Gypsy Magic (The Little Matchmakers)

by Judy Griffith Gill

  Lunchtime came and went… No Lance. Gypsy spent as much time standing at the door looking out for him as she did in the room and admiring the picture she had lined up along shelf in the kitchen. Kevin, totally unimpressed by his artistry, wandered away to play, put out that Gypsy didn’t want to join him. But being there when Lance first saw his son’s drawings was not something she wanted to miss.

  While she waited, not at all patiently, she busied herself scrubbing the insides of the unprepossessing abalone shells until they were clean and gleaming, then took one out to the yard show Kevin. The sunlight shone on the pearly, iridescent nacre inside, creating a wealth of rainbows. “Oh, Gypsy! It’s pretty. I like rainbows. Can I have it?”

  “Of course!” To have Kevin ask for something he really wanted showed huge growth in his ability to trust. “You can have them all. They all look like this now they’re clean. Some people even make jewelry out of them. I have some abalone earrings made out of pieces of this kind of shell.”

  He looked affronted. “They cut them up?”

  She held the seven-inch shell up by her ear. “I guess they have to, Kev. Can you imagine this whole shell as an earring?” She pressed it against her chest. “Or as a necklace?”

  He giggled. “I only want one and I won’t cut it up. You can have the others, Mo—Gypsy.” Not since the night of Lance’s migraine had he called her Mother. It made her sad.

  “I’ll take one. Maybe your daddy would like some, too, because they are very beautiful. You might give one to your aunt.” She’d only pried off half a dozen of the shells. The rest had been too deep, and the water too cold. Still, the flesh would make a nice change for dinner.

  Kevin tilted his shell this way and that, letting the sun shine through the “portholes” curving around one side. “Maybe we can give one to Mrs. Hopkins.”

  Obviously, Auntie Lorraine was not destined to own one of the lovely abalone shells.

  When at last Lance returned, rice was cooking gently near the back of the stove, the abalone had been dredged in flour and seasoned and was just waiting to be popped into a frying pan. She had carrots peeled and sliced, a can of green beans opened and ready to heat in a saucepan and when she heard his steps on the porch, she ran to the door, calling happily, “Lance! Oh, Lance, I’m so glad you’re back! You’ve been gone for hours!” She spun around to point to the fungi and Kevin’s drawings.

  “Look!” she cried. “Come look at what Kevin did! He’s as talented as you are! Oh, Lance,” she appealed to him, her face aglow, “aren’t they wonderful?”

  For once, Lance did not see Gypsy. The room the disappeared, she had become as important as a piece of furniture as Lance stared at the rendition of his own street, his own home, eminently recognizable, and in an instant he had caught what it’d taken Gypsy weeks to realize.

  “My God!” he whispered in awe. “Just look at that perspective.”

  Chapter Eight

  Lance walked slowly down the short line of pictures, pausing in front of each one, his hands clenched tightly behind his back, tension in every line of his body as his eyes took in the tall tree trunks ascending, narrowing as they arose to join together in a feathery blur of foliage, saw the three rocket ships, the one in the foreground larger and more detailed, noticed how the fence surrounding them receded into the distance and he shook his head in disbelief, rubbing his eyes, which suddenly stung painfully. He swung around, remembering Gypsy.

  She stood watching his face, a tremulous smile hovering over her lips, a smile of pride in Kevin, whom she loved. “Where is he?” Lance demanded.

  Steeling herself to touch him impersonally when she longed to fling herself into his arms and congratulate him on having such a clever little son, Gypsy laid a hand on Lance’s arm, staying him. “He’s outside… But go carefully, Lance, slowly and gently. He doesn’t know what he has, has no idea of what he’s done here. He thinks everyone can draw like that. He thinks everyone sees like that. If you go rushing out, you’ll only scare him. Wait a while, have dinner first and then offer him some paper and a pencil. We used fungi. He’s afraid to ask you for paper himself.”

  Eyes traveling as if inexorably drawn to the picture of his street, Lance nodded. “Yes… Yes he would be, wouldn’t he?” Gypsy, knowing it to be a rhetorical question, made no reply.

