Fine Art
By Kathleen Glassburn
On an overcast March Sunday around noon, before leaving Mardelle’s house to stop by his office, Kevin says, “Let’s go out to dinner tonight.” He hugs her tightly and kisses the top of her head. “There’s something I want to ask you.”
“No hints?” Mardelle’s heart pounds.
“Just wait.”
Several hours later, after a long soak in her tub, she puts on a blue cashmere sweater that he said brings out her eyes.
Kevin never comes back and doesn’t answer her calls. She frets all night that he’s been in an accident or worse.
--
For Monday, Mardelle plans to be out of the shop on a buying expedition that includes materials for a collage. Since their father’s death two years before, she has co-owned Branson’s Framing with her 33-year-old brother, Matt. Their father started the Seattle shop forty years ago in 1977.
Because of Mardelle’s bleak mood, she rushes through purchases and returns early, hoping there’ll be a message from Kevin. There’s been nothing on her iPhone.
She stands in the doorway to the workroom, stunned. The musky odor of a perfume she dislikes fills the air. Apparently thinking she wouldn’t be back yet, Matt and his girlfriend, Tracey, forgot about privacy. She sprawls on his lap. His hand circles her rounded backside; the billowy fabric of her skirt is pushed up to reveal a bit of lacy, nude-colored panties blending so well with her skin that, at first glance, it looks like she doesn’t have a thing on. Her purple cloche is cast to the floor next to them.
Coming up for air, Matt sees Mardelle. In a moment he shifts his head toward the wall. “Tracey brought over those frames... from an estate sale.”
Tracey assumes her familiar slanted smile.
Mardelle dashes out of the room. With a grimace she asks herself, Are Tracey and her ridiculous hats going to be a part of our lives forever?
Leaving for the rest of that day, Mardelle goes home to brood.
--
Mardelle thought she’d adapted to running the shop. She seldom yearns for her old position teaching art at the community college. Her relationship with Kevin over the past year, with his encouragement, has made her feel more positive about Branson’s Framing.
It’s Tuesday and for at least the fiftieth time, she checks her silenced iPhone. No voicemails. No texts. The black hands of a distressed-oak wall clock creep closer to 5 p.m. Its constant loud clicks seem to intensify, along with the ache to her head. In a few minutes she’ll turn the door sign to Closed. Maybe there’ll be a message at home.
Matt left an hour ago. Since his recent move to Tracey’s house, he’s been cutting out early because Tracey closes her antique shop, The Treasure Chest, at 4 p.m.
Mardelle handles stragglers.
She scans emails and shuts down the shop’s computer. The landline hasn’t rung since earlier this afternoon.
It was Mrs. MacPherson who demanded, “How’s my collage coming along?”
Mardelle assured her that the project would be completed on Friday. Mrs. MacPherson already checked on progress the previous week, and Mardelle gave her the same timeline. During that call the woman raved about different aspects of her daughter’s wedding that had been Valentine’s-Day themed, including the bride’s red and white rosebud bouquet. Because of this monologue, Mardelle left the shop forty minutes late.
Now, checking her materials, she touches tiny ridges on a sample of the collage’s matting. Tinted a pale pink, it looks like watered silk. The hand-carved cherry frame that Matt assembled is thirty by forty-eight inches. Mrs. MacPherson never so much as gasped at the collage’s grand total of $3,000. Coming from old Seattle money, why would she?
Sifting through a stack of photos to be mounted, Mardelle concedes that the bride and groom really are a good-looking couple. The bride’s pale-blond tendrils frame delicate features. The groom towers over her. He looks as tall as Matt, who was listed at six-foot-six in basketball programs during the time he played for the University of Washington. Kevin, as tall as Matt, also played for the university a few years before her brother.
The clock’s hands finally click into their five o’clock position, but as Mardelle grabs her purse to leave, the shop phone rings. She places a shaking hand on the receiver. Taking a breath, she greets the caller with her most cheerful voice. “Good afternoon. Branson’s Framing.”
“I’m so glad to catch you.” Mardelle’s animated expression falls. Mrs. MacPherson’s well-modulated voice asks about the weight of the collage and the sort of hanging device it will require. Trying to listen, Mardelle studies one of her own subdued watercolors across from the desk—an empty bench beneath a wisteria-covered arbor. A few weeks after painting it, she met Kevin, who’s said he loves this picture. As Mrs. MacPherson rattles on, Mardelle grits her teeth and imagines painting an oil with aggressive, thickly splashed-on primary colors.
Thirty minutes later Mrs. MacPherson hangs up.
