Who Needs Cupid?

by Debra Salonen, Molly O’Keefe

  “Do you like cats, Penny?”

  “I love cats. Why?”

  Rebecca sighed. “I’m thinking of getting like six.”

  “We have a dog,” Penny told her with a solemn nod. “Pirate. He’s got a black spot over his eye.”

  “Then let’s just…” Rebecca reached over and added a dog with a pirate patch over his eye to the sketch.

  “Hello?”

  Rebecca’s head snapped up at the sound of the deep voice. She put her hand to her heart and felt it beat in time to the words He’s here. He’s here. He’s here.

  Will Blakely walked into the room and grinned his crooked grin. His blond hair, tousled by errant breezes or his own long, strong hands, glinted under the lights. Rebecca barely swallowed a whimper.

  Who could be immune to such beauty?

  All he needed was a heavenly chorus and the image would be complete.

  The way he walked into the room made Rebecca feel smaller, girlier. She wanted to bat her eyelashes (which were far too short to be effective) and giggle (which she, as a rule, did not do). She felt like Scarlet O’Hara without the beauty or plantation. And it wasn’t just because Will was tall and broad, and she’d spent hours imagining the body beneath his down jacket and black dress pants.

  It was his confidence.

  Will had grown up in Fenelon Falls, five years ahead of her in school so their paths had never really crossed. He’d moved back six months ago and was a juvenile parole officer for the county, which probably helped him foster that confidence, but Rebecca knew he’d always been that way. Will Blakely had always been picked first for kick ball.

  And that epitomized the insurmountable gulf between them. Those picked first never even glanced at those picked last. Even when they grew up.

  But it didn’t stop her from looking. And dreaming.

  “What are you guys working on?” he asked with a smile. His deep voice echoed around her studio and she wished it would get caught in the corners, behind the big jugs of finger paints and the cans of brushes so she could hear it later.

  His blue eyes seemed to lightly touch Rebecca, just stroke her ever so softly.

  “Nothing,” Rebecca and Penny said at the same time and put their hands over their sketches.

  Will’s thick eyebrows shot up, and Penny and Rebecca smiled at each other.

  They’d gone from untouchable student and concerned teacher to coconspirators in five minutes.

  I guess I’ve reached her, Rebecca thought with a mix of pride and relief.

  “Well.” Will smiled again, though this time it seemed more sad, like the secrets she and Penny kept excluded him. Rebecca felt sudden sympathy. Whatever sadness surrounded Penny surrounded Will, too.

  A beautiful, sad man, with a beautiful, sad daughter…just my type.

  She knew he was divorced, but that was it. She could certainly find out more just by hanging around the café downstairs. The town, particularly the female portion, had gone berserk when Will and his daughter had moved back to Fenelon Falls to be closer to his family. Speculation about everything from his divorce to the size of…well, certain private things had been rampant. As well, Will and Pastor Josh had rekindled their old friendship, so Becca could get the details from her own friend Lucky, but listening to gossip about Will seemed a terrible invasion of privacy and if there was one thing Rebecca valued, it was a man’s privacy.

  Which was probably why she hadn’t actually been witness to a man’s privacy in eons.

  “Grab your stuff, sweetheart, and let’s go get some dinner.” Will rubbed his hands together and when his daughter walked by he pulled her to him in a quick, hard hug.

  So much for catching him being mean to her. The guy was a devoted father. On Penny’s first day at the after-school program, he’d come by early to drop off a card and a box of crayons, asking Rebecca to make sure the gift sat at Penny’s spot when she came in.

  It was the most considerate gesture Rebecca had ever seen.

  Her own mother had at one time thrown out every crayon, colored pencil and marker she’d owned in an attempt to get her to pay better attention in school.

  “How’s she doing?” Will asked when Penny was on the other side of the room, digging her stuff from her cubby.

  “She’s good.” Rebecca nodded and started stacking things so she didn’t have to look into those blue eyes of his. “She’s still very quiet in class…”

  “That’s what her teachers have said since preschool.” He cast a worried glance over his shoulder. “I keep hoping she’ll grow out of it, or feel comfortable enough to be herself in class at some point.”

