Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Natalie
The blue is wrong.
I stand beneath the bright lights of the print shop and look from the approved proof to the sheet the printer has just handed me. The river is too purple. It is a small difference, the kind someone could convince me to ignore if I were worried about being difficult.
I am worried about being difficult.
I point to the water anyway.
“This has shifted.”
The printer, a man named Frank with ink beneath one thumbnail, comes around the table. He looks at both sheets, then takes off his glasses and puts them back on as if that might help.
“You’re right.”
Relief makes me briefly light-headed.
He calls to someone at the press. I move out of the way while they check the settings, then stand beside the table with my coat over one arm.
It is ten in the morning. At home, Adam has taken leave for half a day to cover the press check.
He will work the afternoon while Benji is at his mother’s. We arranged it a week ago.
I have checked my phone only twice.
The second proof is better. Frank lays it beside the first and waits while I study it. I don’t hurry because he is waiting. I check the shadows, the text, the small details in the painting near the spine. Then I sign the approval sheet.
“All right,” he says. “We’ll have them ready in three days.”
In the car, I call Ruth before I call home. I tell her about the adjustment, confirm the delivery, and listen while she thanks me. Then I sit with the engine off and let myself enjoy having finished something.
Adam answers on the second ring.
“How did it go?”
“Good. We had to correct the blue, but it’s approved.”
“Excellent.”
In the background, Owen says something about a spoon.
“Why isn’t he at school?” I ask immediately.
“Late start for the staff meeting. Remember? He goes in at eleven.”
I do remember. I put it in the shared calendar myself. For once somebody else has read it before I reminded them.
“Right.”
“Everything’s fine. He’s making a house out of toast.”
“Please tell me it isn’t on the floor.”
A pause.
“Adam.”
“Only the garage.”
I laugh and rest my head against the seat.
“You don’t have to come straight back,” he says. “You’ve got until twelve.”
I look at the clock. Forty-five minutes.
There is a coffee shop across the street. I take my book from the back seat, the one I bought in October and have carried around unread ever since, and go inside.
At first I can barely concentrate. The habit of using spare time efficiently is so strong that I keep thinking about the pharmacy, the dry cleaning, whether we need milk.
I make myself turn a page. Then another.
Eventually a character does something foolish enough to annoy me, and I become absorbed in that instead of the errands.
When Adam leaves for work, I tell him about the book. He asks whether he would like it.
“You’d spend the whole time saying the man should’ve answered his phone.”
He looks at me, then laughs. “Probably deserved that.”
“I wasn’t even trying.”
Three days later, Ruth opens a box of catalogs in the exhibition gallery. She hands me the first copy before anyone else takes one.
The cover is smooth beneath my fingers. The painting fills the space the way I imagined it. Inside, the captions are correct, the page numbers sit where they should, and my name appears in the credits.
Design by Natalie Bennett.
I read it twice.
“Don’t start looking for mistakes yet,” Ruth says. “Give yourself ten minutes.”
“I already found a comma I don’t like.”
“That’s the spirit.”
She puts a second copy into my bag. “One to keep nice and one to show people. The opening’s tomorrow evening. Bring whoever you want.”
I have already arranged for Beth to stay with the children. I asked her myself, before anyone could tell me the evening was too complicated. I have not yet decided whether Adam is coming.
Ruth watches my face. “You don’t have to make it a statement.”
“What?”
“Who you bring. It’s a work event. You’re allowed to enjoy it.”
I nod, grateful she doesn’t press.
On the drive home I think about inviting him. I want him there. I also want to walk into a room where nobody knows about the baby, where nobody studies the space between us to determine whether we are all right.
In the end I call him.
“Would you come to the opening?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t ask when.”
“Tell me when.”
I do. He checks, confirms, and asks what he should wear.
“Something without gravy.”
“That narrows it down.”
Before the opening, we attend Lucy’s winter concert at school.
Adam has brought flowers for her, a small bunch wrapped in brown paper.
I watch him give them to her outside the classroom.
She looks embarrassed and delighted and immediately asks me to hold them so her friends can see them without seeing her carry them.
Owen sits between us during the concert, leaning against whichever parent has the better view of the stage. Benji sleeps against Adam’s chest until the percussion instruments begin, then wakes with an expression of personal betrayal.
Adam takes him into the hall. I watch Lucy sing, her eyes finding mine in the audience. When Adam returns, I whisper that she hasn’t done her spoken part yet. He nods and settles beside us, one hand cupped over Benji’s ear.
Afterward, his mother finds us near the doors. She kisses Lucy, praises the singing, and looks at Adam and me standing together.
“It’s lovely to see you two back to normal.”
My shoulders tighten before I can stop them.
Adam notices. “We’re still working things out, Mom.”
“I only meant...”
“I know.” His voice stays kind. “But we aren’t back to how it was.”
She looks at me, then nods. “All right. I’m sorry.”
I don’t have to smile and make her comfortable. Adam asks Lucy which song she liked best, and the conversation moves on.
