P.S. Tell, Dillon I say hello back and that I enjoyed meetingher too. And that she’s hands down my favorite Baptiste.
I pressed send witha feeling of complete satisfaction. I’d remained professional, polite andpersistent. All the right P’s. Now he would get the message loud and clear andmove on.
He was a successfulbusiness owner with restaurants to run and empires to build. His attention spanwas probably the equivalent to a chipmunk on crack. Monday would come and goand so would his thoughts about me or what I could do for his business or mypenchant toward gray and yellow and all thingsgreen.
And I would be morevigilant to avoid Ezra as often as possible. Now that the engagement party wasover, I wouldn’t need to seek him out again, and the chances of me ever runninginto him on accident were very slim.
It wasn’t like weran in the same circles or shopped at the same organic, uppity grocery storesor vacationed on the same private tropical islands. I would stay on my side ofthe city and he could stay on his.
There was onlyVera’s wedding to worry about, but we would be back to being strangers by then.Like divorced strangers. We could share joint custody of Vera and Killian,alternating weekends and Wednesdays.
We would pass eachother coming and going or at the occasional party hosted by our mutual friends,but he had his world and I had mine and ne’er would they ever meet.
I stared at myphone, refusing to close my eyes and conjure his eyes, his nose, or the breadthof his strong hands. I ignored the tingle in my fingers begging me to paint anddraw and create something that could capture that unnamed thing in him I foundso obnoxiously fascinating. As I finished my hair and put my makeup on, I stubbornlyrefused to head back to my studio and examine what I’d done the night before.
As I made lunch andtook two Tylenol, two Advil and an Alka-Seltzer, I chose to forget about theadvice Ezra had given last night and the way he’d focused so intently on me.
And then I proceededto erase from my mind the three emails today, the emails from before that, and everyinteractionsI’d had with him since I met him.
He had his life.And I had mine. And everything about us was too different to even consider workingtogether or near each other or in a general vicinity of each other. We were toodifferent and too set in our own ways.
Good luck, Ezra FezziwigBaptiste. Godspeed.
Chapter Ten
Nobody had turnedthe porch light on at my parents’ house. It looked foreboding from the street,like the house you wanted to avoid when you went trick-or-treating as a kidbecause you knew they would hand out pennies instead of candy.
That basicallysummed up my childhood. Always pennies. Never anything sweet.
The front room wasdark as I stepped inside, even though the still winter sun had started to setan hour ago. Typical. My mom wasn’t concerned with making me feel welcome.She’d already invited me over for supper, so her obligation had been fulfilled.
Light from thekitchen situated at the back of the house glowed burnished orange on the datedcarpet, spreading a long rectangle to the edge of a scuffed coffee table. Icould hear my mom knocking around in the kitchen, putting the final touches onsupper. Pots clinked and water boiled, drawers opened and spoons stirred, butno radio or TV could be heard. Just her huffing at our supper and my dad’sdistant cough from their bedroom.
I stood there for aminute, invisible and unnoticed. Taking a deep breath, I inhaled a bouquet ofmemories and emotions. My chest tightened and I couldn’t tell if it was fromregret for agreeing to this or nostalgic longing for when I was a kid andhadn’t had any responsibilities. Whatever the feeling that settled so heavilyon my heart, it made me want to purge it from my body, get it out of me andeternalize it on something else. I wanted to paint this exact moment, somehowmove it from reality to canvas.
I would focus onthat stretched rectangle of light, make it the very center of the portrait. Thecarpet would need to be just the right, faded shade of brown. I would need tospend hours detailing the grains of wood from the coffee table. The doorwaywould need to be the right proportion.
And then in thebackground I would add my mom at the stove, her peppered black hair pulled in alow ponytail. I would bow her head over her pot, taking care to detail hercurled fingers around a wooden spoon and the black sweatpants and t-shirt shewould no doubt be wearing. But I would leave her face hidden, unseen.
Somehow I wouldbring in the master bedroom. Maybe just a sliver of the doorway with the cornerof a bed and a pair of large socked feet hanging off the edge.
I would put it alltogether in grays and blacks and woodsy browns. I would reserve all the colorfor that one window of light. And then I would let the viewer read into thestory whatever they wished. I would let them look at this secret picture of myfamily and infer whatever story it told them.
Because it woulddepend on them, on their view of the world. This could be a story of resilienceand loyalty, of people sticking it out no matter what, a happily ever after. Orthis could very easily be a tragedy. I still hadn’t made up my mind.
I jingled my keysand cleared my throat. Dropping my purse on the recliner near the window, Imade as much noise as possible and headed toward the kitchen.
“I’m here!” Icalled so everyone in the house would know I arrived.
My mother turnedfrom her spot at the counter and looked over me in her hawk-like way. She neverwore makeup so her eyes had a beady quality that was unsettling when they werecritical. “Hi,” she said.
“Hi.” The pressurein my chest tightened. I subtly worried over my choice of clothes and shoes andevery single life choice I’d ever made.
She turned back tosupper and tilted her head. “I need you to set the table. I asked your fatherto, but he has a very important obligation in the other room.”
“By that, you meantaking a nap,” I teased. “No worries, Mama. What’s the point of coming home ifI don’t get to do chores?”
Without turningaround or acknowledging my upbeat candor, she snorted at her simmering dishes. “He’shad a very rough day of napping. His afternoon nap apparently wasn’t enough.And you know, I interrupted him with the vacuuming, so he had to start overonce I was finished. The man has no stamina.”