  “I do think she’s opening up with me.” Rebecca could feel the heat emanating from Will. She could smell the winter air on him and something minty on his breath, and she awkwardly stepped back, hit the chair behind her and dropped her pen.

  Nice, excellent. You’re like all three stooges rolled into one woman.

  She bent for the pen, but Will beat her to it, and she looked up at the ceiling, praying for a quick death.

  “Really?” he asked, handing her the pen, which she took, making a special effort not to touch him. “You think so? She’s always liked art, but since we moved here she’s been so intensely private, I’m beginning to wonder if she’s ever going to open up again.”

  She unfolded the heart picture and showed him. “She gave me this today. It’s my first of the season,” she said, like that had anything to do with their conversation.

  He touched the red heart. “Valentine’s Day,” he muttered and she detected a wealth of disapproval in his tone. He smiled, but the humor was glacial. “I wish I could forget all about it.”

  The pain she heard took the air from her lungs. All she could do was stare at the curve of his eyelashes against his cheek and long to say something that would diminish his pain.

  He stared down at the red heart like it was a death threat.

  “I’m ready, Dad,” Penny said from underneath a hat, scarf and pale pink winter coat.

  He turned to her and laughed. “You sure are. Ellenore’s got some chicken noodle soup warming up for us downstairs at the café. How about we take that home?”

  She nodded, the purple yarn pompom on the top of her hat bobbing.

  Me, too, Rebecca thought, dying a little. Warm me up and take me home, too.

  She sat at her desk and busied herself with the stacking of papers so as not to look at that handsome man who seemed to hold her heart.

  “Bye, Ms. Potter,” Penny cried, though it was muffled by her scarf.

  Rebecca smiled and waved at the little Michelin girl.

  “Bye, Ms. Potter,” Will echoed.

  She waved at their retreating backs and when the door shut behind them she sat back in her chair.

  She shook her head and smiled at her own folly.

  “What a seriously good-looking man,” she said aloud.

  But then, because she knew she’d already spent far too much time thinking about the gold of his hair and what she imagined would be the thick, rough texture of his hands against the soft parts of her body, she swiveled in her chair and flipped up the January page on her Far Side calendar.

  There it was. February. Accompanied by Gary Larson’s deer exchanging paper hearts. She pulled her red marker from her pocket, bit off the cap and circled Wednesday the fourteenth.

  V-Day.

  She could avoid it no longer. Aunt Elle and Lucky needed cards and she needed the money those cards brought in.

  The Fenelon Falls Young Artists Program was kept financially alive thanks to several sources. Of course, the student fees, but she had to raise the fees every year just to cover materials, so things like electricity and rent weren’t covered.

  Luckily the rent Elle charged for the spacious, sunny, second-floor studio situated above the Cup was next to nothing. The building used to be Rebecca’s grandparents’ Conoco Station a million years ago. Now it was owned by her mother, and Elle had converted it to the cool,
retro Cup O’Love Café filled with old filling station memorabilia and sadly, very few customers. Rebecca helped out on the weekends and the money she made paid for rent.

  The third major source of income for the after-school art program were the cards, journals and paper gifts Rebecca had created over the past two years for Valentine’s Day. Last year, both Elle and Lucky had sold out of them.

  She found it hilarious, if not a little sad at times, that she managed to so easily create the messages and sentiments the lovers in Fenelon Falls found perfect to exchange. Easy. All she had to do was open a vein and bleed.

  She’d poured every romantic and sexy thing she’d yearned for onto pink and red card stock. Just thinking about the paper made her fingers tingle and the ideas she spent the whole year imagining crowd inside her begging for release. Any kind of release.

  Because even though she knew it was unlikely that she would ever find the kind of love she wrote about and drew, she believed in it. She hoped for it with every breath, every scratch of pen on paper.

  And she knew that most of the people exchanging her cards would never guess that it was her, the quiet studious art teacher/accountant who created them. Accountant by day—tortured Cupid by night.

