Emily's Art and Soul

by Joy Argento

  “Yep. I go down to the end of this hall and turn left. Right? I mean, correct?”

  “Yes, left, that’s right—correct.” Andi laughed. “That’s the way to the art room all right. I’ll see you in about twenty minutes.” Andi turned and went in the opposite direction.

  Emily watched her walk away, once again noticing the form-fitting jeans.

  Once in the art room, Emily set her armload down on the closest table. She turned, hands on her hips, and surveyed the place. Several color charts and a few old, faded posters hung on the walls. Three deep sinks controlled by foot pedals sat side by side in the corner, and drawing tables were scattered about the room. Light streamed in through large windows, illuminating several large, well-worn wooden easels. On the wall behind her desk hung a small blackboard trimmed with light oak. The tray held several pieces of broken chalk in various colors, along with a dusty eraser. The chalkboard seemed out of place next to the brand new smart board, but Emily was sure she would use both. Okay, I like this room. I can do this. After a little rearranging and some new posters on the walls, she would like it even more.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door. “It hasn’t been twenty min—oh.” It wasn’t Andi.

  The frown on the woman’s face was less than welcoming. Her gray hair pulled tightly back from her face was twisted into a bun. Emily wondered how she was able to walk in the narrow, pointy-toed, high-heeled shoes that her feet were stuffed into. Her flower printed dress reminded Emily of something her grandmother would have worn—twenty years ago.

  “Hi,” Emily said, cheerfully and a bit hopefully.

  “Mrs. Sanders?” Her voice was as stern as her face.

  “Miss Sanders,” she corrected. “Emily.”

  “Miss Sanders. You failed to sign some very important paperwork in the office.” The woman’s frown deepened. Any deeper and Emily was sure her face would crack.

  “I was in the…” Emily stopped her explanation, realizing it was fruitless. Time to change tactics. “I am so sorry.” She smiled sweetly. “Can I come by after the staff meeting to sign them?”

  “I suppose that would be fine.” One side of her mouth tilted up at an angle.

  I wonder if that is her idea of a smile.

  The woman nodded and was gone, probably off to harass someone else.

  Emily went back to the task at hand: sorting through boxes of art supplies. She was lost in thought when Andi silently slipped into the room and came up behind her.

  “Finding anything good?” Andi asked quietly.

  “Holy shit!” Emily jumped, almost knocking into Andi. “Stop sneaking up on me. You’re going to give me a heart attack.” She turned with hand over her heart but couldn’t help smiling.

  “I’m so sorry.” Somehow it didn’t sound sincere through the giggle that Andi tried to suppress. “Oh, these are great.” Andi thumbed through a pile of art posters lying on a table nearby. “I love art. I wish I was creative, but I can’t even draw a straight line.”

  “That’s one of the reasons they make rulers,” Emily teased with a grin.

  “Thanks.” Andi grinned back, showing off a row of almost perfect white teeth. One tooth front and center in the bottom row leaned a bit to the left. Somehow Emily found that endearing. “I’ll try to remember that. Are you ready for the meeting?”

  “Let me get my stuff and I’ll be set.” She swung her backpack over one shoulder as she followed Andi out the door. Without her permission, Emily’s eyes once again went to Andi’s rear. I wish my jeans looked that good on my butt.

  ***

  Andi was glad that boring meeting was over. She had given Emily a quick tour of the school but was sure it would still take Emily a few days to figure out her way around. She sat comfortably on one of the drawing tables, swinging her legs back and forth, careful not to let her toes scrape the floor.

  She watched as Emily dumped a box of paints onto a nearby table. “So, are you ready for the students to start in two weeks?” she asked. It was nice having someone new to chat with. She considered several of the teachers here friends, but there was something about Emily. She barely knew her but already felt comfortable being around her.

  “Pretty much. I’m really looking forward to it. I still need to finish sorting out these supplies. How about you?”

