though Cole didn’t press overly hard. By now Lissa knew if Cole truly wanted to stop the deliveries, they would end. When she caught Cole emptying a container of soupy three-bean chili down the disposal before sitting down to a ham sandwich, it occurred to her that Kent wasn’t the only one who took care of this family.

  Cole was simply more judicious and sneaky. Kent felt useful bringing the food, so the drops would continue. Apparently whether Cole actually consumed the bounty wasn’t something Kent ever needed to know.

  Trevor resumed his visits, too, but Rhea stayed away. The arrangement seemed to suit everyone, even Trevor, just fine.

  At least three times a week Lissa and Cole staged a scene. Gradually their focus shifted from staging an abstract reality that could be painted and photographed to picking a subject and each doing their level best to bring their respective visions to life. Lissa relied on Cole to produce lifelike renditions—beautiful, sometimes haunting, always faithful. Admittedly, Cole had the tougher job of gauging Lissa’s more unpredictable results.

  And then there was the sex. Or, more accurately, the lack thereof. Strained resistance grew as Cole and Lissa held out, sidling around each other like a pair of opposing magnets. One little flip, Lissa knew, and their simmering attraction would boil over.

  The ground shifted the moment the flip—make that the triple-axel front-tuck Lutz—debuted in the form of yet another artistic difference of opinion.

  Lissa stood in front of her easel, shivering, clutching her paintbrush through fingerless gloves. The winter’s first snow had prompted an attempt at the Flatirons that skirted the eastern slope of the mountain overlooking Boulder, an image so famous it had become the City’s iconic symbol, the equivalent of Paris’s Eiffel Tower or Dover’s white cliffs.

  A wool hat muffled her ears, and she fought to keep a steady hand despite the little hopping dance that kept her equally snuggled feet from freezing into solid blocks.

  Cole had chosen black and white and had finished an hour ago, flaunting images that transformed a landscape Lissa had previously associated with sunshine above and wild flowers below into a mass of glinting, mean slabs of rock, each tripping over the next in a bid for domination.

  In pre-dawn December, Lissa realized, that’s exactly what the cliffs were.

  After his last shuttering click, Cole resorted to pacing while Lissa put the final touches on her painting. The frigid air slowed her progress, and truth be told, the last wavering lines were a product of her trembling defenses against hypothermia, not any inspired creative interpretation.

  She was learning that city cold differed from country cold. At home, the very streets steamed. Long columns of vapor rose from the pavement in churning clouds, billowing through the ambient light. If that weren’t enough to distract a person from the damp chill, then the cumulative effect of millions of laundry vents and restaurant kitchens and rooftop chimneys certainly was. Throngs of bodies moving in unison never hurt.

  Middle-of-fucking-nowhere cold chewed on Lissa’s bones. Standing on a rolling plane and staring up at the Flatirons, Lissa’s breath became the only source of heat. Even that floated away in puffs of frozen fog.

  Art became her weapon against the chill. Standing before her easel, she breathed softly, feeling an overwhelming need to have this painting be the one. She closed her eyes and let a single word drift between her ears—drivel. Instead of an insult, she let the slur take on other meanings, like an inability to express joy, like a fear of moving forward, like a mask for things too appreciated. Knowing what she did now, Lissa realized Cole’s criticism had covered the positive things he couldn’t accept with the negative things he could.

  How to pardon a tortured soul? How to show him he’d done nothing wrong?

  She had to send the message the only way she knew—by using a paintbrush to bring joy to ordinary things.

  As Cole made his way toward her, then retreated to start over again, Lissa fringed each jutting cliff with bright fuchsia—just a little and just enough—because the color made her feel warmer. Instead of gray, Lissa etched the rocky slabs from stark, uncompromising white. The lines resembled the slopes in front of her, so much so that a bystander would no doubt spot the marked resemblance. Yet Lissa’s rocky faces were more crowded, more jagged, and, with the white and pink aura, more rock ‘n’ roll. Her Flatirons would be at home against a leopard-print background.

  Her Flatirons lent h
er coldest day in Colorado a little New York.

  Lissa didn’t hurry. The final streaks of color appeared with a will of their own. She wanted to push Cole hard, barely shy of too much. So she took her sweet time. Let him pace. Wonder. Worry. Even he showed signs of being ready, ready for a future she couldn’t predict and he couldn’t avoid.

  Yesterday they’d visited a different formation, this one called Elephant Rock a couple hours north. Cole had adjusted his angle, his distance—as in he’d driven miles back and forth over the encroaching road—until he’d proven himself the master of the perfect shot. Each picture showed the viewer exactly why Elephant Rock had such a descriptive name. Each screamed understated talent that might be that lucky shot in a million, but wasn’t.

  Lissa had strung together a series of multi-colored blotches that, when viewed in her frame of mind, totally formed an elephant.

  “Why”—Cole had sucked a deep breath—“why can’t you”—another pause, this time to scowl with, unfortunately for him, little effect because Lissa liked it when he boiled over—“calm the fuck down?”

  Oh yeah, they were completely ready.

  India, here we come.

  Now Cole ventured her way… again. This time he kept coming. His easy grace, even when he grew impatient, reminded her of the tricks she played for the sole purpose of goading him.

  Teasing him.

  Except not today.

  His down jacket ended at his waist and emphasized broad shoulders and narrow, loose hips. He arrived as she signed her name with unsteady, numb fingers. Lissa Blanc, another tour de force. A title had come to mind fully formed—Turning. Of the seasons, of her life, of a miserable day into something almost warm and inviting.

  Looking up from the wet paint, she saw a liquid-blue gaze that defied the bitter cold. It clashed with hers for a heartbeat, then slid to the canvas.

  Silence drew out. First long. Then too long.

  Lissa saw a flare kindle in his averted irises and admitted, silently, that hot-pink mountains might have been a mistake. So she offered the only thing she could. “They remind us that even harsh and lonely has a purpose, that we have to brave those terrors to reach the bright and shining on the other side. Cole,” she whispered, “help me believe that sometimes black edges have a pink ending.”