  She never signed a single card. A few people knew she made them. Elle, Lucky, Pastor Josh. Her parents.

  Though it had just about killed Jane and Phil Potter that their daughter was the one sketching hearts and writing sweet little poems on cards the whole town exchanged. And it was the fact the holiday was so close to tax season that added insult to injury. People were asking year-round for more cards, and she’d been thinking that after tax season was done, she might branch out into birthday cards. That would probably send her parents right over the edge.

  She put a little black x on today’s date, Thursday, January 18, counted the three and a half weeks until V-Day and then dropped the January page back down. She bent and pulled from the bottom of her filing cabinet her red card stock, which was the color of rubies.

  She took the top piece and dipped her pen into her pot of ink.

  She drew a little sketch—not of Will exactly, but of the idea of Will. A man who held lightning bolts and hearts in the palms of his hands. A shirtless man in boxer shorts and winter boots. She added long hair, blowing in an unseen wind and a look of unshakable confidence.

  Love God, she printed beneath it.

  She smiled grimly and pulled out another piece of red card stock.

  One down. Dozens to go.

  CHAPTER TWO

  January 19—Friday

  IT WAS FRIDAY. Penny loooved Fridays. Not as much as she loooved Saturdays—because of the hot chocolate and cartoons—but Fridays were definitely second best.

  Wednesdays were last. Dad always called Mom after dinner on Wednesdays and that ruined everything, but that was over for this week.

  Today, she and Dad were going to Grandma and Grandpa’s for dinner and she would get to see all her cousins. Even Joe. Which wasn’t great, but she could live with it.

  And it was free draw day with Ms. Potter. She could draw whatever she wanted—for two whole hours.

  She put down her red crayon and picked up the yellow and colored her mother’s hair in big curlicues. That’s how she remembered it. Bright yellow and curly and blowing in the open window of the car.

  “We’re going places, kiddo,” Mom used to say and Penny would unroll her window and wish she had curls that bounced around in the wind, rather than straight hair that got in her mouth and eyes.

  At least she had the color right.

  “Hey, Penny, whatcha working on?”

  Penny looked up from her picture. Ms. Potter was wearing Penny’s favorite shirt today—she wore it every Friday (another reason to like the day). The light blue T-shirt with the pretty painting on it.

  Monet, she’d told Penny the last time she’d worn it.

  Ms. Potter sat down on the table in front of Penny and smiled. Ms. Potter was pretty. Not like Mom was—not many people were pretty like that. But Ms. Potter’s hair was straight and soft and was a pretty brownish-red that changed color when she wore something green or when she stood under different lights.

  Hair that changed color was much better than curls.

  “More valentines?” Ms. Potter asked. She tilted her head and smiled.

  Penny put her hands over the picture, flat, so she could feel the thick wax on the red car and the blue sky and the yellow of her mother’s hair.

  She was going to tell Ms. Potter about her mom. She’d decided Wednesday after Dad had hung up on Mom and then sat in the dark kitchen staring out the window.

  Penny had watched him from the hallway, where he couldn’t see her and tell her to go back to bed. She stood there and decided that her cousin Alyssa might be right.

  He was lonely.

  Watching him, Penny had decided Dad needed a girlfriend.

  Dad needed Ms. Potter.

  Ms. Potter was the nicest woman Penny had ever met. She smelled like perfume and paint. She was perfect.

  “You don’t have to show me, Pen—”

  “What’s your real name?” Penny asked. She needed to know that kind of thing if Ms. Potter was going to be Dad’s girlfriend.

  Ms. Potter’s eyes got wide, and she smiled her big smile that made the little dents come out in her cheeks. “Rebecca is my first name and everyone calls me Becca. But I’ve always thought that my real name is Anastasia.”

  Ms. Potter…Becca…was joking. She did that a lot. Penny liked that, and so would Dad. He always said the best thing in the whole world was laughing. He’d laugh all the time with Ms. Potter.

