Seashell Season

by Holly Chamberlin

  Anyway, let me just say now that the Strawberries are so freakin’ normal. Well, maybe they’re not normal. I mean, they’re, like, out of a storybook. Three times I saw them in a group hug. Three times in, like, half an hour! And as far as I could tell, they weren’t posing for a picture.

  But they had put out a lot of food, and there were these delicious pigs in a blanket. I ate, like, six of them before it occurred to me that maybe I should leave some for other people. But then I took one more. I mean, they probably had more in the kitchen.

  Verity told me that most of the guests were people from the college and people Marc knew through his work as an accountant. I guess a lot of people become friends with their accountants, because the entire first floor was packed. Dad never had an accountant. There was never enough money to account for. In fact, it occurred to me then that I don’t remember him ever paying taxes, but he must have. Or was he living so under the official radar that he somehow managed to evade the long arm of the government? Another thing I could ask him during our next call but probably won’t.

  Cathy suddenly appeared at my side, a guy in tow. She was wearing a sleeveless pink-and-white-checked dress that came to her knees. It reminded me of those red-and-white-checked tablecloths people use at picnics. I noticed she was a bit taller than the guy. He was wearing jeans and a polo shirt. I think that’s what you call them, with the short sleeves and the collar and an animal stitched on the pocket.

  “This is Jason,” Cathy said brightly. “My boyfriend. And this is Marni.”

  Jason mumbled something, and I said, “Hey.”

  “Isn’t it a great party?” Cathy said. “I’m so glad so many people were able to come. Oh, the Simmonses just came in! I have to go say hello.”

  She darted off, leaving me alone with her boyfriend.

  And suddenly I had a funny idea. Not funny ha-ha. Funny perverse.

  “Jason, right?” I said, moving closer to him, like I was going to whisper something in his ear. Then I ran a finger along the bare skin of his arm. He didn’t move away. In fact, he shifted a little closer to me so that for a second our hips touched.

  “Want to get out of here for a while?” I whispered. His eyes were now slightly hazed over. I know that look. His breath was coming a bit faster.

  “What’s going on?” a shrill female voice demanded. It was Cathy.

  Jason, whose face now turned bright red, went running off without a word of apology or explanation to his girlfriend. I mean, what could he say?

  “I’m sorry,” I said quickly to Cathy. “It was just a joke.” Not a joke, really. But I had wanted to shake things up.

  “A joke?” Cathy laughed and shook her head. “What sort of joke is coming on to your friend’s boyfriend?”

  Did she really consider us friends? That was weird. And it made me feel kind of bad.

  “Look,” I said. “I don’t even think he’s attractive.”

  “That’s nice! So you flirted with him, why? To make me jealous?”

  Nice going, Marni. “I don’t know, all right,” I whispered fiercely. “God, why are you making such a big deal out of nothing?”

  “It’s something to me. And you had to do it at my parents’ party!”

  Cathy stomped off before I could come up with another stupid answer. I saw her walk right past Jason without a glance, even though he reached out for her. Poor guy. He looked pretty miserable.

  I thought about finding Verity and telling her what I’d done (so she wouldn’t hear it from someone else who might put a really bad spin on it), and I wondered if Cathy would go running to Annie or if anyone else had seen me flirting with Jason. I wondered if word would get around this stupid town that The Little Kidnapped Girl was a whore. A whore with a foul mouth. In the end, I said nothing to anyone.

  I don’t know why she would be, but I think Verity was as miserable at the party as I was because it was she who suggested we leave right after the cake was brought out, this big sheet cake with chocolate icing and candles in the shape of the numbers two and zero. As we drove away from the house, I could hear a burst of loud laughter and someone turned up the music and it looked like the party would go on for a while.

  “Did you have a good time?” she asked when we were on the main road.

  “Yeah,” I said. “You?”

  “Yeah.”

  I think we both knew we were lying.

  Chapter 49

  Something odd happened this afternoon.

