Three
Andrew insisted on staying when he brought León back to paint in the late afternoon. Dear, dependable Andrew.
“If you want, I’ll carry the conversation for you,” he said. “There’s nothing to worry about. Just tell me what you want to do. Swim? Sit inside?”
León carried his easel through the side gate.
“I think I want to watch him paint,” she decided. “I don’t need help. You can swim.”
Andrew smiled, stripping off his shirt. “Just yell if you want me back.”
The yard was again sun-drenched, the hills below gilded. Andrew’s cannonball into the pool barely registered against the glare. Celia hovered in the open sliding-glass door, wavering as León set up his easel, silhouetted against the sky and lowering sun.
Should she ask to watch or just sit down? Did he want privacy? A drink, maybe? Should she—good lord, how many questions was she going to ask herself? Move, Celia.
She sat gingerly on the nearest lounge chair, shielding her eyes with one hand, and girded herself. “León?”
His head turned at her voice, his gaze flickering down her bare legs and back up so quickly that she almost missed it.
“Can I watch you paint?”
“Sure,” he smiled. “Not back there, though. I don’t want to keep looking behind me. Come up here where I can see you.” He pointed to the side with a foot, much nearer but where she could still see the canvas.
As she dragged the lounge closer, he set up. Easel, canvas, paints, palette. She sank onto the cushion to sit cross-legged.
León had timed his return well. The late afternoon light was turning golden, blue shadows stretching away from the city view. The harsher orange rays had all but faded, dusk approaching, the light from the pool and city starting to rival the sunset.
Celia kept her eyes on his gold-washed form, eager to see real art being made.
He ducked into the shadow of the canvas, reaching into his pocket and pulling out an elastic band. As he gathered his black hair to tie back, his eyes raised to her, looking up through his lashes.
He was sort of cute, in a scruffy way.
León’s expressions weren’t hard to read. He pursed his lips slightly, one eyebrow just barely raising. She was being perused, judged. Not in a mean way, but his eye contact was always too direct. Sitting motionless was the only response that came to her, the one that always came to her.
He finished tying his hair, gave her a little nod, and turned back to his canvas. Then he stopped and closed his eyes, a change washing over him. He went quiet, his face relaxed. He actually became still.
Celia held her breath with him.
Then he exhaled, opened his eyes, and began brushing colors on the bare white canvas.
What had that been, that stopping and being quiet? Was it something she could do when trying to make things? Was he just clearing his mind or meditating or—
“No questions?” he asked, glancing at her before looking at the view again.
She stifled a snort. She had so many questions that she couldn’t dredge one to the surface, like her tongue was stuck in mud.
He’d stopped looking at her, concentrating on his colors.
Um. “How long will this take you?”
León swept a pool of robin’s egg blue across the bottom of the canvas. “Depends on how long it takes to figure out what the painting is about.”
About? “Isn’t it about the sunset? The skyline?”
“It’s inspired by the view,” he said, peering closely at various oranges on his palette, “but the painting isn’t about the landscape. It’s a story.”
“What story?”
“I don’t know yet. I’m finding out.” He held up his brush to her, amber paint on its bristles like a miniature torch. “These colors are the process. They tell me as I go.”
She shook her head. “What does that mean?”
He turned back to paint as he talked. “So, abstract art—all art really, but abstract for sure—is about truth. It could be ‘here’s a flower,’ or it could be more.” His motions were quick but practiced. Soothing to watch.
Why was this new to her? She’d checked painting off her list after taking the still life class but hadn’t taken other styles into account. Maybe abstract painting was different. Maybe she’d try it.
“Maybe,” she ventured, “a flower could be dangerous. Poisonous.”
He didn’t turn to look, focused on the colors going onto canvas. “It could be. But is that a story?”
“What if you….” This was hard. She’d always had trouble deciding what to draw. “What if something was dying under it?” She saw him wince silently, briefly. “I know, it’s cliché. I can understand showing conflict in a still image, but how would you show what came next? The resolution?”
“That’s where truth comes in. The painting tells that on its own.”
“But how?”
A gleam in his eyes, León paused his work and turned to her. “All right. Say you’re painting a flower. Not a poisonous one, just a regular pansy.” With his brush, he drew a circle in the air, waiting until she nodded. “It’s in a flowerbed against a house. The light is pale and delicate and gray. It’s dawn.”
She could see what he was describing.
