Role of a Lifetime (16 page)

Chapter 40

Holly hung up the phone in a much better mood than she had been in when she called.  Then she wondered if Kelly was going to get in trouble for being late for work.  She looked down at her laptop.  The screen had gone blank and when she swiped her finger across the mouse pad Lia's e-mail came back up.

Kelly was probably right.  There had been times, numerous times, over the years, where Lia had lost it, flipped out unreasonably, as any teenager was prone to do.  Holly had learned that if she didn't hide the shock and hurt she was feeling, there was a usually better chance of Lia apologizing.  Not a big chance, but a heck of a lot bigger than if Holly screamed back at her, which just made Lia more defensive.  But god it was so tempting to scream back at her.  So very tempting.

Holly stared at the e-mail.  She couldn't accomplish what she wanted with a look, Lia was an hour and a half away.  She looked at the phone but she didn't feel like calling Lia either.  Lia mostly likely would answer the phone with a nasty "What?" and they'd be right back to where they left off.  So instead Holly hit reply on the e-mail.

She wrote it and rewrote it.  She debated everything from the salutation on.  She put in a part demanding an apology and took it out.   Finally she was satisfied.  She was just about to send it when she changed her mind and added another paragraph in the middle.  She read the whole thing through again.

Lia - You need to realize you caught me off guard with this plan for the summer.  I am not against it, but I would like some more details.  Remember, you've been planning this and know more about it than I do, so of course it makes more sense to you.  I want to tell you I do trust your judgement.  I think, most likely, we can work this out, but you need to understand I do not appreciate your tone or the fact that you hung up on me.  Both were unacceptable. 

I'm going to be going out to California to see Kelly in about a week, we're going to book the plane tickets tonight.  I'm planning on staying out there for several weeks, not sure how long yet, but definitely until after the premiere of the new movie he did.  I'll e-mail you when I have the flight information.  Maybe this time I'll get to try surfing.

I love you and I'm very proud of the great job you've been doing in school this year.  Send me all the details you have about the job and your plans and give me some time to think about it.  Good luck on midterms.

Love, Mom

After she sent it she went out to the barn.  Deciding to go out to California and deciding that she was going to try surfing had given her another idea.  Holly had tons of experience painting the rural scenes that surrounded her house and around her town.  All four seasons of them.  Holly had never tried to paint a picture of the ocean and now she was going to try.  She picked out a small canvas and a pencil.  She spun the pencil around in her fingers, wondering if the lead would show through the lighter colors she would have to use, but she was excited to get started.  This was just her very first attempt anyway, it didn't matter.

She took the pencil and canvas back to the house and went to the computer.  Her plan was to google ocean images until she found one she wanted to attempt.  Her first thought as she scrolled down the page was that it was going to be a lot harder than she thought.  Nothing but blue and white.  Then she found a picture looking down the shore, the waves breaking on the sand.  The sand provided the contrast Holly was looking for and she was debating the orientation of the canvas, horizontal or vertical, when her e-mail chirped at her.

She clicked on the tab for her e-mail and then opened what Lia had sent her.

I'm sorry I yelled at you Mom.  I have a bunch of classes and a lab today but I'll send you the details about the restaurant tonight promise.  Love, Lia

Holly smiled at her daughter's name on the screen.  It had always been hard for Lia to apologize, for anything.  Well Holly knew who Lia had gotten that from, didn't she.  That thought made Holly frown and she typed in a quick response and went back to the photograph of the ocean.

The warm beach looked very inviting and Holly, after saving the link for the photograph, opened another tab and, feeling a bit impish, and then somewhat silly, googled "Kelly Rockport beach".  After spending way too much time looking at Kelly, she gave up on the computer and the painting and went to do her favorite ab workout DVD.  If they went surfing when she was out there she probably would need a wet suit but you wore a bathing suit under a wet suit, didn't you?

Chapter 41

"Do you need help?"

The voice came from behind him.  Kelly did need help.  He had checked out the inventory of art supplies on line and had been instantly overwhelmed.  So he had decided to stop in at the store where Holly had told him she bought most of her supplies to see if he could recognize anything she used.  Luckily the chain had stores coast to coast.  He was determined to have a studio set up for her by the time she got out to California.  He turned around slowly, not sure what was going to happen, but there was a reason he did most of his shopping on line.

