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EMERSON
We spend a week together.
My little painter studies my life the way she studies the ocean for her sketches. She finds the negative spaces in it and puts herself there. It’s consistently surprising, because for all my experience with art, I never noticed those areas in my own house.
I didn’t know that a person belongs on the beach every morning when I’m out on the water. This is one of the first things to become part of the shared routine—not the one she had alone at her house, and not the one I had at mine, but the one that includes both of us. Daphne lets me help her into her coat and clothes before we go out into the cold. She likes to reach up and make sure my wetsuit is zipped, though it’s on the front and basically impossible to screw up.
It’s not just any person, naturally. It’s Daphne. She’s the only one who’s ever fit in that space, with her hood pulled up and her sketchbook balanced in her hands.
There was a Daphne-sized emptiness at my kitchen island I neglected to see. She hooks her feet on the rungs of the stools and drinks tea while I make her breakfast. We don’t eat lunch in the kitchen. Most of these days, we eat it upstairs in her studio. She makes me carry the matching chair from her bedroom and put it next to mine. I place an order for more chairs so we can sit in the bedrooms, if necessary. It’s not usually necessary.
There was a Daphne-sized negative space in my bed.
She never goes back to her own room after the gallery. Not to sleep, anyway. By the third day, I come into the closet to find her hanging up some of her things next to mine. My little painter blushes pink when she sees the surprise on my face. “It’s just faster in the morning when you want to surf.
In the afternoons, she comes with me to my office. This is the place she feels least comfortable in the house. That discomfort likely has to do with what she told me about her prick of a father. Daphne doesn’t mention it to me in explicit terms, but I notice her tells. Her hand spends more time in the collar of her sweaters. She taps her feet. Has more trouble focusing on her sketchbook, even when she has everything else she likes—tea and a blanket over her lap and a soft pillow to lean against on the small sofa by my desk.
And in the evenings…
Well.
She’s art.
Sometimes in her frame. Sometimes in my bed. Sometimes she pops up afterward and wants to watch a movie, curled up next to me in the living room. Sometimes she’s dead asleep for the rest of the night and I get to carry her upstairs.
It’s bliss.
Aside from the texting. The texting borders on irritating. My brothers want to come for more drinks. They commiserate about my father’s increasing calls and visits. I’m not opposed to giving Daphne more of what she wants, but I find myself unable to give up a single day with her.
I’ve never had a week like this. Not that I can remember.
A peaceful one.
“The weather’s the same every day,” Daphne says, late on the last afternoon. We’re down in my office, and she’s fidgeting. The tip of her charcoal pencil drags across the page but she can’t concentrate. Keeps watching the light through the window. “So cloudy. It’s like time stopped.”
“It is like that, little painter.” A repeat of the same day for a week. I’ve been taking it as a gift. If time doesn’t continue, then nothing will disturb us.
“Do you think it will change soon?”
“I hope not.”
My phone buzzes on my desk.
Alert: Front gate approach
Alert: Front gate entrance
“Daphne—”
The interval between the last alert and the next one is too short.
Alert: Front door motion detected
A pounding knock reverberates through the house.
Daphne freezes. The quiet in my office crystallizes. The temperature drops.
“Is it your brothers?”
