Bethany shook her head. “No. I don’t really know her at all. But I’m worried about her, I guess.”
Matteo was quiet. He didn’t know what to say. When Bethany’s kids returned a few seconds later, he cleaned up his table and said goodbye, disappearing down the road and around the corner. There was a slight limp to his gait, proof that he’d recently been on the operating table. But other than that, he was a powerful figure in the world. Alone and lonely. But strong.
13
It had been one of the most peaceful months of Helena’s life. After Matteo’s abrupt entrance and departure from her home, she burrowed herself into the reality she’d envisioned, creating a sunny nest for herself on the beach, one that nobody else was privy to. She kept things simple: she cooked simple dinners, read books, and watched films. She sat in the sunshine and marveled at how much more energy she had, now that she didn’t sit in an air-conditioned house in South Carolina any longer. Still, she took frequent naps and felt the edges of herself beginning to dissolve.
Her liver disease was still coming for her. She knew that clear as anything. But she was going to squeeze every last bit of beauty out of her days as she could.
At the beginning of July, Helena returned to the box labeled “art supplies” and dared herself to open it. She’d packed a number of paintbrushes and canvases that dared her to take risks. She set herself up on the patio, where she stood in a massive sun hat and sketched out her view of the waves beyond. But she decided, in the process, not to make the waves look precisely like the waves she saw before her. She wanted toexperiment with color, with perspective. She wanted to show that there was something much deeper within her soul than just what everybody else saw.
That is what art is, she thought. A grand experiment. A way of trying to connect with yourself.
She went online and ordered more paint and more canvases. Just as the vacuum cleaner had, everything arrived in record time. There was no reason, Helena thought often, to ever go to the store again. There was no reason to put herself at the mercy of the judgmental world.
At the end of that first week of returning to painting, Helena read an article about a woman in her fifties who’d created an online writing career via social media. “I never thought I would get published,” the woman wrote in the article, “and now, I’m making more money than I ever made at my office job. I’ve followed my dreams all the way to the happiest days of my life.”
It had never occurred to Helena to push herself into the social media world and try to make something of her art. Back when she’d actually sold art, back when she’d been married to Elliott, she’d sold paintings through an art dealer and a few contacts. It had been the old-fashioned way, but it had been all she’d known.
Against everything she knew to be right, Helena allowed herself a brief thirty-minute stalk of Elliott and Meg’s profiles. Meg was more and more pregnant, decorating the nursery, and posting videos about her cravings and how “in love with” her boyfriend she was. Apparently, they were talking about getting married, but Elliott hadn’t popped the question yet. Meg was annoyed with this, she told her followers, but she understood it was for the best. “He was in a difficult marriage before this. So was I. We’re both trying to protect ourselves. And we have to focus on our little one, now.”
Helena couldn’t stop shaking. She had to abandon her phone for the night.
It used to be that you could run away from home and never hear anything from your past. The internet had come in to make that impossible. She told herself to block herself from seeing anything Meg and Elliott posted. It was the only way she could really move on.
After a twelve-hour sleep, Helena woke up at the crack of dawn and set to work on her social media strategy. She made accounts on all the relevant sites, then took photographs of the art she’d made. She read about marketing and how to connect with other artists. By the end of that first day, she had more than one hundred followers. By the end of the week, she had close to one thousand.
“Why me?” she wondered. Birds twittered outside her window. Everything felt impossibly beautiful.
Watching so many people interact with her art and appreciate it floored her. It made her dizzy with excitement. It also fueled her to paint more, to produce more. Several newer painters reached out to her for advice about how to get started and deepen their craft, and Helena was careful not to gatekeep what she knew. She’d learned from professionals, and now, she supposed, she was a professional herself. Whatever that meant.
She remembered reading that passing on your knowledge was a form of immortality. What you knew became bigger than you, because you’d passed it on.
One afternoon, lost in her head, Helena made a painting that represented, to her, the morning and afternoon she’d spent with Matteo. She hadn’t known she’d set out to do that until the painting was nearly finished, which felt funny to her. Funny, and tragic. The figure in the painting was dark-eyed and dark-haired, wearing a mysterious, captivating smile. But, as soon as she was aware of what she was doing, she made sure not to give the mantoo many of the same details as Matteo. She didn’t want Matteo to find the painting and get the wrong idea.
Then again, she often dreamed that he sailed back onto her beach, that he came up to the porch and knocked on the recently repaired glass door and demanded why she’d forced him out of her life. The reason he didn’t come back, she assumed, was that she’d pushed him away so strongly, so firmly, that he had no choice but to forget about her. That was what she’d wanted. She’d succeeded, she knew.
At the end of her second week of social media experimentation, a very wealthy Nantucket-based woman named Hilary Salt reached out to her, saying she loved her paintings. At first, Helena thought it was a scam.
“I adore that one with the man. I saw it on your page,” Hilary said when she called. “The dark, mysterious man on the beach? You know the one. I want to buy it from you. I know just where I want to hang it in my house. Name your price, and I’ll pay.”
Helena was momentarily speechless. Name her price? “I’ll have to talk to my agent and get back to you,” Helena lied to Hilary.
“Why don’t you let me come by your studio? I’d love to see what else you’re working on,” Hilary said. “A part of living in Nantucket, for me, means supporting local artists. I hope you’ll let me support you!”
Helena got off the phone and researched how much to charge for a three-foot by two-foot painting of the man she couldn’t get out of her head. Some of the numbers people said she could get away with asking for astounded her. Could she really charge thousands of dollars?
Then again, wasn’t Nantucket one of the wealthiest places in the country? She’d seen their cars, what they wore, and how they conducted themselves. They were made of money.
“Come on, Helena. What do you have to lose?” she asked herself.
When she called Hilary Salt back and told her she wanted four grand for the painting, her hands shaking violently as she tried to keep her voice even, Hilary didn’t seem to bat an eye. “I’ll transfer that immediately. But please, let me know if I can come by to see the rest of your work. I have many friends on the island. I’m sure I can connect you with other clients.” Apparently, four grand was like pocket change to her.
Helena couldn’t believe it. She watched four grand land in her account, just like that, and spent the day in the sunshine on the patio, marveling at her late-in-life success. A part of her wondered what Elliott would say about it. He’d probably say it was a fluke, a passing fancy. Something she was getting away with that wouldn’t last long.
She made a brief calculation. That painting had taken her an entire day to finish. But if she made a few paintings a week and later sold them for four grand, what did that mean? It meant her rent at the beach house would be more than paid for.
It also meant, if things worked out, she would be able to sign up for health insurance again.