  Her carefully prepared meal might have been wieners and beans for all the attention Lance paid it. He ate mechanically, his eyes going from the pictures his son had drawn to the young artist himself, where they rested with speculation of which fortunately, Kevin remained unaware.

  While Gypsy washed dishes and Kevin dried, Lance paced impatiently. Giving him a “calm down” look, Gypsy hung up the towels and excused herself, saying she was going for a walk by herself.

  Kevin, feeling abandoned, rattled the pages of one of his comics, sighed and kicked monotonously against the end of his bunk with one foot. He picked up his crayon box and rattled it. It was half full of broken stubs and his last coloring book was totally finished. He sighed loudly, and jumped when his father spoke. “Here, Kevin,” Lance said casually, “I don’t need these papers. Could you use them?”

  Kevin walked slowly toward the table, a wary look in his eye, hesitation in his bearing. “I… I guess so, Daddy. If you don’t need them. Thank you very much,” he added with timorous politeness. Taking the papers from Lance’s hand, he scuttled back to his bunk where he carefully laid them away on the shelf under his crayon box.

  Lance watched all this out of the corner of his eye and finally said, “Aren’t you going to draw a picture?”

  “Do you want me to?” asked the child, timidly.

  “I’d like you to, Kevin,” Lance replied.

  “Okay. What would you like me to draw?” Kevin asked, looking worried.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Lance said trying to look cheerful. “Use your imagination.”

  “Yes, Daddy,” Kevin said dutifully, and took the papers from the shelf, and the crayons, lay on his belly on the floor and set to work… Scribbling!

  Lance watched in total dismay, swallowing hard and clenching his fists as the crayon, a black one, he noted, went back and forth rapidly on the page, making nothing but a terrible mess. Forcing himself to remain calm, he said at length, “What’s that?”

  “The sky.”

  “Isn’t the sky supposed to be blue?” Lance said with forced jocularity.

  “When Gordie colored a black sky Mrs. Ford said it was all right.” Kevin went right to making the same monotonous motion with his clenched fist grimly tight around the crayon, and Lance, not knowing what to do, where to go from here, retreated, licked.

  Where in the world was Gypsy? Why’d she disappeared when he needed her? What was he supposed to do now? The frustration almost choked him. He knew Kevin could draw. He’d seen the evidence of it with his own eyes, but what did it take to release the talent? Why would the child draw for Gypsy and not for his own father? Disgusted, he knew the answer. Kevin did things for Gypsy and not for him because he loved and trusted her the way he did not love and trust his father.

  She stayed away for longer than the half hour she had mentioned, and to Lance it seemed like half a year, while to Kevin, probably half a lifetime. He kept looking at the door as if he wanted to go out and play but feared his father would think he was going in search of Gypsy, as Lance had told him not to, because Gypsy needed some time to herself. Lance studied his latest stack of animal and coastal renditions and sighed. Kevin continued to scribble and sulk.

  Gypsy edged the door open with one elbow and hissed at Lance who, upon seeing her, rose and left the room hurriedly, closing the door behind himself. “It’s no use!” he burst out angrily. “You started this, and you should’ve stayed around. He’s just lying on the floor making black skies. He’s scribbling, Gypsy, like any two-year-old.”

  Dismayed, she stared at him, hardly able to credit this bit of news. “What did you say to him? How did you go about asking him to draw for you
?”

  “I gave him some paper. He thanked me for it and put them on the shelf by his bunk.” Lance was clearly indignant. “When I suggested he draw, he started what he’s doing now, but as a duty, Gypsy not as a pleasure. What the hell did I do wrong?” he appealed to her, spreading his hands to his sides, palms up in anger and despair.

  “I don’t know,” she was forced to admit. The way Lance told it, it sounded quite straightforward, but knowing him, knowing Kevin, the way they interacted she realized she should’ve stayed around act as a buffer. To Kevin, even the most pleasantly phrased request or suggestion, coming from his father, would be taken as a direct order and, no matter how unwelcome, and order to be obeyed. While to Lance, the lack of enthusiastic gratitude to his offer would have meant disinterest or even resentment.