  “I have a calculator. That’s all I need. At least that’s what most of the kids think. They don’t need to bother learning anything because they can just use the calculators on their phones. I tell ya, back when I was a kid, they didn’t have calculators or smartphones. We were lucky if we had a pencil and paper to figure out math problems. And then we had to sharpen the pencils with our teeth, because pencil sharpeners hadn’t been invented yet.”

  Emily separated the paints into piles. “I guess you should count yourself lucky you had that, because I hear the kids with stone tablets and chisels had it even worse. Those chisels were murder on the teeth.”

  “Ain’t that the truth?” Andi slid off her perch and walked over to Emily. “Need any help?”

  “Sure. If you’re serious, can you sort the rest of these paints? Oil paints in that pile and watercolors over here.” Emily pointed as she spoke.

  “Okay then. What are you going to do while I do this?”

  Emily sat down on the same table Andi had just vacated. Swinging her legs, she said, “I am going to sit here and watch you work for a while. Sorting is hard work and I need a rest.” She lasted all of two minutes before getting up and grabbing a box of paintbrushes.

  “All done resting?” Andi asked.

  “Yep. I was wrong. I can’t sit there and watch you work.” Emily smiled. Her eyes crinkled a bit at the corners and Andi noticed how blue they were, even under the room’s harsh fluorescent lights. She made a mental note to try to make this new friend smile more often.

  Chapter Two

  Emily changed out of her dress clothes and into jeans and a T-shirt as soon as she got home. The casual clothes helped her relax.

  “Did you make s-s-some new friends at school t-today?” Mindy’s tone sounded more like she was asking a child starting kindergarten instead of her older sister starting a new job.

  “As a matter of fact, I did.” Emily handed her a couple paper napkins to put on the table for supper.

  “Who?” Mindy asked.

  “Let’s see. I met the lady from the front office. I don’t think we’ll be really good friends, though, because I forgot to sign some papers, so she was kind of mad at me. And I met some people in the main office like the principal, and I talked to two teachers after the staff meeting. But the nicest person that I met today was Andi, the math teacher.”

  “Ooooh! Is he your boyfriend?” Mindy put her hand over her mouth and giggled.

  Emily playfully swatted at her with a dishtowel. “No, silly. Andi is a girl. She showed me around the school, so now I won’t get lost. Hopefully.”

  “What does she look like?”

  Emily smiled. “She is a little bit taller than me. She has very dark brown hair, about down to here.” Emily showed Mindy with her hand. “She has pretty brown eyes and dimples.”

  “Dimples.” Mindy giggled. “What the heck is that?”

  “Hmm, that’s a good question. It’s sort of like little holes in your face, right here.” Emily pointed to her own cheeks.

  “Can you see her teeth through the holes?” Mindy asked.

  Emily laughed. “No, honey, the holes don’t go all the way through her face. They only go in a little tiny bit. A dent more than a hole, I guess.”

  Emily donned an oven mitt and pulled a pan out of the oven. The room filled with the warm scent of tomato sauce and pepperoni. Frozen pizza definitely wasn’t her idea of a healthy meal, but it was the best she could do after her first day of work. “So, how about you? Did you make any friends today?”

  “I m-met lots of people today,” Mindy started. Twenty minutes later Mindy was still talking between bites of her food. In great detai
l, she told Emily everything that had happened and about everyone she’d encountered. Two people, Daisy and Jeffrey, were now considered her new best friends.

  Plunging into a bowl of vanilla ice cream for dessert, Mindy turned the topic of conversation to their mother.

  “You really miss her, don’t you?” Emily asked.

  “I miss her a whole lot. She was the greatest m-mother in the whole world. I not so sure why people die. How come people die, Emily? Daddy said it was ’cause God wanted her with him. But I wanted her with me.”

  Emily reached across the table and took Mindy’s pudgy hands in her own. “Oh, sweetie, I miss her too. Sometimes the bodies that we have stop working right, and we die. Like the blood vessel in Mom’s head stopped working, and she died. Mom was lucky enough to have a wonderful place like heaven to go to. She’s with God now and waiting for the rest of the people she loves to join her.”