  I went with Verity to her studio at the college, more out of boredom than any real interest in watching her work. Like I said, I’ve never had any use for art. Not long after we got there, Verity got a text from a colleague in another studio, asking her if she could come over and help her stretch a canvas (whatever that means). So Verity went off, and I was left alone in her studio. It’s a big room with windows that go from a few inches above the floor to a few inches below the ceiling. Artists need a lot of light, I guess. The other times I’d been there, I hadn’t really paid much attention to all the stuff in the room, but for some reason, today I did. There are three or four (now I can’t remember) easels and two long tables with benches on either side of them, and a jumble of all sorts of stuff on top, like paintbrushes and some kind of knives and chisels and hammers. There are a bunch of stands around the room—I guess that’s what you’d call them; it’s clear you can adjust their heights—on top of which are unfinished sculptures. I’m guessing they’re unfinished, because some just look like lumps of clay or pieces of wood that have been chiseled or chopped away in places. Other pieces look like they might almost be done, like one of a bird, though kind of an abstract bird, in some sort of wood. There’s also a gigantic bookcase (actually, I remember now that Verity told me she’d made it) stuffed with books about art, some sitting horizontally on top of the ones standing vertically. I remember the title of one book being Terracotta—The Technique of Fired Clay Sculpture, by someone named something Malmstrom. Another was The Care of Bronze Sculpture, by a guy named Patrick Kipper. There was one with the words El Greco on the spine, but I don’t know who that is. Maybe an artist, or maybe the author. There was another book on The Impressionists, and even I know who they are.

  I looked again at that poster Verity had pointed out to me the first time I’d been at the studio. There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. I’ll have to think about that, I thought. I remembered my first impression of Annie, how I’d thought she was ugly, but how after a few minutes I’d changed my mind and realized she was beautiful. Was that what this guy Bacon was talking about?

  Imagine going through life with your name being bacon?

  The last thing that caught my eye was an old-fashioned folding table (Dad and I had one we’d picked up at a garage sale) on top of which there was a blue ceramic vase with some flowers—they looked like wild flowers—and next to it was an arrangement of fruit (I think they were wax, because none of the pieces were at all brown, and it was pretty hot in the studio): a pear and an apple and a small nectarine or something. And there was also a crumpled green cotton napkin.

  Obviously, some of Verity’s students had been drawing the flowers and the fruit. There were a bunch of sketches pinned to a board behind the folding table. Looking up at them, I suddenly thought, I could do better than that, which was a weird thing to think, because I hadn’t done anything remotely artistic since I had some coloring books when I was a kid. There was an open sketchbook on one of the long tables, and two chipped mugs crammed with all sorts of pencils and pens. I reached for one of the pencils—don’t ask me what kind it was, because I didn’t notice—and I looked at the flowers and the fruit and I just started to draw what I saw.

  It was like I was in a dream or something. It was just happening, and I felt like I was watching it happen at the same time I was making it happen. It was weird. When I realized I had pretty much finished drawing the stuff on the table, I flipped to a new page and started again. And like the first time,
my hand just kept moving.

  Suddenly I was aware of voices in the hall, two or maybe three people and one of them was definitely Verity. Quickly, I tore the pages I’d used out of the sketchbook, and without really thinking, I crammed them under a pile of magazines, stuffed the pencil back into the mug, and scurried into the center of the room.

  Verity came through the door then. “Sorry it took so long,” she said. “I hope you weren’t bored, waiting for me.”

  I felt guilty, though I didn’t really know why. “No,” I said. “I’m fine.”

  “Good. I need to do about an hour’s work, and then I thought we’d grab an early dinner at The Friendly Lobsterman, if that’s okay with you.”

  I felt the familiar irritation come over me. I wish she would stop always asking if things were okay with me. Just make a decision, I thought. Tell me what we’re going to do. But all I said was, “Sure.”

