Part 3 (1/2)
”Where'd you grow up?” Jackie settled at the kitchen table and pulled her feet up onto the chair. She tucked the robe around them.
”Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Mennonite country.”
”Amish?”
”Amish who use machinery. Cars only come in black in those parts and the chrome is painted black too. Can't be too gaudy.” Leah smiled ruefully.
Jackie thought of Leah's thick tempera and semi-precious metal canvases that she'd seen pictured in art journals. ”Your early work was an answer to that, wasn't it?”
Leah laughed. Jackie couldn't believe it - a genuine laugh. ”Are you psychoa.n.a.lyzing me?”
”No, just guessing. After all, in Many-Splendored Black and Red, you painted over all except the edges of the silver with black. I'm just your average art student.”
”And I know what garbage they teach at art school.”
”My mother was appalled, too. She said that the curriculum has fallen off about twenty percent and the lack of teaching about non-Western Civilization arts is criminal.”
”She's right. The more I know of your mother, the more I like her. Can I interest you in a dash of Kahlua in your cocoa?” Jackie nodded a yes. Leah poured the steaming cocoa into two mugs, doctored each from a small bottle of Kahlua, and brought them to the table.
”She's a good mother and still somehow very cool,” Jackie said. She sipped her cocoa, the soothing chocolate warmth coating her throat. The Kahlua added a little burn and made her nose tingle. ”It's hard to explain. She always knew when to be my mom, when to be an adult person I could proudly show off to friends, and when to be my friend. It was my dad's idea to name me after Jackson Pollack, though.”
Leah's lips turned up with the closest thing to genuine amus.e.m.e.nt Jackie had seen so far. ”Your parents sound like intriguing personalities.”
”They are. My father is a wit and very charming. He taught me how to dance and walk a reception line without feeling like a robot. And if Mom hadn't been an artist she would have made a great therapist. As I get older I realize how hard both my parents worked to make a home for me that felt safe and secure, even in places where there was a lot of conflict.”
”Were you ever in danger?”
Jackie shook her head. ”Not that I knew. But when my dad was transferred to Egypt in the early eighties, I was sent to boarding school. I worried about them a lot, though. Particularly my mom. She didn't like to be cooped up in an emba.s.sy - she'd go off to the local markets to sketch or take language lessons. And she loves to cook with local foods.”
”That explains a lot.” Leah sat up in her chair with an intrigued look. ”I wondered about the rhythm of her work. It's not strictly Western. And the shapes of the figures and choices of stone - it's because she got inside the different places she lived.”
”She couldn't help it. Even in the U.S. she goes to flea markets, wherever people are buying and selling. She says that's where people are the most real.”
”And that series called Wall Street. It was chilling. I literally s.h.i.+vered when I saw it.”
Jackie sipped her cooling cocoa and smiled fondly. ”Proof in point. She spent a week at the Stock Exchange. Have you seen her Weavers series?”
Leah shook her head. 'I haven't really been keeping up.”
”She did three figures based on a textiles market. All female figures. The forms are somewhat indistinct, but their hands and the yarns are amazingly detailed. It's as warm as Wall Street was cold.”
Leah looked pensive. ”I suppose I should get out, but not... not right away. Um, listen. Is it okay if I sketch you in this light? It'll help with the detail on the other sketches-well, if I decide to take them to canvas.”
Jackie blinked. ”Sure. That's okay.” She had been sketched a lot. Her mother liked to teach kids drawing and Jackie had often been called upon to be their live subject. Her mother insisted art was a universal language.
Leah returned with pencil and sketchpad. ”Keep talking. You can move. Just keep the light on your face.”
Jackie sipped her cocoa. The Kahlua had left her with a pleasant glow inside and a tendency to smile. Parker drifted to the dim recesses of her mind. ”If the snow stays light do you think anyone will come for me tomorrow?”
Leah shrugged as her pencil scratched over the paper. ”I'm going to guess probably not. They won't plow up here until after the highway's cleared, and they won't be starting that until tomorrow - if the snow breaks.” She stopped talking to stare intently at her.
”Oh goodie.” Jackie leaned back in the chair and crossed her ankles. It was unsettling to have Leah's piercing gaze focused on her. ”That means I can play in the snow and have a real day off instead of making nice with relatives I haven't seen since I was a baby.”
”Why'd you come up to see them? Turn a bit to the left.”