  “For goodness sake, relax,” she hissed at him, yearning to put her arms around him, hold him and comfort him.” Come inside and let’s see what’s going on.”

  They entered the cabin together and Kevin looked up. “You were gone a long, long time,” he accused, giving her an injured look.

  “Sorry, love, I must have lost track of the time, but I’ve had a good rest now and don’t feel tired anymore. What’s that you doing?” she asked him with great interest, going directly to him and looking over his shoulder.

  “Making pictures,” he replied, offhand.

  Picking up the page which could only be the one Lance described as ‘black sky,’ Gypsy gave a derisive hoot of laughter, startling Lance. “What kind of a mess is this?” she jeered. “How come you’re doing this baby stuff when you can draw nice pictures?”

  Kevin looked slightly abashed. “You weren’t here to tell me what to draw, Gypsy, and I couldn’t think of what to do on my own.”

  “You could have asked your daddy,” she said, dropping the offending paper and looking up to catch a guilt ridden expression on Lance’s face.

  She raised an inquiring eyebrow, but before he could say anything, Kevin said sulkily, “He said to use my ’magination. I ’magined the night you went out to look for him.”

  Gypsy heard the resentment and refused to allow it. She strode to the table, registering disapproval with every step. “You and I both know you can do better than that.”

  Kevin followed her, feet dragging. “Tell me something to draw,” he pleaded, looking hopefully up at her.

  “No.” She stirred the fire, added some wood, and putting the kettle over the flame, “Not now. I ran out of things to tell you today in the woods. Lance, can you think of anything?” Her blue eyes dared him to refuse.

  He pondered for a moment. “How about Jim’s boat?”

  Kevin looked doubtful, but knelt on a chair at the table and began to work. His finished product wasn’t much like any boat Gypsy had ever seen, and Lance gave her a bewildered look. “That’s nice, Kevin,” Gypsy said, deeply concerned. “What’s this supposed to be, here?” She touched the only part of the drawing which contained straight lines and hence the only part which stood out clearly in the odd shaped hole.

  “That’s the hatch covers,” Kevin was offended, as if everyone should be able to recognize hatch covers.

  “Oh, of course! Then this must be the deck, right?” Kevin nodded seriously.

  Lance spoke up. “And this… Wheelhouse?” He traced a finger around an awkward curve, within which were rectangles.

  “It’s hard where the sides around the front get pointed. I can’t make the shape right when it’s sort of round lines. I like corners, best, ”Kevin said to Gypsy, ignoring his father’s question, though he was breathing down the back of his neck,

  Lance elbowed Gypsy out of the way. She gladly moved back when he said, “Yes, that is kind of hard, but even where there are curving lines, you can still look whole thing like it was a box first. Like this, son.” He took up Kevin’s crayon and drew a rectangle, lightly, then added the curving shape of the boat’s outline inside it.

  “That’s the shape of the hull, right? But just one side of it.”

  Kevin nodded sullenly. In his face Gypsy read pure resentment. That was his crayon and Daddy had not even asked. “But,” Lance went on, blissfully unaware of his son’s feelings, “it’s only half a boat, isn’t it? We want a complete boat, so we make the rectangle into a box, like this.” The crayon flew. “See how the top of the hull, the gunwale, curves down under the top line of the rectangle? Now we make another, just the same distance above the top line, and now we can make the cabin. Just to show you, I’ll draw square one. See, its sides and top are parallel to the sides and top of the box I made out of the rectangle.”

  He paused, suddenly aware of Kevin’s silence, and looked into his son’s face. The child had a faraway look about him, an expression of complete disinterest, utter boredom. Lance suppressed an explosion of frustration and anger.

  As if she knew, Gypsy came back to them,

  Taking the crayon from Lance, she handed it to Kevin, saying, “And now, Daddy’s finished. It’s your turn, Kev. Shows us how the hatch covers should be.”

  Without hesitation, and brightening visibly, Kevin gripped the crayon and placed the lines which represented the hatch cover in exactly the right perspective to the other square lines outlining the boat. “Good,” said Gypsy warmly.

