Chapter 15
The morning that Helena planned to host Hilary Salt at her place, Helena was on the patio, surveying a recent painting of magentas and greens and drinking coffee.
The waves lapped gently over the white beach, and the sun shifted between clouds, lending a warmth that felt medicinal.
Helena had three hours left before Hilary was going to stop by, and she had to decide which of her paintings to show off.
She’d decided to curate a selection to avoid overwhelming Hilary.
She’d read online that if you showed a potential buyer too many paintings, they began to think that you were too unwanted or too easy to get.
Scarcity was key. It was a bit like modern dating, in that way.
Not that Helena would know anything about that. But Helena smiled at her own joke.
Five paintings, she decided, setting them out across the patio. She imagined an insane future in which Hilary Salt bought all five of them.
What did it mean to come into money so late in life?
It was then that she noticed something at the edge of the dock.
Stepping around her easel, she adjusted her hat to see that, yes, something was set upon the dock itself.
Maybe it was a branch that had blown there in the wind.
Or maybe it was a bit of debris from the ocean.
She decided to take a trash bag out and dispose of it so it wouldn’t pollute the ocean further.
When she reached the dock, however, she was struck dumb with the realization that it was a bouquet.
She gaped at the roses and lilies, the trash bag she’d brought with her ruffling in her hand.
The flowers were beautiful. There was a card attached, as well—one upon which someone had written the name “Helena.”
The flowers were, impossibly, for her. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had brought her flowers.
It must have been Elliott, maybe a random Valentine’s Day, a time when she’d felt so sure that flowers would continue to come into her life that she hadn’t allowed herself to fully appreciate them.
Receiving flowers meant someone had gone out of their way for you. It meant that they’d planned their life around the fact that they wanted to—briefly—make you happy.
Helena raised the bouquet gently, then walked as though in a dream back to the patio and through the back door.
In the kitchen, she put the flowers in a vase of water, then, with a shaking hand, opened the envelope.
The card itself was decorated with a sailboat.
The sight of it made her heart pound. On the inside was written: “Thank you again for saving my life. I think about you more than I’d like to admit.
I’d love to take you on a real date sometime—or just a coffee, as friends.
You’re a beautiful person, Helena. Inside and out.
Yours, Matteo.” He’d also written down his phone number.
The note fluttered from Helena’s fingers to the countertop.
Matteo. So she hadn’t done such a good job of kicking him out of her life after all.
She’d assumed he was already in the arms of someone else, building a life on the mainland.
But instead, he’d gone out of his way to buy her flowers, write a note, and sail them out to the dock—the last place she’d seen him.
That knocked her out for the rest of the morning.
Exhausted, wounded by her own inability to love and be loved, Helena spent a few hours on the sofa, watching the world out her window.
She knew that she couldn’t call the number he’d listed on the notecard.
She knew that bringing him into her life when it was nearly over was unfair to him.
She had to remember that it was the wrong thing to do. She had to remember that hearts were at stake, and that he’d been through so much as it was.
When someone knocked on the front door, it startled her out of her skin.
But it was Hilary Salt, Helena remembered now. She’d come to see the paintings. Helena had to pull herself together.
En route to the front door, Helena checked her reflection in the hall mirror.
She looked skinny but tan from her long hours in the sun and far better than she had back in South Carolina.
She almost looked healthy. Almost. When she opened the door to find an elegant-looking woman nearing her sixties, Helena offered a generous smile and said, “Thank you for coming by.”
Hilary walked regally into the foyer. She had the air of someone who’d grown up in royalty rather than simple wealth.
Helena learned later that Hilary’s mother had been a famous Swedish actress who’d moved to the United States later in life.
Hilary’s daughter was also a famous actress, leaving Hilary as the strange woman in the in-between.
But she was also a customer for the movies in her own right.
Helena wondered what that felt like to be around such fame and not have it.
Still, she seemed to have more money than she knew what to do with.
But Hilary was warm and kind-hearted and terribly excited about Helena’s paintings.
Helena had gathered the curated collection on the patio, where they now stood, quietly assessing each of the five paintings.
Helena tried to see them through Hilary’s eyes.
Were they really four thousand dollars’ worth? What did that even mean?
Hilary shook her head and seemed to wipe a tear from the corner of her eye.
“I can’t believe it,” she said. “They’re truly something else.
They open me up emotionally in ways I didn’t think possible.
I was talking to a few friends about your work the other day, and the same thing happened.
