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It’s not a question of trust. It’s a question of not wanting someone to see something that I’m trying to hide.
I wring my hands and try to turn away. But there’s that pleading look in his dark, tortured eyes and I know that look. I’ve seen it so many times.
When you start a project and you want it to be perfect. When you want to capture something that seems so ephemeral that you can’t quite grasp it. That’s the look. And I’ve suffered it so many times that I just can’t tell him no.
I nod and he smiles so wide that it takes over his face, lighting it up like a neon sign.
“Thank you! I’m not sure…”. But he stops talking and I know what he was going to say there too.
I don’t know why I have to do this but I do. It’s an impulse. An age-old yearning that you can’t push away.
There’s loud music down on the docks and there are people milling all around us but it’s like we’re alone in a bubble. A pocket that is so protected nothing else can penetrate it.
He takes my hand and leads me into the house and I struggle to keep my breathing even. Keep from running back out the door.
He leads me into a huge room that seems like it takes up half the house. It’s ringed with bright windows that swim with golden light. I turn around, my mouth dropping open.
“This is so pretty, Merrick.” Then I see the canvases stacked up in the corners of the room and I move towards them like a sleepwalker. I lift one of them and it feels like my heart pounds with excitement and wonder. It’s an early-morning again and it’s on the beach. A family of tourists with their pale skin and washed-out bodies diving into the surf, the kids giggling wildly. You can see the joy on their faces, the wild abandon.
My breath stalls in my chest and it hurts to keep breathing, keep feeling.
“This is beautiful, Merrick,” I whisper, my tone reverent. “You’ve got so much talent.”
“Yeah.” That’s all he says and it hurts to realize that he doesn’t see it. Doesn’t realize how truly gifted he is. Each painting that I pick up takes another chunk of my soul out.
I love to make my jewelry and it brings me peace and fulfillment to do it but this? Merrick has a level of artistic abandon that I can’t duplicate with stones and metal.
Each painting glows with life and joy. Some of them anyway. There’s one that makes my breath hitch in my throat. It’s an old woman that he painted in his studio. Her eyes are lost in thought, the wrinkles around them breathtaking, the pain in her faded blue gaze as much a part of her as the wrinkles and thinning hair on her head.
I hold it up and there are tears in my eyes. “Who is she?”
“A widow. She used to go down to the docks and just stare at the boats when they came in. It took me awhile of talking to her before she told me that her husband was lost at sea during a storm ten years ago. He was considerably older than her and she said he was getting to have trouble walking around.”
“Why didn’t she tell him to stop going out to sea?”
He smiled softly and it hits me right in the gut. “She said she couldn’t take away that part of him. She said the sea was in his soul and if he had stopped going out, he would have died much sooner.”
Tears fall down my cheeks and I look into her sad eyes again. There’s a world of pain and joy and wonder and hurt in those eyes and I can’t stop the tears, until I’m struggling to hold in a sob.
“What happened to her?” I ask softly, trying to breathe slowly through the tears.
“She died about six months after I painted it.” My eyes close and I set it down gently.
“How?”
He comes closer and touches my cheek gently. “Don’t cry for her. She lived a good life with her husband and she loved him desperately. She wanted to be with him again. But she didn’t give up. She passed away peacefully in her sleep. Her daughter found her the next morning.”
I nod my head, trying to get my ragged self-control back. I can’t look away from that painting.
“I want that,” I say softly.
“We all do.”
Merrick turns away and hands me a box of tissues and lets me find what’s left of my control.
“Now. Let’s start working on this painting.”
I nod my head and wipe my cheeks, blowing my nose.
