“That’s what I’m afraid of,” he said, but I could see he was struggling not to smile.
“What’s this?” Carl asked as we approached the counter. “A giant hand giving people the finger?”
“It’s not supposed to be giving people the finger,” David said. “It’s supposed to be a regular hand.” He placed the sculpture on the floor and turned it to display the palm and the four crushed and bent fingers. “It’s been in an accident.”
Carl rubbed his chin. “I’ll say.”
“I was hoping you could tell me the best way to repair it. You sell materials to make papier-mâché, right?”
“Papier-mâché? Yeah, sure. Plain newsprint, liquid starch—I think that works better than white glue and water.” He examined the hand closely, the palm, the wrist, the bent fingers, all the while muttering to himself. “You’re going to need some wire mesh, wire cutters, masking tape…”
We followed him down several aisles, Carl pulling things off shelves and tossing them into a shopping cart. When we were finished, he placed everything on the checkout counter. “I’ve also got a book on papier-mâché you might want to buy. Has detailed pictures and all.”
“We’d better take that,” David said.
“And then for the paint…” Carl ran his hand along the surface of the pinkie. “Looks like acrylic.”
He led us to the paint aisle, stopped at the acrylic section, examined the colors, then began pulling down tubes—Prussian blue, ultramarine blue, yellow ocher, cadmium yellow light. “You’ll need to mix the blues and the yellows to make the greens.”
I moved a couple of steps down to the green tubes. Chromium oxide green, emerald green, permanent green light, phthalocyanine green. I couldn’t even pronounce that last one. “Couldn’t we just use these? I mean, they’re already mixed.”
“Not for this,” Carl said. “That hand’s been painted with a lot of different shades of green. They’ve all been carefully blended.”
So I’d heard.
We went back to the counter, but just as Carl was about to ring everything up, David turned to me and said, “This is never going to work. It’s way too complicated. The whole idea is crazy. I can’t go messing around with this.”
As much as I hated to agree, I was beginning to think he was right. Repairing the damage did seem complicated for two people who weren’t artists. If I was being honest, I’d have to admit that even my Christmas ornaments hadn’t been that great. Although I’d always loved art classes in school, loving something and being good at it didn’t necessarily go hand in hand. My art teachers were nice to me, but I’m sure it was because of my enthusiasm, not because I had any real talent. And now my enthusiasm had taken me down the wrong path.
“Oh God, David. I’m sorry. I was just trying to help. I thought this would be easier than it is.” He didn’t say a word as we went through the aisles and put everything back on the shelves. I felt like I was at a funeral.
We loaded up the hand and got back in the van. “Look, there has to be another way out of this,” I said. I wasn’t ready to give up.
“There isn’t any other way out of it. I’m going to call Ana and tell her what happened. And then I’ll call Alex and tell him so Ana won’t have to. He can’t fire her for this. It wasn’t her fault. It was mine.”
Except it wasn’t his fault either.
Back in the lobby of the Duncan Arms, I grabbed a business card from my wallet. “At least let me know what happens. Please?” I handed him the card. “Text me or call me or send me an e-mail. Something. And if there’s anything else I can—” I stopped myself before uttering the last word, realizing too late it was the wrong thing to say.
“I think you’ve done enough,” he said.
I could tell he didn’t mean it in a good way.
Chapter 4
Mom in Her Element
I opened the door and entered the darkened auditorium of the Hampstead Country Playhouse. It was a little after four. I’d long ago abandoned my plan to check out the resort upstate, and now I was meeting up with Mom. I hadn’t completely forgiven her for luring me to Connecticut with her fabricated story, but the sideshow with Alex Lingon’s hand had distracted me enough for my anger to lose most of its edge, and I didn’t want to leave town without saying goodbye.
The acting class for adults Mom was teaching had ended, but the stage was still bathed in light. The auditorium reminded me of a little theater Carter had taken me to soon after we began dating. We’d gone to see the daughter of one of his clients perform in Big River, and I remembered thinking life couldn’t get much better than the moment he put his arm around me, pulled me close, and told me how glad he was that I was there with him. He said it as though he couldn’t possibly have gone with anyone else.
Mom was on the stage now with a few stragglers, students who were still hanging around, talking. I headed down one of the aisles, wondering how far into the ten-week session they were. She taught the class only every couple of years, but the structure was always the same, each session culminating in the performance of a one-act play. I’d seen several of them, and some hadn’t been too bad. There were usually a couple of people who could act fairly well.
Mom never would have agreed to hold the workshops if Dad hadn’t talked her into it. She didn’t think she’d be a good teacher, but he had a knack for seeing beyond what people saw in themselves. By the time he got her to accept the suggestion, she was convinced it had been her idea all along, a strategy he often used in his work.
“Oh, I agree with you,” Mom said as she smiled and tilted her head at a man in a chambray shirt. “He’s a brilliant playwright. Just brilliant, although he’s gotten very dark lately. He wasn’t that way when I first knew him.” She rested her hand lightly on the man’s forearm. “I could tell you stories…”
“I’ll bet,” he said.
I stopped a few rows before the stage. “Hi, Mom.”
She waved to me. “Hi, honey. We’re just finishing up.” She turned back to the students. “All right, great work, everyone. Same time next week.”
The group disbanded, and Mom walked down the stairs and came over to me. “So glad you called.” She gave me a hug. “I was afraid you’d already left.”
“My flight’s at seven.”
“How about grabbing a cup of coffee? Or a snack?”
“I don’t think I have enough time.”
She glanced at her watch. “Oh, I guess you’re right. Well, we can just sit here for a few minutes and chat if you want.” She moved into one of the rows of red velvet chairs. “I’m always happy to be in a theater.”
We sat down and I thought about how my father would have said the same thing. He loved the theater. Loved rolling up his sleeves and getting into the details. Let’s use candles here, but let’s not have them all come up at once. It should be gradual, a progression. Sometimes it drove the directors crazy, how much he got into the nitty-gritty, but he knew what he wanted—mood and tone, visual effects, sounds. And in the end, he was right every time. The awards in his office—five Tonys and four Drama Desks—proved it.