Song of Renewal (4 page)

The
Greenville News
hailed him “the next great artist of our time.” Even the
Charleston Post and Courier
touted, “Garrison Wakefield is a phenomenal talent whose arrival is a heads-up to the art world.”

Today, he looked at his logo, Wakefield Creations, which specialized in commercial graphic art and thought about how destiny had other ideas. His tired mind ambled back to
last night’s scene in the den, to the portrait of Liza dancing, and again he experienced the slow evaporation of hopes and dreams. He blinked back fatigue and adjusted his designer glasses, ones that lent his features austerity, casting him as an ageless Hitchcock Cary Grant. At least that’s what Liza had told him during their courtship days, when she was principle of the city ballet. That seemed eons ago.

He recalled last night’s conversation at dinner. Gwen’s question about wedding memories had opened up a real hornets’ nest. He’d known that marriage could morph from hormonally charged tumult to lesser degrees of passion. But for the first time he realized just how far apart he and Liza had grown in recent years. He knew, too, that she felt it.

Yet for one moment last night, he’d experienced the magic bliss of their wedding day. How powerful, their passion. It had burst upon and through them and swept them up for years. But now it was like the portrait on the wall. At first, the sight of it had thrilled him beyond comprehension. He continued to pass the same painting, day in and day out, glancing its way and feeling the depth of their romance. How long had it been now that he’d walked past it without really seeing it?

He shook his dark head to dispel the bleakness and gave attention to the project spread before him on the mahogany, glass-topped worktable. He rarely came home empty-handed. The Vanhauser account loomed before him on the horizon. The courtship involved design samples on his and his assistant’s drawing boards. He needed to get this right. If so, it would put him over the top financially.

Another new account was a famous restaurant chain for which he needed to complete the promotional art and advertising layouts. Sometimes, like tonight, he had mixed emotions about his business. More and more, its demands depleted him, left him feeling stretched out on a medieval torture rack.

Focus!
he commanded. His brow furrowed and he attacked the project with renewed vengeance. Beneath the rain, he almost didn’t hear the muffled knock on his door.

He frowned and called, “Come in.”

Angel’s face poked tentatively around the door. “Hi, Daddy.”

He swiveled in his chair, aware that he did a poor job of hiding his impatience. He tried to soften his voice. “Hi, Angelface.” He spotted Troy behind her. Garrison had a special place in his heart for the boy whom he’d known first as a little towheaded tyke, chasing behind him when Garrison had worked at his dad’s dairy farm. Though he’d nearly tripped over him at times, Garrison had never ceased to be charmed. “Hi, Troy,” he said warmly. “Come on in, you two. What’s happening?”

Troy gave Garrison a big grin. “Hi, Mr. Wakefield.” He stepped forward and extended his hand. Garrison grasped it in a hearty handshake. “Sorry to disturb you.”

“S’okay,” Garrison said politely, though it wasn’t okay at all. He had a deadline to meet. He turned his attention to his daughter, who seemed fidgety, a sign that she was about to dump some unwelcome agenda upon him.

Angel’s fair hair shimmered in the light of the desk lamp. The cloudy day had brought an early dusk, rashly dimming the chamber. Her blue eyes, so clear one could almost see through them, held a note of pleading, which made him feel, suddenly less than he wanted to be. But he was, after all, working.

“Daddy,” she drew the word out into four syllables, her appeal dialect. “Today’s Troy’s birthday. I baked him a cake. We just cut it. Here, I brought you a piece.” She placed the plate on the desk corner and shot her boyfriend a quick grin. “So…may Troy and I go to the concert at the Bi-Lo Center? The Vines are a group we really, really want to hear. He has tickets.”

Garrison inhaled deeply, and then tiredly blew it out. “Happy birthday, Troy. Eighteen, is it?”

“Yes, sir.”

