Rolling her head back and forth on her pillow, Tabbi says, “No, Mom.” She says, “Granmy Wilmot says Dad never loved you for real. He only pretended love to bring you here and make you stay.”
“To bring me here?” Misty says. “To Waytansea Island?” With two fingers, she scratches off the loose flecks of white paint. The sill underneath is brown varnished wood. Misty says, “What else did your grandmother tell you?”
And Tabbi says, “Granmy says you're going to be a famous artist.”
What you don't learn in art theory is how too big a compliment can hurt more than a slap in the face. Misty, a famous artist. Big fat Misty Wilmot, queen of the fucking slaves.
The white paint is flaking off in a pattern, in words. A wax candle or a finger of grease, maybe gum arabic, it makes a negative message underneath. Somebody a long time ago wrote something invisible here that new paint can't stick to.
Tabbi lifts some strands of her hair and looks at the ends, so close-up her eyes go crossed. She looks at her fingernails and says, “Granmy says we should go on a picnic out on the point.”
The ocean shimmers, bright as the bad costume jewelry Peter wore in art school. Waytansea Point is nothing but black. A void. A hole in everything.
The jewelry you wore in art school.
Misty makes sure the window's locked, and she brushes the loose paint chips into the palm of one hand. In art school, you learn the symptoms of adult lead poisoning include tiredness, sadness, weakness, stupidity—symptoms Misty has had most of her adult life.
And Tabbi says, “Granmy Wilmot says everyone will want your pictures. She says you'll do pictures the summer people will fight over.”
Misty says, “Good night, honey.”
And Tabbi says, “Granmy Wilmot says you'll make us a rich family again.” Nodding her head, she says, “Dad brought you here to make the whole island rich again.”
The paint chips cupped in one hand, Misty turns out the light.
The message on the windowsill, where the paint flaked off, underneath it said, “You'll die when they're done with you.” It's signed Constance Burton.
Flaking off more paint, the message says, “We all do.”
As she bends to turn off the pink china lamp, Misty says, “What do you want for your birthday next week?”
And a little voice in the dark, Tabbi says, “I want a picnic on the point, and I want you to start painting again.”
And Misty tells the voice, “Sleep tight,” and kisses it good night.
July 10
ON THEIR TENTH DATE, Misty asked Peter if he'd messed with her birth control pills.
They were in Misty's apartment. She was working on another painting. The television was on, tuned to a Spanish soap opera. Her new painting was a tall church fitted together out of cut stone. The steeple was roofed with copper tarnished dark green. The stained-glass windows were complicated as spiderwebs.
Painting the shiny blue of the church doors, Misty said, “I'm not stupid.” She said, “A lot of women would notice the difference between a real birth control pill and the little pink cinnamon candies you switched them with.”
Peter had her last painting, the house with the white picket fence, the picture he'd framed, and he'd stuffed it up under his baggy old sweater. Like he was pregnant with a very square baby, he waddled around Misty's apartment. His arms straight down at his sides, he was holding the picture in place with his elbows.
Then fast, he moved his arms a little and the painting dropped out. A heartbeat from the floor, from the glass breaking into a mess, Peter caught it between his hands.
You caught it. Misty's painting.
She said, “What the fuck are you doing?”
And Peter said, “I have a plan.”
And Misty said, “I'm not having kids. I'm going to be an artist.”
On television, a man slapped a woman to the ground and she lay there, licking her lips, her breasts heaving inside a tight sweater. She was supposed to be a police officer. Peter couldn't speak a word of Spanish. What he loved about Spanish soap operas is you could make what people say mean anything.
And stuffing the painting up under his sweater, Peter said, “When?”
And Misty said, “When what?”
The painting dropped out, and he caught it.
“When are you going to be an artist?” he said.
Another reason to love Spanish soap operas was how fast they could resolve a crisis. One day, a man and woman were hacking at each other with butcher knives. The next day, they were kneeling in church with their new baby. Their hands folded in prayer. People accepted the worst from each other, screaming and slapping. Divorce and abortion were just never a plot option.
