After she graduated, she said, then she’d be an artist. When she’d put together a body of work and found a gallery to show her. When she’d sold a few pieces. Misty wanted to be realistic. Maybe she’d teach art at the high school level. Or she’d be a technical draftsman or an illustrator. Something practical. Not everybody could be a famous painter.
Stuffing the painting inside his sweater, Peter said, “You could be famous.”
And Misty told him to stop. Just stop.
“Why?” he said. “It’s the truth.”
Still watching the television, pregnant with the painting, Peter said, “You have such talent. You could be the most famous artist of your generation.”
Watching some Spanish commercial for a plastic toy, Peter said, “With your gift, you’re
What you don’t understand, you can make mean anything.
The painting dropped out, and he caught it. He said, “All you have to do is paint.”
Maybe this is why Misty loved him.
Loved you.
Because you believed in her so much more than she did. You expected more from her than she did from herself.
Painting the tiny gold of the church doorknobs, Misty said, “Maybe.” She said, “But that’s why I don’t want kids . . .”
Just for the record, it was kind of cute. All of her birth control pills being replaced with little heart-shaped candies.
“Just marry me,” Peter said. “And you’ll be the next great painter of the Waytansea school.”
Maura Kincaid and Constance Burton.
Misty said how only two painters didn’t count as a “school.”
And Peter said, “It’s three, counting you.”
Maura Kincaid, Constance Burton, and Misty Kleinman.
“Misty
You said.
On television, a man shouted
The painting dropped out of his sweater, and Peter caught it again. He stepped up beside Misty, where she was working on the details of the tall stone church, the flecks of green moss on the roof, the red of rust on the gutters. And he said, “In that church, right there, we’ll get married.”
And duh-duh-dumb little Misty, she said how she was making the church up. It didn’t really exist.
“That’s what you think,” Peter said. He kissed the side of her neck and whispered, “Just marry me, the island will give you the biggest wedding anybody’s seen in a hundred years.”
DOWNSTAIRS, it’s past midnight, and the lobby is empty except for Paulette Hyland behind the desk. Grace Wilmot would tell you how Paulette’s a Hyland by marriage, but before that she was a Petersen, although her mother’s a Nieman descended from the Tupper branch. That used to mean a lot of old money on both sides of her family. Now Paulette’s a desk clerk.
Far across the lobby, sunk in the cushion of a red leather wing chair, is Grace, reading beside the fireplace.
The Waytansea lobby is decades of stuff, all of it layered together. A garden. A park. The wool carpet is moss green over granite tile quarried nearby. The blue carpet coming down the stairs is a waterfall flowing around landings, cascading down each step. Walnut trees, planed and polished and put back together, they make a forest of perfect square columns, straight rows of dark shining trees that hold up a forest canopy of plaster leaves and cupids.
A crystal chandelier hangs down, a solid beam of sunlight that breaks into this forest glade. The crystal doohickeys, they look tiny and twinkly so high up, but when you’re on a tall ladder cleaning them, each crystal is the size of your fist.
Swags and falls of green silk almost cover the windows. Daytime, they turn the sunlight into soft green shade. The sofas and chairs are overstuffed, upholstered into flowering bushes, shaggy with long fringe along the bottom. The fireplace could be a campfire. The whole lobby, it’s the island in miniature. Indoors. An Eden.
Just for the record, this is the landscape where Grace Wilmot feels most at home. Even more than her own home. Her house.
Your house.
Halfway across the lobby, Misty’s edging between sofas and little tables, and Grace looks up.
She says, “Misty, come sit by the fire.” She looks back into her open book and says, “How is your headache?”
Misty doesn’t have a headache.
Open in Grace’s lap is her diary, the red leather cover of it, and she peers at the pages and says, “What is today’s date?”
Misty tells her.
The fireplace is burned down to a bed of orange coals under the grate. Grace’s feet hang down in brown buckle shoes, her toes pointed, not reaching the floor. Her head of long white curls hangs forward over the book in her lap. Next to her chair, a floor lamp shines down, and the light bounces bright off the silver edge of the magnifying glass she holds over each page.
Misty says, “Mother Wilmot, we need to talk.”
And Grace turns back a couple pages and says, “Oh dear. My mistake. You won’t have that terrible headache until the day after tomorrow.”
And Misty leans into her face and says, “How dare you set my child up to have her heart broken?”
Grace looks up from her book, her face loose and hanging with surprise. Her chin is tucked down so hard her neck is squashed into folds from ear to ear. Her superficial musculo-aponeurotic system. Her submental fat. The wrinkled platysmal bands around her neck.
Misty says, “Where do you get off telling Tabbi that I’m going to be a famous artist?” She looks around, and they’re still alone, and Misty says, “I’m a waitress, and I’m keeping a roof over our heads, and that’s good enough. I don’t want you filling my kid with expectations that I can’t fulfill.” The last of her breath tight in her chest, Misty says, “Do you see how this will make me look?”
And a smooth, wide smile flows across Grace’s mouth, and she says, “But Misty, the truth is you
Grace’s smile, it’s a curtain parting. An opening night. It’s Grace unveiling herself.
And Misty says, “I won’t.” She says, “I can’t.” She’s just a regular person who’s going to live and die ignored, obscure. Ordinary. That’s not such a tragedy.
Grace shuts her eyes. Still smiling, she says, “Oh, you’ll be so famous the moment—”
And Misty says, “Stop. Just stop.” Misty cuts her off, saying, “It’s so easy for you to build up other people’s hope. Don’t you see how you’re ruining them?” Misty says, “I’m a darn good waitress. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re not the ruling class anymore. We’re not the top of the heap.”
Peter, your mother’s problem is she’s never lived in a trailer. Never stood in a grocery line with food stamps. She doesn’t know how to be poor, and she’s not willing to learn.
Misty says, there’s worse things they can do than raise Tabbi to fit into this economy, to be able to find a job in the world she’ll inherit. There’s nothing wrong with waiting tables. Cleaning rooms.
And Grace lays a strip of lacy ribbon to mark her place in the diary. She looks up and says, “Then why do you drink?”
“Because I like wine,” Misty says.
Grace says, “You drink and run around with men because you’re afraid.”
By men she must mean Angel Delaporte. The man with the leather pants who’s renting the Wilmot house.
