Painted Moon

by Karin Kallmaker

  She was too much her father to fool herself about her skills. She was no Frank Lloyd Wright. But every ounce of creativity she did have was being ground out of her at Ledcor & Bidwell. As her mother had said it would be.

  She tried to turn her thoughts from this unprofitable path. She'd been down it too much lately. She tried to think of how she'd get more exercise. Perhaps she could get Parker to go dancing with her. She hadn't been in ages and she dearly loved it. But Parker didn't like it as much and complained that she outmatched him, which made it no fun for him.

  It was only a tiny mental step from the box where she kept her unrequited desire to go dancing to the dumpster where she kept her growing resentments about her job ... and about Parker. She was aware that her bitterness about the career setback spilled over onto Parker. She resented him his success. She resented his salary being five times hers and that after moving across the country they lived in separate cities and only saw each other on the weekends, and then only after she drove down to San Jose. Driving to see him in the car that cost a fortune to park in San Francisco a full block from her dark, tiny studio third-floor walk-up. She resented that his apartment, with two bedrooms and a modern kitchen, was in a complex with pool and Jacuzzi and free parking — all of which cost him less than her rent. She had almost no savings to speak of, while his bank balance was skyrocketing. He could have afforded a new car without a second thought.

  She was enough her mother to tell herself firmly that she'd made her bed and now she had not only to lie in it, but get a good night's rest. She snuggled down into the sofa cushions and thought about getting one of the warm blankets.

  She probably wouldn't have resented him so much if when she wasn't there he missed her, but she had the feeling she could skip seeing him and he wouldn't care. He hadn't been upset about her absence over the holiday weekend. She'd felt guilty about asking, but then he hadn't seemed to care. And she'd certainly had more fun than in a long time — making a big meal and having someone appreciate it. She'd forgotten how much she missed cooking. Her roommate in Boston had had an appreciative appetite, too, like Leah's.

  Funny, she hadn't thought about Kelly in ages. She wondered how she was doing, where she was working. She regretted that she and Kelly had grown apart — Kelly and Parker had been oil and water. After she had moved in with Parker, Kelly had just drifted away.

  Parker. She hadn't wanted to do this — adding up all that she'd given up for the sake of their relationship. Her apprenticeship in Boston. Kelly's friendship. Some of her parents' respect for her good sense. If she was being brutally honest, she'd given up some of her own self-respect. And all for a rut that was making her crazy.

  She put the book down, suddenly near tears. This taking stock had been inevitable. She'd been avoiding it, but now it was too late to stop. Her mother hadn't really had to persuade her too much to come up to her aunt's for Thanksgiving. She'd been eager to get away, have a bit of a holiday from her dark apartment and from Parker. They hadn't gone anywhere together in ages.

  Every weekend was exactly like the one before. Get off work at noon on Saturdays, hop in the car with her overnight bag already packed. Stop for gas — her cost. Stop for the groceries she knew he wouldn't have remembered to get, including condoms— her cost. Let herself in at Parker's around three. Wait for him to get home. Go out to dinner — Dutch treat. Maybe go to a movie — Dutch treat. Go back to bis place, have sex, be asleep by eleven. At least, he was asleep.

  The last four weekends she hadn't been able to sleep, so she'd gone down to the Jacuzzi. She'd struck up a running conversation with a nurse who came at that hour to work the knots out of her calves after her shift. If she was truthful with herself, she'd admit she looked forward more to talking about books, movies and politics in the Jacuzzi than to seeing Parker. Parker talked mostly about software and his co-workers.

  A board creaked on the other side of the room and she and Butch both started up.

  "Sorry," Leah said. "I was trying to be quiet. I thought you were asleep."

  Jackie had to clear her throat to be sure her voice wouldn't quaver. "I was just lying here thinking."

  "Oh." Leah snapped on the light in the kitchen. "You want some hot chocolate?"

  "Sure." Jackie sat up. Anything to stop thinking. Leah did have social skills, she thought with a little smile. She shrugged into the chenille robe Leah had lent her and padded out to the kitchen in her thick socks.

  "Can I ask you a question?"

  "Okay," Leah said. She poured milk into a saucepan, then looked up expectantly.

