French Braid(57)

Candle herself, though, did not forget her paintings. There were six long weeks before school began, and she had nothing in the world to do. All her friends were away on summer vacation, but Candle’s parents had already taken their vacation while she was at camp. So one day she asked her mother if they could go to a crafts store and buy a few supplies, and although it took several days for that to happen, they did go eventually. Except Candle didn’t know what exactly she needed. She’d been thinking she would just pick up a ready-made set of oil paints, but oils didn’t seem to come in sets; they came in expensive single tubes. Acrylics came in sets, though. “Well, I’m not sure,” she told her mother. “I mean, acrylics don’t sound so professional as oils.”

Her mother said, “I don’t know why you say that. Your grandmom uses nothing but, and she’s a professional, supposedly.” Then she said, “Tell you what: let’s arrange a time for you to visit her studio and ask her all about it. Bring along some of your pictures from camp and maybe she’ll have an opinion as to what kind of paints would work best for you.”

So that was the plan. Alice phoned Mercy as soon as they got home, and they settled on an afternoon two days from then.

“Now, one thing you should bear in mind,” Alice said as she was driving Candle into town, “is you shouldn’t get your feelings hurt if Grandmom says something critical about your pictures. She might not be as complimentary as Today, or whatever her name was.”

There was no way on earth Alice could have forgotten what Tomorrow’s name was. She was just being snooty, as usual. She just liked to sound all amused by people.

She didn’t go into the studio with Candle when she dropped her off. “Tell her I’ll say hello when I come to pick you up,” she said. “In an hour or so; hour and a half tops.” She was heading to a mother-of-the-bride-dress fitting, up in Towson.

The studio was above a garage in somebody’s backyard. Candle had to climb a rickety outside staircase that shivered with every step she took, so her grandmother knew to expect her and already had the door open by the time Candle reached the landing. “Kendall!” she said. “It’s so nice to see you!”

Until that moment, Candle had forgotten that her grandmother, at least, had been calling her Kendall all along. She felt a rush of gratitude. She said, “Thank you, Grandmom,” and gave her a little hug, although ordinarily she wouldn’t have bothered.

Mercy was more interesting-looking than most old ladies—still thin, with a flyaway bun and a small, pointy face. She was wearing a man’s shirt as a smock, probably Pop-Pop’s, long enough so it almost covered her skirt, and she had a slightly bitter smell, like tea. Her studio was the kind of place Candle approved of but knew she could never manage for herself, because her room at home was chronically messy whereas here, all the surfaces were bare and everything had been put away. She stepped inside and looked around appreciatively, and then she handed over the folder containing her work. “Mom says to tell you she’ll stop in when she picks me up,” she said, and Mercy nodded, but absently, because she was already opening the folder and looking at the top painting.

“They’re not very good, I’m afraid,” Candle said.

Mercy glanced over at her. “Never tell people that,” she said. “Rule One.”

“Okay, but I mean, they’re just stuff I did at camp.”

Mercy started laying the pictures in a row across the table, moving aside several paint tubes to make room. “Hmm,” she said as she examined each one. “Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.”

First the fruit bowl and the Kool-Aid. Then a tree by the lake at camp with huge plates of white fungus sticking out from its trunk like CDs when you hit the Eject button. And then a portrait: Ditsy Brown from cabin 8. Ditsy’s plump left shin, crossed over her right knee, was the largest object in the picture because it happened to be closest to the viewer. The effect was cartoonish, Candle saw now. It was not what she’d been aiming for at all. She started to say so but stopped herself, and they moved on to a picture of a rowboat.

One of Mercy’s paintings, half finished, lay on the other side of the table. It showed somebody’s front porch. Candle knew it was only half finished because it was nothing but a vague smear of floorboards and Adirondack chairs, with no part detailed. All of Mercy’s paintings featured one tiny portion that was super-detailed. She must find Candle’s paintings childish; they were so ordinary and same-all-over.

“I know they’re not like yours,” Candle told her, and Mercy said, “Well, I should hope not. They shouldn’t be like anyone’s.” Then she gathered the paintings up again and slipped them back into their folder. “But I can see why you’d want to try a different medium,” she said, “because your style relies upon line. You’d find linear painting easier with oils or acrylics. Would you like to try my acrylics?”

“Yes!” Candle said.

“Let me set you up, then, and you see what you think.”

She tore a piece of paper off a pad and laid it in front of Candle, along with a couple of pencils. Candle sat down at the table and slid a finger testingly across the surface of the paper, which had a woven feeling, like cloth.

“Now for your subject matter…” Mercy said, and she went to the kitchen area and started rustling around. When she returned she had a cantaloupe, a bottle of apple juice, and a wooden-handled string dish mop. “Pay no mind to the weird assemblage,” she told Candle as she positioned them on the table. “I wanted to give you a variety of textures. Just experiment; try using different-size brushes. I’ll leave you to it.”