by Lexy Timms
I placed a kiss into the crook of her neck as she sighed, releasing the rest of the tension in her body.
“As for my mother, fuck her.”
“Bryan!”
“I’m serious. She’s got some serious stuff going on right now, and that’s on her. I’m not going to allow her to bring down this family any longer. And my father? He’s a big boy. If he can’t stand up to his own wife to come have a conversation with you, then fuck him, too.”
Hailey turned her head toward mine, and I tried not to grimace at her breath.
“I’m sorry for being so emotional,” she said. “I promise, as soon as this baby’s out of me, things will level out.”
“Babe, you’re carrying around four more pints of blood than usual. Your body is sloshing around twice the amount of hormones. Your hips are widening to prepare for childbirth, your breasts are probably aching with growing tissue, and there’s a good chance you can no longer see your toes. Just like it took you time to get here, it’ll take you time to even out. And I’ll be there for you no matter what kind of toll your hormones take on you.”
“I see you’ve been reading the books I’ve been giving you,” she said.
“Every. Single. One.”
I kissed the nape of her neck and listened to her beautiful giggle fall from her lips. I spread my hands out around her stomach, feeling it move and undulate with the shifting of our child. It always amazed me how her body was harboring a person. This little human being that would come into the world was seated inside her magnificent body.
“Do you feel him?” Hailey asked.
“I feel her,” I said, grinning.
“I’m telling you, I’ve had enough of the wonders of pregnancy.”
“Not one of those women who love being pregnant?” I asked.
“Fuck. No,” she said.
We laughed as we fell onto the bed, but there was still a trickle of worry behind Hailey’s eyes. Her laughter was genuine, and her smile was real, but so was that speck of worry. It had been there for a couple of weeks now, and it was beginning to give me nightmares. Was her cancer back? Was Hailey sick again?
If it was back, I knew she wouldn’t seek treatment until she gave birth. That was the kind of woman Hailey was. She had been protective of this child ever since we discovered we were pregnant in Europe. But if she was sick again, I needed to know. I needed to know what our options were and what we could do to save her and the baby if the worst happened while she was in labor.
I drew in a breath to ask her, but then I stopped.
I’d been to all the obstetrician appointments. I’d been there for all the bloodwork and the testing for gestational diabetes. I had been to all the emergency room visits when there were pains and splotches of blood in her underwear that weren’t a normally-occurring thing in a pregnancy.
I was there for all of it. And I knew she wasn’t keeping this from her doctor. I was there when she gave the obstetrician the rundown of her cancer and how quickly we had gotten pregnant afterward. I was there on the other end of the line as we received Hailey’s monthly blood work results over the phone from her oncologist.
That couldn’t be what she was hiding.
So what the hell was it?
Chapter 16
Hailey
I had interviewed the three individuals I had discussed with Bryan, but none of them were as impressive in person. The person who had worked at The Louvre t hardly had any knowledge of the paintings they had worked alongside and guarded. It was astounding to me, her lack of enthusiasm. And the other interviewees couldn’t give me straight answers on anything like why they wanted to work here and what drew them to art in the first place. It was like they chose art just to get a degree in something.
They were airheads, and I was angry that I had wasted my time on them.
Now, I was waiting on the last interview of the day. I was ready to close down the gallery and go home because my ankles were throbbing. My hip pain was getting worse by the day, I was beginning to sweat through my clothes because of San Diego’s lovely seventy-degree weather, and I had run out of water a half an hour ago during a rush of people who came in to purchase things and place orders.
She was late. The girl that both Bryan and I liked on paper was ten minutes late for her interview. The sun was beating down through the windows of the gallery, and at any other point in time, I would’ve loved the view. I would have loved the way the warm glow illuminated the onyx flooring of the gallery Bryan had so painstakingly put together and the way the warm hue cast an orange along the cream-colored walls and accented John’s dual paintings perfectly.
It was a sight I used to love.
But now, it was almost tainted by threats from John’s past, by my constant worry that someone would come in and hurt me, by Ben’s disgusting smell and rotting teeth and switchblade that seemed too eager to cut into the canvas of my paintings. Every time the bell rang out into the gallery, I jumped. My heart would race, and my palms would sweat. In a matter of seconds, I would debate on whether to waddle out the back door and try to get away. Only to see it was a customer coming in to purchase something.
That Ben guy had ruined this gallery for me, and it ached my heart.
This place had been my solace, my safe place from the world. It had held my dreams and ambitions in the corners of its walls and watched me succeed. It had held a painting Bryan and I had made, our bodies becoming brushes as our love painted the scene. It had been the place of John’s showcase, where his artwork had been shipped off to the corners of the planet to forever be enjoyed and talked about.
This place had brought so much into the lives of so many, and it had only taken one individual two appearances to destroy it all.