I just—poof—burst into tears. Do you have that effect on everyone? ”
Helena didn’t want to give away the fact that she’d hardly ever sold any paintings.
She’d certainly never sold any paintings like this.
So she said, “There have been reports, yes. Of crying? But I don’t always have access to people’s emotional centers.
I appreciate that they find something within my work that speaks to them. That’s all I can really say.”
Hilary seemed pleased with her response. Helena breathed a private sigh of relief.
It was a much calmer and more intimate time with Hilary than Helena had expected.
When Hilary left that afternoon, she had with her three additional paintings, besides the one of Matteo that had initially led her to call Helena.
Because two of the paintings were larger than the Matteo painting, Helena felt Hilary almost expected her to ask for higher prices.
She’d had to come up with them on the spot, cursing herself for not thinking more about it prior to Hilary’s arrival.
She’d actually told Hilary that one of them was ten grand in total, which was insane.
But Hilary said, “Of course.”
All told, along with the Matteo painting, Helena made out like a bandit that week. She earned twenty-five thousand dollars, all from Hilary Salt.
“And three friends want to come by to see your stuff,” Hilary said as she and Helena piled the wrapped paintings into the back of Hilary’s car. “Do you have anything else?”
Helena was stumped about what to say. “I do,” she admitted finally. “And I’m in the process of making some major works. I also take commissions.”
“Fabulous. That’s how you make your money,” Hilary said.
“Rich people think they know what they want. After they describe it to you, you have to give it to them. And then, when they figure out that’s not what they actually wanted, you have to give them what they didn’t know they wanted. You have to have that ready.”
Helena wasn’t following, but she pretended she understood perfectly. “That’s always the way,” she said, as though she’d dealt with numerous wealthy people. As though this was a world she dipped into often.
As Hilary backed out of her driveway, Helena remained in the garage doorway, watching.
As soon as Hilary was down the road and out of sight, Helena did a little dance for herself, then immediately went inside, closed the curtains, took off her dress, and crashed into bed.
All that socializing had taken everything out of her.
When she woke up, however, the first thought that came to her mind was: twenty-five thousand dollars. It was so much extra money, extra money that dared her to ask: what did a dying woman like her really want with the time she had left?
She thought about “make a wish” situations. She thought about children who wished for a trip to Disney World. What was her wish? She closed her eyes and tried to envision it.
But the face that came into her mind wasn’t Mickey Mouse’s.
It was Matteo’s.
She opened her eyes again, cursing herself.
That was something she couldn’t wish for.
She got out of bed and went to the kitchen to make a big pot of coffee and begin another long day of painting.
She had maybe fifteen paintings already stashed away for Hilary’s friends—women Hilary called the Salt Sisters for a reason that Hilary hadn’t explained—to look at.
But Helena wanted more. She wanted to elevate her vision.
She wanted to push herself, both creatively and on social media.
Around the end of July, Hilary Salt’s friends Stella, Robby, and Rose came by to see Helena’s collection.
They weren’t as wealthy or as regal as Hilary, and they cracked jokes easily and asked Helena a number of questions about her life, questions Helena had to dodge as they felt too sensitive.
When they left, each took a painting. Rose had a smaller one, only two thousand dollars, but Robby sprang for a large eight-thousand-dollar painting, and Stella got one that was nearly six grand.
They didn’t seem to bat an eye, as though paying that much for art was an expected thing to do around here. Helena was getting better at pretending not to be surprised.
With the money coming in over the past two weeks and the euphoria that came with being recognized, Helena felt a rush of vitality she hadn’t experienced since before the pandemic.
A few nights a week, she even slept fewer than ten hours, as though she were eager to get up and do things.
As though her body had found a treasure trove of strength that she hadn’t imagined possible.
And then, almost without realizing what she was doing, she began to research health insurance plans.
She dipped her toe in, assessing costs. Obviously, she was a risk for any major insurance company.
But if she went with a private one, one that was a bit more expensive and a bit “fancier,” she guessed they wouldn’t turn her away.
When she finally got up the nerve to call one, she burst into tears when she talked to the operator.
She had to clean herself up and call back ten minutes later.
The woman who answered was not the same one who’d answered before, which was a godsend.
She didn’t want to have to explain herself.
But all at once, Helena was enrolled in health insurance.
All at once, she was protected—and insured—for a future death that awaited her.
When would it be? She didn’t know. For the first time since her diagnosis, she had the guts to push back against it. She wasn’t naive enough to think she could beat it. But maybe she had to try.