Mardelle runs out the back door as a gust of cold wind blows open her unbuttoned coat. Stumbling along the dark path, she reaches a white Dutch Colonial—the Branson family home. She opens the front door and heads for the telephone. Nothing but the buzz of a dial tone.
The rest of the evening, while nibbling at a salad and sitting in front of the television with glazed eyes, she waits but no calls come in.
--
Mardelle was only seven years old and Matt was ten when their mother unexpectedly died from an embolism. He helped their distraught father care for Mardelle. At night Matt read her stories, scared monsters from under her bed, and sometimes stayed with her while their father spent more and more time at the shop.
Wednesday around noon Matt walks quietly up to Mardelle. “What do you feel like eating?” Ordinarily he would have hollered an order from his worktable. Slouching at her worktable and watching Mardelle arrange photos on the pale-pink foundation board, he looks as awkward as when he slumped at his first high school athletics banquet. Matt grew five inches that year while Mardelle stayed much smaller than all her classmates.
“What do you want for lunch?” he repeats.
“I’m not hungry.” She examines her glue gun to see if it needs a refill.
“Aren’t you going to eat at all?”
“No.” Her throat feels as if tied in a knot.
A few hours before, Mardelle had called the office where Kevin works as a CPA and left a message with his assistant. At least she gained the reassurance that he wasn’t lying in some hospital.
He never called back.
--
When they were at Ballard High School, Matt a senior and Mardelle a scared freshman, he guided her class choices as well as her social life. He pushed her to try out for cheerleading, even though she would have been at ease in the art room.
She asked, “Why would they possibly choose me?”
“Because you’re Matt Branson’s sister.”
In order to please him, she tried out and was chosen. At five-foot-two and ninety-eight pounds, Mardelle was tossed to the top of pyramids as she willed herself not to tremble.
During the year they spent together at the university, Matt warned plenty of guys, “Hands off my kid sister,” and he warned her, “Stay away from frat parties.”
She had one serious boyfriend in college, a business major, who ended it by saying, “You’re not interested in me. You want a clone of your big brother.”
At the time of this breakup, Mardelle decided to change her major from business, the same as Matt’s, to what she really loved — art.
After their father’s death, Matt decided that he and Mardelle should keep the frame shop in operation. He put his own lucrative real estate business on hold and convinced Mardelle to give up her teaching position. In addition, they let their apartments go and moved into the Dutch Colonial because he considered it to be a good financial decision. Neither of them was in a serious relationship at the time.
She planted a zigzag border of tulip bulbs that fall and he did repairs.
One night several months after their moves, Matt went on a date with Tracey, a woman Mardelle knew from shopping at The Treasure Chest. She’d found Tracey to be pushy and self-centered, always urging purchases of unappealing items, never paying attention to Mardelle’s taste. The night of that first date, Mardelle sat home trying to read a historical novel, her mind losing track of the plot. Finally going to bed, she listened to the old house’s creaks. At last came the click of Matt’s key in the lock but still she couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t long before he quit coming home at all, and as she feared, Matt moved in with Tracey.
Mardelle stayed in the Dutch Colonial by herself, dusting family pictures, feeling certain that some premonition of an early death had driven their mother to document her children’s lives so thoroughly. In a favorite Mardelle stood alone amid the yard’s vibrant spring garden. Freshly opened red tulips clustered around her little-girl bare legs.
Aiming the camera, Mom had said, “Stand tall, Mardelle.”
Despite her misgivings, one good thing did come from Matt’s relationship with Tracey—an introduction to Kevin. Since there’s been no word from him in over three days, she doubts the fortunate nature of that meeting and also wonders whether she should call him again. She knows what Matt would say: “Don’t be pushy.” Mardelle finds this idea to be absurd, given what she sees in Tracey. She also wonders, Should I ask her? Or, Should I forget about him?
When Tracey acted as matchmaker, she said, “You really need to meet Kevin,” accompanied by that know-it-all slanted smile. “You’ll love this guy. He’s really nice and every bit as tall as Matt. Same lanky, basketball-player way of carrying himself.”
Mardelle hesitated. She hated set-ups and didn’t want to owe Tracey anything. Her description of Kevin was enticing. Still, the information about his upcoming divorce forced her to say, “I don’t want to get involved.”
“They haven’t lived together in over a year,” Tracey said.
“Not interested.”
Matt and Mardelle went out to dinner at a downtown steakhouse a few nights later. He chose a large table, telling the greeter he liked to have lots of room. A few minutes after they were seated, in walked Tracey and a tall, fair-haired guy with a reticent smile who had to be Kevin.
