The Art of My Life (10 page)

She’d been ridiculously naïve to think
Henna wouldn’t supply Cal with pot. She wrenched the door
open.

Henna’s loose white bun flopped behind
her when her head popped up. “Starr!” Her eyes lit up. The shiny,
age-mottled skin of her face stretched into a smile. She set
People
magazine beside her on the sofa.

Starr marshaled the anger dance and an
afternoon of teaching had only tamped down. “Cal wouldn’t have gone
to jail if you weren’t giving him pot.”

Henna’s breath sucked in. Her face
whitened.

Tears formed in the back of Starr’s
eyes, and made her angrier. She didn’t want to lose control. “How
can you keep undermining his life?”

“
Freedom sings. Cal has
the freedom to choose just like you did. You turned out like a
charm. Cal’s my baby, too. I’d give him the world.”

A painting Starr had never seen of
Henna’s house drenched in sunset stared at her from the wall behind
Henna. Henna mothered Cal when she’d never mothered Starr. The
unfairness of Cal’s and Henna’s love for each other fed her anger.
“I saw Cal smoke a joint for the first time today.” The words
ripped from Starr’s throat.

“
You’re making a mountain
out of a sand hill.”

Starr glanced at the wing-backed chair
she’d curled into as a child, covered in cat hair, and chose to
stand. It was the same old argument. She would never convince Henna
or Leaf that marijuana had robbed her of a childhood. And they
would never convince her that happy smoke was happy.

“
Cal’s started down the
same road Leaf took.”

Henna shrugged a shoulder, dislodging
the patchwork sweater draped over her red muumuu. “Leaf picked
himself up by his own boot laces. He always brought home the hot
dogs, and his home was where his heart was—with me.”

A cynical laugh coughed from Starr’s
chest. “Maybe his heart was home, but his body sure
wasn’t.”

“
I like a man who isn’t
under foot all the time like a bad penny. The THC girls are my
family, too. Forever friends are sisters.”

And I’m a mistake. A nuisance. Your
burden to bear.
Starr sighed. She wasn’t here to come to terms
with her past. She was fighting for Cal’s future. “What might Leaf
have accomplished if every ounce of his ambition hadn’t been
anesthetized by marijuana? You can’t tell me you didn’t want more
from him.”

“
You make your bed, then
you sleep in it.”

“
Well, Cal’s sleeping in
it, too. He’s going to turn into Leaf if you keep giving him weed.
Is that what you want?”

Henna leaned forward, placing her
hands on her thick knees. “Different strokes for different folks.
Jesse’s like-father-like-Jackson. Let Cal find himself.”

Starr crossed the nubby rug to Henna,
knelt, and grabbed her hand in a fierce clasp. “I’m begging you.
Stop giving Cal pot.”

Henna stared at her with milky blue
eyes, the corners of her lips twitching. “Starry, Starry Bright, if
it means that much to you….”

Starr peered into her mother’s eyes,
maybe the first time she’d really looked at her in years. She saw a
woman, raised by a father, who never learned how to mother. A woman
who had never been loved enough by Leaf.

Or by her daughter.

Starr rolled up to her feet. “Thanks,
Mama.” The word felt like a stone in her mouth that lodged at the
back of her throat. Last time her mother pledged to quit giving pot
to someone, nothing changed. Starr had been a little girl begging
Henna to cut Leaf off.

May it be different this
time.

October 24

I find myself staring at my
dreams. Do I have the guts to face the pain it will take to achieve
them? Did Van Gogh achieve his goals or just the pain?

Aly at
www.The-Art-Of-My-Life.blogspot.com

Fish’s tires rolled over the gravel of
the Koomers’ drive as he passed Starr’s studio. He hadn’t seen
Missy in over a week. He’d never see her if he waited for her to
jog into his orbit, as she called it. She’d pretty much said she
was over him. But he’d resurrect her childhood crush. He parked
between the garage and the house and climbed out of his
pick-up.

Just being around Missy made him want
to be the man she challenged him to be. She was the only one in
years who had expected anything of him. She’d be good for
him.

A memory bubbled to the surface of
eight-year-old Missy careening up to him on her pink bike, jumping
all her weight on the brakes. Dirt and shell flew as she jerked the
handlebars to the side, just missing plowing into him. The maneuver
was an essential life skill he and Cal had taught her. She stuck
her lip out and demanded he forgive Cal for shooting him in the
butt with his BB gun. And he had.

Her grown-up challenge to forgive Cal
for getting him arrested and fired had gnawed at him all week. But
Cal had gone too far this time.

