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DREAM
Clarissa and I were having lunch over at Cherry’s Tomatoes, a hip little salad joint near Blueprint Coffee. The place was packed with the lunch crowd, mostly students from the college. Over Thai chicken salads, I regaled Clarissa with everything that had happened with Mom during breakfast.
"I don’t get it,” Clarissa said as she stabbed a piece of Mandarin orange. “Why did she buy the bagels if she was just going to make some comment when you took one?”
I laughed despite how pissed off I was, but the moment quickly passed, and I was right back to being annoyed. “Mom’s weird like that. I wouldn’t be surprised if she put them there as a test or something. She was always playing weird games with food when I was a kid.”
“Well, whatever’s going on with her, you don’t need to worry about it. You’ve got a place to stay, and as long as you’re crashing on my couch you can eat whatever the hell you want.”
Her words brought a smile to my face, making it abundantly clear just how lucky I was to have a friend like Clarissa.
“You know, when I first stepped foot in that huge house part of me was like, ‘why don’t I take a bedroom here?’ Don’t get me wrong – I totally appreciate what you’re doing for me. But there’s going to come a time when you get sick of me crashing on your couch.”
“Maybe,” she said with a shrug. “But when that happens, I’ll have put the pressure on you to get a bigger place with me.” Clarissa followed this up with a smile and a cheeky tilt of her head before stabbing a big piece of tofu with her fork.
“Of course, she knew all the buttons to push. She even gave me crap about my art, how she was convinced I’d be a starving artist and I needed a husband to afford the lifestyle she thinks I should be living.” I let out a grunt of annoyance, resisting the urge to toss my fork onto the ground.
Clarissa didn’t say anything in response. Instead, she gave me a curious look, like she was trying to figure something out.
“What?” I asked.
“When is the last time you painted? I mean, I only ask because you were freaking awesome back in high school. Seriously – you were, like, the best painter in town.”
I blushed hard. I’d never been able to take compliments very well.
“No way. I wasn’t even close to being the best painter.”
“Well, either way, tons of people thought for sure that you’d be famous off your art. So, you sticking with it?”
I glanced down, shifting in my seat.
“It…Adam…” was all I could say.
“What happened?”
I sighed, glancing away and trying to figure out where to begin.
“Back when he and I started dating, when we came back into each other’s lives in Chicago, he loved that I was a painter. At least, that’s what he said. I came to find out later that he didn’t give a damn at all.”
“Oh God. How’d you find out?”
“When I moved into his place, he told me that he’d clear out the storage unit that I’d rented when I’d come to town. He brought all of my stuff over, minus the boxes of my paintings. Turns out he’d thrown them away.”
“What?” Her eyes went wide with surprise and anger. “He threw them out?”
“That’s about how I reacted. His excuse was that he didn’t know what was in the boxes, that they looked like nothing. But part of me was sure he’d done it because he’d wanted me to put that part of my life behind me. After all, he was the one who pushed me into getting a job at the design firm.”
“What a prick,” she said, shaking her head. “Total underhanded crap.”
“I tried to stay on top of my art, getting some supplies and setting up a little spot in the apartment where I could practice. But he’d always make some comment about my stuff getting in the way, how much of a mess it was. It was a ‘death by a thousand cuts’ sort of thing. How was I supposed to relax and get into the zone if I had to hear him scoffing and see him rolling his eyes every five minutes?”
“I tried to find other ways to channel my need to create art. I volunteered at children’s hospitals doing face painting, which was a blast. And I even worked at a couple of renaissance fairs doing costume painting.”
Clarissa smiled. “That sounds like fun.”
“It was. But you’ll never guess what happened.”
Her smile vanished. “Adam.”
