Stony River (55 page)

She still had moments of discouragement. But once she had gotten past that initial block, when she had frozen up because so much was riding on that critical juncture in her life, something began to take over—an inner sense guiding her she almost didn’t understand. And she knew why talent was called a gift, for it wasn’t something she was entirely responsible for. It was a gratifying time, in which she was finding her ability equal to the things she aspired to do.

With art class and assignments, her own painting projects, the job at the shop, and church on Sundays and sometimes Wednesday nights, the days settled into a predictable pattern. Sevana felt well occupied and even content, after a fashion—even though sometimes when she thought about it, she felt far away from herself. But she would almost rather go on than think about it. She was tired of missing what she could not have, and put it from her as best she could. She watched the fall grow old with a peculiar detachedness. There was nothing on that bare brown plain to catch or stir her heart, so it lay quiet. But underneath it all was the knowledge that Joel was coming in the near future, and it was this that held her steady and enabled her to bide the time. She hadn’t heard from him, but every day she watched the mail for a letter.

Upon Sevana bringing down a practice assignment for evaluation one morning, Willy took one long look at it with his lips compressed in a thoughtful line, selected a frame that brought out its best accents, and hung it on the wall with a $200 price tag. “Willy, do you mean—?” she stammered, wondering if he was toying with her.

“Yes,” he said firmly. “It’s good enough.”

It sold before lunch. Sevana was in shock. But Willy was gleeful because he had judged correctly. “I told you, Sevana. Anything you want to sell, just hang it up. Price is up to you.”

Two hundred dollars for a practice picture! At that rate it wouldn’t take long to save up a down-payment for a car—and she did want her own transportation. So on top of her art lessons, she resumed work on the painting of Snowshoe Meadow.

Willy came up to see it one afternoon. “I can’t get over you,” he said, straddling a chair to study the oil into which she had been unguardedly pouring her heart. “I’ve never seen such talent, not in all the time I’ve been teaching.”

“I don’t know—” Sevana didn’t feel she could take full credit. “When the scene is so outstanding, any reasonable attempt to copy it is bound to be satisfactory. Oh Willy, I wish you could have seen it—the flowers knee-deep at Snowshoe Summit! You’d have gone crazy for wanting to paint it.”

“Then it’s a good thing I was miles away on the plain,” Willy joked, not taking her seriously. He stood up. “Well, I should be so dedicated, but I’m off to the Roadhouse. Come with me?”

She looked back at her picture. “Thanks—but I’d like to get this finished. I need to get going on my car fund.”

Willy was not fooled by her excuses. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about what happened last time you were out at the Roadhouse, Sevana,” he said. “I don’t want one small incident to keep you from going back with me, because I enjoyed your company immensely.”

“I know you like it out there, Willy,” she said diplomatically. “But I just don’t feel at home around such a wild crowd.”

“All right.” He didn’t press it. “Lucky for me, I don’t have to rely on nights at the Roadhouse for your company.” Then, as an idea struck him—“Say, how about coming over to my house tomorrow night to see my new painting?”

Sevana caught her breath. For several weeks Willy had been producing an undisclosed work at home, to which he had mysteriously alluded on several occasions only as his ‘masterpiece’. “Is it finished?”

“It most certainly is. That’s why I’m off to the Roadhouse to celebrate.”

“You’d be off to celebrate anyway,” she said accurately, though without censure. She had long since learned that his self-stated dedication to art was in fact rivaled by his devotion to social drinking. “But I would love to see your painting.”

“Then it’s a date!” he cried gaily. “I’ll take you home with me tomorrow after work.”

Sevana saw him out, then returned to her work as one withdrawing into a cloister—slipping back into a world where she and Joel still wandered a meadow of extravagant purple-blue. And so completely did that idyllic place surround her, so real its appeal to her senses, she was convinced that moment still existed,
had
to exist—somewhere in or out of time. When it was done she didn’t sell it as she’d planned, for it seemed too sacred a thing to trade for money.

CHAPTER 37

When Willy took Sevana home, it was to a townhouse in the newest part of the city. He parked in the driveway of the double garage and led her through a private atrium of neatly trimmed shrubs. “Welcome to my humble home, doll face,” he said, opening the front door with an exaggerated bow and flourish.

He ushered her through the entryway into a dining nook with a polished round oak table standing next to the glass wall of the atrium. They passed through the kitchen—gleaming as if scarcely ever used—and into a living room, where black leather furniture sat upon a brushed carpet of silver. Over the couch hung a large picture of a shadowy lake with the path of the moon shining across it. Drawn in by its mysterious mood, Sevana stopped to enjoy it.