  Chapter 50

  I’ll be introducing four new pieces at the gallery show in July, rather, four parts of one larger piece. I’ve called the work The Four Seasons, and as the title so clearly indicates, each individual piece represents a conception of a particular season. It’s taken me the better part of a year to complete the work, to perfect Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall as separate but related works. I’m also planning on showing several sketches of each season in process. I chose the sketches carefully for visual interest, and for all four pieces, I wrote up a short statement of intent and purpose and a description of the path from initial idea, through changing iterations, to final form. I framed the sketches in rough wooden frames to match the wood used for each season—walnut for Winter, butternut for Spring, cherry for Summer, and white pine for Fall. For some people, preliminary sketches and the studies that come before a work is finished are themselves works of art. Process is as important as the final product. And, let’s be practical, for those who want to collect art but have a limited budget, this sort of thing is far more affordable than the final pieces.

  Anyway, I don’t mind telling you that I’m anxious about Gemma’s being at the opening of my show. I want her to be proud of me, even if she can’t find an interest in what I do. I want her to know I am a responsible, reasonably successful person on whom she can rely. And I want to impress her too, no matter how silly that sounds. I want her to know I have some reputation as an artist. I want her to realize that people who do care about art take me seriously.

  Alan didn’t care about art. And he never took my work seriously. He never took me seriously. But that’s typical of emotionally controlling and possessive men.

  Let me explain.

  In the early days of our relationship, Alan pretended to be supportive of my art (but of course at the time I thought he was sincere), even if he admitted to not understanding it. “I think it’s great,” he’d say about a particular piece. I’d ask him what exactly about the piece made him say it was great. He’d shrug. “The whole thing, I guess.” It didn’t matter to me that he was no art critic. It only mattered that he paid me a compliment.

  But over time he took more and more to belittling my achievements, specifically, my sculpture in clay and stone and wood, denigrating the work that meant the most to me. I can’t tell you how often he opined that playing around with wet clay and chipping away at blocks of stone was all well and good, but I was meant for better things. At least, a more steady choice of jobs.

  “Like what?” I would ask every time he brought up the subject of My Life.

  “Like pretty much anything,” Alan would reply. “Why don’t you change your major and get a degree in accounting?”

  And every time I would say, “Alan, it’s too late for that. Besides, I hate doing math. I’m no good at it, and it doesn’t interest me.”

  And round and round it would go. To be fair, money was tight in our household, what with me still in school and Alan not making very much money. And even when I’d graduated, we still sometimes had trouble making the rent. I was working part-time as a waitress while devoting the majority of my days to my art, creating new pieces, learning new techniques and perfecting the ones I’d already learned, submitting pieces to local gallery shows. There were times, I admit, when I felt demoralized and wondered if in pursuing a life in art I was being willfully naïve or selfish. I’d remember what my mother had told me about following my dream and feel bolstered for a moment or two, but then I would think of my father’s none too subtle hints about “settling down” and getting a “proper job,” and always there was Alan’s not so subtle pressure. It became more difficult with each passing day to sustain enthusiasm for what had once been so important to me.

  There were more than just economic reasons behind Alan’s pressuring me to quit art. He didn’t like me going off to the tiny part of town where artists congregated to work; he began to follow me to my studio and wait outside, sometimes for hours, for me to leave. He didn’t try to hide, either—just parked his beat-up old car across the street and sat. He began to show up unexpectedly at my lunch dates and to invite himself along to gatherings of fellow artists, where he’d be a dark, negative presence in the room. Later he would criticize my friends for being lazy and morally suspect and lacking civility. “Not one person had the decency to ask what I do for a living,” he would complain. I never did, but I should have replied that he never asked one question about anyone’s work, either. Instead I would soothe his petulance and say stupid things like, “You know how artists are,” no matter that I was insulting myself as much as I was insulting my friends.

  But Alan persisted in his subtle and not so subtle methods of undermining my commitment to the thing I most loved, and finally, worn down, tired of being broke, and without another emotional resource but for Marion, who, as Alan’s devoted mother, always echoed his opinions and sentiments, I put away or sold most of my materials and canceled the lease on the tiny studio I had been renting. Alan praised my wisdom and told me he knew I would now also put aside the dubious characters—especially the men—I had once worked among.

