by Ana McKenzie
But damnit, she couldn’t do it all on her own. Not right now. Another sigh, and she rested her head in her hand. Rita was twelve and couldn’t possibly take on the responsibility of an assistant. That was a ridiculous thought.
The trouble was, that there was no one else Bianca could tell. If she hired an assistant right now, to help her navigate her way through these uncharted waters, then everyone would find out in a magic minute that she was blind. Pretty much blind.
That would create an absolute furore. Bianca shivered at the thought. The prices of her work would move, probably upwards for a bit, but there would be definite instability. Not to mention the publicity. The fawning sympathy, the veiled insinuations that everything was over for her.
No. She didn’t have the resilience right now to deal with all that. There was no question of going back out into the world until she could paint again.
Bianca sucked in a deep breath, her body quivering with the stress of it all. But that was it, then: the painting had to happen. Which meant she had to struggle along as best she could for now.
As for an assistant, perhaps Merren would help her out over the summer, until she went back to university. She hadn’t said anything about any other jobs, so maybe she was at a loose end and would be glad of the work. Bianca stuffed away the thought that she would be very glad of Merren’s company. That was for later. Right now, she told herself sternly, she was having a business meeting with herself. Getting things figured out. This was serious.
Which brought her to the other item on her internal agenda. The one that had woken her before the sun rose that morning.
Getting up, she shuffled out from behind the desk and wound her way through the house and up the stairs. Her palm was damp on the bannister and her footsteps loud inside the sudden hush in her head.
There was only one room in the house that could really function as a studio. Unless she wanted to bring a crew of people in to redo one of them – which she most certainly did not.
She stood outside the door and leaned her forehead against it, blinking into the darkness, asking herself if this was really what she wanted to do, if this was really how it had to be.
Her mouth dry, tongue sticking to the roof, Bianca nodded. There was no way round it. The kitchen, which she’d somehow thought the other day to use, was too small. This was the only room that would be suitable. Every other room had dark walls, rich reds and greens and blues.
Only one had white.
The door knob was cold in her shaking hand. She turned it and pushed the door open, letting go of it and hesitating a moment before stepping in and letting out a breath.
The air was stale, but the room was still as she knew it would be. Empty. The walls white where Bess had painted them, slathering bright white paint over the old paper underneath. Bianca told herself she didn’t remember what colour the room was supposed to be finished in, but she did. The pot of paint was still downstairs in one of the cupboards in the laundry. Seafoam Green. They’d decided together it would be perfect for a nursery.
Bianca walked over to the large windows and gently unlatched and opened one of them. The leadlight panes made the light chequered in her hazy vision, and she blinked, looking away at the room itself.
There had ended up being no nursery, of course. Because there ended up being no Bess. Bianca reached out and placed a hand against the wall, steadied herself.
She’d been at home that day, painting. Bess had stuck her head into the studio and asked if she’d wanted to take a break, come out with her to run some errands, but she’d said no.
Bianca pressed herself closer to the wall. Felt the paint under her cheek. She wished she’d put down her brush that day and gone with Bess. Then maybe something would have changed, and they both would have come home.
Or maybe it would have still gone the same way, the car out of nowhere, the driver not paying attention, the crash, the horrible slamming, grinding twist of metal. Only, both of them would have been gone, not just Bess. Bianca opened her eyes and sighed. It had taken a long time for her to stop wishing it had happened that way.
But she had, eventually.
She stood up, took a steadying breath and let it slowly out. That was old business. Bess was gone over five years now. And as for this room – it was time to open it up, dust out the old ghosts, make it a place of new life again. Maybe there was even something good, apt, about that. Bianca nodded. Forced herself to focus.
She’d get Merren to bring everything in here. The easel, paints. Set it all up in here.
The thought of Merren brought a guilty shiver to her skin and Bianca forced herself not to think of the young woman, and certainly not in that way. Despite what her young neighbour had to say about the situation. Bianca gazed around the room, shaking her head. There was no situation. She forced herself to look around the room as best she could, shoving everything from her mind except to assess the space for its new purpose. Through the window came the rustle of a breeze in the trees, and the scent of summer, a golden, somehow heavy, shimmer.
