Paint Me True Read online

  “Well, I’m not into flowers.”

  “Yeah, but at least by spending real money, he shows he cares. Would you get a bouquet like he got you for a friend in the hospital? I don’t think so.”

  “Okay, Rule Two, has to give good gifts, e.g. fifty bucks worth of flowers or more. What’s the next Rule?”

  “No, I’m not helping you draft rules. I’m just saying-”

  “Did Len ever get you flowers?”

  “No. But we weren’t dating over my birthday-”

  “Valentine’s Day, what did he do?”

  “He sent me an e-card.”

  “Ah-ha, so you do need to follow some Rules.”

  “It’s not about rules, it’s about standards.”

  “Which is what I said before. What’s the next Rule?”

  I scraped my spoon around the edge of my sundae to get all the drips of melting ice cream.

  “Hmmm?” prompted Hattie.

  I wasn’t going to play this game.

  “I think politics really is important,” she said. “I mean, the Church leaders are clear, this is the End of Days and as the world refuses to repent, we find ourselves in enemy territory.”

  I glanced around. Hattie didn’t have much grasp of nuance when it came to politics or taking spiritual guidance from church leaders. I always worried that her comments would provoke a fight when she aired them in public like this, but the parlor was still empty, and the guy behind the counter was busy tooling around with the milkshake blender.

  “Seriously,” she went on, “I dated this one guy whose sister was gay-”

  “Your brother’s gay.”

  “And look what happened to him and my whole family!” Her voice rose to a crescendo.

  This wasn’t a discussion I wanted to have again. Her brother and the rest of her family had left the Church and I didn’t want to hear Hattie’s theory that liberals had conspired with Satan to make this happen. “Okay, fine, Rule Three... um... howabout the first date Mike took you on? Took you to a movie he wanted to see with a bunch of his friends. He basically just let you tag along.”

  “I like action movies.”

  “You so don’t. Besides, even if you did, tagging along with his friends? You need to only date guys who put thought into dates. I mean, he should figure out the perfect date for the two of you. Like I had one guy take me on a ‘hot chocolate date’ once-”

  “How is that a good date?”

  “We didn’t really know each other and he...” I quickly amended what I was going to say. The guy had pointed out that the rest of society did coffee dates, where people who didn’t know each other well met in a casual setting to drink coffee. The date could be as short as the time it took to finish the coffee, or could go longer if they really hit it off. Since we Latter-day Saints didn’t drink coffee, he proposed a hot chocolate date instead, and it had worked well. I didn’t want to get Hattie started on her anti-coffee rant, though. “Okay, so it made sense for us. It turned out to be a really casual, low stress date, and afterward I wasn’t interested in going out again, but he picked up on that while we drank our hot chocolate and it was just perfect. I wouldn’t have known how I felt without it, and if he’d taken me somewhere more expensive, then he’d probably have been way more disappointed.”

  “So a guy should do a cheap, no strings attached date?”

  “No, the guy should really think about the first date. Put some real planning into it. I mean, I knew a guy at BYU who did the same first date, same second date, same third date – no matter who he was dating. It became a joke. We’d be like, ‘Oh, you made it to the frisbee golf date? Wow, you were serious about him. I only made it to the bowling date.’ He put no thought into it. Planning a date should be like planning a-a diplomatic event. Guys need to engineer a date that shows they get you and where you’re at. They need to ask you out at least three days in advance and demonstrate that they are willing to do what you want and they need to put work into the whole thing, not just the planning, but the execution too. I mean, a date’s like a job interview, and they need to act accordingly. It’s their proposal to get you to spend more time with them, so they better make it a good one.”

  “I don’t know how to write that as a Rule.”

  “Well, don’t bother writing it down-”

  “Rule Three, treat first date like a job interview and work very hard to impress. No generic dates, and no doing whatever it is he wants to do. It has to be about you. ‘Kay, how’s that?” Her pen scrawled the words across the page.

  “Whatever. Sure.”