  “Like us?”

  “Like us. But that probably won’t be for a very long time, so Mom has God and Grandma and Grandpa and Uncle Johnny to keep her company until it’s our turn to join her. Do you understand?”

  Mindy nodded. The look of confusion left her face. “We are so, so lucky, Emily. We had the b-b-bestest mom in the whole world and we had her for a long time, ever since I was a little baby, even. And she is okay now. She isn’t in no pain, no more.” Mindy shook her head.

  Emily rose and gave Mindy a tight squeeze. When Mindy had enough of it, she gently pushed Emily away with a giggle. Emily roughed up her hair. She loved her baby sister, but it was surprising her how much she liked having her around.

  “Okay, little girl, let’s get these dishes done.”

  “Hey! I am not a little girl. If I am a little girl, you are an old lady.” Her laugh came out more like a snicker.

  “Okay, big girl, let’s get these dishes done.”

  “Okay, okay, okay, that’s better. You wash, I dry.”

  “How about we put them into this dishwasher here? It came with the house, ya know.”

  Mindy slapped her hand against her forehead. “Oh yeah, I forgot ’bout that. How do we do it again?”

  Emily showed Mindy how to load the dishes, but her thoughts turned to Andi and she smiled. She looked forward to her new job if it included people like her.

  Chapter Three

  It was the first day of school for the students, and Emily felt like it was her first day of work all over again. Her fingers tapped out a nervous rhythm on the steering wheel as she drove across town. She parked in the lot designated for teachers, and the sun warmed her skin as she got out of the car and breathed in the beautiful, early September day.

  She knew she was ready. Staff meetings, curriculum planning, and organizing her classroom had kept her pretty busy the last couple of weeks. Her teaching plan was well thought out and clear. Nothing to be nervous about. She took another deep breath.

  Compared to teaching at a city school in the heart of Rochester, this should be a piece of cake. She had gotten to know those kids, those tough inner-city kids, and they had come to respect her. She was starting over here. New school. New kids. Fear of the unknown. She realized the pattern in herself. This fear wasn’t a new thing. She shook her head and half smiled at the revelation. Not that it made it any easier for her to walk into the two-story brick building and confront the unknown.

  Once in her classroom, Emily let out a sigh, set her backpack on the desk, and proceeded to take the chairs off the tables. She didn’t have to wait long for her homeroom students. A quiet buzz grew into loud chatter as the teenagers trickled in, forming small groups, clamoring to catch up on summer activities and the latest gossip.

  Emily jumped as the bell, indicating the start of the school day, blasted over the loudspeaker above her head. “Everyone take a seat,” she said, trying to cover her embarrassment. She repeated the command to a few stragglers who continued to chat.

  “Good morning.” Emily forced a smiled at the new faces. “I’m Miss Sanders. Obviously, I’m the new art teacher here, seeing as we are in the art room.”

  A few of the kids chuckled.

  “Now that we know who I am, let’s find out who you are. Please raise your hand when I call your name. Susan Abbott?” She looked around the room until her eyes found the hand raised in the air. Her eyes followed the hand down to the young girl’s face. Emily knew it would take time, but she wanted to try to get a handle on matching names and faces. She marked her attendance sheet and read the next name. “Kenneth Anderson?”

  The tension eased with each name she called. The butterflies in her stomach took flight and went on their merry way. The setting was new, but the routine was familiar, and she knew that soon, it would feel like home here. She was sure of it.

  ***

  The day seemed to fly by, and before she knew it, the final bell rang, signaling the end of the last period. There were no lessons today. Instead, Emily talked to the kids about art and what they hoped to get out of the class. It had been a very productive day, and at the tail end of it, Emily sat at her desk sorting through her attendance sheets.

  “Knock, knock.” The sound of Andi’s voice made her smile.

  “Hi there.”

  “Hi, yourself.” Andi’s smile matched her own as she leaned in the door. She wore a simple lavender pullover shirt and dark dress pants. Emily missed the jeans, but she looked great dressed up too. “How did it go today?”