If this was love or just inertia, Misty couldn't tell.
After she graduated, she said, then she'd be an artist. When she'd put together a body of work and found a gallery to show her. When she'd sold a few pieces. Misty wanted to be realistic. Maybe she'd teach art at the high school level. Or she'd be a technical draftsman or an illustrator. Something practical. Not everybody could be a famous painter.
Stuffing the painting inside his sweater, Peter said, “You could be famous.”
And Misty told him to stop. Just stop.
“Why?” he said. “It's the truth.”
Still watching the television, pregnant with the painting, Peter said, “You have such talent. You could be the most famous artist of your generation.”
Watching some Spanish commercial for a plastic toy, Peter said, “With your gift, you're doomed to be a great artist. School for you is a waste of time.”
What you don't understand, you can make mean anything.
The painting dropped out, and he caught it. He said, “All you have to do is paint.”
Maybe this is why Misty loved him.
Loved you.
Because you believed in her so much more than she did. You expected more from her than she did from herself.
Painting the tiny gold of the church doorknobs, Misty said, “Maybe.” She said, “But that's why I don't want kids . . .”
Just for the record, it was kind of cute. All of her birth control pills being replaced with little heart-shaped candies.
“Just marry me,” Peter said. “And you'll be the next great painter of the Waytansea school.”
Maura Kincaid and Constance Burton.
Misty said how only two painters didn't count as a “school.”
And Peter said, “It's three, counting you.”
Maura Kincaid, Constance Burton, and Misty Kleinman.
“Misty Wilmot,” Peter said, and he stuffed the painting inside his sweater.
You said.
On television, a man shouted “Te amo . . . Te amo . . .” again and again to a dark-haired girl with brown eyes and feathery long eyelashes while he kicked her down a flight of stairs.
The painting dropped out of his sweater, and Peter caught it again. He stepped up beside Misty, where she was working on the details of the tall stone church, the flecks of green moss on the roof, the red of rust on the gutters. And he said, “In that church, right there, we'll get married.”
And duh-duh-dumb little Misty, she said how she was making the church up. It didn't really exist.
“That's what you think,” Peter said. He kissed the side of her neck and whispered, “Just marry me, the island will give you the biggest wedding anybody's seen in a hundred years.”
July 11
DOWNSTAIRS, it's past midnight, and the lobby is empty except for Paulette Hyland behind the desk. Grace Wilmot would tell you how Paulette's a Hyland by marriage, but before that she was a Petersen, although her mother's a Nieman descended from the Tupper branch. That used to mean a lot of old money on both sides of her family. Now Paulette's a desk clerk.
Far across the lobby, sunk in the cushion of a red leather wing chair, is Grace, reading beside the fireplace.
The Waytansea lobby is decades of stuff, all of it layered together. A garden
. A park. The wool carpet is moss green over granite tile quarried nearby. The blue carpet coming down the stairs is a waterfall flowing around landings, cascading down each step. Walnut trees, planed and polished and put back together, they make a forest of perfect square columns, straight rows of dark shining trees that hold up a forest canopy of plaster leaves and cupids.
A crystal chandelier hangs down, a solid beam of sunlight that breaks into this forest glade. The crystal doohickeys, they look tiny and twinkly so high up, but when you're on a tall ladder cleaning them, each crystal is the size of your fist.
Swags and falls of green silk almost cover the windows. Daytime, they turn the sunlight into soft green shade. The sofas and chairs are overstuffed, upholstered into flowering bushes, shaggy with long fringe along the bottom. The fireplace could be a campfire. The whole lobby, it's the island in miniature. Indoors. An Eden.
Just for the record, this is the landscape where Grace Wilmot feels most at home. Even more than her own home. Her house.
Your house.
Halfway across the lobby, Misty's edging between sofas and little tables, and Grace looks up.
She says, “Misty, come sit by the fire.” She looks back into her open book and says, “How is your headache?”