  She tore off the notebook page and pushed it across the table to me.

  “What? Why?” I said.

  “Because you need to remember. You made the Rules. You have to follow them.”

  “I was trying to help you.”

  “You know the scripture about the mote and the beam. Thank you for noticing the mote in my eye, but you’ve gotta take the beam out of your own.” She pushed the paper at me.

  I snatched it off the table and stuck it in my pocket.

  She grinned at me as if she’d won this whole exchange.

  While I’d been trying to be helpful, not start a game of one-upsmanship. It was time to finish my ice cream and go home.

  The sight of my two story house bathed in the light from my headlights gave me another wave of discomfort. I activated the garage door and pulled my car in from the slanting rain.

  This house was why I’d moved to Portland.

  The car pinged as got out, reminding me to shut off the headlights before I gathered my clutch purse and went through the creaking back door to the kitchen area with its giant print of the Last Supper on the wall. Not DaVinci’s version, mine. I’d been working for almost ten years as a painter, and I did make money this way. Some, at least. I sold prints through LDS bookstores and gift shops, and had a somewhat steady stream of private commissions.

  I tossed my keys on the counter where they landed with a dull crash. My shoes hit the floor with two hollow clacks and I tiptoed in my nylons to the carpeted hallway, which featured more of my art on the walls and propped up on the entryway table. Carrie, my stepmother, had bought a lot of my work while she dated my dad. Then, when they’d married and she’d moved to Utah to be with him, she’d asked me to house sit for her. The housing market was so bad, she had no hope of selling the place and I made just enough money to cover utilities.

  One year later here I was, dumped by Len Hodge, living on my stepmother’s charity, and without a plan to move forward.

  That, in a nutshell, was my life.

  The phone rang when I was halfway up the stairs. I peered down at the entryway table, at the caller ID box and noted with a start that the phone number began with 44. I bounded back down and lifted the receiver. “Hello? Aunt Nora?” I glanced at the clock. It was nine thirty, which meant it was five thirty a.m. in the UK. Something was wrong.

  “Hello sweetie.”

  “Hi! How are you? Everything okay?”

  “Well, I broke my arm. Silly thing for me to call you about, I know.”

  “No it’s not. What happened?”

  “I slipped and fell in the kitchen. Thing is, they’re not letting me out of the hospital. They want to do extra tests to see why I fell, even though I told them. I dropped a bowl of frozen peas, stepped on a few, and went down. They want to scan my brain. Me, I think they’re just trying to run up fees to make some money. I guess my private insurance pays way better than their National Health Service.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “That it is. Listen, honey, is there any way at all I could get you out here?”

  “Absolutely. When?”

  “Well, I’m trying to talk sense to the doctors, but they won’t listen. Maybe if you and I gang up on them? Or maybe you can just think more clearly than I can. I’m so tired, honey. And I hate hospitals. They remind me of watching my mother die.”

  “I know the feeling.”

  “And my siste
r, and my other sister.”

  “And my sisters and my cousin.” Our family had the BRCA 1 mutation, a gene that put the women at risk for cancer. On top of that, we had hideous luck. My grandmother, great aunts, mother, aunts, and sisters had all died before the age of forty. None of the technological advances in cancer treatment over the course of the last century made the slightest bit of difference; the cancers spread like wildfire once they showed up and they bounced right back no matter how many times doctors removed tumors or hit them with radiation and chemo. Nora and I were a rare breed, adult women in the family, survivors of a silent war. I’d sobbed when I got the results of the tests back that showed I didn’t have the mutation. “I will be there as fast as I can. I’ll go book a flight.”

  “Thank you, sweetheart.”

  “Anytime. You get some rest. I’m on my way.” Even as I said this, I ran up the stairs to the office, where the computer was on standby. I had Nora’s credit card number written backwards on a sheet of paper in the drawer.