”My mom made me.” Jackie laughed. ”I know, I'm a little big for that, but she's very good at guilt when she wants to be. My coming up here lets her off the hook for another ten years. They don't really get along. My mom's way too outrageous for them.” Her other reason, time away from Parker, she kept to herself.
”I would have never said Jellica Frakes was outrageous. Cutting edge, yes.”
”It all depends on your point of reference. To her family, she's leading a completely bizarre life. To most artists I suppose she seems conservative.”
”Lift your chin.” Leah was leaning closer, the pencil moving across the paper at light speed. ”For my parents, guilt was a way of Ufe. Any form of aspiration, creativity or love that wasn't directed at salvation was a sin. No ifs, ands or buts. My father was an elder in the church.”
”When did you leave home?”
”When I was eighteen. It was evident I had some artistic talent and they sent me to a Christian university near nowhere, New Mexico, to teach me how to be a nice, Christian artist. That's where I met Sharla.”
Jackie decided there was something special about the way Leah said Sharla's name. It vibrated. The way Jellica vibrated when her father said it. ”Love at first sight?”
Leah shook her head. ”It took a while. But she was resourceful and determined. And she was determined never to go home again. Sharlotte Kinsey from Norman, Oklahoma. Can you imagine being from a place so off the beaten track that the main sight for miles is an oil field? Lancaster County is small but beautiful, full of life. The greens in the spring would actually hurt my eyes...” Leah's pencil paused for a moment and her eyes glazed. Then she shook her head and the pencil began moving again. ”After a while she was determined that I would never go home either. So I didn't. Could you lean forward? Rest your elbows on the table.”
”It must have been hard,” Jackie said as she complied with Leah's request. Leah scooted her chair closer and scanned Jackie's brows and forehead. Jackie dropped her gaze, unable to stare back.
Leah was silent for a long time. She reached across the table, tracing the eraser end of her pencil along the laugh line that creased the left corner of Jackie's mouth. Jackie controlled a s.h.i.+ver. Leah's mouth had parted slightly and she felt as if Leah's gaze was burning her lips.
Leah sat back suddenly and made a last addition to her sketch. She flipped the pad closed. ”No,” she said softly. ”It wasn't hard. She made everything easy. For thirteen years everything was very easy. Only the last few have been a b.i.t.c.h.” Leah got up abruptly and took her mug to the sink. ”I think I'll turn in. Are you sure you're warm enough?”
Jackie raised her mug in salute. She was devoutly grateful the sketching session was over. ”I am now. Thanks. The Kahlua was nice.” Truth be told, she was sweating slightly. She grabbed a toasty warm blanket from the clothesline and tucked herself into the sleeping bag. Leah clambered up the ladder out of sight. After a few minutes, all was quiet.
Except for the rapid beating of Jackie's heart.
5.
A feathery snow persisted until noon on Sat.u.r.day. Jackie tried to earn her keep by shoveling most of the huge drift against the garage door to one side. Butch kept her company. The weather report said that the snow would continue in higher elevations - what's higher than here, she wondered-through the day, but that the sun would be out tomorrow. Towards sunset she thought she heard the faint echo of a snowplow hard at work, but it sounded a mountain or two away.
Leah helped shovel for a while but at Jackie's urging went back to her sketches. She seemed grateful for the turkey sandwich Jackie forced on her in the early afternoon. Refres.h.i.+ngly worn out with physical labor, Jackie turned her attention to stripping the turkey carca.s.s and making soup stock, all the while not thinking about Parker. After that she made soup. And baking powder biscuits. The door to Leah's studio remained closed.
Long after sundown, Jackie finally knocked and carried in a steaming bowl of soup and some biscuits. Leah was dishevelled and drawn, and she murmured in a distracted way Jackie knew all too well from her mother's fits of artistic pa.s.sion. She stoked up the fire in the pellet stove that heated the studio and left again, not even sure Leah had noticed her.
An hour later Leah emerged, bringing her dirty dishes. She held out the bowl like an adult Oliver Twist. ”May I have s'more, sir?”
Jackie looked up from her novel and nodded at the pot on the corner of the stove. ”It's still hot. Biscuits are wrapped in the tea towel in the basket.” She sat up and stretched her spine. The kitchen chairs weren't that comfortable, but the heat from the stove was too blissful to leave.
”I had no idea my kitchen could turn out something so tasty. And the biscuits are good.”
”There were a number of spices shoved in the back of that cabinet.” Jackie pointed. ”Plus some things that had changed organic states. I tossed them into the composter.”