Misty doesn't have a headache.
Open in Grace's lap is her diary, the red leather cover of it, and she peers at the pages and says, “What is today's date?”
Misty tells her.
The fireplace is burned down to a bed of orange coals under the grate. Grace's feet hang down in brown buckle shoes, her toes pointed, not reaching the floor. Her head of long white curls hangs forward over the book in her lap. Next to her chair, a floor lamp shines down, and the light bounces bright off the silver edge of the magnifying glass she holds over each page.
Misty says, “Mother Wilmot, we need to talk.”
And Grace turns back a couple pages and says, “Oh dear. My mistake. You won't have that terrible headache until the day after tomorrow.”
And Misty leans into her face and says, “How dare you set my child up to have her heart broken?”
Grace looks up from her book, her face loose and hanging with surprise. Her chin is tucked down so hard her neck is squashed into folds from ear to ear. Her superficial musculo-aponeurotic system. Her submental fat. The wrinkled platysmal bands around her neck.
Misty says, “Where do you get off telling Tabbi that I'm going to be a famous artist?” She looks around, and they're still alone, and Misty says, “I'm a waitress, and I'm keeping a roof over our heads, and that's good enough. I don't want you filling my kid with expectations that I can't fulfill.” The last of her breath tight in her chest, Misty says, “Do you see how this will make me look?”
And a smooth, wide smile flows across Grace's mouth, and she says, “But Misty, the truth is you will be famous.”
Grace's smile, it's a curtain parting. An opening night. It's Grace unveiling herself.
And Misty says, “I won't.” She says, “I can't.” She's just a regular person who's going to live and die ignored, obscure. Ordinary. That's not such a tragedy.
Grace shuts her eyes. Still smiling, she says, “Oh, you'll be so famous the moment—”
And Misty says, “Stop. Just stop.” Misty cuts her off, saying, “It's so easy for you to build up other people's hope. Don't you see how you're ruining them?” Misty says, “I'm a darn good waitress. In case you haven't noticed, we're not the ruling class anymore. We're not the top of the heap.”
Peter, your mother's problem is she's never lived in a trailer. Never stood in a grocery line with food stamps. She doesn't know how to be poor, and she's not willing to learn.
Misty says, there's worse things they can do than raise Tabbi to fit into this economy, to be able to find a job in the world she'll inherit. There's nothing wrong with waiting tables. Cleaning rooms.
And Grace lays a strip of lacy ribbon to mark her place in the diary. She looks up and says, “Then why do you drink?”
“Because I like wine,” Misty says.
Grace says, “You drink and run around with men because you're afraid.”
By men she must mean Angel Delaporte. The man with the leather pants who's renting the Wilmot house. Angel Delaporte with his graphology and his flask of good gin.
And Grace says, “I know exactly how you feel.” She folds her hands on the diary in her lap and says, “You drink because you want to express yourself and you're afraid.”
“No,” Misty says. She rolls her head to one shoulder and looks at Grace sideways. Misty says, “No, you do not know how I feel.”
The fire next to them, it pops and sends a spiral of sparks up the chimney. The smell of smoke drifts out past the fireplace mantel. Their campfire.
“Yesterday,” Grace says, reading from the diary, “you started saving money so you could move back to your hometown. You're saving it in an envelope, and you tuck the envelope under the edge of the carpet, near the window in your room.”
Grace looks up, her eyebrows lifted, the corrugator muscle pleating the spotted skin across her forehead.
And Misty says, “You've been spying on me?”
And Grace smiles. She taps her magnifying glass against the open page and says, “It's in your diary.”
Misty tells her, “That's your diary.” She says, “You can't write someone else's diary.”
Just so you know, the witch is spying on Misty and writing everything down in her evil red leather record book.
And Grace smiles. She says, “I'm not writing it. I'm reading it.” She turns the page and looks through her magnifying glass and says, “Oh, tomorrow looks exciting. It says you'll most likely meet a nice policeman.”
