I take a quick shower and get ready for the day, determined to make the most of it. If Rose is busy, I might as well make myself busy, too.
First up: flyers. I sit in Lottie’s nook and bring out my sketch pad from beneath a pile of books on the shelf. Through the wavy glass of the window, I can feel the morning sun. Outside is Lottie’s beloved garden, still in the process of blooming.
I start out small, sketching some of the flowers outside: the rosebuds crawling up the trellis, the daisies poking their heads out hesitantly. The more I draw, the more I begin to lose myself in the process. It’s like being submerged underwater. I lose track of time, watching as the sun progresses a shadow across the page. Eventually, I bring out my watercolor kit and fill in the image.
I never have a plan before I sit down to paint. It’s like the image tells me what needs to happen next, and all I can do is hurry my hand along before I miss the directions. I’ve always loved the peace in the utter immersion of it. The fury of invention and then the finished project—knowing I created something from nothing.
The first time I admitted I wanted to be an artist, I said it like it was a curse. Rose was driving me to a friend’s sixth-grade birthday party. I remember my heart was pounding against the seat belt. Shepulled us into a parking spot and said, “Okay, honey. Have fun! I’ll be back in a few hours.”
But I didn’t leave. I just kept sitting there, my hands slick against the leather seat.
“Are you okay?” Mom asked.
“I have to tell you something,” I said in a grave voice.
I’m not sure why I chose that particular day, except that I couldn’t keep it in any longer. The car was where the majority of our revelations and deep conversations took place—the front seat was like a confessional booth for us, almost holy.
I must have alarmed her, but to her credit, she remained calm.
“What’s wrong, Lily-pad?”
I took a deep breath in. “I want to… I want to be an artist when I’m older. Like for real.”
Inexplicably, there were tears in my eyes. I had loved drawing since I was a kid, and friends and teachers frequently told me I had talent, but this was my first time admitting out loud that I wanted to pursue it seriously. Art was not some fun, absent-minded hobby for me. It was not the activity of a girl trying to kill time. I needed it. I needed to do it constantly. I wanted to be taken seriously.
“Well, that’s great!” Mom laughed, relieved. “Now, you better get inside before you’re late. I’ll see you later, honey. Have fun!”
That was the end of it, but it was like I had walked through a hailstorm and emerged miraculously untouched. From that day on, Rose supported my dream, but I always felt some hesitancy from her. I know she wants the best for me, but for her, that means stability. It means a reliable income and health insurance.
Lottie was the one who truly saw my vision. When I was seventeen and applying to colleges, thinking about majoring in something practical like marketing so I could at least fall back on a corporate job while still retaining some creativity, she said to me, “There is nothingmore irresponsible than ignoring a dream. It will eat away at you if you don’t pursue it. And that is the real tragedy.”
It was Lottie who encouraged me to keep painting when I had self-doubts, Lottie who told me to take art classes in college, even if everyone else said it was a waste of tuition. It was Lottie who told me I could be anything. She was married to a good man, Charlie, my great-uncle. But he passed when I was only eight. All I remember of him is his love of the constellations. He would take me on the deck at night and point out the stars.
After he was gone, Lottie was heartbroken, but she remained resolute in her grief. She worked more on her craft, started writing the book she always wanted to write. She held up Rose and me, despite her own suffering. She was the strongest woman I ever met.
I notice a ladybug making steady progress on the windowsill, its tiny legs marching forward. I try to count the dots on its shell but can only see one side of its small body.
Good luck, I think with a smile. Lottie used to always say that ladybugs are good luck. I hope she was right about that one. I hope she was right to believe in me, too.
When I’m done with the drawing, I hold the paper against the sunlight. To give myself credit, I think I did a decent job capturing the garden in its full splendor. There are a few lines I’d like to clean up, but for the most part, it looks okay. In the middle I write my advertisement: “Photography services available for weddings, family photo shoots, graduation photos, and more!”
Photography is the closest to my background in print media, but then I think about how nice it felt to be painting again. In a smaller line underneath, I add, “Also available for house portraits and custom oil paintings.”
I try to keep the desperation out of the copy but it’s hard because, well, I am in fact desperate.
Two hours later, I’m downtown, carrying a bunch of photocopied pages. I balance the stack in my left arm, pausing to staple a few to a job board by the library. I have already approached several businesses with my résumé, includingNantucketmagazine and the local gazette,The Inquirer.
There’s a small art studio down by the library, and when I walk in and ask if they are hiring someone for the front desk, a snooty girl with acrylics and a bad attitude tells me to come back later.
“When later?” I ask.
“I don’t know…” the girl says, flipping through a copy of a magazine without looking up. It’s the brand I used to work at. We designed everything months in advance, and I recognize my handiwork on the cover. “Just not now.”
As I walk through the wide, airy space and stare at the paintings, I feel this tingling sensation in the crook of my elbow, my telltale sign that something is registering with me. Many of the pieces are what you might expect from a beach town: impressionist paintings of sunsets reflecting off the sloping backs of beach dunes, sailboats in the harbor, a rainy rendering of the street right outside the window—all the lights aglow with warmth, and yellow shadows on the brick sidewalks. There are photos of lightning striking water, black-and-white images of women wearing vintage bikinis, a beach van in retro colors, a close-up shot of a wave about to fold—the ocean churning angry froth like the open mouth of a beast.
Others are more of a surprise. Outside the gallery is a large bronze sculpture of a man and a boy. A hippo in a tutu balancing on one foot. Sculpting is the one medium I could never comprehend in school. Perhaps I admire it all the more because of this.
I keep being met with the same noncommittal answers whenever I drop my résumé off at one of the galleries, but at least posting flyersis a start. It feels good to be doing something ostensibly productive, even if it proves to be a dead end.
