Paint Me True (20 page)

The pole was heavy, which meant it was easy to drop down to the river bottom. I leaned against it and pushed the boat forward. So far, so good.

“Don’t push down too hard on the pole,” he said. “You’ll sink it into the muck and it won’t come up again.”

I pulled the pole up with a jerk, relieved that it came. I dropped it again and pushed. Again the punt moved forward. It was exhausting, but in a good way.

The fourth time I tried to lift the pole, it wouldn’t come. I gave it an extra jerk and the next thing I knew, the punt had slid out from under my feet and I was in the frigid water, hanging onto the pole for dear life. Only then did it come loose from the bottom of the river, and for a second I feared its weight would pull me down. The river closed over my head and I held my breath. With a flail and a splash I got the pole upright and stuck it in the mud at the bottom of the river again, then lifted my head back up into the air, spat filthy water out of my mouth, and looked around for the punt.

Colin had burst out laughing. “Here, hurry,” he said. The river current had slowed the punt to a stop, and as I watched, it began to drift the other way, towards me. “Hold out your hand. Get ready.”

My waterlogged shoes threatened to fall off if I kicked my legs. I wore simple flats, so I clenched my toes, let my body drift downstream, and held out my hand as the punt closed in. From this angle it seemed impossibly high. I didn’t see how I’d pull myself up and over the side.

But as the edge came near enough, I grabbed it with one hand.

“I’ll get the pole. Let go,” said Colin.

I grabbed the edge of the boat with the other hand and with a twist and a kick propelled myself up out of the water and over the edge. The whole boat rocked as I hauled my drenched body aboard. My skirt clung to my legs and my blouse to my chest. I gave a brief prayer of thanks that I hadn’t worn white.

Colin stumbled and stepped over me as he wrestled the pole loose from the bottom of the river, then fell when it came loose. I tried to catch him and he twisted so he wouldn’t fall on me, and he almost went over the edge. For a moment the world was chaos, and the next he lay across my feet, the pole in his fist, and both of us laughing.

“Yeah,” I said. “That was graceful of me.”

He rolled over and got up. “Everyone does that at least once. Just you watch. I’ll do it before long. You okay, though?”

“Only thing bruised is my pride.” I shivered as the breeze wicked the water off my skin. Despite the warm sun, goosebumps stood out along my arms. And I felt ridiculous to be so sopping wet. I didn’t want to see my makeup or hair.

Colin was a perfect gentleman, though. He helped me sit up and handed me a little hand towel to dab my face dry with. There were a couple of them in the bottom of the punt, but it looked like I’d soaked the others.

I lifted my sodden hair off the back of my neck, wrung it out over the river, and then twisted it into a bun. This was why I always wore a hair tie around my wrist. For emergencies. My skirt wanted to ride up every time I moved, so I peeled it off my legs and did my best to wring it out too.

Colin had moved back to the end of the punt and was poling us upriver again.

I looked down and saw that I’d soaked my sketchbook.

“Oh no,” said Colin, noticing at the same time I did.

“It’s fine. Just pencil sketches. It’ll dry out.”

“All that work.”

“Shouldn’t erase anything.” I tugged my shirt loose from my upper body and clenched my teeth to keep them from chattering. I felt like Pip had looked when I’d first found him, all wet and miserable.

The punt lurched slightly and I looked up. Colin had run us into the riverbank and stepped over me to jump off on dry land. “Let’s eat lunch here,” he said. “You can get sorted.”

The stretch of riverbank he’d chosen was an open, grassy field with only a couple of other people set up for picnics. I clambered out of the punt with the picnic basket and we set up. This was not Nora’s second painting, revisited. This was me looking like something the cat dragged in, sitting across from Colin, who was all but falling asleep.

“Sorry,” he kept saying, through yawn after yawn.

I set out the lunch items I’d brought. He nibbled at some salad and downed the Coke in a couple of gulps. That woke him up a little. He sat up and stretched his toned arms. I couldn’t help but notice that even half asleep, he managed to look all put together and very attractive.

I looked down at myself with chagrin.

“So, Eliza,” he said. “Can I ask you something?”

“Mmm?”

“Mormon.org. Is that your church?”

He’d looked up my church? I tried not to jump to any conclusions, but if he cared enough to know my church, he must have felt something for me. “Yeah. That’s kind of the information site for it, for people who aren’t members.”

“I just-” he yawned “-after the blessing your aunt got, I was curious, so I did some digging.”

“Well, you have to be careful on the internet. There’s a lot of garbage on there.”

“I went and peeked at the whole ordinance thing those blokes did the other night. And...”

I didn’t press him. If he’d been touched by the Spirit, it might take him a few tries to express how it felt.

“You take that all quite seriously, don’t you?”

“Hmm?”

“The whole laying on of hands thing.” He frowned at me, clearly wanting the answer to be “no”.

But I couldn’t deny my faith. I couldn’t even hedge the way I had when religion had come up on our last date. There was only one answer to such a direct question, so I kept it short. “Yeah.” I even made myself look him in the eye.

“And you think that’s a way that God talks to you, through ordinances like that?”

“Sometimes.” And during that blessing, He had. Though I knew Colin would scoff at the idea.

“It’s not just cultural for you, is it? You’re not just bowing to tradition.”

“No.”

“That’s... a little odd. I mean, don’t take this the wrong way, but a hundred years ago your church was practicing polygamy-”

I winced. “We don’t do that-”

“Anymore, right. But you believe the
Book of Mormon
was translated by a bloke with some seer stones? In upstate New York?”

“Yes, but I understand that that one’s a little hard to swallow. I don’t expect you to read that and think, ‘hey, this must be true!’”