"Oh my god, you're Kelly Rockport."

"Yes, I am," Kelly said.  He had taken off his sunglasses when he was alone in the aisle to check out the merchandise.  And he had quickly realized that even one aisle of art supplies was also, completely overwhelming.

"You paint too?" the woman asked, "I mean, painting and acting?"

"No," Kelly said, "It's for a...friend.  Birthday."

It was rare but occasionally Kelly resented the hell out of his fame.  He would have liked to have said "girlfriend" not "friend".

"Oh well what kind of painting do they do?"

"Umm," Kelly said.

"We have some nice acrylic sets, and oils."

"Oils, definitely," Kelly said remembering.

"Beginner, professional?"

"Professional."

"Those are locked up," the woman said leading him down the aisle.

Kelly frowned at the selection, "There's only ten colors in a set?"  Holly had piles of different colors.

"We can order a bigger set, but it's pretty expensive," the woman shrugged and looked at him, "I mean, not that you have to worry about that."

"Oh god, this is confusing, she has tons of colors, ten, it doesn't seem like enough."

"If she has them, then why are you getting more?  I mean, a little bit does a long way with these, I'm told."

"Errr, what about the other stuff, easels and brushes?"

"Umm, yeah we have all that."

In the end Kelly decided to order the paint on line.  Giving out his personal information so they could order it for him was out of the question.  He picked out an easel and a large set of the best brushes and five small to medium canvases.  He was obviously way out of his league but he was confident he had enough for Holly to get what he was trying for and he was sure she'd be happy.  They could order whatever else she needed on line or she could take one of his cars when he was working and go shopping.

Kelly drove home in a very good mood.  The film was wrapping up and he estimated he'd have at least a week off before the premiere.  He didn't have any more projects lined up for three more months so whatever coast they ended up on, east or west, he was looking forward to the two of them just being together again.

When he got home he took the stuff up to the bedroom he had chosen for the studio.  It was decorated pretty sparsely, but it faced south so it had the best light.  He had left the bed and the night table but had moved out everything else.  He set up the easel and put one of the canvases on it.  He moved the night stand next to the easel and put the brushes on it.  The rest of the canvases went up against the wall in the corner.

Then Kelly went down to his computer and searched until he found an oil set with a hundred different colors.  He ordered it and paid the premium for rush handling and shipping.  The promised delivery date was in two days, the day before Holly was flying in.  He couldn't wait.

Chapter 42

"What you got?"

Holly handed over the tiny sample bottle.  The hardware store had run a coupon for three free samples.  Once she and Kelly had worked out her travel plans she had realized she was very excited for the trip and to see him.  To pass what was starting to feel like a very long week before she could actually leave, she had decided to paint the living room, finally.

"A gallon of this one, please."

"Finish?"

"Eggshell."

"Okay, hang on."

Holly watched as the employee brought a gallon of paint up to the computer and the machine started squirting in the color droplets.  The process was kind of fascinating to her, one of the most challenging parts of pottery was perfecting the glazes.  It could either be exhilarating or infuriating depending on how close she came to the image she had in her mind.

"The shakers are in the back," he said as he pounded the lid back on with a small mallet. "You need anything else for prep?  Spackle?"

"Spackle?" Holly asked.

"Yeah, you know, spackle, if you have any little holes, also painters tape to cover up the trim, or are you painting the trim?"

"I could use some spackle," Holly said.

"Aisle four," he said, "I'll be right back, paint will be ready in about ten minutes."

"Thanks," Holly said.

Twenty minutes later she was on her way home with the paint, spackle, sanding sponge, putty knife and tack cloth.  Before she even went into the house she went into the barn, up into the hayloft.  She didn't keep much up there but she had empty boxes.  She took her time, carefully selecting two medium ones.  Then she peeked over the edge of the hayloft and dropped both the boxes over the side.

The ladder to the hayloft was sturdy, but steep, and Holly held on with both hands as she made her way down.  One of the boxes had bounced towards the other end of the barn and she went to retrieve it.  As she picked it up she was facing the stall where she kept her most favorite paintings and she stopped.

