More important, though: Tomorrow thought Candle had talent. She showed the other girls the still life Candle painted—the same still life they’d all painted, a bowl of fruit and a pitcher of Kool-Aid set up on one of the picnic tables—and she said, “See how Candle has put her own special twist on things? She didn’t copy the pitcher; she exaggerated it. She narrowed the neck and she ballooned the base. That is what makes it art, folks.”
Candle hardly knew where to look. She had always “exaggerated” her pictures, if that was what it was called. Drawing a fairy-tale princess, as she liked to do when she was little, she had swooped the skirt of the ballgown out to the very edges of the paper; she had elongated the torso; she had made the princess’s arms as curvy as the scrolls on the front of a violin. But no one had said she had talent. The artist her friends at school admired was Melanie Brooks, in eighth grade. Melanie drew fashion models so polished-looking that they could have been in a magazine.
Eventually, the other campers moved on to pottery making, lanyard braiding, and basket weaving, but Candle was allowed to stick with painting. And when her parents came to pick her up, at the end of her six weeks, they were treated to an entire show of her paintings thumbtacked around the art cabin. “I’d love to see what she could do with oils,” Tomorrow told them. “The camp limits us to just watercolors for easier cleanup, but she might want to branch out into other mediums.”
“My mother works in acrylics, as it happens,” Alice said.
“Oh? Your mother’s an artist?”
“In a way,” Alice said.
“Maybe Candle could pick up some tips from her,” Tomorrow said.
Alice looked uncertain, but she said, “Well. Maybe.”
* * *
—
Candle’s paintings were forgotten once she was home again. Or forgotten by her parents, at least, because the house was all abuzz now with her sister’s wedding plans. Robby was marrying her longtime boyfriend in the fall. Carlton, his name was. He was a dental student with a receding hairline; so, big whoop. Candle couldn’t figure out what all the fuss was about.
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.