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“But?”
“But what? I think it’s great that he cares so much about things working out with us.”
“Something is clearly still bothering you, Angie,” my mama says.
I get up from the table and busy myself making more coffee in my French press. In addition to food, my mama has brought over a bag of beans from her and my mom’s favorite coffee roasters in Portland, and just smelling it makes me feel a bit more clear-headed.
“How do you know when you can trust someone?” I ask her.
“You don’t.” She’s smiling as she says this, like she hasn’t just delivered a devastating blow.
“Um. What? But don’t you trust Mom?”
“Of course I do. But trust isn’t something you can check up on, or test. Because you can never be completely sure of what another person will do.”
“So you just have to give it blindly?”
“No, not blindly. I trust your mother because she shows me every day that she’s deserving of my trust, and I of hers. But we can’t ever know what the future will hold with complete surety. People change.Lovechanges. Trust truly exists when you stop needing constant reassurance of its presence.”
I nod. “That makes sense, I think.”
I don’t say anything else, and I think my mama understands that I’ve shared as much as I’m willing to about this. Where my mom would pry and try to get more out of me, my mama understands that I like to think things through.
“Why don’t you show me some of your art?” she says.
I pour us some coffee, and then we head into the small office in the back of the house. I’ve never used it for much aside from storage, but it gets good light, and I’ve laid out the oil pastels I did at the beach on the desk.
“I think I want to turn this place into a studio. If I have a dedicated space, I think I’ll be more committed to it.”
My mama nods and holds one of the pictures up to the light. “These are good, Angie. And I’m not just saying that because I’m your mom.”
I laugh, but I really do trust my moms’ opinions on art. Plenty of their New York friends, including Uncle Benny, are involved in the art world, and they’ve always filled their home with fabulous pieces done by people they know.
“Thanks. I’m still getting the hang of oil pastels, but I like them. I’m going to finish these up and then do some studies of the birds we saw on Isle North.”
I show my mama a few of the photos I’m planning to use for studies and then she leaves, heading home to get ready for a hike her and my mom are going on tomorrow.
For the rest of the afternoon and well into the evening, I work on my art.
I don’t work with the oil pastels like I said I would, though, and I forget all about the photos of birds that I took. Instead, I become captivated by a shot I took of Carter on the boat. Half of the photo is a close up of one side of his face—baseball cap pulled low, a smile stretching his cheeks, tanned skin glowing in the sun. The other half is filled with a perfect light blue sky, meeting rolling dark blue waves in the middle.
I sketch it out on a pad of paper, drawing the lines of his face carefully and deliberately, trying to capture all of his goodness and light. And then I do it again. And again, shading here and there with charcoal, playing around with the light. I stop for dinner, heating up some of the chili and cornbread that my mama left, and then I start transferring the drawing onto a canvas.
Then, I get to work on the underpainting.
The whole time, I think about what my mama told me about trust, and whether or not I truly trust Carter, and how far that trust extends. I think about finding that place where trust exists because I no longer need constant reassurance of its presence.
And I think about the feeling of unease I felt with Carter. And how it’s not just me who needs to trust him, he needs to trust me as well.
By midnight, the underpainting is done, and I know what I want to do.
37
CARTER
There arethree emails in my inbox.
One is an automatic email from the university confirming that I’ve submitted my dissertation.
