The Matchmakers of Minnow Bay (20 page)

“Of course. I owe you at least two hours for helping me get this tire fixed. I can't believe I didn't notice it was flat before now. I must have driven over something on the way home from Ben's yesterday. It's the damnedest thing.”

“Hm, well,” Colleen says cryptically. “These things happen! About that favor.”

“Anything,” I say. And then, within minutes, I am filled with regret.

*   *   *

Crazy Simone Wajakowski, coffee pourer, bad dresser, gossipmonger, and Ben Hutchinson groupie, is also a wannabe artist, it turns out. Her mother, Marina, knew Colleen's mother well, back in the day, when they were kids. Marina actually babysat Colleen for a couple years while Colleen's mother worked outside the home, and she was a huge help to Colleen during the funeral, years later. Colleen is giving me all this background as she's walking me down the alleyway behind Lake Street, behind the inn, and the theater, and the market, and then Jenny's gallery. There, in a converted garage, Jenny has built a beautiful, light-filled studio for guest artists. It's chilly, but normally it's only used by resident artists who come during the summer and show their works at the art festival. Jenny has installed a little pellet stove that currently lays dormant, and otherwise not concerned herself with HVAC or insulation.

“Welcome to the Lake Alley Studio,” Colleen tells me as she pushes closed the door. “It takes about twenty minutes to warm up.”

“I think it is colder in here than it is outside.”

“Nonsense,” says Colleen. “The windows, though, let in a lot of drafts. And the skylights are even worse. Drew Hutchinson installed them when he was still in school, using only reclaimed materials. He was still learning. He's much better now.”

“Let me guess. Ben's brother.”

Colleen smiles and nods. “Very good. So I'll go back to the inn and make you a nice big thermos of hot coffee, you keep feeding the stove, and Simone will be along in a couple minutes. All she needs is a little informational interview. Someone to talk to about the artist's life, maybe take a look at her technique. Give her some pointers. She'll bring all the paints and stuff you need. Brushes or whatever. Jenny keeps them in her basement. I guess they freeze if you leave them in here.”

“I'm going to freeze if you leave me in here.”

“Nonsense,” Colleen says again. “Happy art-making, or whatever it is you call it! See you in a couple!”

She is perky as she slips out. Giving absolutely no indication of what, exactly, I have just signed myself up for.

*   *   *

The studio warms up. The stove makes a pretty sound and a soft glow, and that, plus the skylights letting in a low winter's sun, makes for beautiful light. It's cast onto interesting sketches hung with gallery wire around the perimeter of the room. Discards from artists past. I have never been invited to be an artist in residence, but my professors in college told me about the prospect of being installed in a place, living for free, like a pet, a novelty, a circus act. It sounded lovely to me.

The subject matter of many of the sketches is uninspired. This does not surprise me—my own sketches are probably pretty uninspired too. Much of my work is about color, and what I do with a soft gray pencil on thick white vellum isn't really the point. The point of a sketch is to have a conversation with yourself about what you see, and what you don't see, in the world before you. I like being in this room surrounded by other artists' personal conversations. It's like eavesdropping on moments long past. Unfinished moments. Each sketch is a cliffhanger. How did that field of sunflowers pan out? Is it motel art? Or something more?

There's a drafting desk near the stove. Sort of automatically, I sit down at it. Find an open, empty sketchpad. In the right-hand drawer there's a pretty dark green pencil tin, and inside, eight gradated graphite pencils. I take out pretty, rich 9B and find it already sharpened. I soften the tip with spit and pressure and then start to draw.

When next I look up, it's because the garage door is opening with a mighty racket. In an instinct left over from junior high, I quickly close up the sketchbook. Then I remember it's Simone coming in, see her in a pink parka and ludicrous orange faux fur trapper's hat, and open it up again. I was right in the middle of something. She can set up while I finish.

“Sorry it took me so long to get here,” she says, laden with Rubbermaid tubs of art supplies. “I was afraid you would be gone. I brought coffee.”

“It didn't take you that long,” I say, still distracted. Then I feel a pang of hunger. “Wait, what time is it?”

“Noon,” she says.

