“It won’t bite,” the woman had said, with a dry single laugh, a little impatient. She’d had a cold sore at the corner of her mouth.
“I know.” But Becky hadn’t even been sure how to hold the thing—flat like a pizza? In front like a shield? In the end she’d seized it any old way, on fire just to get out of there.
Here with her father, though, she was the expert. She rested a hand on his curved back, on the wool blazer she’d chosen for him tonight, and urged him to appreciate how different it was to have a real painting in the house, why it gave her regular old room a whole new feel. And that he shouldn’t worry about the money. She was doing real well at the office. “Not everyone gets a bonus at the end of the year.” She rubbed the slack muscles along his neck and shoulders.
“Storm.”
“No, it’s clear tonight.” But he meant the painting, he was looking into the painting where the background’s slate blue with scrapes of white did lighten to a summer-tornado shade of yellow green.
“That’s a storm?”
Did he mean, had she spent five hundred and forty (diverted) dollars on a drawing of a gully washer? “Maybe,” Becky muttered, a bit sulky.
The woman with the cold sore had insisted on rattling off facts about the artist’s dates, influences, and methods while the painting stood propped on the office easel and Becky crushed the envelope of cash in her lap. I said I’d take it, she wanted to say. Was this a kind of test? Why hadn’t she learned anything about the artist before showing up here?
“And of course, it’s the silo image itself, both archetypal and reminiscent of the farm in childhood where the artist—”
“What is?”
“The silo.” The woman stopped in her presentation. “The subject matter.”
“Oh. Right.” So that was what you called it, that part. Becky supposed she had registered the shape of a silo in the painting and now that it was mentioned, the forms of a sagging fence and a stand of cypress trees, but these images were somehow only tangentially related to the thing itself. Subject matter, she repeated silently. In all those fevered weeks of acquisition, she hadn’t known what the painting was about.
Holding her father’s hands, Becky stepped backward to guide him down the hall, then waited outside the bathroom until the flush, then shuffled him to his turned-down bed, where she’d laid out his pajamas. He could take it from there, more or less. She made sure to put his glasses on top of the alarm clock—the one he used to set for 4:40 am—and plug in both night-lights.
Back in her own room she hurried into her own bed. What did it matter if her father didn’t see what she did in the painting? That old lava lamp on his dresser, that’s what made him smile. Hell, even when he’d been fully with it he never cared about any kind of pictures, never remarked on one that she could remember.
So why this queasy sadness? She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t give in to the sudden images pressing down on her: no college, no boyfriend, no mother downstairs wiping up the last of the kitchen after tonight’s family feast. Becky rocked herself fiercely and marshalled a barrage of new thoughts like a deck of cards rainbowed out for her mental pleasure.
There she is in the office, catching up the phone on its first half-ring. Turning in the week’s report a full day early. Overhearing Mr. David say, That new girl’s shaping up to be a real powerhouse. Now she’s slicing through a tangle of invoices, back straight at her own metal desk. Making Mrs. Harris’s day with a pouch of shrimpy kibble for the tabby who lost part of his tail in a garage door mishap. Her neatly labeled record books, her own carton of yogurt in the break room fridge, the good mornings exchanged with everyone, even old Mayor Thomsic if she happened to pass him in the lobby.
Becky rolled onto her side so she could look at her painting. Hers, it was hers now, and who cared if anyone else recognized its power? Night winds started the cottonwood branch brushing, scraping. She clicked off the light. She lay in bed urging the painting along.
Go on, go on, change me.
4
Pierson
1984
Almost 9 pm and the server still hadn’t cleared their entrée plates. Becky knew that her new boss, Karl Price, would insist on ordering a selection of desserts for the table—To share! C’mon, a bite won’t kill you. Then someone would say, All right, I guess I’ll have coffee. Then Karl would insist on a glass of “dessert wine,” something horrible and sweet that nonetheless he’d spend half an hour sipping from and talking about. Who knew that the most tedious part of her promotion to assistant comptroller would be these endless restaurant meals? If you’d told her three years ago she’d get paid to eat steak and laugh at bad jokes, Becky would have said that sounded just fine.
Karl had a penchant for holding client meetings at restaurants, and by now, just a few months into her new position, they had cycled through all of Pierson’s and most of the surrounding counties’ “fine dining” establishments (steak houses or Italian). Tonight they were back at Mama Sofia’s, where Becky had quietly reminded Karl not to order the fish. So he’d steered all of them, including the two reps from Malten Industries, specialists in municipal wastewater treatment, toward the lasagna. Becky sadly poked at her enormous amount of leftovers. Dad would love it, there was enough for two more meals, but she had a policy of no doggie bags. Karl took food home, and the reps often did, but Becky had her own standards.
“I hear you have a family business, too,” Bill from Malten said, angling toward her. He’d gamely tried to turn the conversation toward work throughout dinner, even though Karl mostly wanted to opine about the White Sox. “Out on your place?”
“Yes. Well, sort of.” Becky had almost entirely wound down Farwell Agriculture Inc. She’d stopped taking standing orders last year, stopped insurance, and finally had let go their half a dozen seasonal workers. The inventory was mostly gone by now, as were leftover building materials and pallets and shelving. Every night Becky parked in the shadow of the barn extension and wished they hadn’t taken that on. They still owed nine grand on it, empty and beautifully painted.
“A lot of times,” Bill said, his voice lower now, “we offer add-on residential or commercial services as a perk. With a town contract. Think of it as a bonus, something to hang on to.”
Becky nodded tiredly. She hoped he wasn’t going to say cash back or cash benefit or cash anything. This was about the time during every dinner when a rep would try to bribe her, with varying levels of subtlety. At least Bill stayed in his lane. Someone from food services once tried to give her a year’s membership to Weight Watchers because “all the girls loved it.”
“The council has final decision,” she told Bill. “We’re really just getting to know the people behind the names.”
“But you make the recommendation,” Bill countered. “Why don’t I have someone come out to your property for a free assessment and a future credit? You can always cash it in later if you don’t—”
“Excuse me,” Becky said. Often it was the only way. “I need the ladies’.”
In the hall outside the restrooms she tried her father from the pay phone. It rang eight times and then lapsed into the answering machine message, her own embarrassingly girlish voice. Becky hung up without saying anything—Hank barely acknowledged the machine—and then tried Mrs. Nowak next door. Again, no answer. Did this mean that her neighbor had already gone over to check on her father? Or had Mrs. Nowak fallen asleep again, in front of her own TV? For the fiftieth time Becky wished the old biddy would take the twenty dollars she tried to give her, instead of waving it off irritably and claiming no one needed to pay her to do a good turn for a neighbor. The thing was, it was hard to enforce a good turn. When you were paying, you could complain.