Slowly she made her way into the stall.  Most of the paintings were there because she loved both the subject matter and the way it had turned out.  But not the sunrise.  That was there for an entirely different reason.  It was the first painting she had done after…everything.  The first one she had done when she started painting again.  Holly fingered the edge of the canvas, remembering how Kelly had liked it.  Or maybe he had just been being nice.  But if he had just been being nice, well, wasn't that just, nice of him?

She grabbed the painting and went over to the house.  In the living room there were three big splashes of color on the wall.  When she had picked the samples she had been overwhelmed by the selection, especially the dark, bold colors that seemed to be all the rage.  So she had stuck with lighter tones, one blue, one yellow, and one cream, the cream color closest to what the room had been for the past fourteen years.

Holly held her painting up to the paint color she had just committed to, by buying the gallon, but couldn't tell if it went with the painting.  She needed someone to hold it up for her and opened her mouth to call for Lia automatically.  Then Holly remembered.  She couldn't believe it, all the months Lia had been away at college and Holly still wasn't used to it, not really.  Holly wanted to stand back and look at the painting against the wall, but Lia wasn't there to help her.  Lia was gone, really gone and she wasn't coming back, not really.  After much discussion, and many e-mails, Holly had agreed to let Lia go to Maine for the summer.

Holly set the painting down and stormed off into the kitchen.  She came back with a kitchen chair.  By putting the chair against the wall and the oversize painting on the chair she could kind of get a feel for it.

"Screw it," she said out loud, "Ivory goes with everything."

She forced her eyes to the photographs.  Then she picked the painting up, snorted in annoyance and slid the chair down the length of the wall until it was under the photographs.  She set the painting down and stood back again.  The painting would cover almost all the holes.  She didn't even have to patch all of them.  As soon as she thought that she realized she was patching the holes.  Every last one.

She picked the painting up and carried it to the back room and leaned it up against the wall opposite the rabbit area.

"Enjoy guys," she told Timber and Mercedes.

The rabbits both pranced to the front of their pens and rose up on their hind legs at her.  She took the time to pat them both, and then both again.  They didn't want her to stop and she didn't want to either.  But she had put it off long enough.

She marched back to the living room.  The entire room was prepped, save for the wall of pictures.  The furniture had been moved out, or to the center, and what was left was covered.  She had cleaned the trim and masked it off with painting tape.  The floor was completely covered with newspaper.  Holly only got the Sunday paper, for the coupons, and the once a week local paper, but she saved every one for the rabbits' litter boxes so she had had enough.

She went right to the first picture.  She reached for it and stopped, her fingers resting gently on the sides.  She looked happy in that picture and she had been.  Very happy.  She had been thrilled when he had asked her.  Hell, her roommate and almost every other girl on the floor of the dorm had been thrilled, if not jealous.  She had the first of her doubts that night, little ones, tiny, but when she got back to her dorm room, everyone couldn't wait to hear about it and tell her how lucky she was.

The next day he had sent her a dozen red roses and that, she supposed, was it.  It had felt so good to be wanted, and envied, that all it had taken was twenty dollars’ worth of damn flowers.  She had spent the next ten years trying to recapture that feeling and had never felt it again.  Glimpses of it, sure.  Less intense versions of it, definitely.  Holly's fingers curled tightly around the picture and she forced herself to take a deep breath.

"Lia," she said out loud, "You got Lia.  That's all that matters now.  Why can't you remember that Holly?  Why?"

She let go of the picture and stepped back from the wall.  She marched out to the barn and brought back the two boxes.  Quickly but carefully she removed each picture in chronological order, wrapped each one in newspaper and stashed it in one of the boxes.  When she was done she got out the packing tape and sealed both boxes.  Wrote "Pictures for Lia" on them and stashed them in the closet of the spare bedroom.  She had been going to put them in Lia's room, but decided not to chance Lia finding them, and possibly asking questions.

Then she got to work on the wall.  She pulled every nail and patched every hole.  Then she forced herself to take a break and eat a sandwich.  When she was done she was worried the spackle wasn't dry yet so she started painting the adjacent wall.  It was well after midnight when she was done.

The next morning the repaired wall pleased her so much that she almost took the painting back out to the barn.  It wasn't until the day before she was to leave for LA that she figured out the empty wall just reminded her of the pictures and she hung up the sunrise.  She might never forget, much as she wanted to, but she was sure, as she stood back and looked at her painting, a reminder of what could be was better than a reminder of what had been.