The bell above the door rang out, and my heart jumped into my throat. This was it. He was here to collect early, and I didn’t have the money. My hands started to tremble, and I reached down for my taser, ready to defend my unborn child with my own life.
“It is such a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. McBride.”
The feminine voice ripped me from my trance, and I let go of my taser. There was a woman standing in front of me with thick-framed glasses on her face. Her raven-black hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and she was wearing torn-up jeans and a tank top with a mesh cardigan around her shoulders.
Was this supposed to be my thirty-one-year-old applicant?
“Kelly Connelly?” I asked.
“Yes, ma’am. I’m so sorry I’m late. I was volunteering on the other side of town and got stuck in traffic,” Kelly said.
“What type of volunteer work do you do?” I asked.
“Well, it’s not really official volunteer work, but I go down to the homeless shelter and draw the kids.”
“Draw the kids,” I said.
“Yeah. I mean, they sit there, and I sketch them, and then I give them the picture. They love it, and it puts smiles on their faces,” she said.
“That sounds ... nice,” I said, grinning.
“It is,” she said. “So, again. Sorry I’m late.”
“It says here you worked at The Metropolitan Art Museum as a ticket-taker,” I said.
“I did. That place is really awesome if you want a history lesson on art. But it isn’t really tailored to those who want to view it and accept it for what it is,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, all the exhibits are arranged by date. And if the date houses enough artifacts or whatever, then they divide them up by the place they were found or their origin story. Really obscure things that only someone with a degree in art history would know. It’s not really for the public, though it’s open to the public. That make sense?”
“I suppose. Would you do it any differently?” I asked.
“Oh, of course,” she said. “I would start by taking down the names of the pieces.”
“The names,” I said.
“Yes. If you want to educate the public on art, then you have to tap into how a
rt affects them. If you give them a name, a date, and a history, then they get bored because that feels too much like school. And we all know people attach ‘boring’ to any school-like atmosphere.”
“So, you would take away all the available information on the pieces, and then what?” I asked.
“The tour guide wouldn’t be a tour guide of the museum. They would be a tour guide of emotions.”
“What?” I asked.
“The tour guide wouldn’t educate. They would simply ask you how something made you feel. It would make the tours more interactive, and after learning how the piece of art affects those around them, the tour guides could give more information as to why that is.”
“Interesting concept,” I said. “It also says your main degree is in music.”
“I’m a cellist,” she said.
“Why should I hire you as the manager-slash-assistant of my gallery?” I asked.
“Because sometimes places like this need the eye of someone who isn’t properly educated,” she said.
“Explain.”
“Art education isn’t always about the background information. Sometimes, art education is about teaching others how to express themselves through it.”
I tried not to jump for joy at her answer as I stood up from my stool.
“If you hire me, what I’d like to do is not simply educate, but immerse. I want to act as that tour guide. I want to figure out how the art on the wall affects people and then educate them by guiding them through those emotions. Our minds pick up on so much, and it disperses that information throughout our bodies at a dizzying pace. Sometimes, we pick up on things that make us sad before we can identify why we’re sad. The same goes for happiness. Or anxiousness. Or joy. Or depression. Take Picasso, for instance. Most people couldn’t even figure out what the hell it was he had painted, but it made them feel a certain way. Their minds picked up on cues from his paintings that pulled the exact emotion Picasso wanted from them even though they couldn’t even identify the basic subject.”
“You want to be that tour guide,” I said.
“Among other things, yes.”
“What else would you want to be?”
“A guiding hand for your classes. There have been rumors circulating that you would start some up, but they haven’t ever come to fruition. I’d like to help you start up those classes,” Kelly said.
“Some things have gotten in the way, yes,” I said.
“I’d like to be able to take on those classes for you. I’ve got three in mind that I think would go over really well in this community. One that reaches out into the disabled community, one that reaches out into the fine arts community who want to learn from you, and one that reaches out into the poorer communities who have been left behind in the wake of evolution.”
“Evolution?” I asked.
“It’s a better word than gentrification.”
“Say what you mean and mean what you say,” I said. “And I agree with you. That was my original target audience for my first art class.”
“I’d also like to find a way to get people through the doors on Saturday nights. You know, showcases or fun community activities. We could take up donations, and those donations could purchase people some tools for the art classes so those who can’t afford them can still come,” she said.
“You’ve really given this some thought,” I said.
“I really think what you’re doing here is phenomenal,” she said.
Kelly turned to me and looked me in the eyes. She had been late and very unapologetic about it, but she was sincere. The ideas she had for this place matched the ideas I had started out with, and some of the ideas even surpassed things I would’ve implemented myself. The way she wanted to educate people about art really brought it down to a level I was wanting to bring it to, making art accessible to the masses and showing them that it didn’t take a fancy degree to learn about, appreciate, and even do this idea of art.