  As luck—really?—would have it, there was an opening for a deadly boring clerical job at Rowland Electronics, the company for which Alan was currently working. I applied and got the job immediately; frankly, I was way overqualified, and as a result, not very good at the work. But in Alan’s opinion, the situation was ideal. He could keep an eye on me at all times and hey, we could even commute together, which, he announced, was cost saving and efficient. Who could argue?

  I’ll probably never tell any of this to Gemma, definitely not at this point in our relationship. For one thing, I don’t want to sound accusatory. For another, I’m not proud of behaving the way I did with Alan, of pretty much handing over my independence and abandoning my interests. If he’s to blame for manipulating me, then I’m to blame for allowing it. But maybe neither of us is to blame, assuming we were hardwired to play out the relationship as we did. But no. I can’t let either of us off the hook that easily.

  I just remembered something. I wish I hadn’t.

  At one point a few years after Gemma’s abduction, I decided it might be a good idea to see a therapist again—this was a year or so after the therapist who suggested I have another child as a way to heal the pain of Gemma’s loss. There had been a similar case to Gemma’s in the national news, but unlike in Gemma’s case, the stolen baby had been found within days of being taken. He was in the hospital for observation, doing well, though a little dehydrated. His mother was hysterical with joy. His father, the abductor, had been arrested, along with his female accomplice.

  I was happy for the mother and child. But their happy ending only highlighted my own state of uncertainty.

  At our second session, the therapist told me that after seven years (it varies from state to state, but it’s seven years here in Maine), a person could have another person declared legally dead. “And?” I asked. Seriously, I had no idea where he was going with this bit of information. “And,” he said, “having Alan and your daughter declared legally d
ead might help bring some closure. After all, the odds of them being found alive are pretty small. Infinitesimal, really.”

  I remember a sort of fury rushing through me then, fogging any clear thought. When my mind returned a moment later, I realized that having Alan declared legally dead was the last thing I wanted, because as long as he was presumed guilty of child abduction and was, therefore, a fugitive from justice, there was in my mind every reason to hope he was alive and would someday be caught and prosecuted and sentenced.

  And as for Gemma . . . “Screw the odds!” I shouted at the therapist. “What happens if my daughter does come home to me someday only to find I’ve had her declared dead? What in God’s good name will she think of me, that I cared so little, that I gave up hope!”

  The therapist (obviously an idiot) tried to calm me down with some words I was too furious to register, but I was already half out the door. And I never paid the bill. That was the first and only time in my life I made such a stand.

  Seriously, maybe now I’ve exorcised that awful memory once and for all. I certainly hope so.

  Because there’s still work to be done if I’m to be ready for the opening.

  Chapter 51

  I went with Verity to her studio at the college again. If she wondered why I was along for the ride, she didn’t say. I know she likes us to spend time together because she’s always the one asking me to do stuff with her. Maybe she doesn’t care why I go along as long as I do.

  When we got to the studio, I sat at one of the long tables and looked through some of Verity’s books about art while she worked. Let me tell you, some of those books weigh a ton, and you should see how much they cost. I’d never seen books like them, not the inside of them, I mean. They’re full of pictures of paintings and sculptures and buildings, both really old ones like European cathedrals and ones from the last century, like some by this American guy named Frank Lloyd Wright. It was kind of like watching the Travel Channel in some ways, flipping through those books. And kind of like being in history class but a lot more interesting. Occasionally I looked up and watched Verity as she stood at one of the easels, paintbrush in hand and a pencil behind one ear. I’m pretty sure she didn’t notice I was watching. She seemed so focused. She looked so on another planet at one point I thought she probably wouldn’t even hear the fire alarm if it went off. And it occurred to me that I’d never seen Dad concentrate so hard on anything. Ever. Maybe that’s why he always loses at cards.