“Fancy meeting you two here.” Tracey plopped down on a chair next to Matt, pointing to an empty one by Mardelle for Kevin.
The expression on Mardelle’s face must have made Kevin say, “I’m sorry, weren’t you expecting us?”
“Well...um...”
“It’s fine,” Tracey said. “Mardelle loves surprises.” Tracey proceeded with introductions.
Meal orders were taken and quickly talk turned to the upcoming West Coast Conference Tournament.
“It’s great being around women who understand the intricacies of the game,” Matt said. Tracey had told Mardelle that she really didn’t like basketball that much. The rhinestones in her vintage hair clips twinkled.
Kevin gave Mardelle a hesitant look and said, “I’d like to take you to a game sometime.”
“That’d be fun. I used to be a cheerleader.”
“Did you like it?”
“Not much. I went to all of Matt’s games. I liked watching him play.”
“What is special for you?”
“Art. I used to teach it.”
“I don’t know much about art but I’d like to learn.”
Afterward, when Matt asked about the date, Mardelle said, “He’s a pleasant enough guy.”
“That’s all?”
“Okay. I like him.”
The next day Kevin called and asked Mardelle to go see Inside Out. She didn’t hesitate. Stopping for wine afterward, they barely spoke about the animated film, agreeing it was unique.
A month later, he started spending the night at her house, saying, “This sure beats being alone in my apartment.”
His present silence, like watching for tulip bulbs planted in the fall that failed to bloom in the spring, made her feel as empty as a too-small vase.
--
Lunchtime Wednesday Matt returns to his worktable, picks up a piece of extra-fine sandpaper, and begins smoothing the joints on a frame. Minutes later he looks over at Mardelle, his dark brows scrunched in confusion. “If you don’t want anything to eat, I guess I’ll go...”
“That’s what I told you to do!”
“Yeah, right.” He ambles to the coatrack and shrugs into his old Husky purple-and-gold jacket.
Several calls had come in that morning. During one there was a long pause before anyone spoke. Unable to catch herself, Mardelle said, “Kevin! Is that you?”
Wrong number.
At least she didn’t know the person. With each subsequent call Mardelle has told herself, “It won’t be him,” and answered on the third ring. Despite this, a wrenching ache clutches her chest.
Half an hour later, Matt approaches the shop. Mardelle ignores him as he juggles a carton, two cans of Coke, and maneuvers the door handle. Inside he stomps his feet on the mat and shakes out his jacket with loud snaps that rival the clock’s ticks.
“Thought you might like pizza,” he says.
“I don’t want a thing.”
Dismay on Matt’s face reminds her of a college game where he looked equally confused. As Matt posted up on the blocks, the opposition point slipped in and picked him.
“You’ve been acting so strange lately,” Matt says as he finishes lunch. “Something you want to talk about?”
Mardelle considers telling him. Before Tracey it would have come tumbling out.
“I’m hassled.”
“I hope you’re not upset about me spending so much time away.”
“Mrs. MacPherson is bugging me.” She resumes work on the collage. In the next photo to be mounted, the couple toast each other. The bride looks as entitled as a princess who’s been granted her every wish. The groom memorizes her with adoring eyes.
Mardelle flings the glue gun onto the table with a clunk.
“What is with you?”
“It slipped.” She goes to the rack and searches for her coat underneath Matt’s damp jacket. “I’m going for a walk.”
“In this weather?”
“I need some exercise.” She lets the door slam, its bell jangling frantically.
--
By Thursday Mardelle rationalizes, He’s not so great. Would she really want to spend all her time with a guy whose favorite topic of conversation is play-by-plays of his lunch-hour basketball team? A guy who considers an ideal date to be popcorn and beer and watching more games on the tube?
Her mind shifts. When she joked about his team attachments, did he get offended? Did he really enjoy visits to the Seattle Art Museum? Did she mention too many times her desire to sell the family house and business in order to get back to teaching and her own life? He did say things like, “Do what makes you happy.” But always added, “It might be best for the future if you stayed put.”
Maybe it was only sex. As his hands caressed her body, she’d gotten lost in the swirls of a Chagall poster of Bouquet With Flying Lovers on her bedroom wall. Cuddling afterward, he’d whispered, “I’m glad you’re enjoying this, too.” Kevin had told Mardelle that his wife’s career traveling as a tour guide in Asia was more important to her than their relationship.
--
On Friday, a resigned Mardelle goes to Matt. “Could you invite Tracey over for lunch? I’d like to talk to her.”
“Great! She’d like to know you better.” Then, “We want to combine The Treasure Chest with this shop. You and Tracey can run the place, and I’ll get back to real estate.”
