Chapter 4
Mom tapped a finger beside the sunflower on my canvas.
"Make those petals bigger. That flower looks more tired than I do."
"It was painted at two in the morning. Be nice."
Ruth Hayes was my mother, fifty-six, and a former teacher who still corrected the way I held a pencil. Her hair had started growing back and lay soft around her ears. She had gray-blue eyes, a yellow sweater, and a small bruise from a blood test. When a nurse came in with medicine, she asked whether Mom had sneaked out to water the hallway plants again.
"I was checking on them," Mom said.
Her room at St. Anne's had a wide window. The real sunflower sat on the sill in a yellow pot, held up by two wooden sticks. I leaned my painting below it and stepped back. Mom kept staring at it, despite all her advice.
"Can you come Saturday?" I asked.
"The doctor says I can stay an hour."
"My part starts at eight. Sit in front if you want to show off."
"I need to inspect the work. When you were six, you drew me with three arms."
I handed her the printed program. Beside the eight o'clock opening display, it said Nora Hayes, Sunflower, in support of the children's ward. She ran her finger over our last name.
"Did you save the email?" she asked.
"Three copies. I had a good teacher."
That evening, I found Adrian in my studio. He had brought in a chair and was reading a file beneath the window.
"Doesn't your office have chairs?"
"It does. Your light was on."
"So you came to pay my electric bill?"
He closed the file and walked to my painting. I had one small patch left to finish. He studied it long enough to make me nervous.
"Your mother will love it," he said.
"She says the petals need help."
"She's teasing you."
"You've met her twice. Now you're an expert?"
He set his seat card for Saturday beside my brushes. On the back, someone had written the time of my display.
"I checked with the organizer," he said.
"Your place is set."
"Can I record you saying that?"
"Don't push your luck."
"You said you'd come. Now I have a card and a witness. All I need is your signature."
He held out his hand. I gave him a pen. He took my fingers instead. Yellow paint had dried on one knuckle. He rubbed it with his thumb, then used a damp cloth when it would not come off.
I remembered how he had noticed the hairpin hurting me on our wedding night. He could be so careful about small things that I forgot the larger ones for a moment.
His phone rang. Elena's name appeared on the screen.
He let go of my hand and answered.
She said the main donor would leave the gala by eight-thirty. She needed the eight o'clock display slot to speak to him before he went.
"That time is taken," Adrian said.
Elena paused.
"By whom?"
Adrian looked at my painting. I went to wash the paint from my hand. Behind me, Elena said she would find another way. Adrian told her they would talk tomorrow and hung up.
"That's my time," I said.
"I know."
"You told me it was set."
"It is."
The next morning, I went to the hotel to check how my painting would be moved. The woman in charge of the display gave me a worried look. She still held the old program, with my name at eight. A new email lay on top.
Its subject read: Voss Foundation request to change the eight o'clock display.
The request listed my name.