House of the Blue Sea (14 page)

Oh God
,
where is a connection failure when you need one
. “He is, isn’t he? A refreshing change from his impression of Tom Hanks in
Cast Away
.”

“So you’ve told your friend about me,” he said, looking at Sandra. “How lovely. What else did she have to say?”

So much for a less uncomfortable topic.

“She hasn’t told me much really, just that you bought one of her paintings and bullied her into showing her work in La Paz.”
Thank heaven for that bit of uncharacteristic discretion on Trisha’s part.

“And good that I did or she’d have two more pieces to lock away in her cellar.”

Trisha laughed. “You’ve gotten to know our Sandra well in a short period of time.”

“In truth, I haven’t. She’s rather reclusive and I’ve had to push my way into every outing we’ve had.”

“Including this one,” Sandra added with a forced smile.

Mark continued, unfazed. “But, I have convinced her to come sailing with me on Tuesday. Did she mention that?”

“She did.” Trisha’s eyes went to Sandra’s face. “But she didn’t tell me much. Is this an overnight sailing voyage?” Trisha had a promiscuous lilt to her voice.

Shoot me now
.

Mark flushed a little red and chuckled. “No, simply an afternoon sail with a picnic, and a bottle of wine perhaps.” There was a question beneath Mark’s words. They hadn’t talked about plans except to confirm Mark would charter a boat for a few hours. At least Sandra could take some comfort in the fact that he also seemed embarrassed by Trisha’s question.

“Didn’t you tell me you had to get to the gallery, Trisha?” asked Sandra.

“I probably should be off to check on my Felix. He’s a dear boy but not always on time, and the gallery should be opening ...” Her eyes went to her watch. “Right about now. It’s been delightful to meet you Mark. I’ll let you two enjoy what looks like a lovely Mexico morning.”

“And a pleasure to meet you.” Mark nodded his head toward the screen. “Perhaps we’ll talk again.”

“I certainly hope so. Bye now. Talk soon.” Trisha blew a kiss to Sandra and disappeared from the screen.

Sandra closed the laptop and pushed it to the other side of the table. “Excuse me for a minute. I’m going to track down Paul or Arturo and see what’s become of my breakfast. I think they may have forgotten me.”

As if she hadn’t felt awkward enough around Mark.
Ga! I could kill her!

When she returned to the table with her breakfast sundae, Mark had taken the chair opposite hers, his back to the beach. He was looking up toward the hills, the sun catching the side of his face. His skin was pale where the beard had been and had that smooth, I-know-you-want-to-touch-me appearance that men’s faces get when freshly shaven. He’d dropped his sandal to the tiled floor and his bare foot was across the opposite knee, his hands resting on his tanned calf. When he saw her he smiled, and there it was, that gorgeous mug she’d seen on the big screen, no longer partially concealed by a beard. She felt her knees wobble. He’d been easier to ignore with an untended beard and wrinkly clothes.

“You did come back. I thought your friend may have frightened you off. She’s rather a forward one, isn’t she?”

“Forward. That’s one way to put it.”

“She’s delightful though, really.”

“Yes, she is, but a bit of a handful at times.” Sandra set her breakfast on the table and took her seat.

“You’ve known each other long?”

“About eight years. When I first moved to Okotoks, she ran an art collective that offered classes and I signed up. It turned out we lived on the same block and we’ve been close ever since. She’s been a good friend. I wish I could convince her to come down here with me. She would love it.”

“She won’t come? Why ever not? Didn’t she say it was thirty degrees below zero where you live?”

“She doesn’t travel. I’m not sure why since she’s adventurous in other ways. She claims to be a hundred-mile traveller, like the hundred-mile dieters, but I think there’s something else to it. I don’t fly, so I’d completely understand if that were the reason.”

“You don’t fly?”

“No. Never. I did when I was a kid but not since.”

“Well how did you get here if you don’t fly?”

“I drove.”

“From Canada. Funny.”

“No, really. I drove. My car is sitting out back. Look for yourself—a Toyota SUV with Alberta plates.” She knew the smirk on her face was making her less than convincing.