I start, and drop my pencil. I've been drawing for hours. I lost track of time while working. When was the last time that happened?

“Did you bring any food? I haven't eaten since…” I trail off, thinking of the interrupted quiche. Damn.

“No, but I can text Colleen. She said she would pack you a sandwich.”

“Perfect. Thank you,” I say. I hope Colleen will know to come get me when Hutch gets back with that tire. I promised to help Simone and all, but I've got places to be. “Ah, so, Colleen tells me you're an artist.”

“No,” says Simone as she unloads her ephemera. “You're an artist. I work at a coffee shop.”

“Those things are not mutually exclusive. I worked at a coffee shop for five years. Of course, I knew how to make a latte.”

“I know how to make a latte too,” she tells me. “I just didn't like you.”

I take a long, cleansing breath. “Fair enough. But you like me now?”

“No. Not exactly. But I need help.”

“Wow. How can I resist that kind of flattery?”

“Colleen said you were stuck here anyway. What else do you have to do?”

I think of the sketchbook, which is now full to brimming with my own translations of all the landscape sketches in the studio, and then at the Rubbermaid bin of paints, sponges, rags, and brushes Simone is setting up. I could be painting, I think. The thought is so unfamiliar that it almost startles me.

“Do you ever do portraits?” Simone asks, when I don't reply.

“I did. In art school. I make landscapes now.”

“I make portraits. I want to get good enough to get into art school.”

“Instead of being a dairy farmer?” I ask gently.

“In addition to being a dairy farmer.”

“Well, then, you need to practice a lot, every single day.” I feel like a huge hypocrite. I practice, sure. But just as many days, I simply stare futilely at a blank canvas for hours, hopeless at ever feeling inspired again.

“I do,” says Simone with an arrogant flip of a purple braid. “The thing is, I'm stuck.”

I sigh and let any illusion of authority fall away. “I may not be able to help you that much, then. I'm stuck too. I've been stuck for months.”

“On what?” she asks, handing me a thermos of hot coffee, which I find is already lightened perfectly the way I like it.

“On a certain subject. I have been painting the same view out of my apartment window for the last six months,” I admit.

“Whoa, that's really bad,” she says.

I pointedly drink my coffee instead of replying.

“Is it something you're not seeing?” she asks.

I look up from my coffee.

“I … yes. Yes, it is something I'm not seeing.” When was the last time I really talked to another artist about process, I wonder? Since Renee quit sculpting all those years ago? And how did this teenager so quickly narrow in on a problem I've struggled with for months?

“What aren't you seeing?” she asks.

I think back. “Well, if I knew that, I wouldn't be stuck. The whole thing just doesn't make any sense,” I admit. “When I started painting this particular view, it was because I was seeing so much.” I think of Annie and Jo, their stolen moments at the wine shop, always devoted to either fighting or making up. The couple with the new baby who perambulated by my window at the same time of morning every morning in one direction, and then just the dad returning with the stroller ten minutes later, after seeing the mother off to work, and walking so much slower, and with a sort of heaviness. The old woman who did her dishes in front of a window facing mine, who laughed to herself while washing up dinner alone every night.

“But then, I kept painting that view, and ran out of things to see that I hadn't seen before. Or ran out of new ways to see them. So then it was just sun moving across windows. Or weather. And then, finally, it was just the same thing I painted the day before. For weeks, months, I've been going on like that. I think I see something new, but then there isn't anything new on the canvas when I'm done.”

Simone nods at me. “Yep, that's my problem exactly. So how did you fix it?”

I shake my head at her. “What made you think I did?”

“So you're just not working anymore?” she says, horrified.

“Well. I don't really have a studio right now, and I—”

“What is this, if not a studio?”

“This is a garage. An unheated garage in northern Wisconsin.”

“Seems warm enough to me.”

That's true. It's warm and, dare I say, cozy now. And the light is truly quite pretty. “I only just learned about this place today, and I'm heading back to Chicago as soon as I get a new tire. Hutch is in Duluth right now.”

“No he isn't.”

“Do you contradict me just for sport, I wonder?”

Simone only shrugs at me. Then, after a moment's pause, she says, “You have to understand, I'm in love with Mr. Hutchinson.”