He peered through the screen door at
Missy standing at the kitchen counter on the other side of the
kitchen.

He knocked on the door frame. “Hey,
Mis.”

Her face jerked toward him, and he
thought he saw the old flash of delight on her face. She looked
down at a piece of bread and spread mayonnaise on it. “Since when
do you knock?”

He stepped into the kitchen, and the
door banged behind him. “I didn’t want to scare you.”

“
Fat chance.” She laid
turkey on top of a tomato slice and dotted it with halved green
olives. “Want a sandwich?”

“
I want—” He stopped. This
was harder than he anticipated.

She stared at him.

He felt like he was fifteen again,
asking Kirstin Potrofsky to go to the movies. He cleared his
throat. “What do you say, let’s go out?”

She set down the knife as though she
were laying out instruments for heart surgery. Her eyes lifted to
his. “You mean like let’s go outside and look at some amazing bug
you found?” She laid the words down carefully like the
knife.

He smiled. So, she was going to make
him work for it. He was game. “Like dinner at Ocean’s Seafood,
watching the sun set on the beach, a kiss good night.”

A tiny breath sucked in. Her eyes
dilated. “Oh.”

She was still so long, her hip and one
hand resting against the counter, he wondered if she was going to
say anything else.

His heart thumped against his chest.
Each millisecond she stood like a human statue at a street fair
made him want her to say yes more desperately and fear she’d say
no.

She turned her back on the sandwich,
crossed her arms, and leaned against the counter. “You’re just
doing this because you lost your adoring puppy. Well, you lost me
two years ago on my eighteenth birthday.” She said it like her
birthday was supposed to remind him of something.

“
So, I’m a little late. A
lot late. I’ve hardly seen you in the past couple of
years.”

“
You’ve hardly seen me in
the past five years….”

He’d been around her a hundred times
since he was twenty and she was fifteen. What was she getting at?
“All I’m saying is I like you grown up. And we should hang out, see
what happens.”

“
It’s just your pride
talking. I’m not mooning after you, bringing you treasures—sea
shells, pine cones, Popsicle stick houses—plying you with chocolate
chip cookies.”

All of which—except the cookies—were
carefully boxed up with his other belongings in the Koomer’s
garage.

She turned back to her sandwich,
sliced it, nailed him with her brown eyes. “You’re a good-looking
guy. A little tall. A little bony. But I’m sure you can find
another fan without too much effort. Have fun, Sean. I have
complete confidence in you.” She picked up her plate from the
counter and took a step toward the dining room.

He grabbed her upper arm, his fingers
closing around the soft flesh. “What’s going on here? This isn’t
like you. There’s a whole subtext I’m not picking up on. Say what
you mean.”

Pain-lanced eyes lasered into his.
“No, I won’t go out with you.”

He stood in the kitchen, stunned by
her anger.

Car wheels crunched across the
gravel.

Missy looked out the window. Her face
softened. Her eyes brightened. “Excuse me.” She pulled out of his
grasp, set down her sandwich, and dashed out the door.

His gaze followed her to Cal exiting
his Jeep.

Cal climbed out, hair freshly shorn as
short as he’d worn it in middle school.

Not for the first time, Fish wished
Cal hadn’t pulled three months jail, six months’ probation. Even
angry at Cal, the sentence seemed excessive for a first time
offense. And something was fishy about Cal being caught with
twenty-one grams. Cal never carried more than a few joint’s worth
of weed. If Cal had been dealing, he would have known. If he’d
defended Cal, he could have whittled the sentence down to probation
only.

Fish could see more than hear
conversation zinging between them, their faces smiling.

Whatever Cal said made Missy bounce on
the balls of her feet. Excitement seemed to roll off
her.

His gut twisted with longing and
bitterness. He wanted to be in that conversation.

Cal shot Missy a final grin and ducked
into Starr’s dance studio.

Missy turned back toward the house,
her face sobering with each step she took.

Her feet padded up the back steps
toward him.

He wanted to tell her she’d intrigued
him with the idea of legal aid. He wanted to ask her if she’d
debate both sides of the prospect with him.

She stepped quietly through the door.
“Thanks for stopping by, Sean. I’ll see you around.” The words were
gentle, but he heard the steel behind them. She walked through the
room, and he heard the stairs creak as she went up.

He stared at her forgotten sandwich on
a blue Melmac saucer, the wheat bread still indented from her
fingers.

This was crazy. He’d figure it out. He
didn’t want a fan. He wanted their old friendship with the hottie
she’d become. He wanted Missy.