“It’s a cool morning, and dew is clinging to its petals, a bit too heavy. The flower is bowed down under the weight. Its stem has little hairs on it. You can sense its thin trembling leaves fluttering in a breeze.”
Poor little flower.
“But the sun is coming, as it always comes. That’s a truth. The breeze may dry it, the dew might drop away, or the sun will warm it. All the flower has to do is stay strong until then.”
Of course. The picture could show the sun coming around the house, or a tall shadow receding. “I can see that!” she said. “You could show those physical details in one image, but they tell a story. They are a story.”
He nodded. “In an abstract painting, you don’t show the flower itself. You play with the physical details. The color of the light, the tension in the stem.” His eyes stayed with her instead of his work.
His smile was nice.
“If you don’t have a story tonight,” she finally asked, “how do you know which details to show?”
He stood back to consider her backyard, then the canvas.
“There’s the blue pool against the sky’s orange. Cool versus warm. Close versus far. This will probably be about contrasts. I still need to find the story, though.”
This was fascinating.
“Then the colors,” he said. “The pool is aqua and lacy whites. The city is dark purple with spangled oranges. The pool is flat and still, and the city is flickering with small stars.”
“Contrasts,” she breathed. “All the opposites. I never looked at it that way, and I’ve looked at this view for six years.”
“And that’s a contrast, too,” he grinned. “Old and new views. All the hidden stories and shapes and colors.” He stopped. “Oh.”
“What?”
“Hidden.” He turned to look around the yard, lowering his tools. “This view is hidden from the road outside.” He turned back to the canvas, large gaps of unpainted space awaiting him. “Look, Celia. The white canvas with spots of color. It’s your kitchen cabinet with the mugs hidden in it.”
He began to paint furiously, with no hesitations.
Six years. She’d gone all the way through her art list, six years of classes, and León saw this magic in her backyard in one day.
He painted in silence as the last of the golden light slipped away, and she watched.
This was art. This was what she had to learn to do. Pluck sights and sounds from life and say…what? She needed a story too. She hated to disturb the whispers of brush marks being made, his economical movements in the cooling blue dusk, but she had to know.
“Where did you learn this?”
He leaned in to inspect a detail. “Art school and practice,” he said. “This is how I see things. I have to paint to show people what I’m seeing and thinking.” He glanced at her quickly, face indistinct as the sun slipped below the ocean. “You have that art list. You’ve taken a lot of art classes by now, right?”
“Classes didn’t teach me how to do that.”
He stepped back and folded a rag around the top of his brush. “Well, they can’t. It’s unique to each person. You create your own process.” He wiped his fingers on the outside of the rag, eyes focused too directly on her again.
“Could I learn how?”
The challenge on his face was clear, even in the dusk. “Why do you want to make art?”
She’d said she would tell him.
“I think art might save me.”
“Yeah.” He finished wiping his fingers. “Me too.”
Bare feet whispered across the lush lawn and Andrew’s form emerged from the dark, a wet towel around his shoulders. He shivered visibly as he stepped into the soft glow from the house windows. “It got dark,” he said. “You done for today?”
León tossed his paint rag into the box of paints. “I guess. My stuff’s wet, though. We can’t load your car just yet.”
“Can’t we keep it in the pool house, Celia?” Andrew asked.
“Of course,” she said, rising to pick up a smaller box full of jumbled brushes and palette knives. Both men trailed after her to the pool house.
León nodded at the space and went back for his gear. Andrew stayed to towel off, his bare chest dusky and bronzed under the dim overhead light. Celia scanned the tidy square room, shelves and day bed by the door, huge black windows looking over the city behind her. As León brought in his things, she made space for his smaller boxes on the shelves. The painting was brought in last.
Andrew leaned close and squinted at the unfinished canvas. “What’s it about?”
León shrugged. “I’ll find out soon enough. Two more nights, at least.”
···
It wasn’t until the men left that the backlash hit.
“Why do you want to make art?” León had asked. A normal question.
There were so many sane answers Celia could have given, but no. Her crazy ass had to dump a weird truth into the conversation. “Art might save me.”
Celia heard the melodramatic, laughable, pathetic phrase drumming in her head all night.
It was still there the morning after.
“Art might save me,” she mocked under her breath as she made her morning tea, grimacing. How could she say something so cringeworthy? León must think she was off her theatrical rocker. How could she look him in the face again?