She was out the door in a flash, hand along the wall as she scooted back down the stairs, aimed for the front door, and then she was outside, bare feet slapping against the path towards her studio.
There must surely be pastels somewhere in amongst all her supplies. They weren’t something she usually used, but they’d be good for right now. She just wanted to do something really quickly, see if there was even a chance of capturing what she could see in her head. Maybe there was – it was just colour, after all, colour and movement.
She’d plucked up the keys from the table by the front door and found the correct one almost by muscle memory. It twisted seamlessly in the lock.
Ignoring the smell of paint and heat and mineral thinners, breathing through her mouth, turning her face from them, Bianca reached for the line of cupboards under one set of windows, dropping to her knees and pulling the doors open. Her hands patted the assortment of supplies and she cursed the absent-minded habit she’d always had of not disposing of her old tubes of paint, instead simply throwing them in boxes which ended up right back in the cupboards.
She shoved a jumble of paint brushes aside, squinting into the darkness of the cupboard, hands outstretched as though drowning. A box tumbled out onto her lap and she dropped her hands onto the spill from it, tubes of old paint everywhere. She picked one up and it oozed a dribble of oil paint onto her fingers through a cut in the tube. She dropped it, shocked by the sudden wet slime of paint between her fingers.
There was a thin layer of sweat on her upper lip. Swallowing, she wiped her hand on her shirt, scraping it across the fabric, the paint tacky, sticking to her. She did it again, then pushed the old tubes off her lap and crawling over to the next cupboard, tugging the door open and blinking, squeezing her eyes open and shut as she shoved her hands into the crowd of things she couldn’t see on the shelves.
But there had to be a box of pastels in there somewhere. Why couldn’t she see, damnit! She pushed the heels of her hands against her closed eyes and rubbed at them, blinked them open and strained to look around.
Not good enough. The room was a crowd of light and shadow, the light from the windows bright and white, the shadows of the cupboard the exact opposite – dark holes of blackness. She blinked again, and mewled, her skin prickling, her breath loud in her ears.
She moved, and something squished under a knee and she yelped, spun around, knocked her head on something, bent down whimpering, hands clenched against her temples.
And then she was putting her hands out to drag herself to her feet, and her fingers touched a something low and slim, a box, the sort of box she recognised – the pastels. Grabbing it in clawed fingers, she sat back on her bottom with a jolt, holding it up under her eyes, seeing the smear of a pattern on the box.
Her fingers shook as she dropped the box and ripped at the lid, bent over it. It came free and she could smell them, their scent old and chalky.
But they were paste
ls. She’d found them.
Now she needed paper. A sketch pad. Squinting out into the dark and light, black and white room, she tried to figure out where she kept the sketch pads. Did she have any at all?
What was on her easel? She tried to think, staggering to her feet and pushing through the mess on the floor over to her easel. She could still hear her breath, harsh in the room that had once been such a haven.
Where was her easel? The room was just a spinning haze of light and shadow. Her eyes were dazzled. Her feet stopped moving and she stood still, closing her eyes, the open box of pastels pressed to her breast, willing herself to calm down, to open her eyes slowly – really slowly – nice and steady, everything was going to be all right, she’d open her eyes and it would be all right, she’d find the easel and her stool and she had the pastels, so everything would be all right.
She ran a hand through her hair, fingers snagging in the rough curls. Swallowed, held her breath, let it out, opened her eyes.
Oh, thank god. She could see the easel, and the stool in front of it. It was just a few steps away. No problem.
Her teeth bared in a feral smile when she touched the easel, sat down on the stool. There was a ledge on the easel, and she spilled the pastels onto it, searching around in her head for the shreds of the inspiration she’d had before, that had brought her scampering down here so filled with hope.
