Paint by Magic (26 page)

"It took me a little while to think of it, too, Mom," I told her.

Mom ran her fingers over my face. "Thank goodness you figured things out, Connor. It makes me shiver to think of you there, all alone."

I knew what she meant, though I'd hardly been alone for even a second.

"Then Fitz got sick," Mom continued. "Influenza. Very serious in those days. So he couldn't paint for weeks and weeks. During that time I regained all my strong memories of home again
and
searched his studio for the sketch he'd done of me—this one." She fingered the edge of the sketch. "I held the sketch and rubbed it—and I was gone. I didn't even say good-bye."

I let out a long breath. I hadn't even realized I'd been holding it in. "Well, he sure went crazy missing you, once he realized his muse was gone."

Mom patted my knee. Then she reached across me for the big art book. "Let's see what this book says about Fitzy's post-muse period."

"I already read it, Mom," I told her. "That section called the Dark Years—it was terrible. And it led directly to his suicide."

"No—look here!" cried Mom, and she turned the book so I could see the page.

...Fitzgerald Cotton's painting sprang to life in 1925 and lasted until 1926 with a whole new style and vibrancy; and his unnamed muse appears in every one of the paintings from this period.

After a year, Cotton's muse disappeared as suddenly as she'd appeared. Cotton's painting style changed again, growing dark and sinister for a brief time. But soon the cheerful vibrancy of the muse
period returned to Cotton's work in full force, featuring the woman he referred to as his New Muse. In
1927
he married this new muse, his sister-in-law, Joanna—widow of his beloved brother, Homer. Joanna and her four children (Elizabeth, Homer Jr., Elsa May, and Chester) became the new subject matter for Cotton's work over the next ten years. Together, Cotton and Joanna had two more children, a son, Connor, and a daughter, Pamela, who also star in many of his paintings from the 1930s–1950s.

"Connor and Pamela!" I exclaimed. "Look here, Mom, he named his kids after us!"

After his family was grown, Cotton and his wife lived abroad in their later years, during which he painted his most famous Night City scenes in towns and cities and villages all across Europe and Asia.

Fitzgerald Cotton's work depicted both ordinary family life and the lives of extraordinary people all around the globe, but in all his work, with the exception of the short-lived Dark Years period, Cotton was able to convey the beauty, love, and humor of the people and situations around him with almost photographic detail. His paintings now hang in the permanent collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Tate Gallery in London, the Academia in Rome, among others, and in private collections worldwide.

His death, in 1978, at age ninety-five, marked the end of a long and glorious career.

I looked up at my mom. There was this huge lump in my throat, like I was going to cry or something. But why would I burst out bawling now, when I hadn't shed a single tear throughout my whole big adventure? "He didn't die," I said, and I could hear the wonder in my voice. "I mean, he's dead now, but he was an
old
guy. He
didn't
commit suicide!"

"No," she agreed, and I saw she was crying, too. "Hats off to you, Connor, my brave boy. You saved him. You saved
us.
"

Dad and Crystal were reaching for the book. "Go on and read it," I said, wiping my cheeks. I glanced at Mom, who returned my watery little smile. "It's the very best bedtime story."

They read the book. Crystal twirled her hair round and round her finger while she read, then rolled her eyes at me. Dad just looked sort of stunned, as if his whole family was cracking up right before his very eyes and he didn't have a clue what to do about it. He could have us all committed, I supposed, but then he'd be lonely with just Ashleigh. So he sort of decided to believe us. But you could see he didn't like it one bit.

But what he did like—what I think we all liked—were the little changes that happened in our family. Mom was home a lot more. Dad put his foot down at work and said no more weekend meetings; he had a family to raise. Crystal cut out the piano lessons she was sick of, and I stopped gymnastics. Hanging from that skylight, I'd lost my head for heights.

We said enough was enough, and there wasn't time for everything.

We packed up my
Star Wars
furniture and sent it to my cousin Brad, in Seattle. He's only seven and is as much a Luke Skywalker fan as I ever was, maybe even more. I got new furniture—plain maple wood bunk beds and matching maple dresser and desk. All very simple and quiet and somehow just nice. I could imagine Homer sleeping in the bottom bunk (I'd nabbed the top one, of course). Sometimes I'd whisper to him at night.
Hey, Homeboy!

Once I looked in the phone book under
COTTON:
The only listing was for a Cotton, Elizabeth over in San Francisco. That might be Betty. But maybe not. If it
was
Betty, she would be old now—old enough to be my grandmother. When I closed my eyes I could see her perfectly as she was in 1926—tall and thin, with that shiny brown bob of hair and those challenging eyes. Easier just to remember her that way, maybe ... but I thought I probably would phone her, once I got my nerve up. "
Hey,
there, Betty old girl," I'd say. Would she know it was me, after so long?

Fitzgerald Cotton's painting now hung in a frame above my bed. The painting had gotten a little smudged at one edge during my—uh—travels. But the frame hid the smudged part. I'd given the ancient wooden paint box to Mom, who displayed it front and center on our mantel in the living room. "Powerful statement," said Mom's decorator when she saw it. "You're learning."

Mom brought back one TV from the storage center where she'd taken everything. She hooked up two computers. I think she donated the pagers and cell phones and everything else to charity. I hardly noticed.

We didn't tell our story to anyone outside the family, not even to Ashleigh or Doug. It's one of those things that happens that you just know won't sound so good in the telling. It's better kept as a memory. But some things, I decided, were nicer
not
kept as memories. Some things you just wanted to be
real.

Like: "Mom, know what?" I asked at dinner not long after all this happened to us. "I think we should build a front porch on to our house."

"What for?" asked Crystal suspiciously.

I looked at her and couldn't help wishing for the zillionth time that it could be Betty sitting there instead. "Porches are good," I said.

"For drinking lemonade," Mom added with a smile.

"And for working on jigsaw puzzles," I said. "One of the finer things in life."

Dad and Crystal looked at each other and rolled their eyes. They were slowly getting used to us. I was still getting used to us, too. The Rigoletti-Chase family connected in ways none of us could guess to how many other people? And in what surprising ways?

"A front porch is a fine idea, Connor," Mom said. "And jigsaw puzzles, too. They're the bee's knees."

I grinned at her. "Hotsy-totsy, even." And there around the dinner table, as we laughed together, I saw my life suddenly stretching out before me—a life at least as long as Fitzgerald Cotton's had been, and maybe even longer. It was going to be filled with things like family dinners and front porches and glasses of lemonade and jigsaw puzzles and books at bedtime and roller-skating all over town. There were going to be tree forts and swimming holes ... and lots of traveling—starting with Italy. Maybe I'd even try my hand at painting. There were going to be big adventures, and—oh, my life was going to be good.

Did I say plain old
good
? Hey—my life was going to be the cat's pajamas.