What could she possibly need saving from? The wealth, the free time, the utter privilege? People scraped their knuckles bare working for this, and it had fallen in her lap. She didn’t earn a living. Funny, that implied living had to be earned, could be deserved.
The thought chased her around the house all day, getting more insistent. She recognized her spiral but was powerless to stop it. Her one chance was to stay too busy to think.
She cleaned her house, scrubbing furiously. Any room, any surface, it didn’t matter.
She sidled into her craft room, untouched for the last month but dusted regularly. Nothing to clean here. All her art supplies were conventionally stored in floor-to-ceiling storage units. Everything in her life went behind white cabinet doors.
Get that mess out of sight, Celia Rose!
Her famous art list, written in earnest capitals, hung neatly by the door. She’d poured true hope into this, but every item on the list had been crossed off. Tracing the words with a fingertip was like poking a bruise.
In six years, she’d finished every class at the college. She was out of ideas. Art hadn’t saved her.
She didn’t want to tell her friends. They’d ask what was next.
She closed her eyes tight. A leaden knot sat in her chest, and she didn’t know how to budge it.
Wondering if swimming would help but knowing it was too late to stop her gloom, she drifted out to the pool house to look at León’s painting. Unfinished, but already better than anything she could ever do. Expressive. Colorful.
She would never squeeze something like that out of her cold little heart.
The painting on its easel looked at home here. She’d always thought the pool house would make a good studio. It was partly why she’d bought this too-big house. She’d intended to work through her art list out here but had ended up turning a spare bedroom into the craft room.
Don’t take up so much space, Celia Rose!
Could she clean out here?
Her eye fell on the daybed, its head near the main door. She patted the thick, orange-striped cushion, watching for dust, but no cloud rose. She settled for scrubbing the tiny bathroom and the little drinks fridge, then scrounged up a lesser-used table lamp from her house to put near the daybed. The overhead light had felt dim when putting away León’s things last night.
In the area near the big windows, overlooking the pool and view, she swept and mopped. The windows were tall, but she was able to give them a good cleaning with a step ladder.
There. Space, light, amenities. A room for creation—for a real artist. Not her.
Making up pointless tasks was exhausting.
Celia sat down on the daybed, like a doll tossed there, waiting for someone to come play with it.
You don’t have to live like that.
She was losing the battle today.
She went to lie in her bed, pretending to read. She napped off and on and tried not to think.
When she heard León arrive hours later, she got up and waved at him through the sliding glass door but retreated immediately back to bed. He’d probably be relieved she wasn’t bothering him with stupid questions.
She was ridiculous, selfish, talentless…a waste of space. Why did she think she needed a talent when she had nothing to say?
She burrowed into her bed in the dark and closed her eyes, giving in to her nightmare insides. An unpredictable looming judgment pricked at her, finished sentences for her. Be mature. Be useful. Just be normal, Celia Rose!
Well, here she was, all grown up. Dad was gone forever, Mom banished hundreds of miles north. Celia could disappear too, who would notice? Even her friends didn’t know her. She had them fooled into thinking she was a regular person. If they knew she was this worthless inside, they’d leave too.
No one was better for her being here. There was nothing the world needed Celia for. Others could give away money better. Others could cook better. Others could make art.
Art might save her. Ha! The art list had been a distraction, a diversion, a delay. It had come to a ragged end, and there was no use clutching at it. She’d hoped…couldn’t there be one original thing inside her? One thing only she had? Something she could put into art and say see, I deserve to be here too.
She gave up. The evidence of failures piled around her, the slaps and welts of wooden spoons, the dirty spite with which she’d given up language.
You don’t have to live like this, Dad said. He stretched out a hand from the bridge.
There was peace in giving up the fight, lying still, and being worthless. She could lie here until she ran out of air and light. She could follow him. What else was left to try?
“Celia? You here?”
Andrew! Back to pick up León already? He’d come in the back door.
She sat up in bed and brushed her hair quickly with her fingers. He poked his head into her bedroom to see her in the rumpled bed, curtains drawn.
“Celia.” He frowned. “Are you having a bad day?”
She nodded, caught.
Andrew had seen this before. He came in and sat on the bed, enfolding her in a hug. She let him.
It lasted a long time.
He finally patted her shoulder gently. “You’re supposed to call me when this starts, remember? We made a deal.” She nodded again, like a child. “Well, I know now. Okay if I sit with you for a while?”
“Okay,” she whispered.