“Would you like me to show you some of my favorite pieces?” I asked.
“I would love nothing more,” Kelly said.
I walked her around the gallery and asked her about how she felt on some of my paintings. Some of them pulled from her feelings of joy and elation while others made her anxious. She had a hard time standing in front of some of the paintings because of how tumultuous they were, and I was surprised at her ability to pick up on all of these things. We slowly walked around the room, and I conversed with her about the type of person I needed to hire, and she seemed on board with all the things I threw her way.
But then we stopped in front of John’s dual paintings.
“Wow,” Kelly said.
“Wow, indeed,” I said.
“It’s amazing how there can be so much color and still so much pain.”
I panned my gaze over to her, and I watched her eyes take in the artwork. I watched her entire body being pulled to the paintings as she studied them over and over. In an odd way, this thirty-one-year-old alternative woman fit into this place. She brought back a civility to it that had been stripped away when the likes of Ben had appeared at my door. She carried with her a light that I needed to shine in this place, a light that could coat the walls even with the darkness that loomed just outside of it.
“These are the dual paintings by that artist you showcased, isn’t it?” Kelly asked.
“John McBride, yes,” I said.
“He was a drug user, right?” she asked. “I can’t remember his whole story. Something about art helping him get clean. I loved that part of his story.”
“You’re basically right. John was homeless and strung out on drugs when I found him in Los Angeles. He was sketching people and animals as they went by and selling his drawings for ten dollars a pop on the street corner.”
“Ten dollars,” she said breathlessly. “If only they knew who they were purchasing those from.”
“I had this little studio, barely any bigger than my little store I have back behind that wall. He wandered into my studio high during one of my classes, and I sat him down with a canvas and a brush. Art seemed to calm him, broaden his mind, and open up his horizons. He ended up coming to every class I gave and was eventually there every day doing some sort of painting,” I said.
I felt my eyes tearing up as Kelly continued to marvel at his paintings. I could still see John’s face that night, how angry he had been when he’d come into the studio and saw those men holding me in the air. It was like he became inhuman, ripping them off me.
I closed my eyes and took in a slow, deep breath to try and calm my nerves.
“What happened to him?” Kelly asked.
“He was killed,” I said.
“What?”
“Yeah. He was killed trying to protect someone who meant something to him.”
“A girlfriend?” she asked.
“No. Just a friend,” I said.
“Mrs. McBride, no offense, but no one gives their life for someone who’s just a friend.”
“John did,” I said. “It shows you the caliber of a man he was. Art saved him, but it didn’t pull him out of his addiction. It showed him a better way of life. He kept selling his art, found odd jobs to do, and ended up making enough to get his own place. Art gave him the rope he needed to climb out of the hole he had dug himself. It’s why hiring the right person for this place is so important to me.”
“You don’t want your personal philosophy to be muddled,” Kelly said.
“Correct. I want someone who understands that art is so much more than some high-society understanding. It’s rehabilitating and nurturing. It can be life-giving, and it can change the lives of those who succumb to its warmth. It can bring joy and peace, and it can give those who struggle to express themselves the perfect outlet to do just that.”
We stood there, the two of us, taking in John’s paintings. I couldn’t believe I was about to sell these off. I couldn’t believe things had spiraled so far out of control that I was about to relinquish these
to Ramon Escalante. I knew he would take good care of them. I knew he would put them somewhere where they could be cherished, but it was all I had left of John. It was all I had left of the man who had saved my life.
It was all I had left that connected me to someone I should’ve known better than I did.
The warmth of a pair of arms descended around me, pulling me once again from my thoughts. I looked over and saw Kelly’s head leaning toward mine, her arms hugging me around my shoulders. I wrapped my arm around her and accepted the kindness of this stranger, our heads meshed together as we stared at his paintings.
“I think John saved the life of the woman who saved him,” Kelly said. “And I think that says a lot about him as a man.”
A tear rumbled down my cheek as I held Kelly closer. We stood there in the middle of my art gallery as her warmth filled the open space. I closed my eyes and steadied my breathing, allowing myself to soak up a strength I so desperately needed. I was so used to being the source of my own strength that I hadn’t come to terms with how worn down I had become, how weak I felt in my bones, and how heavy my soul felt with everything spiraling around me.
I didn’t just need an assistant or a manager for this art gallery.
I needed her to run this gallery.
“So,” I said. “When can you start?”
“Wait, are you serious?” Kelly asked.
She turned her head to look at me as her arms let me go.
“Very serious.”
“Mrs. McBride, it’s an honor. And I can start anytime you need me,” Kelly said.
“Perfect. Your training starts now. I’ll show you how the register works, and I’ll show you what I do to lock up. I’ll get you to fill out some employee paperwork so I can get it processed this week, and your first payday will be this Thursday. I pay out every two weeks,” I said.
