“Twenty seconds till the next segment,” she warns them.
With the speed of an auctioneer, Roger rattles off, “And that’s why I don’t cook turkey dinners anymore! Up next, we’ve got a little culture for you—an up-and-coming artist from San Francisco! She just had her first solo show at the Frankle Gallery, and she’s here to explain painting to us! Let’s give a warm welcome to Mara Eldritch!”
The producer shoves me forward. I feel myself striding across the stage, my body moving like a puppet on someone else’s strings.
Even though I was warned, the overhead lights press down on me like heat lamps. I can already feel myself starting to sweat.
I forgot where the producer told me to sit. I take the chair closest to Gail, hoping I haven’t made a mistake.
“Nice to meet you, Mara!” Roger booms, like we haven’t already met before. His capped teeth and spray-on tan compete with the glittering red holiday top worn by Gail, and her matching lipstick.
“Now, I can’t draw a stick figure to save my life!” Gail trills. “How did you get your start in art?”
They’re both staring at me, eyes bright, teeth gleaming.
Under the glaring lights, with the muffled motion of the cameramen all around us—everyone trying to be quiet but making the tiny shuffles and breathing sounds that humans can never entirely contain—I’m thrust back to the last time I sat on a stage, expected to perform, while my mind emptied out like a sieve.
I can almost hear my mother snapping her fingers at me, ordering me to start.
I don’t know what to reply. I’ve forgotten how to speak.
The silence drags on for several agonizing seconds.
Wildly, I cast my eyes around until they land on Cole.
He doesn’t look nervous in the slightest. He stands next to the producer, hands tucked in his pockets, smiling at me with perfect confidence. He mouths, “You got this.”
I turn back to Gail.
The words flow out of my mouth like I rehearsed them. “I’m mostly self-taught. I never went to art school. But I watched a lot of YouTube videos and took books out of the library.”
“YouTube videos!” Roger laughs. “If that’s all it takes, then how come I’m not an expert at golf yet?”
I give him a sly smile. “Well, I’m not three beers in when I paint.”
Roger roars with laughter and Gail shakes a finger at him. “She’s got your number.”
“Too true,” Roger chortles. “The more I shank, the more I drink.”
The rest of the interview passes by in an instant. The questions are easy. I know exactly what to say.
The commercial break is my chance to escape. Roger and Gail give me a brief handshake, already preparing for the next segment. The producer hustles me off saying, “Nice work! You’d never guess it was your first time.”
“She’s just being nice,” I say to Cole, as we pass through the green room once more on our way out of the studio. “I froze up at the beginning.”
“It just looked like you were thinking,” Cole says.
“I wasn’t thinking. I was lost—till I looked at you.”
Cole gives a small smile. “You must be the only person in the world who finds me a calming presence.”
“I certainly didn’t at first.”
“What did you think when you looked over at me?”
“I thought … even if I fuck this up, you won’t be embarrassed by me. You’ll still hold my hand on the way home.”
“I knew you weren’t going to fuck it up. You always find a way through.”
As Cole and I gather our bags from the hotel and head back to the airport, I think to myself that humans don’t learn things all on our own. Someone has to teach us. It might be necessary for someone to believe in us before we can believe in ourselves.
Unloved children are crippled because no one shows them the way.
Cole is so much more than a lover to me. He’s the teacher I never had. In some ways, the father I never had.
I blush, remembering what I called him last night when I was blitzed out and half asleep. I’ve never called anybody that word before.
I don’t want to be another fucked-up girl with daddy issues.
But god, it’s nice to have a daddy.
Returning to Seacliff feels like coming home. I run ahead of Cole into the house, practically skipping up the steps. Throwing open the doors and inhaling that familiar scent, increasingly mingled with my own shampoo, my perfume, and the old books Cole let me put on a shelf in the living room, even though the battered paperbacks clash with his hardcovers and leather-bound books.