That small intervention stays with me longer than the flowers.
The next evening, Beth sits on my bed while I get dressed for the opening. She has arrived with overnight clothes and a bag of snacks I would never buy. The children consider her a significant improvement on both their parents.
“Wear the dark dress,” she says.
“It’s a work event.”
“And you work in a sack now?”
I hold it against myself. “I don’t know if it fits.”
“Try it.”
It does, though differently than before Benji. The neckline is lower than I remember. I look at myself for a long time, adjusting the fabric over my hips.
“You look good,” Beth says.
“Don’t say that because you’re my sister.”
“I’ve told you plenty of times when you didn’t. Remember the orange pants?”
“They were fashionable.”
“They were visible from space.”
I laugh and leave the dress on.
Adam knocks on the bedroom door when Beth sends him upstairs. I am trying to fasten a necklace, my fingers slipping on the clasp. He stops in the doorway.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing.”
“That didn’t look like nothing.”
“You look beautiful.”
The words are simple enough that I believe them. I turn back toward the mirror before he sees how much I wanted to hear them.
“Can you do this?”
He comes behind me and takes the chain. His fingers brush the back of my neck. I hold my hair up, watching his face in the mirror while he concentrates on the clasp. He is close enough that I can feel the warmth from his chest through the air between us.
“There,” he says.
I lower my hair. Neither of us moves for a second.
Downstairs, Owen shouts that Aunt Beth is letting him have a second dessert. Adam closes his eyes, smiling faintly, and steps back.
“We should go before she gives them the car keys.”
At the gallery, Ruth greets us and immediately takes me to meet an artist. Adam asks where he can leave my coat, then does it.
The artist is Marian Croft, a small woman with silver hair and a bright yellow scarf.
I know her painting better than I know most of the rooms in my house.
I have spent hours looking at the dark strip of shoreline beneath her winter sky, checking that the print doesn’t swallow the detail.
“You chose the close-up for the opening spread,” she says.
“Yes. I hope you’re happy with it.”
She tips her head. “Why that part?”
I glance at Ruth, who is already being called away. For a second I want to follow her, to let someone more practiced take over. Then Marian opens the catalog and waits.
“The windows,” I say. “You can see the light better at that size. On the full painting they’re small enough to miss.”
“They were the reason I painted it.”
“I wondered.”
“My husband was in the hospital across the river. I used to stand at that window while he slept and look over at the houses. People making dinner. Watching television.” She touches one painted window with a finger. “I wanted to go home so badly.”
I look at the image again. “Did he?”
“Yes. He’s over there eating all the olives.”
We both turn toward a man beside the refreshments. He lifts his plate in acknowledgment, entirely unashamed.
“I like what you did,” Marian says. “You let people see it.”
“Thank you.”
She asks about my other work, and I tell her the truth: catalogs years ago, smaller projects around the children, this job after a longer gap than I intended.
She doesn’t look disappointed or offer reassurance.
She tells me she didn’t begin painting seriously until her youngest left school, then asks whether I have a website.
“It needs updating.”
“Everything does. Send me the address anyway.”
By the time she moves on, I have her card in my hand and a small commission to discuss after the holidays, a booklet for a studio exhibition she is planning with two friends.
Nothing is settled. It may come to nothing.
I am pleased by the conversation itself, by being asked a question I can answer without checking somebody’s schedule.
Ruth returns long enough to ask whether Marian has recruited me.
“Possibly.”
“She recruits everyone. Last year she got the mayor to carry frames in the rain.”
“She asked for my website.”
“Then update it.” Ruth squeezes my elbow. “And send me an invoice for the balance before you disappear for Christmas.”
“I already did.”
“Excellent. Even better.”
I put Marian’s card into my bag instead of giving it to Adam to hold. Then I go to find him. He doesn’t keep a hand at my back or steer me toward people he thinks I should impress. When I look for him twenty minutes later, he is studying a painting with the catalog open in his hands.
I watch him turn the page to compare the printed detail with the original.
For some reason that nearly undoes me.
During the short remarks, Ruth thanks the artists, the staff, the volunteers, and me. It is one sentence. People turn. I smile awkwardly, and across the room Adam lifts his glass just enough for me to see.
Afterward, a woman asks whether I take outside design work. I give her my email. Adam is beside me, listening, and waits until she has gone before saying, “You should have cards.”
“I know.”
“Sorry. That’s me offering a solution.”
“It’s a good solution. I’m allowed to accept some of them.”
He grins. “I’ll try not to get carried away.”
On the way home, he asks which painting I would buy if money and wall space weren’t considerations. I tell him, and he chooses a different one. We argue pleasantly about whether his is bleak or peaceful all the way to the driveway.
Beth meets us in the hall with a finger to her lips. The children are asleep. She asks how it went, and I hand her the catalog before taking off my coat.
She turns straight to the credits.
“There you are,” she says.
Adam is standing beside me. I take his hand without looking at him, and his fingers close around mine.