  I’d first met my aunt at a family reunion. My mother was from a tiny town outside Tooele (pronounced “Tu-willa”), Utah. The place had one gas station, one diner, a tiny cluster of houses, and a church. I was fourteen and the family had taken over the church and had filled the cultural hall with tables for a potluck. A huge spread of casseroles, mashed potatoes, and jello salads took up one wall.

  My oldest sister had just died half a year earlier and my next older one was sick, not with the cancer that killed her, but with the one before. People were waiting on her like a princess as her bald head turned this way and that to receive the plates piled high with her favorite flavor of red jello.

  The place was a madhouse. I could barely hear myself think, there were so many voices jabbering away, punctuated with loud “Helloooo”s as cousins and siblings happened upon each other in the crowd. But when Nora’s figure appeared as a silhouette in the doorway, the place went quiet.

  She was slim and wore a tulip skirt and a translucent, short sleeved blouse that seemed as insubstantial as smoke when backlit by the sun. When she stepped forward, the blouse shifted to a more substantial cream color and I beheld her jet black hair and gray blue eyes. She was twenty-nine and moved gracefully in her pumps, like a doe stepping out from a copse of trees.

  Her gaze fell on me, and I smiled. The smile that I got in return was all relief and she came right over to me. “Are you one of Sarah’s daughters?”

  “Sara Dunmar’s, yeah.” There were at least four Sarahs at the reunion.

  “I’m your aunt, then. Nora.”

  “Eliza,” I replied. I’d heard of my Aunt Nora. I knew she lived in England and was married to a wealthy man with a mansion, but all the stories of her were static. There were never any new ones. No one had spoken to her in years, except to mutter with disapproval that she’d stopped going to church.

  She leaned in and whispered, “Do you think they’d notice if we went to the diner and got malts? I’ve got the most desperate craving for a malt.”

  I glanced around and saw that both my parents were staring at me from two tables over. I pointed in the direction of the door and they both nodded and waved their consent.

  “Excellent,” said Nora, “let’s go.”

  We’d gone to the diner for malts. She’d paid, and just laughed off my attempt to pitch in. We got them to go and spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the town. I’d been there dozens of times to see family, but through Nora’s eyes, the place ceased to be just a boring collection of houses, and instead became rich with history. “The woman who used to live here had a crush on Uncle Ron,” she said as we passed one of the smaller woodframe houses. This one had a heart motif cut out of the faux shutters nailed on either side of each window. “She used to feed him, basically. She’d leave him dinner on his front doorstep every evening.”

  “So did they ever get married?”

  “Uncle Ron wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. He assumed it was charity and by the time Cousin Shayla set him straight, the woman had moved on. She kept cooking him dinner, though. That was the funny thing. I guess her new husband didn’t mind.”

  When we walked past a cow pasture, she paused and rested a hand on the barbed wire. I pulled out my sketchbook and set about trying to capture the brightness of the sun, and the lazy expressions of the cows, laying with their feet tucked under them. They looked content, as if they were all having their backs scratched.

  “Are you an artist?” Nora asked.

  “I just draw.”

  “Let’s see. These are wonderful.” She leafed through my sketchbook. “You’ve got real talent. Are you going to become an artist?”

  “No. It’s not practical.”

  “Oh, pffft. You only live once, who’s got time for practical? Let me ask you this, what makes you happy, a day when you get three square meals and a lot of homework you don’t like, or a day when you draw and don’t even remember to eat dinner?”

  That was easy to answer. “I love to draw.”

  “Choose to be happy, then, even if it means you go hungry sometimes. You and I both know how short life can be.”

  That evening I’d drawn a picture of the little house with the hearts on the shutters. I drew it as a longing house, its windows like eyes turned upwards, its porch steps like a sad frown. I found that if I made these subtle enough, the casual observer would only see the house and get a sense of sadness. That was the night I began to call myself an artist.

