As I carried it upstairs I could hear Charlie scratching at the kitchen door. I let the dog in, and he began snuffling the floor under the table hunting for dropped morsels of food.
I checked the clock on the microwave. Henry Marsh had instructed us to draw anything we liked for twenty minutes. But what did I like? It had been ages since I’d observed the world through an artist’s eyes. I contemplated skipping the homework. Twenty minutes was a valuable chunk of time I could use to call a client or check new listings. Henry would never know the difference—especially if I didn’t return to class. Most likely he wouldn’t even notice my absence.
When Charlie found nothing under the table, he cocked his head in my direction, no doubt hoping I’d forgotten I’d already fed him two hours earlier.
“Okay, little mister, you’re going be my model,” I said. While I sharpened a pencil, he minced over to his bed, a wicker basket with an orange pad. He gyrated in a circle, then flopped down like a stuffed animal and closed his eyes.
As I sketched my snoozing pooch, the time zipped by. I put the pencil aside and groaned. The finished drawing looked like nothing more than a chaotic mass of fur.
“That’s awful.” In college I could draw so well. But over the years, the inkwell had gone dry.
Charlie opened one eye and glared at me with annoyance. I swear, I could almost read his mind. And that went both ways.
“You really are just a fuzzy mass, you silly old thing.” I realized I should have chosen a subject with more lineal definition. I gazed out the window at my neighbor’s maple tree, its leaves flashing rust and burgundy, and imagined what it would be like to execute the finest drawing Henry had ever seen. This vision lightened my mood for a moment, but when I glanced down at my real drawing again, I was flung back to reality.
I double-checked the address as I pulled my Toyota up in front of a dingy cottage perched on a steep hill in the Phinney Ridge neighborhood. I peered out the window to see a flesh-colored house with paint peeling back to reveal layers of turquoise blue and murky brown. Its unkempt lawn looked like it had been mowed several weeks ago, but no one had raked up the matted grass clippings. A laurel bush grew in unruly globs, and a hawthorn tree had been pruned back to stumps.
“Not much to look at,” I told Susan, who’d asked to see the property. I tried to remember what I’d read on file and the scuttlebutt around the office. “The same couple lived here for forty years. It was remodeled in the fifties and hasn’t had a thing done to it since. When the husband died, the wife moved into assisted living.”
While turning the front wheels against the curb and firmly setting the parking brake, I thought of my aging parents. My folks had talked about moving to a smaller place some day. That is, if they stayed married long enough.
As I scaled the uneven porch steps, I warned Susan, “Be careful, and I wouldn’t use that hand railing.” I removed the key from the lock box and worked open the door.
She passed through the front hall without seeming to notice the curling wallpaper or the warped flooring. “I love it. She proceeded to the kitchen at the far side of the house. “Look at that view of the Olympics.”
Following her, I caught sight of pale mountaintops jutting above Puget Sound out the window. “You already have a nice view where you live now,” I said.
“Not this good.” Susan opened empty cupboards, then looked under the sink and found a baited mousetrap.
“That’s a bad sign.” I sniffed the stale air and detected rancid cooking oil and mold. “This kitchen’s awful.”
“But it has potential.” A fan of the Cooking Channel, she’d renovated her present kitchen into a chef’s paradise, while my idea of updating was purchasing new dish towels and pot holders, and decanting the liquid dish soap into a glass bottle.
“I wish I had your energy,” I said.
We climbed to the second floor, and she counted the two bedrooms. “The upstairs is much too small,” she said, her voice sinking.
“Not to mention only one bathroom.” Earlier, when waiting in front of Susan’s colonial, with its fluted pillars standing on either side of the front door and shutters framing each window, I’d wondered why anyone would want to leave such a charming home. Four years ago I’d sold the house, then a fixer-upper, to Susan and her husband, Bob. And, several years earlier, the couple had purchased another rundown place from me, extensively remodeled it, and then decided they needed something bigger.
“You don’t need to say it. I should be content where I am,” she said. “I have everything a woman could want: a terrific husband and three kids and a beautiful home. Is it wrong for me to want more?”
She was living the life I’d always dreamed of—the kind my parents enjoyed when I was a child. “Are you talking about a change of locations or a change of lifestyles?” I asked.
“I’m not sure. I seem to get restless every fall when school starts. I think I’m going to utilize the free time, but all I get done is the grocery shopping and laundry. Then the kids come home, and I’m busy fixing snacks and helping with homework.”
“What else would you want to be doing? You’re welcome to take the drawing class