  Jim’s boat has a mast,” Lance said. “Can you put that in?”

  Kevin did. The mast rose straight and true, parallel to the ends of the rectangle, parallel to the cabin, at right angles to the hatch covers. “But it looks funny with the box drawn around it,” he protested, dropping the crayon, and Gypsy nudged Lance, tacitly telling him to take over again.

  Lance, realizing that his earlier mistake in excluding Kevin, began again, hoping to do better. “It does look funny, that’s true,” he said. “But if we start using a pencil, we just erase all those lines and then there’s only our boat.”

  Kevin, looking much happier now that he could think of it as their boat not just Daddy’s nodded. “But I don’t have a pencil, just crayons, so our boats are going to have to look funny.”

  “No, Kevin, our boats won’t have to look funny,” said Lance, giving Gypsy a questioning glance. She nodded, to tell him he had the right attitude, and he went on. “We can just draw the boat, pretending the lines are there. Like this.” Again he took the crayon and working swiftly, economically, and expertly, he recreated a much better representation of the boat. “Now you try it.”

  Kevin, concentrating hard, tongue sticking out, did try, but less than halfway through his attempt, Lance, frustration oozing out of every pore of it in his body, snatched the crayon and finished it for him. “You have to visualize the box, Kevin. Look where you went wrong… The curve is much wider here than it is on the other side and that’s what gives your deck a lopsided look.”

  Kevin tried again and again with the same result until at last, white faced and shaking, he pushed the papers away and said, his voice quivering, “I’m tired, Daddy. I don’t want to draw anymore. Can I just read my comics?”

  Gritting his teeth, Lance crumpled the last page and threw it in the fire. “Go ahead,” he snarled. “Do what you want.”

  So ends a dream, thought Gypsy tiredly. Only I was so sure that here at last, was the key for which I had been searching. Why oh why can’t he just have a little more patience, a little more understanding? What’s lacking in the man that he can’t see what he’s doing? Can’t he understand the way he comes across? If he had given Kevin the crayon at the very outset and coached each step of the way and let it be Kevin’s drawing, everything would’ve been all right. But oh no, not Lance. First, show the kid a perfect example and then get mad when he can’t come up to the same standard. What in the world did she ever think she saw in the man?

  She was still seething inwardly when later, after Kevin had been bedded down and was sleeping, she voiced these same sentiments to Lance. “If you had two grains of sense to rub together, Lance Saunders, you’d be able to see for yourself, what you’re doing. You kno
w he has talent, and if you’re not very, very careful, you’re going to choke it right out of him. If you get mad at him, make drawing into a chore at which he must excel to earn your approval, you’ll destroy every bit of pleasure he gets from it.”

  “So what am I supposed to do? Let him make stupid mistakes that I’m able to correct with just one word or two, or even easier, a stroke of the pencil?”

  “Yes!” she cried impatiently. “Let him make mistakes. They’re his mistakes. It’s his right to make them, and to grow by making them. Didn’t you? Don’t you still? Didn’t you have to learn? Or did you, as a tiny infant, simply pick up a pencil and a piece of paper and instead of chewing on them, begin drawing perfect pictures every time? Oh!” She gritted her teeth. “You make me sick.”

  “You think you feel sick? How do you think I feel? What I’d like to know is why wasn’t I told about his ability? What’s the matter with schools today they can’t recognize talent when they see it and tell the parents so proper training can be started? If I had known what an eye he had, he’d have been getting art lessons long ago.”

  “Kevin is six years old, Lance, only recently out of kindergarten! He’s probably much too young for formal art lessons. Anyway, what makes you so sure his teacher doesn’t know? Have you ever even discussed your work with his teacher, and suggested maybe she should watch out for potential talent?”

  “Why… Why, no.” Lance frowned, though he sounded surprised. “I don’t even think I know his teacher’s name.” He gave his head a hard shake. “But Lorraine’s gone to all the parent-teacher interviews—one for each term, and if she’d been told Kevin had an ability like this, she’d have let me know. That stupid teacher probably wouldn’t perspective in drawing if it bit her.”