Chapter 8 – Preparing the Palette
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Despite Darren’s estimate, Nicholas did not appear right away. I was left alone with my thoughts, my coffee, and pretty soon a cereal bowl of my own. I tidied up the dishes—at least Darren had left his near the sink—and was just pouring myself a second cup when Nicholas arrived.

He was already dressed and dapper. After greeting him, I poured him a cup, which he took gratefully. He spooned in even more sugar than I had, so much that I wondered the spoon didn’t stand up on its own.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said, after a long, lip-smacking sip. “You’re thinking, ‘I don’t belong here.’ Am I right?”

It struck so close to what I was thinking that the surprise must have showed on my face. He laughed. “There’s not a single artist who comes here that doesn’t feel the same way. I still do.”

If only it were that simple. I’m sure I would be feeling a simple case of impostor syndrome, if it weren’t for the fact that I was an actual impostor. A calculating part of me was glad he had brought it up, though. It would explain away my lack of confidence and timidity. At the same time, I felt a flash of guilt. Here he was, trying to help me, and all I could do was think how it could benefit my lies.

I nodded and smiled, grateful for his encouragement. He asked gentle questions to draw me out, and while I dodged most of the ones about my background, I did allow myself to be drawn out about my art. In a sense, that was the one thing that I did not have to disguise. My oil paintings were genderless, with the possible exception of my self-portraits. But I could speak about my influences and techniques and themes without reservation.

The result was that Nicholas and I talked until the coffee pot ran dry, at which point we brewed another pot and kept talking. Josephine appeared next, and I was happy to see that she looked just as rumpled as me, although she was wrapped up more modestly in a threadbare robe.

Anthony came down next. That sent a little stab of tension through my chest—would he be just as combative as before? But he seemed far more relaxed than last night, and I supposed that maybe Madge has been correct; he just missed my predecessor. Gerald, it seemed, had gone out early to catch the light over the lake, and would not be back until supper.

To my surprise, Madge appeared last of all. I had pegged her for an early riser, but the group assured me that she rarely got going before eleven, and only a new arrival would bring her down by 9:30. She sniffed but did not deny the charge, instead chivvying us out of the kitchen, if we were not going to eat anything, and why didn’t we actually get ourselves cleaned up and ready to receive any visitors that came by? The gallery opened at noon, after all.

“I acknowledge that I am in a shocking state,” Nicholas replied. He brushed some invisible dust off his shoulders and arms. “There. Presentable.”

Madge ignored him. “Cayley, once you’ve had a chance to get dressed, I’d love to give you a tour of the house and grounds, and to show you the workspaces. Shall we meet at eleven?”

An hour and a half seemed like a lot just to get ready, but then again, all of my intuitions about time came from a body that needed little more than a quick shower to be fully presentable. I took my leave of my fellow... well, fellows, and returned to my room.

As it turned out, ninety minutes was barely enough time. I had not unpacked, which meant that clothes and toiletries and everything else had to be located before they were used. I didn’t bother to shave anything, but I did wash and condition and blow dry my immense mass of hair. The color kept surprising me whenever I saw it in the mirror, brighter and shinier than seemed natural. The most annoying thing was the cord of my necklace. It was a hard, thin core covered in a stretchy, velvety black material. The shower got it soaking wet, and I couldn’t remove it to dry it off. Eventually I just pressed it between two towels to get as much water out as I could, and trusted it to air dry the rest of the way.

I also had to locate some Advil, as my insides had started to cramp even further. At first I blamed it on all the coffee, but in a flash of insight, I realized that I was dealing with the first signs of menstruation. A quick Google told me that the sore boobs were likely from the same source. Nowhere online could give me an accurate idea how long I had between the onset of cramping and the actual start of my period. And so I spent another ten minutes hoping beyond hope that I had packed some sanitary pads. I had, though they were buried at the bottom of the suitcase. I then spent another five minutes getting the pad adequately positioned in my underwear. It was not comfortable, but if pop culture told me anything, that probably meant I had done it correctly.