  “Excellent. I think it went really well. They seem like a great bunch. Of course, I know it was only the first day and everyone was on their best behavior.” Emily gathered a few stray pens from her desktop and put them in the drawer.

  “Yes. It doesn’t hurt that art is an elective either. The kids that are in your class are here because they want to be. Not always the same story with my math students.”

  “True, but I also get the kids who think art is an easy A and don’t want to put in the effort.”

  “Good point. Hey, I was wondering if you wanted to grab a cup of coffee or something. There’s a decent place a few miles down the road. Good coffee. Great pastries.”

  Emily took a quick look at her watch. It would be a little over an hour before Mindy got home. She knew she would be fine by herself for a little while but didn’t want to be too late getting home to make supper. “Sure,” she said. “But I need to be home by five.” Okay, she could be a little late getting home, if it meant spending time getting to know Andi.

  “Got a hot date?”

  “Yeah.” Emily put some papers into her backpack as she rose. “A hot date with my sister.”

  ***

  The coffee shop was bright and cheery as Emily followed Andi in. The aroma of fresh roast and baked goods permeated the air. The red and white checkered tablecloths gave the place an old-fashioned look and feel. A sign by the door informed them to seat themselves, and Andi led the way to a table by the window.

  “This is a cute little place.” Emily slid into the booth.

  “Coffee?” The waitress, complete with a pink uniform and pinafore apron, was at the table with a pot of coffee ready to pour. It looked like something you would see on an I Love Lucy rerun.

  “Yes, thanks,” Andi said, turning the coffee cup in front of her upright.

  Emily copied the action and nodded.

  The waitress filled both cups and set the pot down on the table. Reaching into the pocket in the front of the apron, she pulled out a green pad and pen. “Ready to order?” Her eyes were young but her skin showed too many days spent in the sun.

  “What’s good here?” Emily asked Andi.

  “I love the Danish. Cheese is my favorite, but cherry comes in a close second.”

  “Ooh. Cherry sounds great. I’ll have that, please.”

  Andi ordered the cheese Danish and the waitress was off.

  Emily reached for the sugar and half-and-half. Andi watched with obvious amusement as she opened and poured four little containers of half-and-half and two packets of sugar into her cof
fee. Emily caught her eye. “What?” she asked.

  “You like a little coffee with your cream and sugar?” Little laugh lines appeared around Andi’s eyes with her smile.

  “A little,” Emily answered, enjoying the company. Andi had a great sense of humor and Emily had no trouble playing along.

  Andi sipped her coffee—black.

  Emily gave her coffee mixture several rotations with her spoon. Cherry filling oozed onto her plate as she cut into her pastry. Another couple of drops fell as she bit into the piece on her fork.

  Andi reached across the small table, ran her finger across the drips, and put her finger into her mouth. Emily watched the movement with great interest. Andi looked up to see Emily watching her. “Sorry,” she said, looking a little embarrassed. “I wanted to see how the cherry tasted. You can have a bite of my cheese Danish if you want.” She cut a piece of her own food, stabbed it with her clean fork, and reached across the table, sliding it into Emily’s open mouth.

  “Mmm,” was all Emily could say. She was too surprised by this whole exchange with her new friend to say much more. She had a few close friends back in Rochester, but none of them would have reached for that drip of filling or offered a bite of food to her off their own fork. She liked the way it felt. She liked this budding friendship. She had the feeling Andi would become a very good friend.

  “So, tell me about this hot date you have with your sister. Is she your only sister? Do you have other siblings?” Andi took a bite of her pastry. “Isn’t this food good?”

  Emily took a sip of her diluted coffee before answering. “It’s just supper at home, yes, no, and yes.”

  “Huh?”

  “My hot date with my sister is just supper at home. Yes, she is my only sister. No, I don’t have other siblings, and yes, this food is good. Really good!”

  Andi laughed.

  “Mindy came to live with me after our mom died a few months ago. Well, my mom died a few months ago, and my sister came to live with me a few weeks ago,” Emily clarified.