Garrison shook his head in disbelief. “Amazing how time flies. Eighteen, huh? That was a good year,” Garrison muttered, a lopsided, weary smile grazing his lips. He addressed Angel then as his mouth settled into a grim line. “Thanks for the cake, Angel. I’ll eat it later. As for the concert,” Garrison’s head moved from side to side decisively. “No. I’m sorry about the tickets, Troy, I truly am, but no.” The denial was abrupt and final as his chair swiveled away.

“But why-y?” Angel pealed, instantly distraught.

“Why?” Garrison spun around again and glared at her as though she’d lost her senses. “Listen to that rain, Angel. You don’t go out in weather like this. It’s dangerous.”

“Daddy,” Angel whined, “you’re being overprotective.”

“Maybe so,” Garrison said over his shoulder. “But my job is to keep you safe.” He hated to say no to Angel, but this time his refusal was justified. Was he overprotective? Maybe. That he and Liza could not have more children was not even in the equation. If he had ten children, he’d still say no. Garrison returned to his sketching, the one thing he did enjoy about this work. The creation.

Long moments passed. A rustle of movement at his elbow startled Garrison.

“You’re so talented, Daddy,” Angel said.

He turned and squinted up at her, annoyance filtering through. “I thought you left. Where’s Troy?”

“Downstairs.” She smiled a bit nervously, licked her lips, and gazed appealingly at her father. “Daddy, please, please let us go to the concert.” She stooped suddenly and hugged him tightly, kissing his cheek. “Please, pretty please! I’ll wash the Jag four times in a row and cut the grass for a month if you’ll just – ”

He disentangled himself, not unkindly but firmly, then slowly removed his glasses. “Angel.” He rubbed his eyes tiredly. “You sound like your mother trying to get her way when it’s not exactly kosher. You don’t need to be on the roads tonight.” He looked at her then, his face empty with fatigue. “Sorry, honey, but the answer is still no.”

He swiveled in his chair once more and resumed his work. A moment later, he heard Angel leave the room, shutting the door firmly behind her.

“Mama, you know how much I want to see the Vines.” Angel jiggled her propped sneakered foot against the bar stool, her mouth pouty. “It starts in just a couple of hours.”

Mama looked over her shoulder from where she stood at the kitchen sink. “What did Daddy say?”

“He said no. Just that. No.” To her way of thinking, that was the bottom line.

Mama looked thoughtful, then sympathetic, and resumed putting away leftovers from their earlier dinner of cold cuts and salad. Troy couldn’t make it for dinner but he’d come over later for cake to celebrate his birthday with Angel. Secretly, she’d banked on Troy’s presence getting her dad’s permission. So much for that.

In fact, after Daddy had refused to give her permission to go, Troy had cautioned her against pushing her dad too hard. “You’ve got a super father, Angel,” he’d said. “Don’t underestimate his wisdom.”

“But Troy,” Angel argued, “If I don’t push, Daddy would never let me out of the house.” Troy had simply shrugged and gone off into the den. She knew she’d exaggerated her father’s stringency, but tonight was special and she wanted to go to that concert more than she’d ever wanted to do anything in her life.

“Why doesn’t Daddy want me around?” Angel asked morosely, swiveling the seat back and forth at the kitchen bar while her mother rinsed off supper dishes and loaded them into the dishwasher.

Mama turned, hands dripping. “Darling, your daddy
does
want you around. He simply works all the time and isn’t always there for you. He doesn’t mean it to be that way.”

But it is.
The thought, unspoken, hung silently between them as her mother continued to tidy things.

“Mama, you sure I can’t help?” Angel’s voice was listless.

“No, no. You sit right there. You prepared the meal so I’ll do clean up.”

“Thanks.” Angel replayed her father’s rebuff of her affectionate hug. Did he have to be so…so cold? Tears of rejection and shame pooled in her eyes. She wondered, not for the first time, what had drawn her parents together. She knew her father had not always been so aloof. What gentle, explosive rudiments made their marriage work? Their signals were, at least in recent years, almost always mixed, perplexed. At one time, their passion had been a palpable thing, though at the time she’d not, in her innocence, been able to name it.