  And even though my parents were not in favor of this career, by the time I was eighteen I had a trust fund filled with life insurance payouts from my mother and one of my aunts. It covered the fees for my degree in fine art. I then turned down jobs as a graphic designer, which paid well but wasn’t what I loved, and instead went into painting gospel subjects. I chose to be happy, as if by living one full life, I might make up for the lack I felt in the absence of my sisters, whose lives had come to such abrupt, decisive ends. I wanted to feel enough joy for the three of us.

  My father was indifferent, at best, to my choice of career. My brother was a jerk about it, saying I clearly just wanted a cute hobby for when I was married with kids. Only Nora was unreservedly delighted.

  Years later, when her children had both left home, she flew me over for a visit, and I’d gone again every year since. Her husband had long since died in a car accident, so it was just her and me.

  A knock on my front door pulled me out of these memories. I looked at my watch. It was nearly ten o’clock.

  I flipped on the porch light and hauled open the door. A whoosh of damp, sweet smelling air blew in, and there on the stoop were Hattie’s loser semi-boyfriend, Mike, and Len’s housemate, Chris. Chris, who was medium height with ash blond hair, had his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his khaki pants. “Hey,” he said. “Um... so... I couldn’t find Ben tonight but I wanted to come see how you were.” Chris and Ben were my home teachers, two priesthood holders in the ward assigned to visit me every month and look out for me in any crisis.

  “I’m fine, guys, but thanks for coming by.” I shrugged at Chris. “It was an amicable breakup, you can tell the media that we intend to remain friends. Why, is he upset?”

  “I dunno. He’s in the middle of a Bioshock marathon.”

  Len was an obsessive video gamer, yet another trait that made him all wrong for me.

  It was chilly out here on my porch. “You guys want to come in, or...”

  They exchanged a look. “Yeah,” said Chris. “Sure.”

  Not what I’d expected, but I knew it would be rude to show my surprise, so instead I stepped back and ushered them in. With the front door closed, the air inside was still once more. I flipped on the lights to the living room and went to close the curtains as the guys plopped themselves down on the couch.

  “Would you like a blessing?” Chris asked me.

  Chris wasn’t a very intuitive person, and he wasn’t hyper religious, so I must’ve looked like I was in bad sh
ape. Some guys offered blessings with the same frequency they offered handshakes. Chris didn’t even bother to visit me most months. Usually when I saw him, he’d be on his couch at home eating an Evol burrito and watching reality television. If he even noticed I was there, all I got was a wave of the burrito. Now that Len and I were over, odds were, I’d never see him at all outside of church.

  “No, I’m okay. I mean, I just got a call from my aunt and she broke her arm, so I’ve gotta go fly out to help her.”

  “Oh, she all right?” Mike asked. He had dark hair and very green eyes that were slightly almond shaped. They gave him a kind of weasley quality as he gazed directly at me. He was a youngster, too. Twenty-two, barely back from his mission, still living at home. He still seemed like a teenager to me, self absorbed and clueless about making his own way in the world.

  “I think so. I just have to pack. I’m flying out in eight hours.”

  “You need a ride to the airport?” Mike asked.

  “Um, no, don’t worry about it. I’ll manage.”

  “No, I’ll do it. I’ll come by at what time?”

  “It’s an international flight. Three hour check in. Really, I’ll be okay.”

  “Three a.m.? Okay, I’ll be here.”

  Chris palmed his hair forward – an odd habit he’d developed since he’d started buzzing it himself. He claimed it stuck straight up and he wanted to train it to lie flat. “You sure you don’t want a blessing?”

  “Um... okay, sure.” There was no harm in a blessing. If they were willing to go through all this trouble on a Saturday night, I might as well oblige them.

  “You need a blessing for the sick or one of comfort and counsel?” Mike asked. He got up from the couch.

  “Just comfort and counsel,” I said. I hauled the piano bench out and sat on it as the guys stood on either side of me.

  The two of them put their hands on my head. I felt a little silly, doing this. It was yet another reminder of how, as a Mormon, I couldn’t ever really aspire to be a normal person, but I shut my eyes and bowed my head and resolved to listen.