Finally I was dried, dressed, and proof against embarrassing leakages. I made it downstairs with ten minutes to spare, which I spent looking through the small library and examining the artwork that was on display in that part of the residence.

Madge arrived right on time. I wondered if she had been waiting on the other side of the door, counting down on her watch.

We started with the residence. The common space included the kitchen I had already seen, a massive pantry I had not, a dining room and several sitting rooms that Madge described as “multi-purpose.” Out back was a kitchen garden, though it was rather sparse this late in the season. A gravel path led to a small parking lot, where I saw my own vehicle parked — Nicholas must have moved it out of the visitor lot for me.

Past the parking lot was a wooden fence, and beyond that the earth gave way to wide open space. Madge and I walked up to the edge and looked over, out and beyond.

We were high above a sapphire blue lake. I could see from shore to shore, and observed a walking path that wound around it. On the other side of the lake, the ground rose more gradually, covered in conifers right up to the top. Beyond it was another rise, and another, until the rolling, forested hills disappeared on the horizon.

I realized I was holding my breath, and let it out. “It’s beautiful,” I said. It was a paltry description, but then again, no description could ever do it justice. “How many fellows have tried to paint this view?”

“Just about all of us, at one point or another. Even I tried once, and I abhor landscapes.” She shook her head. “We never quite manage to capture it, though.”

“No need to,” I replied. “It’s right here. I’d rather paint something that exists nowhere else.”

“Did you bring any of your paintings?”

A stab of fear jolted through me, but I kept my voice level. “A few that were in progress. I left most back home.”

“May I see?”

There was no way to say no to such a direct question. Nicholas had left them in the car, so they were no more than fifty feet away, and I had brought my purse and car keys with me. It was with great trepidation that I led Madge to the car, opened the back door, and pulled out a wood-mounted canvas.

“It’s part of a series I was working on. I tape off these blocks,” I pointed to a few squares, where tape covered the canvas, “and pull them off when I’ve finished the first part, the realism. Then I paint truth into the holes.” I didn’t edit the words before they came out, and I cringed at how arrogant and self-aggrandizing it sounded. Janice would have tinkled a laugh, told me to get my head out of the clouds, and made me work overtime.

But Madge did not laugh. She reached a finger out to one of the rectangles of tape, stopping just short of touching the surface of the paint. “You even painted over the tape. That’s a lot of detail you’re putting in to an area that you already know will be going away.”

I followed her finger. I had been painting a male figure, wearing a jacket pulled over his head against the rain. A broad area from his left shoulder down to his hip had been painted only on the tape, but I had given it the same photorealistic quality as the rest of the image.

“It doesn’t work otherwise. I can’t put what’s true in there, if I lie about what it was before.” And yes, if you’re wondering, the irony of the words were not lost on me. “I guess that doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

“It makes all the sense in the world,” she said, and stepped back from the car as I put the unfinished painting back inside.

We walked on, parallel to the cliff now. “Tell me,” Madge said in mild tones. “Your life back home.... your artistic skills were not greatly appreciated, were they?”

The walk gave me the excuse to keep my eyes on the path. I shook my head.

“Belmont fellows are sometimes selected from well known, famous artists. Sometimes they are chosen from small art communities, or even from hobbyists who create for nothing more than the joy of creating.”

She stopped, turned towards me, and I unwillingly mirrored her. She waited until I met her eyes before speaking on. “You are not here to prove yourself, Cayley. You are not here to do anything but do what you already love. We are not here to judge you, either. We are here to learn from you, and to help you learn from us.”

My eyes shied away from hers, but I tried to smile back convincingly. I think it worked. If nothing else, we walked on, approaching a low, warehouse-like structure.

“Here,” said Madge, pulling up a garage door and beckoning me inside, “is the main workspace.”

My mouth fell open.

The space was clearly industrial in origin, adapted to its present use. Approximately half of the floor had been segregated into eight distinct areas, highly personalized to the artists who worked there.