Just for the record, tomorrow Misty is getting the lock on her door changed. Pronto.
Misty says, “Stop. One more time, just stop.” Misty says, “The issue here is Tabbi, and the sooner she learns to live a regular life with a normal everyday job and a steady, secure, ordinary future, the happier she'll be.”
“Like doing office work?” Grace says. “Grooming dogs? A nice weekly paycheck? Is that why you drink?”
Your mother.
Just for the record, she deserved this:
You deserve this:
And Misty says, “No, Grace.” She says, “I drink because I married a silly, lazy, unrealistic dreamer who was raised to think he'd marry a famous artist someday and couldn't deal with his disappointment.” Misty says, “You, Grace, you fucked up your own child, and I'm not letting you fuck up mine.”
Leaning in so close she can see the face powder in Grace's wrinkles, her rhytides, and the red spidery lines where Grace's lipstick bleeds into the wrinkles around her mouth, Misty says, “Just stop lying to her or I swear I'll pack my bags and take Tabbi off the island tomorrow.”
And Grace looks past Misty, looking at something behind her.
Not looking at Misty, Grace sighs. She says, “Oh, Misty. It's too late for that.”
Misty turns and behind her is Paulette, the desk clerk, standing there in her white blouse and dark pleated skirt, and Paulette says, “Excuse me, Mrs. Wilmot?”
Together—both Grace and Misty—they say, Yes?
And Paulette says, “I don't want to interupt you.” She says, “I just need to put another log on the fire.”
And Grace shuts the book in her lap and says, “Paulette, we need you to settle a disagreement for us.” Lifting her frontalis muscle to raise just one eyebrow, Grace says, “Don't you wish Misty would hurry up and paint her masterpiece?”
The weather today is partly angry, leading to resignation and ultimatums.
And Misty turns to leave. She turns a little and stops.
The waves outside hiss and burst.
“Thank you, Paulette,” Misty says, “but it's time everybody on the island just accepted the fact that I'm going to die a big fat nobody.”
July 12
IN CASE YOU'RE CURIOUS, your friend from art school with the l
ong blond hair, the boy who tore his earlobe in half trying to give Misty his earring, well, he's bald now. His name's Will Tupper, and he runs the ferryboat. He's your-aged and his earlobe still hangs in two points. Scar-tissued.
On the ferry this evening coming back to the island, Misty is standing on deck. The cold wind is putting years on her face, stretching and drying her skin. The flat dead skin of her stratum corneum. She's just drinking a beer in a brown paper bag when this big dog noses up next to her. The dog's sniffing and whining. His tail's tucked, and his throat is working up and down inside his furry neck as he swallows something over and over.
She goes to pet him and the dog pulls away and pees right there on the deck. A man comes over, holding a leash looped in one hand, and he asks her, “Are you all right?”
Just poor fat Misty in her own beer-induced coma.
As if. Like she's going to stand here in a puddle of dog pee and tell some strange man her whole fucking life story on a boat with a beer in one hand and sniffing back tears. As if Misty can just say—well, since you asked, she just spent another day in somebody's sealed-off laundry room, reading gibberish on the walls while Angel Delaporte snapped flash pictures and said her asshole husband is really loving and protective because he writes his u's with the tail pointing up in a little curl, even when he's calling her an “. . . avenging evil curse of death . . .”
Angel and Misty, they were rubbing butts all afternoon, her tracing the words sprayed on the walls, the words saying: “. . . we accept the dirty flood of your money . . .”
And Angel was asking her, “Do you feel anything?”
The homeowners were bagging their family toothbrushes for laboratory analysis, for septic bacteria. For a lawsuit.
On board the ferry, the man with his dog says, “Are you wearing something from a dead person?”
Her coat's what Misty is wearing, her coat and shoes, and pinned on the lapel is one of the god-awful big costume jewelry pins Peter gave her.
Her husband gave her.
You gave her.
All afternoon in the sealed laundry room, the words written around the walls said: “. . . will not steal our world to replace the world you've ruined . . .”