“As I’ll ever be.” She smiles a sad roaming smile that takes over her entire face, and quietly watches out the car window the entire ride.
The hospital has that familiar fluorescent hue, the one that seems to be consistent no matter what medical building you go in. My mom lays casually on the bed in the center of the room, flipping through the same ten or so cable TV channels the hospital offers. So far things have gone as expected. Words like terminal, and inoperable are thrown around and I squeeze my mom’s hand after each one. Finally, we get to discussing her treatment plan which the doctorinsistson reiterating only has a twelve percent chance of working, and I want to ask him if he’s ever heard of the law of attraction but think better of it. Mom’s eyes turn steely, her emotions inaccessible to me.
“You're sure you want to move forward with this? It won’t be easy and it definitely won’t be fun,” he says to my mom, turning so there’s only room for her to answer. Staring him down with as much irritation in my gaze as I can muster, I feel my mom’s gaze on me.
“That’s uh, why we’re here,” she says, smirking at me like the doctor didn’t just suggest this is all pointless. “Don’t think this one would have it any other way.”
Dr. Whitman chuckles, nodding, and I bite the inside of my cheek.
“Alright, well, I’m going to keep you overnight to run the remaining tests, so go ahead and get comfortable.” He gestures to the bed. “We’ll start our first round of treatment in the morning. I assume you’ll be back for that.” I nod. “Great. I’ll be in touch later this evening and we can discuss the plan a little more in detail.” Dr. Whitman leaves, and I watch my mother tip her head up toward the ceiling, like the fluorescent lights have something to offer her.
More than a few people in the hallway asked if we were sisters because we look so alike, and because she’s a little too young to be the mom of a twenty-two year old. Same long blonde unruly hair, same deep tan from being in the sun, and same deep blue eyes—although Grant has those too.
Mom shifts in her bed, eyeing me, eyeing her. “Will you stop starin’ at me like that? It’s unsettlin’.” She rolls her eyes, and I do it back. “You should go. What—you're just gonna stay here all night? Don’t you have stuff to do?”
“Such as?”
A thoughtfulness I don’t remember seeing as a child crosses her gaze. “Anything, Sloane. You could do anything other than sit by a dyin’ woman all day.”
“Well, good thing I don’t wanna do anything else, andgood thingyou’re not dyin’,” I retort, sliding into the narrow cot alongside her. “No place I’d rather be, Connie bee.” I boop her nose and admire the way her laughter rolls out of her as I lean into the feeling.
5
Sloane
“Can we light stage left with the spot instead?” I yell to Bill, the lighting designer who is currently situated in the small booth at the top of the theatre. I stick the end of a paint brush in my mouth, considering the lighting on the colors I chose for the backdrop. If you told me a few months ago I’d be living in the northeast, designing sets, I’d have laughed in your face.
“Serious artists don’t settle into predictable fields,”Elliot’s voice practically screams at me anytime I find myself enjoying the work I’m doing here. But it’s temporary. That's the mantra I’ve stuck, with at least. I’m here for mom’s treatment and then I’m gone.
But in the meantime, the Boston Conservatory for the Arts seems like the perfect little side quest. Gen floated the idea to me a few weeks ago when I met her at the bar and honestly I thought maybe it was a drunken promise made in the line to the bathroom, but when she texted a few days later giving me the details and stating the job was mine if I wanted it it was an easy decision. I’m hoping it'll quiet my mind. Give mesomething to do between hospital visits with Mom. Spark inspiration in my finger tips that haven’t seemed to work since I left California. I thought whatever was blocking me from creating would dissipate, the way it’s come and gone so many times over the course of my life. This time it feels like I’m stuck in cement, even the paint brush feels wrong in my hands.
That’s why this is good for me: a prompt, the setting of the nutcracker, a ballet I’ve seen countless times with millions of references. It’s mindless but just involved enough to make me feel like I’m still pursuing whatever it is I once wished to pursue.
“Her hair is like Rapunzel," I hear one of the little voices behind me squeak. A small redhead with curls pulled up into a ridiculously tight top knot. I smile to myself, letting the child’s comment momentarily stroke my ego before an even tinier raven haired girl chimes in.
“Sure, if Rapunzel was like seven feet tall.” I glance over and watch the red head and another little girl franticallyshhhher but she doesn’t shy away. Instead she meets my gaze, raises an eyebrow like someone twice her age as if to sayyour move.
“I’m five ten. Not seven feet.” I cross my arms, raising my eyebrows back.
“Cool?” Her voice is bored and her friends are looking at her in sheer horror, but the audacity of this child has me laughing.
“You're pretty vicious for a toddler,” I note and her eyes narrow.
“I’m eleven.”
“Cool?” I smile because I know I’ve won and sure, I shouldn’t find pleasure in arguing with a child but I’ll take a win where I can get it. I turn back, fixating on the wood grain in front of me, letting myself get lost in the gliding movement of the brush.
Rehearsal has been brutal today for the dancers. Gen very briefly introduced me to the stage manager before running off and has barely stopped to hydrate. I’m playing around with the half painted backdrop left behind by the artist I’m apparently replacing, making sure each snow flake has a glazed sheen so it glimmers against the warm hues the backlights are creating when the choreographer whose name I can’t pronounce claps her hands, signaling the end of rehearsal for the day. The dancers scatter like flies, and Gen nods at me to follow her, the art director in tow as we trek toward backstage.
She’s a goddess, and watching her lithe arms waft around as she tries to translate the art director’s vision for the set piece is mesmerizing. I think this girl’s incapable of moving without grace; every move she makes is loaded with a soft sensuality that I’m convinced she doesn’t even recognize. I saw it the moment she walked into that bar, and I see it now.
“And I know you said you paint watercolors, but he really—” the art director interrupts Gen, a flurry of French flying out of his pursed lips, “—oui. Je suis sûr qu'elle peut,” she tells him, brows furrowed. “Can you do oil? He’s insisting,” she addresses me, rolling her eyes.
“Of course!” I lie, a fist sized knot forming in my throat. I’ve avoided painting with oils since I fled the art studio my adoptive mother, Evie, designed for the both of us. “I’m a little out of practice, but yes.”
The gallery wall in the west wing library of my childhood home explodes in my mind’s eye, and all I can see are Evie’s bright, effusive oil paintings, blindingly contrasting my numerous attempts at capturing dawn and dusk. I wonder if it looks the same now, or if Evie boxed up that part of me like she stowed away all the others that didn’t fit into her conception of the perfect daughter.
“Do you believe in fate?” Gen’s question comes out of leftfield as we march up the stairs to the cat walk, a supposed short cut to the workshop I’ll be spending most of my time in.