I tried to pick out whose area was whose. After the discussion last night, I assigned clean and tidy space with an in-progress still life to Anthony. The abstracts with the big moving colors reminded me of Nicholas. The whimsical animal paintings and the dozens of bobblehead dolls had to be Gerald.

Madge’s space — and she confirmed that it was hers — could have been lifted from the front of a schoolroom, each brush and tool in its place ready to hand. Josephine, on the other hand, had a tremendously untidy space, paint staining the floors and bookcases loaded down with all manner of objects. And yet the work she had in progress was a mouse, a sculpture about a yard high, which had been constructed from bits and pieces of junk. The expression on its face was so yearning and wistful that I felt like asking what it needed, so I could make it feel better.

There was another workspace with a painting that had just been started, no more than sketches on canvas. There were no personal effects around it. “Aubrey,” Madge supplied. “You’ll meet her tomorrow evening. And that is Darren’s over there. I’m sure he’ll be up later this afternoon. He had a late night.”

“I met him this morning early,” I said absently, wandering over toward his workspace. The other spaces had felt welcoming and inviting, but none of them had felt quite so comfortable. There was a recliner, positioned on a rug in the center of the workspace. That chair could have been pulled directly from some Victorian library or smoking room. Adjacent was a series of milk crates full of old vinyl albums, with a record player perched precariously on top. Next to that was an area clearly for painting, though it seemed that Darren tended towards very small canvases. And next to that was a woodworking area, and next to that a tent with a sleeping bag, and next to that a pile of bolts of fabric around a sewing machine. Each miniature area kept to itself, like a patchwork quilt of creativity.

I looked back at Madge. “Does he really use all of these?”

“Oh yes. I’ve seen him at it. Sometimes on the same project. He mixes media like an orchestra mixes instruments.” She walked on, and I swept along in her wake. “Here is your space.”

It was next to Darren’s, I was happy to see. Otherwise, there was not much to recommend it. In fact, it looked as if the others might have been using it to store whatever they did not want. But I had brought a bit of paint with me, and I could almost certainly make use of some of the stuff.

“Whatever you don’t want, we’ll throw into storage. And if there is anything you need, you can get it out of storage.”

“What do you charge for supplies?”

Madge stared at me, and shook her head. “No, dear, you don’t understand. You don’t pay for anything. If there is anything that you need to create your art, anything at all, simply ask, and it will be yours.”

I took an involuntary step backwards. “Oh no, I couldn’t do that. I mean, I want to pay my way, I’m not a freeloader, I....”

She cut me off with a wave of her hand. “Oh, as to that, you’ll be pulling your weight in no time. Rarely a day goes by without one sale at least, and on a fine weekend day like today, I’d be surprised if we took in less than eighty thousand.”

“Eighty...” I swallowed. “Eighty thousand?”

“Oh yes. Half to the artist, half in the coffers.”

I cleared my throat. “I’ve never sold anything before.”

“Good.”

“Huh?”

“I said, ‘Good.’” Madge’s kind expression took the sting out of her words. “Because that means when you make your first sale, we’ll all get to celebrate with you.”

Suddenly something moved within the pile of junk. The long, slender form of a tawny cat slunk out into the aisle, sat and composed itself with its tail wrapped its body, and mewed up at us.

“And that is Sasha. He is a wastrel and a scoundrel and a drain on our resources. And we all love him dearly.”

I knelt, and Sasha approached. He rubbed against my hand, against my pant leg, and made a full circle of me. I returned to my feet, and he darted off.

“I love it here,” I told her. The sudden, almost uncontrollable urge to tell the truth came over me. “But I don’t belong here. I’m not....”

“No.” Madge held up her hand again, threatening to press a finger against my mouth to shush me. “There will be no more of that. You’re one of us now. You have a home here as long as you want it.”

As long as I can pretend to be someone I’m not, and lie to you all, I thought. How much longer could I feel so wonderful, and so guilty at the same time?

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