  Slowly Penny peeled her fingers from her picture, and then she pushed it toward Ms. Potter. Becca. Ms. Potter climbed down from the table and slowly turned the drawing so she could look at it the right way.

  The picture was of her mom leaving, driving away in that red car with no roof, with that guy—Mom told her to call him Uncle Jim—but he wasn’t an uncle. In the picture, Penny and Dad were standing in front of their old house in South Carolina crying tears so big they made a river at their feet.

  “That’s my mom,” Penny said, pointing to the woman with blond curls in the driver’s seat.

  “Did she leave?” Becca asked in a quiet voice.

  Penny nodded.

  “Do you still feel like that?” Becca pointed to the big blue tears.

  Penny thought about it and decided she didn’t. Not anymore. She hardly ever cried about Mom.

  “No,” she told Becca.

  “Can you draw me a picture of how you feel now?”

  Penny pulled another piece of the scratch paper that Ms. Potter had all over the room and she picked out crayons from the big box that her dad had given her. Becca walked away, not far, just over to one of the other tables, but Penny was glad she wasn’t watching her.

  Privacy. That’s what her dad called it when she let him go to the bathroom with the door shut.

  Becca was giving her a little privacy.

  One more thing to like about Becca.

  REBECCA STARED DOWN at the second picture Penny had drawn. Will was helping Penny into her coat on the other side of the room and Rebecca wondered if there was some kind of student/teacher confidentiality that meant she shouldn’t show Will these pictures. But Penny was only eight, and Will needed to know what was going on in his daughter’s head.

  The second picture touched Rebecca even more than the first. In it, Penny walked beside her dad. They were both wearing thick jackets and hats with yarn balls on top. Big snowflakes were falling down around them and Penny was looking up at her dad, watching him cry huge tears that turned into icicles before they hit the ground.

  It was so private. So honest.

  “I’d like to have Penny come in three days a week instead of just Thursday and Friday,” Will said, approaching her with his checkbook out. “She loves this class so much, it’s blowing my mind.”

  Her heart beat erratically fro
m the knowledge of the sadness that lay just underneath all of his grins.

  Rebecca stood up.

  “Hey, Penny, would you go down and see if Elle has any more muffins? I’m just about dying for a muffin,” she said.

  “Sure,” Penny agreed readily.

  Rebecca waited until the door shut behind the little girl before handing Will the pictures.

  “Your daughter drew these today.” He tucked the checkbook into his parka and took the two pieces of paper. “She willingly showed them to me, probably assuming I wouldn’t share them with anyone else, but I know you’re worried about your daughter and these drawings are the best insight into Penny that I’ve had since she’s been in my class. Please don’t tell her that I showed them to you, otherwise she may never let me see another one.”

  Will blinked rapidly. “All right,” he finally stammered and looked down at the drawings. His grin faded and the bright color in his cheeks followed. Rebecca stared at her hands, wanting to flee from the tension that had filled the room. He flipped to the second picture, of Penny watching Will crying icicle tears.

  “She said that’s how she feels, now. About her mother leaving,” she murmured. “She said she’s sad for you.”

  “Oh…wow,” he breathed. He rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand, and Rebecca longed to wrap her arms around him. She’d never seen someone more in need of a hug in her life.

  She touched the sleeve of his jacket, a weak, silly thing considering what she wanted to do. “I think it’s a good sign.”

  He nodded and handed the pictures back. His blue eyes were flat and sad, without their usual sparkle.

  Rebecca folded her arms across her chest, to keep herself from touching him again.

  “I guess my daughter and I have some things to talk about,” he whispered.

  “Will, I—” She had no clue what to say.

  I’m an art teacher, she thought. An accountant-slash-art teacher, I don’t know what I’m doing!

  Luckily she was saved by Penny’s smash and bang arrival back into the studio.

  “No muffins, but I brought you a scone. Elle says you shouldn’t send kids to do your dirty work. If you want free stuff get it yourself.” Penny’s smile was bright and unfettered and both Rebecca and Will smiled back at her. It was impossible not to.