He kicked off his shoes and climbed onto the bed with her. He sat up against the headboard, arms wide. Celia leaned into his chest, her eyes burning. She’d have to go back to trying now. His strong, brown arms closed around her, and she made an effort to back out of her hopeless place.
Quit the self-pity, Celia Rose.
“You know I like you, right?” he asked. “You know you’re important?”
Sweet Andrew. He knew the antidote. What would it be like to feel like him, generous, accepting everyone at face value? Dating him had been so easy. Low stakes, casual intimacy, fondness but no love to mess things up. Who knew why he hadn’t walked away after the romance ran dry.
“You want to tell me what started it?” he asked.
She released a shuddery breath. “It’s over,” she finally said. “The art list is done.” There. She’d admitted it.
“Really?” he asked, stroking her shoulder. “You’ve taken every class?”
“Every one. And I was awful at them all.”
He leaned his head against hers. “Aw, you were just new to it. Art takes practice.” His voice rumbled in his chest against her cheek. “What did you like best?”
She didn’t want solutions, but he was trying to help. “Posing, maybe,” she said slowly. “I was a part of other people making good art.”
“You are an excellent life model,” he said, a smile in his voice. “Remember the sculpture of mine you posed for last term? I’m firing the final piece now. If it survives, I can show you this week.”
Artists always ended up talking about their work, even the sweet ones who meant well. What would it be like to have something of her own to talk about?
Andrew rubbed a gentle hand up and down her arm. “You don’t have to limit yourself to the college, you know. This is LA. There are artists everywhere who need to earn a living. You could get private instruction. If you want to keep going on the list, keep going.”
She sighed heavily. Meeting new people one-on-one? She was bad at that too.
Andrew reached up to ruffle her hair. “Let’s eat something, then get in the pool. That sometimes helps, right? The sun’s probably down by now. It’ll be cooler out.”
Celia let him lead her around, taking fruit and cheese from the fridge and going outside into the dusk. León had already put away his easel. His shadow moved in the pool house. Andrew made a beeline for it.
Oh no.
She didn’t want to see León after saying what she’d said.
Andrew didn’t give her a choice, pulling her by the hand right into the pool house.
León was in the bathroom, cleaning his brushes. “Oh, hey,” he said. “Is it okay if I clean these here? I’ll fix any mess I make.”
Was he acting like she hadn’t been awkward yesterday?
Andrew sat on the daybed to take his shoes off, looking around. “It’s different in here.”
“Not much,” she said. “I added a lamp.”
Andrew stood to grab his swim trunks from the drying rack he’d laid them on the day before, unzipping his pants without regard to who was in the room. León caught Celia’s eye and grinned, giving Andrew a meaningful side glance.
He was going to ignore what she’d said!
He straightened from the sink, approaching her with dripping brushes, but she wasn’t ready to be talked to. Celia retreated to the door, still holding Andrew’s forgotten plate of cheese. “I’ll just….”
Andrew was pulling his pants down as she slipped out.
She escaped to the very edge of the yard, between the pool and the wrought iron fence that ran along the top of the retaining wall. The canyon fell away below her, smelling of sage, the distant yips of coyotes a familiar greeting.
She’d made it through again. She still felt the weight of her failures, but Andrew had helped. If nothing else, she had to act normally so he didn’t worry.
Maybe she would look for private art teachers. Poetry, maybe. That didn’t need a lot of equipment, and throwing away a lousy poem was easier than some of the other awful artworks she’d made.
“Absolutely not!”
Celia jumped as León’s voice, raised and strident, pierced the serene backyard.
“No way in hell!”
He was shouting in the pool house! An old panic began rising. Andrew’s voice could be heard, low and placating, but she couldn’t make out the words.
Silence. It drew out.
Andrew came out to the pool, looking ordinary in his swim trunks. He wasn’t agitated or worried. Her heart began to beat again.
“What was that?” she asked.
He waved a hand back at the door dismissively and grinned at her. “I’m a genius, is all.”
“It didn’t sound….”
Andrew came close and reached for her free hand, a relaxed smile spreading across his face. For someone who’d just been yelled at, he looked awfully pleased with himself.
“Celia. León needs a place to stay, and you have that pool house. You could let him stay there in exchange for painting lessons.”
The evening went suddenly cold. Sharing her backyard? Someone living here? She barely knew León! No way in hell.
“Absolutely not!” she said.
Andrew just grinned wider.