“But you think it is?”

I felt like I was in college again, facing some sneering out of state student who liked to pick on “those crazy Mormons.” There was little that I could say in the face of their criticism other than what I told Colin now. “Yes, I do.”

His eyebrows shot up at that.

I resisted the urge to explain myself. It wouldn’t talk him out of his misgivings. Though I did wonder if a lie might make him like me more.

“Have you been to one of those temple things?”

Now we were on thin ice. “Yes,” was all I said in a tone that I hoped would shut that line of inquiry down. I’d received my temple endowment when I was twenty-one, young for a woman with no plans to go on a mission or get married. I’d gone because the temple was one place where the living did ordinances for the dead, which meant the veil between our world and the spirit world was thinner there. I went whenever I wanted to feel my mother’s arm around my shoulders, or hear Rachel’s braying laugh, or sense Lindsay’s constant irritation with me. I never saw them, but I felt they were there. It was like I was in my living room as a child, with them bustling around the house. Out of sight, but making their presences known. There was no way I could share that with Colin without making him even more skeptical.

“Did you go on a mission?” he asked.

“No, but my brother and one of my sisters did.”

“Do you
really
believe all that stuff I read on that website?”

“Okay, I haven’t really searched mormon.org, but the answer is probably yes. I just say probably because if there’s any part where people are giving their own personal views... sometimes those can get odd.”

“You mean odder than what I read in the main part of the site?”

“Right.”

He looked distinctly uncomfortable.

And I felt even more absurd than before. I was still disheveled and damp. I’d dabbed my face with the towel, but probably managed to smear my makeup regardless. I must’ve looked like a clown who’d been dragged behind a cart in a rainstorm. So much for this opportunity Nora had given me to live life. I was just making a fool of myself.

“Can I ask you something?” said Colin.

“Hmm?”

“Have you ever had a friend who’s a guy?”

“What?”

“A friend? Just a friend? Who has a Y chromosome?”

“Um... no.”

“Me neither. I’ve never had a female friend. I could really use one sometimes, you know?”

He couldn’t have been plainer. This was an olive branch he held out, a way to convert this date turned disaster into something positive. “Yeah,” I said, tentatively.

“I don’t get birds, you know?”

“Birds?”

“Women.”

“You call us birds?”

“It’s like bloke. What? It’s not derogatory. It’s like, I dunno. ‘Chicks’.”

“Well, I don’t normally talk to any guys about ‘chicks’. If my brother used that word, I’d think he was being strange.”

“Women, then.”

I shrugged. “I’m not sure there’s anything to get, you know? I mean, I think the only secret is, we don’t know what we’re doing either.”

He raised his eyebrows at that again, then chuckled, then laughed.

“What?”

“Just- I don’t know. It’s not what I expected you to say.”

“It’s called honesty.”

“Right. Now you’re going to want the same from me I suppose. How terrifying.”

“I don’t have any deep and meaningful questions for you.”

“I’m fine with shallow. I’m good at shallow.”

“I don’t have shallow ones either. I don’t really have much of a social life.”

“Really? I would have thought you were popular.”

“I work alone and spend a lot of time in hospitals.”

“That’s true. And here you have to do it again. There’s no one else to be here with your aunt?”

“I want to track down the rest of her family.”

“What do you mean, track down?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Blimey. So she’s got family other than you?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry. Is there any way I can help?”

“Know of any other way to search for people other than on the internet?”

“Not really, no.”

“Then no, but thank you.” I ate some bean salad and looked down at the still damp hemline of my skirt. At least it was drying without many wrinkles.

“Eliza?”

“Hmm?”

“I meant what I said, you know, about being friends.”

“Thanks. Me too.”

“I may not have any answers to deep universal questions, but I do know cancer. Anything you need, let me know.”

“Thanks. I just need to find her family and I owe her one last picture.”

“I saw the one you brought in the other day. Just smashing.”

“It came together all right. I’m hoping I can get the same effect with this last one.”

He glanced at his watch. “Shall we get back?”

“Yeah,” I agreed.

W
hen I rounded the corner of Charlbury Road, there stood Louisa,
again,
in front of the house. This time, I knew I couldn’t afford to hide from her. I had too many questions and too little time.

I
made myself square my shoulders and march toward her. She didn’t notice me at first, just stared at the house. When she did turn, she didn’t jump with surprise, just tilted her head to one side and smiled. Pretty nervy for someone who’d tried to break into the house.

“Hello,” she chirped. “I just wondered if there’s anything I can do to help.”

“Why are you here?” Inwardly I cringed, but I hoped that didn’t show. I just didn’t do confrontation well.

I had the impression that Louisa did. She didn’t give anything away, just said, “Pardon?”

“I saw you try to get into the house the other day.”

“Oh, well, right. I don’t have the right key.”

“Why would you have
any
key?”

“I was given a copy.”

“By?”

“It’s not something I care to reveal.”

“Excuse me? You have a key to my aunt’s house and you don’t care to tell me how you got it?”

“You changed the locks. I can’t get in anymore.”

“You had no business trying to go in the other day.”

“I know, but you two won’t tell me anything. I was trying to get information.”

“What information?”

“About Nora. How she’s doing.”

“What business is it of yours?”

“Well it wasn’t for me.”

I was not in the mood for this. I was tired and wrung out and overstretched and all of these emotions together ignited into a flash of blinding anger. My inhibitions blasted to smithereens and I whipped the picnic basket off my shoulder and slammed it to the ground between us. Then I stood there, trembling with fury. I curled my fingers and wished I could wrap them around her neck. “Listen to me, I saw the scans, okay? I saw all of the old broken bones and the surgery, all of it. You are not welcome here.”