Heavily, I sit down at the drafting table. “He's too old for you, Simone.”

“No,” she says wistfully. “I'm too young for him.”

I smile sympathetically. “The end result is the same.”

“I know. But I still don't want him to end up with you.”

“You don't need to worry about that. I have a boyfriend in Chicago.”

“Colleen says he's the worst.”

“Colleen doesn't even know him!”

“She thinks you should stay here and be with Mr. Hutchinson.”

“I think,” I start, and then stop myself and try again. “Colleen may not totally understand.” And then, because we've left reality so distantly behind us that I'm actually a little lost, I say, “Why don't we limit the conversation to the subject of art?”

“This is about art,” Simone tells me. “See?” Then she pulls out her sketchbook. It's a big one, eleven by seventeen inches. Tucked inside are watercolor works in colors as garish as Simone's clothing. Each is a different representation of Ben Hutchinson.

I know I shouldn't be surprised. I really shouldn't. But I don't know what to say to her. I can't think of a single thing.

“Oh, Simone.”

“Are they any good?” she asks me.

The thing is, they kind of are. But I remember being Simone. I remember being so incredibly needy for feedback for my art, and what made me strongest as an artist was the way I didn't get any. Not good, not bad. Creating in a vacuum, as I did while I was her age, made me learn how to do it for my own joy, not for applause and validation.

And then creating for money zapped all that away.

I am about to tell her this when there's a knock at the side door. It's Colleen and Jenny.

“Lunch is served,” Colleen trills happily. “How are you fancy artists doing in here?”

“Ooh, it's so warm,” says Jenny. “Don't you just love a potbelly stove? So atmospheric.”

“Hello, ladies,” I say. “We were just, ah…” I look out of the corner of my eye as Simone quickly shovels her watercolors back into her sketchpad. She has the same instincts to hide everything she's not a hundred percent happy with. I fear it may be a sign that she's the real deal. “What did you bring us?”

“Sandwiches and bad news,” says Jenny, with undisguised glee in her voice. “Hutch didn't go to Duluth.”

“What?” I look to Colleen. “I thought you were going to call him hours ago.”

“I did,” she replies with nonchalance. “But it's snowing up there something awful. Safer to go tomorrow. I made brie, arugula, and apple on seeded baguettes. Yum.”

I ignore the growl of approval from my stomach. “But I need to get back to Chicago today.”

“Why?” asks Jenny, unwrapping the most tempting-looking sandwich and taking a huge mouthful for punctuation.

“Because I … Mitchell is…” She hands me a sandwich while I'm floundering, and my willpower vanishes. “You guys, this town is like the island from
Lost.
”

Colleen giggles. “There's better food. I brought Pellegrinos and a nice warm lentil salad too. Tonight when you're done in the studio, we can all head over to the brewery and have the fresh-caught walleye. With wild rice soup on the side.”

I can't help but laugh. It is a defeated, confused laugh.

“We can sit in the back room, not talk to anyone. The Hutchinson boys will all be busy with their mom's Sunday dinner.”

I pause long enough for Jenny to try to close the deal.

“One more night won't kill you,” says Jenny.

“It may kill me,” says Simone.

“Oh, shut up, Simone. You think she's cool too.”

Simone just shrugs.

I think for a moment. What can I do? Rent a car? Take a train? Hitchhike? All my other options seem unreasonable and reactionary. I have to stay here.

“Do you do this to everyone who comes into town?” I ask them. “Keep them here against their better judgment for days on end?”

“Only in January,” says Jenny, turning for the door. “See you at dinner.”

*   *   *

That night, after a wholly pleasant dinner with the girls followed by hot cocoa at the inn, Jenny and Colleen go off to their quarters with yawns and talk of busy Mondays ahead. My brain is full of the sketches in the studio and some kind of unrest I'd rather not contemplate. I go up to my room, read for an hour, brush my teeth and wash up as though I'm going to go to bed, watch some bad cable, read some more, and then finally, after all that, admit that trying to sleep would be fruitless. Out the bay window, the most beautiful lacy flakes of snow are falling. I go downstairs and pull on my boots and coat and slip out the front door.