The Winter Sister(24)
“That sounds just like Steve,” I wrote after a few moments.
“Obviously,” she replied. Then she added, “So how is it being back at your mom’s house?”
I hesitated before responding. What could I say? That things were even stranger here than I’d imagined? That it wasn’t just Mom that seemed skeletal, but my bedroom, too, Persephone’s things having vanished right along with the muscle from Mom’s bones? If I explained that to Lauren, I’d have to explain so much else. Instead, I wrote, “It’s okay, I’m unpacking now, I’ll update you later,” and I let my phone slip onto the bed.
As I looked back toward my suitcase, my eyes swept across some of my old paintings that leaned against the wall in the corner of the room. I remembered bringing them over from Aunt Jill’s just before I left for college. I’d planned to find a place to store them in the house, but in the rush of it all, my eagerness to leave, I never had. Now, unlike Persephone’s things, they were still here, seemingly untouched. Kneeling in front of the stack, I blew a layer of dust off the top of the canvases and began to flip through them.
How easily it came back to me then, the single-mindedness with which I’d painted in the years after Persephone died. My grades had slipped, and the school psychologist said it was normal, that I was likely depressed. In those days, all I wanted was to move away from the black hole of my mother’s grief, from the place where everything in my life had become unhitched.
The guidance counselor kept reminding me that college could be my fresh start, that even as an underclassman, it was never too early to start preparing for my future.
“Because you still have one,” she said, “no matter what you’ve lost. You’re still allowed to have dreams, you know. You’re still allowed to chase them.”
I winced when she said it—the cheesiness of it, the fact that my only dream was to go, get out, be gone—but I couldn’t deny that college was the logical solution to my problem. I knew that I’d never be able to afford it—I didn’t have enough money for a week’s worth of groceries, let alone tuition—which meant I’d need to get a full scholarship somewhere. And with my missing homework assignments and late papers dragging down my once stellar GPA, the only chance I had left was art school.
Miss Keegan, the art teacher at Spring Hill High, had thought of me as her star student. “She’s got it!” she said to my mother at the freshman art show, just one month before Persephone died. “I show her a new technique and she picks it up right away! I can’t wait to see what she does in the next few years, once she really finds her voice.” Mom had smiled at me, wrapping her arm around my shoulder, and Persephone had stood in the school gymnasium with her arms crossed, a freshly painted bruise hiding beneath the sleeve of her sweater. I’d believed, back then, that Miss Keegan was right; I would develop my own style, and someday I’d have gallery openings and pieces that sold for thousands of dollars. But when Persephone died, I couldn’t bring myself to care about finding my voice as an artist any more than I could muster the motivation to study for tests and quizzes. All I knew was that if I did the work that Miss Keegan assigned, and made it seem as if it came from deep inside me (angry slashes of red on an otherwise soothing blue; a clay bust of my mother and sister, both heads supported by the same neck), then I could continue to fool her into thinking I “had it,” that indefinable quality that makes someone an artist, instead of just good at art.
When I lived with Aunt Jill during high school, I spent my Friday and Saturday nights painting. While other girls my age went to the mall or had sleepovers, I was determined to create at least one new piece to show Miss Keegan the following week. Every Friday, she sent me home with a blank canvas (which I often suspected she paid for herself), and every Monday, I returned to school with a completed painting. “Motivated and highly skilled,” I pictured Miss Keegan writing in a letter of recommendation, “Sylvie is the most prolific young artist I’ve ever known.” On the nights I painted, Jill would often come into the guest room, watch me sweep my brush across the canvas, and she’d put her hand on my shoulder as if she was concerned about something she didn’t know how to articulate. I continued painting even when she stood behind me like that. I couldn’t rest until I knew the piece looked as if it meant something profound. Miss Keegan wasn’t always convinced; sometimes, she would hold the canvas out in front of her, pushing her lips to one side. “Go deeper,” she’d say. “What is this window supposed to show us exactly? What do you want us to feel?” Then, I’d take the painting back to Aunt Jill’s, ignore my Algebra II homework, leave the assigned chapters of The Things They Carried unread, and paint Persephone into the picture, her body visible through the window, dressed in a red coat, walking away. When I did things like that, I had to ignore the pounding of my heart. I had to convince myself that it wasn’t Persephone I was painting; it was my ticket away from home.
And in the end, it was worth it. I won the art awards, I won the RISD scholarship, I won a life without my mother. Only now, here I was again—a jobless tattoo artist, back at the very same place I’d made it my mission to leave.
“Looks like you haven’t gotten too far.”
The canvas I was holding slipped from my hand at the sound of Mom’s voice.
“With what?” I asked, standing up and turning to face her in the doorway.