Angel just knew they adored each other, and it spilled over to include her. At least at one time it had been so. In her earlier years. She remembered the looks that had passed between them, so charged with ardor and sensitivity to each other that she’d felt guilty at witnessing them.

Sadly, she reflected, that awareness didn’t seem to visit the Wakefield home very often anymore.

If it did, it was quickly doused by arguments over money. Her daddy’s mantra these days was, “I’m the one who keeps this ship afloat, so please be considerate. Turn out lights when you leave the rooms and don’t use the credit card like a wish list.”

In response, Mama would insist that, “I can’t cook without buying groceries,” and go on about the cost of chicken and beef.

Angel dreaded when Daddy balanced the checkbook and got the credit card bill. Then there were the utility bills that seemed to climb higher and higher each month.

Again, she wondered what sinister or magnanimous forces kept her parents together. A real mystery. Would she figure out how love manifested itself between her and Troy, how to engage in it without pain and disappointment? Lordy, she hoped so. She certainly knew that Troy would never be as cold to their child as her father was to her.

Nearby in the den, Troy watched an Animal Planet special on bears in the wild while wolfing down a huge second piece of fresh strawberry birthday cake, his favorite. “This is delicious, Angel,” he called to her. “You’re a great cook.”

“Thanks.” Dismally, she pulled the crystal cake pedestal toward her and sliced off another big hunk of the luscious pink, sugary fruit concoction, scooted it onto a small plate, and picked up a fork.

“Ah ah,” Mama said, lifting a dainty finger of caution. “You’ve already had a slice.”

Angel’s breath came out in a whoosh. “Mama! It was so thin it got lost between my teeth.” Her fork clattered to the countertop’s granite surface, echoing Angel’s morale.

Mama looked indecisive for a moment, then waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, don’t mind me.” She nodded her okay. “Go ahead, honey. This is a special occasion. You do well with your weight, anyway. Not like me when I was your age with ol’ Tarishka calling me Miss Piggy in ballet class!” She crossed her eyes and assumed an awkward, knock-kneed waddling execution, arms at a grotesque angle, eliciting a sudden, rolling belly laugh from Angel.

“Aw, Mama,” Angel said, gurgling with laughter, “you were never fat.”

Mama rolled her eyes, then laughed with her and gestured to Angel’s heaping plate. “Have at it, darlin’.”

Angel tucked into the cake, from which carb comfort, within seconds, swirled through her willowy yet supple body.
Why does everything I look at turn to fat?

She knew what she needed to do. She excused herself to go to the bathroom and quietly, succinctly made herself throw up. There. That would take care of Karinsky’s in-class references to her “chub” and her ballet coach’s snide remarks like, “been laying into the French fries and milk shakes, have we, Angel?”

The upchucking always left her feeling weak and downtrodden. Unreasonably depressed.

Angel shuffled despondently to the bar stool, rejoining her mother. “Would you have had me if you hadn’t retired from ballet?“ she asked.

Mama dropped her dishcloth and moved swiftly to place her hands on Angel’s shoulders and gaze into her eyes. “My darlin’ daughter, you were destined to be. There was never a question in my mind that you were what I wanted in life. ”

Angel slanted her a searching look. “No regrets?”

Mama laughed, a joyful, exuberant, celebratory sound. “None whatsoever.” Then she kissed Angel’s tilted nose and returned to her cleanup.

Angel gazed at her mom at work, awed anew by her strength. She knew of her mom’s difficult childhood, of her being emotionally abandoned by Angel’s sick grandmother, a woman Angel never knew.

It still warmed Angel to hear her mama’s fervent insistence that she preferred spending her life as a stay-at-home mother. Not many friends of hers could say that. Many of them came
from broken homes and had custody issues. She didn’t know what glue held her folks together, she was just thankful it did.

Suddenly, Angel’s sugar high crashed, leaving her feeling more morose than ever. “Daddy doesn’t love me anymore,” she proclaimed, believing it in that instant.