“Right then. I’ll bite.” Mark got up from his chair and took the back stairs from the patio down to the parking lot. A few minutes later, he returned to his chair on the sundeck.

“You realize, statistically, it’s much more dangerous to drive through Mexico than it is to fly over it?”

“I’m aware.”

“So you do it because ...?”

“I told you. I don’t like to fly.”

“And you like Mexican banditos?”

She laughed. “I’ve not had the chance to get to know one so it’s hard to say. But I don’t drive down alone. I meet up with others; RVers who are travelling here for the winter. It’s a beautiful drive down the Baja Peninsula.”

“I’ve no doubt it is. Beautiful
and
dangerous—like so many things.”

That was a bit how Sandra was beginning to feel about Mr. Jeffery.

S
andra placed a blank canvas on her easel, clipping it into place to keep the wind from throwing it onto the sand. Her third piece for the show was going to be a portrait of Mar Azul. She’d walked south along the shore to give a broader view of the surroundings. She wanted to capture the spirit of the place that so spoke to her own spirit.

“So, what are you painting?”

She’d tried to discourage him from tagging along but it seemed he was more determined to come than she was to stop him. He promised he would stay out of the way on the back side of the easel so as not to watch her work. He’d brought along a blue canvas chair from Paul’s deck and was sitting in it now, facing the sea, a few magazines resting on his lap.

“Mar Azul.”

“There’s a very nice painting of the hotel hanging in the lobby. Is that one yours as well?” Mark said.

“It is.” She’d once painted Mar Azul from one of the palapas and the hotel filled the canvas. “I gave that one to Paul two years ago. This one will take in more of the landscape.”

“Well, let me know if you need a second opinion or any suggestions.” He opened a magazine.

“I certainly will.” She didn’t mind the company as long as he didn’t watch her paint. Nick used to accompany her on painting excursions and she enjoyed his quiet energy—there but not there. She wasn’t sure Mark could be
not here
, although she didn’t know if the problem was him or how she felt around him.
Nick
. In addition to his quiet presence, as an architect, he had been a welcome second opinion when she was painting any kind of structures. She would do her best to channel his excellent eye.

She looked down the beach to Mar Azul, its white walls rising up out of the desert. The definitive moment—where to place things and what percentage of the canvas to give each element. This was the only planning she did for her paintings. The remainder came through eye and feel. Sandra pulled a pencil from her bag and began to sketch in a rough outline of the image before her. Her paintings were often a combination of reality and imagination but this one she wanted to be a true capturing of the place, its colours, its peace. Mar Azul was taking shape on the canvas—its flat roof, its square pillars and angles, the stone wall that separated it from the surrounding desert. Sandra sketched in the palapas and where the sand met the sea before tucking her pencil behind her ear. She opened her paint kit and began placing blobs of various colours on her palette. Blue. Whenever she thought of Mar Azul she thought of the deepest, richest blues. She could close her eyes and see them on the backs of her lids, some vibrant, some dark, some shimmering, some cool. Shades of blue—maybe a good name for the painting, or shades of Mar Azul.

Sandra looked up past her canvas and realized Mark was watching her.

“Sorry,” he said. “I enjoy watching people at work, especially when they find their work so absorbing.”

“It’s all right. I’m used to painting with other people around. Usually they’re painting too, but I can make this work.” Standing at her easel with her palette in hand, she felt grounded, more herself, even in the company of Mark Jeffery.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“As long as it isn’t mathematical or otherwise drawing from the left side of the brain, sure.” Sandra was making the first strokes of colour around the pencil outlines.

“Have you always loved to paint, since you were a child?” he asked.

She continued to paint, not looking up. “I used to sit with my father in his library on Sunday mornings. He would read and smoke and I would do some kind of art. Each Sunday I’d try something different—paints, pencils, charcoal, pastels. At that time, pencil sketching was my favourite. I liked the simplicity of it, that I could take it anywhere.” Sandra rinsed her brush in the jar of water at the base of the easel and selected a different brush with a larger, flatter bristle.