  "Whose clothes are these? They're too big for you." Jackie pulled on the front of the pajamas which even she didn't fill out completely.

  "They're Sharla's." Jackie could see the walls coming down in Leah's eyes.

  "I thought so. Thank you for letting me wear them."

  "Necessity is the mother and all that." Leah studiously measured out cocoa powder. "After my upbringing? I could hardly throw away good cloth."

  "Where'd you grow up?" Jackie settled at the kitchen table and pulled her feet up onto the chair. She tucked the robe around them.

  "Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Mennonite country."

  "Amish?"

  "Amish who use machinery. Cars only come in black in those parts and the chrome is painted black too. Can't be too gaudy." Leah smiled ruefully.

  Jackie thought of Leah's thick tempera and semi-precious metal canvases that she'd seen pictured in art journals. "Your early work was an answer to that, wasn't it?"

  Leah laughed. Jackie couldn't believe it — a genuine laugh. "Are you psychoanalyzing me?"

  "No, just guessing. After all, in Many-Splendored Black and Red, you painted over all except the edges of the silver with black. I'm just your average art student."

  "And I know what garbage they teach at art school."

  "My mother was appalled, too. She said that the curriculum has fallen off about twenty percent and the lack of teaching about non-Western Civilization arts is criminal."

  "She's right. The more I know of your mother, the more I like her. Can I interest you in a dash of Kahlua in your cocoa?" Jackie nodded a yes. Leah poured the steaming cocoa into two mugs, doctored each from a small bottle of Kahlua, and brought them to the table.

  "She's a good mother and still somehow very cool," Jackie said. She sipped her cocoa, the soothing chocolate warmth coating her throat. The Kahlua added a little burn and made her nose tingle. "It's hard to explain. She always knew when to be my mom, when to be an adult person I could proudly show off to friends, and when to be my friend. It was my dad's idea to name me after Jackson Pollack, though."

  Leah's lips turned up with the closest thing to genuine amusement Jackie had seen so far. "Your parents sound like intriguing personalities."

  "They are. My father is a wit and very charming. He taught me how to dance and walk a reception line without feeling like a robot. And if Mom hadn't been an artist she would have made a great therapist. As I get older I realize how hard both my parents worked to make a home for me that felt safe and secure, even in places where there was a lot of conflict."

  "Were you ever in danger?"

  Jackie shook her head. "Not that I knew. But when my dad was transferred to Egypt in the early eighties, I was sent to boarding school. I worried about them a lot, though. Particularly my mom. She didn't like to be cooped up in an embassy — she'd go off to the local markets to sketch or take language lessons. And she loves to cook with local foods."

  "That explains a lot." Leah sat up in her chair with an intrigued look. "I wondered about the rhythm of her work. It's not strictly Western. And the shapes of the figures and choices of stone — it's because she got inside the different places she lived."

  "She couldn't help it. Even in the U.S. she goes to flea markets, wherever people are buying and selling. She says that's where people are the most real."

  "And that series called Wall Street. It was chilling. I literally shivered when I
saw it."

  Jackie sipped her cooling cocoa and smiled fondly. "Proof in point. She spent a week at the Stock Exchange. Have you seen her Weavers series?"

  Leah shook her head. 'I haven't really been keeping up."

  "She did three figures based on a textiles market. All female figures. The forms are somewhat indistinct, but their hands and the yarns are amazingly detailed. It's as warm as Wall Street was cold."

  Leah looked pensive. "I suppose I should get out, but not... not right away. Um, listen. Is it okay if I sketch you in this light? It'll help with the detail on the other sketches—well, if I decide to take them to canvas."

  Jackie blinked. "Sure. That's okay." She had been sketched a lot. Her mother liked to teach kids drawing and Jackie had often been called upon to be their live subject. Her mother insisted art was a universal language.

  Leah returned with pencil and sketchpad. "Keep talking. You can move. Just keep the light on your face."

  Jackie sipped her cocoa. The Kahlua had left her with a pleasant glow inside and a tendency to smile. Parker drifted to the dim recesses of her mind. "If the snow stays light do you think anyone will come for me tomorrow?"