It had been the sunshine, hadn’t it? The smell of it. The colour of the smell of it. Her hands were sweating. The paper on the easel right in front of her was a blank hole in her vision, surrounded by a corona of light and dark. For a moment, she leaned forward, as if to fall into the hole at the centre of it all, but she pulled back, made a last effort, her breath ragged as she murmured to herself.
‘It’s all right. It’s all right. It’s all right.’ She picked up a pastel, holding it in the limited field of her vision. It was broken, a sliver of colour between her fingers. Some sort of colour. She couldn’t tell what the colour was.
Maybe it was orange. Or yellow. Her mouth dry, she concentrated on it, straining to see, then dropped it, picked up another.
This one was darker? Blue? Green? She squeezed her eyes shut and her skin prickled and shrank a size too small for her. She opened her eyes and the room swam around her in a bright glare of white with that fathomless black hole in the middle. Swaying on the stool, she grabbed hold of the easel to steady herself, and the pastels spilled to the ground. She broke one under her foot, and slid off the seat to the floor, pulling her arms over her head, blocking everything out, feeling the room, the whole world, press in on her as she lay sightless as a worm on the floor, sobbing.
Chapter Sixteen
‘Hey Merren, you ready for this?’
Merren poured water into her glass and took a sip. Nice. Someone had popped a slice of lemon into the jug of water. Refreshing.
‘Yep, Mee-Yon, sure am. You ready to see what sort of difference we can make?’ She poured another glass and passed it to the other woman who took it, grinned, and tipped it in a silent toast.
A buzzing against Merren’s wrist made her frown, checking her watch. ‘How long until the meeting?’
‘Ten minutes,’ Mee-Yon said. ‘No one better be late this time.’
‘I have a call I need to take.’ Merren looked around the room, decided to opt for one of the empty offices. ‘If I’m longer than ten minutes, start without me, okay?’
‘Okay. Is anything wrong?’
Merren shook her head, already moving towards the door. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Just personal stuff. Won’t be long, I’m sure.’
The door to the small conference room swung shut behind her and she gave a distracted wave to the two guys walking up the corridor, their laptop bags slung on their shoulders, coffees in hand. Then she slipped into the nearest office.
‘Bianca,’ she said, hearing the pleasure in her voice, and feeling the flood of endorphins through her body. Damn. She was totally and absolutely attracted to Bianca. There was no denying it. Merren swiped a hand through her hair.
The Inescapable Fact, she reminded herself. Especially in times like these…
Bianca’s reply was strangled, muffled.
‘Are you all right?’ Merren asked.
Bianca’s voice was anguished, as though she’d been caught on the sharp edge of panic and only just managed to back away. ‘Merren,’ she said. ‘I need help.’
Heart beating too fast, Merren nodded, mind whirling. ‘Are you hurt?’
‘No, I’m okay. I mean, I’m fine.’ A groaning sigh.
The next words were clogged with frustration, fear, despair, tears. Merren heard them all and closed her eyes in empathy.
‘Merren, I don’t know how to do it.’ A pause. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I tried to do something – yesterday, and I just couldn’t. I tried just to get some pastels – just to do something, just to play, and I couldn’t.’ She choked.
‘Oh Bianca,’ Merren said. ‘I’m so sorry. I’m sorry it’s so hard. That it’s going to take so much practice and experimentation.’
Bianca coughed, cleared her throat and her voice came back stronger. ‘I know. I know – but Merren, I can’t even see the colours! I can’t see them well enough to even pick them out. And the pastels I had were so small…it didn’t work, Merren. Oh god, it really didn’t work. Can you come around? Sometime, I mean.’
‘Okay.’ Merren leaned against the desk, listening, brain working furiously.
‘I threw the pastels all around the studio,’ Bianca whispered, then spluttered a horrified laugh. ‘I had a total fit, Merren, a panic attack, I think. Oh, you should have seen me.’ She faltered again and fell silent. ‘You have to help me. Please,’ she said after a moment. ‘I don’t have anyone else I can ask. Please.’