“I’d often sketch my father, trying to change and improve on my work each time. He always looked the same so he was a good subject, sitting in that wingback chair he loved, cigarette in one hand, book in the other. I don’t know where he got that crazy chair, somewhere in South America I think, but the back was made of elaborately carved wood and twice his height when he was sitting. It towered behind him like some Brazilian throne. He’d sit there, smoking, which he did all the time.” She stopped painting and looked over the canvas at Mark. “Do you know, I can’t smell cigarette smoke and not think of him, or think of him and not smell cigarettes? Marlboroughs.”

Sandra mixed a pearl of white paint into the side of one of the three blues on the palette. “Anyway, it was as if I could return each week and he’d be sitting there, waiting. I once did a detailed and complicated composition and, even though six days would pass between my sketching sessions, my father would be posing in exactly the same way, like he was doing it on purpose.” She paused, looking over her canvas again. “I’m sorry, you were probably looking for a simple yes, I’ve always loved to paint or no, I took it up when I was forty, kind of answer.”

He chuckled. “No, not at all. I assume your father was thrilled to be the subject of so many works of art?” He lay the magazines on the sand beside his chair.

“You’d think, wouldn’t you? But no, he never saw any of them. Never showed an interest; and I was too afraid of his criticism to volunteer them. When I was twelve, my father planned an outing for the whole family to the National Gallery in Ottawa.” Sandra stopped painting and stared at the canvas. “It was a life-changing experience. Each painting, each drawing, each sculpture was a complete fascination for me. The colours, the brush strokes, the faces, the landscapes, all blending in this ...” Sandra waved her paintbrush through the air over her head, “this wondrous place where art was celebrated. And my father, he asked questions about what I liked, what I didn’t, and why. He asked why I thought the artist had used certain colours or media. My mother oohed and aahed over every piece I liked, finding something positive to say about each one. It was a beautiful day—maybe my best family memory.” Her eyes returned to the work in front of her.

“So your father ended up being supportive of your interest in art?”

“He was that day, but only because he was trying to steer me in the
right
direction, his direction. He didn’t see art the way I do. He thought it frivolous, simply ...” she deepened and stiffened her voice, “self-expression with a singular and selfish motive.” Mark laughed. “The day in the gallery, I saw how it affected people, brought them together, showed them something of each other, and I knew how it felt for me to create it.” Sandra continued to apply paint to her canvas, filling in the walls of Mar Azul, laying in the base colours of the sand, sky, and water.

“What was the
right
direction, according to your father?”

“A university degree in art history, focusing on the study of art and its forms rather than creating it. And that is how I ended up as a curator instead of a painter, at least for a while.”

“And what does your father think now? Does he appreciate the work you do?”

“My father is dead. Has been for a very long time. He died in a plane crash in South America when I was in my early twenties.” She hadn’t spoken of her father for years and was surprised by how little emotion he brought up.

“I’m sorry,” Mark said. “Is this the motivation for your choice of driving over flying?”

Sandra’s eyes went to the waves rolling onto the beach and then back to Mark. “Initially it was. He and his team were on their way to a remote dig site when their plane went missing.” She recalled the families of the three young people who’d travelled with her father, at the house every day, clinging together, hoping for some shred of good news. “It was a month before they found the plane, and the bodies. There was something about the horror of it, imagining over and over their final moments, knowing they were going to crash and die. For years I couldn’t imagine getting on a plane. I don’t think I’m afraid to fly anymore, I just don’t relish the feeling of disorientation that comes with being transported thousands of kilometres in less than a day. And I discovered the joys of long distance driving, being gradually immersed in a new climate and culture over many days.” Sandra returned to her painting. “My father lived to see me finish university and get my first gallery position. I’m sure he felt he’d done his job.” Sandra tasted bitterness in the back of her throat but swallowed it. Her eyes rose to Mark’s. “Five years after he died I left Toronto, left my position as curator of a rather swanky gallery, and started my life over—creating art rather than trading in it.”

“And you didn’t go back to working in galleries?”

“No, never, and I’m sure my experience there has been part of my reluctance to exhibit. I saw and heard what went on behind the scenes. Of course, Trisha’s gallery is very different from the kinds of places I worked, much more down to earth and far less political.”