  Leah shrugged as her pencil scratched over the paper. "I'm going to guess probably not. They won't plow up here until after the highway's cleared, and they won't be starting that until tomorrow — if the snow breaks." She stopped talking to stare intently at her.

  "Oh goodie." Jackie leaned back in the chair and crossed her ankles. It was unsettling to have Leah's piercing gaze focused on her. "That means I can play in the snow and have a real day off instead of making nice with relatives I haven't seen since I was a baby."

  "Why'd you come up to see them? Turn a bit to the left."

  "My mom made me." Jackie laughed. "I know, I'm a little big for that, but she's very good at guilt when she wants to be. My coming up here lets her off the hook for another ten years. They don't really get along. My mom's way too outrageous for them." Her other reason, time away from Parker, she kept to herself.

  "I would have never said Jellica Frakes was outrageous. Cutting edge, yes."

  "It all depends on your point of reference. To her family, she's leading a completely bizarre life. To most artists I suppose she seems conservative."

  "Lift your chin." Leah was leaning closer, the pencil moving across the paper at light speed. "For my parents, guilt was a way of Ufe. Any form of aspiration, creativity or love that wasn't directed at salvation was a sin. No ifs, ands or buts. My father was an elder in the church."

  "When did you leave home?"

  "When I was eighteen. It was evident I had some artistic talent and they sent me to a Christian university near nowhere, New Mexico, to teach me how to be a nice, Christian artist. That's where I met Sharla."

  Jackie decided there was something special about the way Leah said Sharla's name. It vibrated. The way Jellica vibrated when her father said it. "Love at first sight?"

  Leah shook her head. "It took a while. But she was resourceful and determined. And she was determined never to go home again. Sharlotte Kinsey from Norman, Oklahoma. Can you imagine being from a place so off the beaten track that the main sight for miles is an oil field? Lancaster County is small but beautiful, full of life. The greens in the spring would actually hurt my eyes..." Leah's pencil paused for a moment and her eyes glazed. Then she shook her head and the pencil began moving again. "After a while she was determined that I would never go home either. So I didn't. Could you lean forward? Rest your elbows on the table."

  "It must have been hard," Jackie said as she complied with Leah's request. Leah scooted her chair closer and scanned Jackie's brows and forehead. Jackie dropped her gaze, unable to stare back.

  Leah was silent for a long time. She reached across the table, tracing the eraser end of her pencil along the laugh line that creased the left corner of Jackie's mouth. Jackie controlled a shiver. Leah's mouth had parted slightly and she felt as if Leah's gaze was burning her lips.

  Leah sat back suddenly and made a last addition to her sketch. She flipped the pad closed. "No," she said softly. "It wasn't hard. She made everything easy. For thirteen years everything was very easy. Only the last few have been a bitch." Leah got up abruptly and took her mug to the sink. "I think I'll turn in. Are you sure you're warm enough?"

  Jackie raised her mug in salute. She was devoutly grateful the sketching session was over. "I am now. Thanks. The Kahlua was nice." Truth be told, she was sweating slightly. She grabbed a toasty warm blanket from the clothesline and tucked herself into the sleeping bag. Leah clambered up the ladder out of sight. After a few minutes, all was quiet.

  Except for the rapid beating of Jackie's heart.

  5

  A feathery snow persisted until noon on Saturday. Jackie tried to earn her keep by shoveling most of the huge drift against the garage door to one side. Butch kept her company. The weather report said that the snow would continue in higher elevations — what's higher than here, she wondered—through the day, but that the sun would be out tomorrow. Towards sunset she thought she heard the faint echo of a snowplow hard at work, but it sounded a mountain or two away.

  Leah helped shovel for a while but at Jackie's urging went back to her sketches. She seemed grateful for the turkey sandwich Jackie forced on her in the early afternoon. Refreshingly worn out with physical labor, Jackie turned her attention to stripping the turkey carcass and making soup stock, all the while not thinking about Parker. After that she made soup. And baking powder biscuits. The door to Leah's studio remained closed.