“That’s just terrific!”
“You bet.”
Could he be any more dense? Mardelle cringes.
Mrs. MacPherson’s completed collage is propped on a large stand ready for pick-up. In one picture she smoothes the back of her daughter’s hair. They are both tall and blonde.
Tracey bursts into the shop, her pungent scent filling the room. She pauses to take in Mrs. MacPherson’s order. “What a beautiful collage.” Leaning closer, she says, “I attended this wedding.”
Momentarily taken aback, Mardelle says, “It’s for the bride’s mother.”
“She’ll be ecstatic.”
“Thanks.” Mardelle gestures to the chair beside her desk. “We’ll talk after Matt leaves.”
Tracey sits down, her eyes darting from one displayed picture to another. “Exquisite... delightful... charming,” she gushes. Looking at Mardelle’s watercolor, she says, “What a sweet little piece.”
Matt leaves with their order for Greek food, and Mardelle comes right to the point, relieved that her voice sounds strong. “I haven’t heard from Kevin all week. What’s happened?”
Tracey’s effusiveness subsides, like a faucet suddenly turned off. “Oh...ah...” She strokes her red velvet beret.
“You know what’s going on, right?”
The clock’s ticks fill the silence.
“I wish he would have talked to you.” Tracey’s pointer finger goes round and round on the desk’s shiny surface, as if answers will appear with a hard enough rub.
“Me too.” Mardelle sits up straighter. “I want you to tell me whatever you know. Be fast. Matt’ll return soon.”
“Well... Kevin was getting a divorce.”
Mardelle winces at “was.”
“Almost final.”
She nods.
“They tried for a long time to have a baby.”
“Go on.”
“Kevin and his wife saw very little of each other this past year.”
“That’s what he said.”
“A few months ago, they ran into each other at a wedding... this wedding.” She waves a hand toward the collage. “There were lots of old friends from the university and things got pretty sentimental.”
Mardelle holds her breath. Kevin asked her to go to this wedding. She’d declined, saying, “I won’t know anyone there.”
“He went home with his wife. By the following morning, they knew it was a mistake and parted, planning to meet each other next to sign the papers. She called him last Sunday, after he left your place. She’s pregnant. He’s moved back in with her.” In a smaller voice, “They always wanted this.”
Mardelle exhales. “Does Matt know?”
“I didn’t tell him.” Tracey’s skin pales. “Kevin really cared for you. He was thinking about the fut—”
“Cared so much that he didn’t have the courage to tell me.”
Matt enters the shop carrying a bag of gyros and cans of Coke. Tracey jumps up to help him. One look at Mardelle and he says, “What’s wrong?”
“Ask Tracey,” Mardelle chokes out. “I’m gone for the day.”
“Mrs. MacPherson’s order?” he shouts as the door’s bell jangles.
“You take care of it!”
--
Mardelle gets into her Ford Focus and drives to a little park situated near the shop. For an hour she gazes at the empty, blurred outlines of rain-soaked playground equipment through a fogged-up window. Eventually the tightening in her chest eases, like a vise releasing, and she begins to sob.
When this passes she writes a simple note, freshens up, and drives to the frame shop. She tiptoes in, holding the door carefully so the bell won’t ring. Matt’s in the workroom by himself, and Mrs. MacPherson’s collage is gone. Mardelle reaches for her empty bench and arbor watercolor and slips out. She drives to Kevin’s gray, box-like house and contemplates the front door with its opaque glass windows.
Ignoring the rain, she gets out of the car and places the protected picture under her left arm. Mardelle’s heels pound against the pavement as she paces forward. Slow and measured. Like a hammer breaking a frame apart.
Kevin immediately answers her loud knock.
“This is for you.” Mardelle shoves the watercolor at him.
He looks at the wistful scene with confusion. Tucked in its frame is her note: Congratulations! You can fill the empty bench.
“Mardelle, I’m sorry. I should have called. I didn’t mean for this to happen. Mardelle, come back... so we can talk...”
She turns as a dark-haired woman walks up behind him.
--
The rain stops and the sun casts filtered light on tall, green shoots crowned by furled, bright-red petals. Soon it will be tulip time. These catch Mardelle’s attention as she pulls up to the community college’s entrance and walks tall toward the employment office. The familiar hiring representative sits at her desk.
Once Mardelle has made her request, the representative says, “All I have available is a summer night school position, but it’s yours if you want it.”
Mardelle takes the position. This is a start.
Immediately, she drives to an art supply store and buys canvases, large brushes, and oil paints in strong, primary colors. The next day she plans to find an apartment.
THE END