Straightening, Merren drew in a deep breath, checked the time. ‘I can be there in about two hours, Bianca. I’m sorry but I’m at the university at the moment and can’t leave. But I’ll come straight around after I’m done here. Will that be all right?’
There was a pause, then Bianca answered. ‘Yes, of course. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have interrupted you. But oh god, yes please. I’d really appreciate it.’
A smile relaxed Merren’s face and she felt some of the tension leave her body in a physical wave. ‘Okay then. And in the meantime – you have any of Mum’s cake left?’
‘Yeah, she was very generous with it.’
‘Make yourself a pot of tea and have a slice or two of that. Mum always feeds me cake when I’m having a hard time. Sometimes it even makes me feel better. But this is all going to be okay, I promise. We’ll figure it out together.’
There was embarrassed laughter on the other end of the call. But at least that was better than the sobbing Merren had heard when she’d first answered.
‘God, Merren. I’m sorry. But thank you. Thank you. I’ll see you in two hours.’ A snort. ‘See being relative, of course.’
‘Sure,’ Merren said, and the warmth was back washing through her body again, right down to the tips of her fingers, her toes. ‘I’m glad you called.’
‘Well, you were kind enough to send me your phone number. I got it in yesterday’s mail.’
Merren smiled, remembering sorting through the bag of plastic letters and numbers. ‘I’m glad it arrived so promptly.’ Reluctantly she made herself say goodbye. ‘I have to go, I’m afraid, Bianca. I’ll be there soon as I can, though.’
The call finished, Merren stood for a moment, staring into space, then pursed her lips, tugged open the door and strode back into the conference room.
They were just getting started, pulling out their computers, chatting. She leaned over the table on her knuckles. ‘Guys,’ she said. ‘Help me out for ten minutes before we get started, will you?’
‘No worries. What do you need?’
Merren grinned at the three of them. Every single one of them was a terrific person. ‘If you were a painter,’ she said, ‘used to using oil paints, and were now
vision-impaired, and so needing to find an easier medium, and whatever other supplies would help, what would that medium and those supplies be?’
For a moment there were blank looks all around, then puckered frowns and narrowed eyes, as everyone turned to their computer screens.
Merren watched them for a moment, pride welling up in her chest – they were a really great team.
‘Oh, and think in terms of life-size paintings, minimal prep-work, and whatever else seems sensible to you. The artist is previously used to working on boards, rather than canvas.’
They nodded, and Mee-Yon slipped headphones on, giving her a thumbs-up.
Merren puffed out a quick breath and turned to her own laptop, bringing up the browser and typing in a search for art supply stores. She picked the one that looked the most professional, noted the number, and pulled out her phone, typed in the number and put the call through.
‘Hi,’ she said, when someone answered. ‘I want a bunch of supplies, but don’t have time to come in store. Do you have some way I can send through the order and you can package it up for me? Then I can arrange for a courier to pick it up in two hours.’ She listened for a moment, scratched her head.
‘Fax? No, that’s not super-convenient. Do you have an email address I can send the list to?’
She listened again, shook her head. ‘No, shopping online will take too long. I just want to send you the list and then you can put together the items for collection.’
Apparently, the assistant had to fetch her manager to run the request by her, and Merren stuck a hand on her hip, hanging onto her patience, aware of the minutes ticking by.
The manager however, cottoned onto the request straight away. No problem, she told Merren.
‘Excellent. And if you don’t have something on the list I’m putting together, just use your discretion and give me something similar.’
She listened for a moment and nodded. ‘I’ll pay by credit card and will give you those details now.’ She slipped out of the room, drawing her wallet out of her pocket. ‘But only the courier is going to know the delivery address, so you don’t have to do anything but have the goods packaged and ready.’ The manager spoke, and Merren nodded. ‘Yes, I can give you my billing address, but not the delivery.’ She paused, then stuck in the last comment anyway. ‘And please, no plastic bags, I’d prefer you packed the items in boxes.’