  Long after sundown, Jackie finally knocked and carried in a steaming bowl of soup and some biscuits. Leah was dishevelled and drawn, and she murmured in a distracted way Jackie knew all too well from her mother's fits of artistic passion. She stoked up the fire in the pellet stove that heated the studio and left again, not even sure Leah had noticed her.

  An hour later Leah emerged, bringing her dirty dishes. She held out the bowl like an adult Oliver Twist. "May I have s'more, sir?"

  Jackie looked up from her novel and nodded at the pot on the corner of the stove. "It's still hot. Biscuits are wrapped in the tea towel in the basket." She sat up and stretched her spine. The kitchen chairs weren't that comfortable, but the heat from the stove was too blissful to leave.

  "I had no idea my kitchen could turn out something so tasty. And the biscuits are good."

  "There were a number of spices shoved in the back of that cabinet." Jackie pointed. "Plus some things that had changed organic states. I tossed them into the composter."

  Leah shrugged as she sat down at the table. "I hope Parker appreciates you." She dunked a piece of biscuit into her soup. "At this point, anyone else's cooking seems like manna to me, but even so, this is extra good."

  "The key to a successful Thanksgiving is using everything up. You now have several gallons of turkey stock. Butch, by the way, tells me she likes warm turkey stock on her kibble when it's cold."

  Leah made a derisive noise. "Yeah, right." Butch didn't even raise her head. She looked like a worn out, pleased dog. "I'll bet she said she should get turkey every day."

  Jackie laughed. "She's not that greedy. Once a week would do."

  Leah got up for a second biscuit. With her back turned she said, "You didn't say if Parker appreciated you. Does he appreciate your culinary prowess? Everything you do for him?"

  Jackie was slow to answer. Honesty seemed important at that moment. "It's not perfect, but I care a lot about him. He doesn't talk about his feelings easily." With a start, she realized she wasn't sure he had feelings to talk about.

  Leah was shaking her head as she sat down again. "Care? Caring is not worth wasting your time over. When you love someone, it invades every part of your life." She closed her eyes and idly stirred her soup. "It's not something you can describe, it just is. Every breath is a part of your love. There are no colors for it but it's every color, too."

  "You're describing obsession."

  Leah
pushed the bowl away as though she'd lost her appetite. "Who says where it goes over the line? Love is obsession. Every little thing about her is beautiful, even the little things you can't stand. You want to know her thoughts and how she spends her time away from you. And she shares them with you because she feels the same way. That's not obsession, not when she loves you back. Not when she's obsessed with you too."

  Leah wasn't speaking to Jackie, she was speaking to the blank wall that bore the outline of a canvas. Jackie didn't agree with Leah's definition of love... it wasn't anything like what she felt for Parker.

  “People don't want to admit to that kind of love. Because if you can feel it, you can feel pain, too. The kind of pain that cripples your spirit." Leah bit her lower lip. "If only..."

  In the golden light of the kitchen lamps, Jackie could see the glimmer of tears reflected in Leah's eyes. With a part of her that had nothing to do with her eyes, Jackie could see the black aura hanging around Leah, a pall of sorrow and hopelessness. It sent a chill up her spine and dusted her arms with gooseflesh.

  She didn't know why she pressed Leah for more. "If only?"

  "If only I had checked the lines myself instead of leaving it to the rental crew. The weather report was good for sailing, but the wind blew up unexpectedly. If only I'd headed in then. If only I'd made sure she'd tied her life jacket on tight. The mast snapped," Leah said with half-gasp. "Like a toothpick. And we capsized. I saw her head hit the railing as she went over. I couldn't reach her. She just slipped away from me."

  A tear spilled over and shimmered like a diamond on Leah's hollow cheek. "It was like watching a leaf wash down a flooded river. Her face, then her hair, then just her fingertips. Her life jacket slid off of her and then she was gone." On the last word, Leah ran out of breath. Jackie could see her fighting to breathe in. When she finally did, it was a long, racking sob that drew Jackie out of her chair to Leah's side.

  Without hesitation, she pulled Leah into her arms, cradling her head against her breasts. Leah pushed against her for a moment, then relented. From between them Jackie heard her say, "Her body washed up in San Pablo Bay two days later. Her family claimed it. They wouldn't let me go to the funeral. They took her body away and I never got to say goodbye."