The Children(38)

Her brother’s anger could simmer for hours. Hers went up like a match. Spitting sparks, burning bright, blowing out. By the time she reached the trees the fury that sent her there was gone, her spirits blackened and spent. She took it out on herself, running until she felt hollow.



* * *




The next day Anne was back, helping Llewellyn carry things in and out of his studio. Guinevere hung off to the side until Anne smiled and beckoned her over. A bleach-spotted handkerchief was tied over her hair, and in the sunlight her eyes were a tumbled hazel shade. “Mornin’. You want to help us set up your dad’s studio?”

Guinevere watched Llewellyn stride by with the space heater in his arms, carrying it back to the house. “Set it up for what?”

“Painting. Look at that thing.” Anne put two hands to the small of her back, admiring the peaked building. “It’s like a little toy church. We’ll make it an art church.”

“Why are you helping him?”

“I like to be helpful. I have to stay busy, it’s my curse.” She crouched so they were eye to eye, then sat flat on her butt. “I teach at a studio in town, that’s where I met your dad. In a couple months it’ll be my high season—lots of summer people, paying lots of money. Right now, I’ve got time. And if I paint all day, without ever checking in on the world, I start painting the inside of my head.”

“What does the inside of your head look like?”

“Oh, I love that question.” Anne looked up, teeth catching and releasing her bottom lip. “Lately I’ve been in an abstract mood. I always know what I’m painting. An idea, a place, a memory. A person I want to figure out. I like a feeling of movement in my work. Light and air and . . . escape hatches. If I don’t get out among people, I can feel the hatches closing. The paintings start to feel like paint.” She shrugged. “That’s me, though, I’m an extra extrovert. Other artists need solitude. How about you?”

“How about me what?”

“What do you need to work? To—express yourself? Sorry, I’ve never liked that phrase. You know what I mean. How do you do it?”

Did her dad tell Anne about the stories she was writing? He couldn’t have, only Ennis knew. She thought a moment, then said it aloud for the very first time. “I’m a writer.”

Anne’s eyes lit. “Oh, cool. What do you write?”

The painter’s interest was almost too much. Guinevere felt like she’d swallowed fire. “Nothing,” she said hastily. “Stories and stuff. Don’t tell my dad, okay?”

Anne didn’t ask why. She only said, “Promise I won’t.”



* * *




“Dad wants to marry her, I bet.”

Guinevere blew out derisively. “He’s already married.”

She and Ennis sat at the edge of the orchard, tearing at a loaf of bread. Anne had given it to them. She always brought something to the house, handmade by one of her many friends. Farmer’s cheese, pickled baby radishes, translucent soaps speckled with dried marigold. Today a loaf of sourdough, flavored with caraway. Guinevere didn’t think she was trying to win their favor. It was just that people liked to give her things, and she liked to give those things away.

“Doesn’t matter,” Ennis said darkly. “He’ll divorce her. Why wouldn’t he?” He spat on the ground.

“If he married Anne, we’d have a mom.”

She spoke without thinking. Her brother stared at her, chewing, digging his fingers into the dirt. “Shit,” he said. He’d been trying out swearing, the word sounded newly made. He said it once more, and this time it seemed natural.

They ate the rest of the loaf in silence. After that day she didn’t like anything made with caraway. It had a desolate taste.



* * *




Ennis was chilly to Anne right up until he saw her studio.

It was perfect. Exposed-beam ceiling, white walls, windows on all four sides looking out onto unbroken trees. Its odor was pleasantly toxic, soporific, made of chemicals and coffee and a three-wick amber candle. It was the three of them. Anne didn’t invite Llewellyn.

Ennis stopped in front of a painting done in purples and blues, that might’ve been fog or shadow or the surface of a misty lake. It had an unnerving tensile quality to it. All the paintings were like that. Planes of shifting color full of likely points of emergence. They kept your eye on the move.

“How did you do this?” He sounded almost angry, which meant he was impressed.

Anne looked as close to uncomfortable as Guinevere had ever seen her. “Can I tell you something?”

Ennis nodded.

“I don’t talk about it.” Her voice was nearly a whisper. “I think if you talk about art too much, it goes away. It doesn’t want to be pinned, you know? It doesn’t want to be a dead butterfly.”

“Don’t you teach art?”

“I teach technique. That’s the part you can teach. The rest has to come from the artist.” She put her hands up, showing their palms. “I travel light. Whatever I get, I let go of. Sometimes it comes back to me better, sometimes it’s just gone. Art is my one constant. I need it too much to risk it.”

Ennis watched wide-eyed as she spoke, mouth open a little, moving. Like he was reading Anne’s words as she said them. “Yeah,” he said. “That makes sense.”