“Haven’t seen that one before, have you?” Willy waved it off. “I hardly notice it anymore. Come on—” He led the way down the hall to a spare bedroom. This room was in direct contrast to the other orderly rooms, being a pleasurable confusion of easels, drop clothes, canvases and palettes. On one easel was stretched a large watercolor, and it was this he wanted to show her.

Sevana gaped at the scene before her eyes. Snowcrusted mountains were rising out of a fog with no visible connection to the earth, and against that fog, flying above a flat foreground of dry grass and snow, was a prominent formation of seven Canadian geese, their wings eternally captured in motion. Oh, the geese!—they would fly across the mountains in perfect formation forever. She was so arrested by the sober power of the picture that she could hardly find words to tell him so.

Willy was pleased. “I like it myself. I don’t have much experience in watercolor, and I didn’t expect it to come out as well as it did.”

“It
is
a masterpiece, there’s no question. Why, Willy, you could sell it for thousands of dollars!” Sevana couldn’t get over it. But Willy was like a little boy, wanting to show her all the other things in his wonderful room. He took her through some of his early attempts, his experiments in chalk and charcoal, a handful of projects he’d never finished—even a few of his father’s. Time slipped away unnoticed while they both were engrossed in their favorite subject. Finally Sevana realized it had grown dark outside. “I should go home.”

“There’s no hurry, is there?” Willy asked. “Why don’t we throw some dinner together first?” Taking off for the kitchen, he flicked on a light and peered into the recesses of an oak cupboard.

“It’s meeting night at church,” Sevana objected. “I was thinking of going.”

“When’s it start?”

“Seven.”

Willy glanced at the cuckoo clock on the wall. “We’ve got time, don’t we? I can drive you straight from here. It’s that one out past the junction, right?” He tossed a sack of French bread onto the counter. “We’ll make something easy—how ‘bout steak and toast?” Taking down a bottle of vodka, he filled a crystal shot-glass and offered it to her. “Fact is,” he continued, downing it himself when she shook her head in refusal, “I might go with you. It’d be good for my image, don’t you think?”

“Oh, Willy—” she couldn’t help laughing at his breezy manner. “All right. It would be fun.”

He barbecued two fresh steaks on the stove’s built-in grill, and she shook a bag of gourmet greens into a bamboo bowl in his shining kitchen. Willy took to teasing her about putting so much time and effort into the salad and almost burned the steaks because of it, blamed her for distracting him. They ate in the dining nook with the night just on the other side of the glass wall, then piled their dishes in the sink and collected their coats in a hurry. “Nice place you have,” Sevana said, as they swung away in his car.

“Big improvement over that rat-hole I used to live in—oh, wait, that’s your place,” Willy said, tossing her a wicked grin.

It was past seven when they got to church, but the service hadn’t started. David was up front waiting for people to take their places. Sevana saw his look of surprise when she came in with Willy. Quickly they found seats near the back.

For all his lighthearted jesting, Willy seemed ill-at-ease once inside the church. He grabbed a hymnbook and thumbed through it rapidly several times until a few more latecomers found a seat and David began the service. Secretly Sevana was looking forward to Willy hearing David, for she was strangely proud of him and his intelligent discussions. It was his wit and wisdom, his unassuming charisma, that made her look forward to each meeting.

She enjoyed the sermon that night, and hoped Willy did, too. There was a skeptical air about him, and she wasn’t sure he was glad to be there. David came down to introduce himself afterward. “It’s a pleasure to meet you in person, Willy,” he said, gripping his hand warmly. “Both my wife and I are longtime admirers of your work.”

They exchanged a few pleasantries. But as soon as he gracefully could, Willy said “C’mon,” to Sevana under his breath, and headed for the door. “Couldn’t make head or tail of it,” he said once they were outside—but he didn’t seem disturbed. He let her in the car.

“I don’t understand everything, either.” Sevana was anxious to let him know he wasn’t alone. “But I like listening to David.” She added, “David and Krysta have been so good to me.”

“Nice people.” Willy gunned the engine. “But I can’t see what you see in church.”

“I don’t know.” She wondered how to explain. It was David, mostly, because she admired him so much. But it was also for the sake of an encounter she’d had in the high country, which she could never explain to anyone, let alone Willy. And it was the feeling of being among friends—a good feeling for her, on her own and trying to make a life there. “I just like it,” she said ineffectually. “Maybe you would, too, if you went often enough to know the people.”

“Not me,” Willy said, speeding down the road. “Not that I wouldn’t like to go with you. But I can’t afford to get weighed down with philosophical issues. I’ve got to live free and easy, so nothing hinders my inspiration.” He said it flippantly, but Sevana could tell he wasn’t joking. He glanced over with a familiar look to find understanding from a fellow artist, but received from her only an uncertain nod. They came to a stop at her apartment.

“Would you like to come in for coffee?” she asked, feeling she would like to make some return to him for dinner, and for trying church at least once for her sake.

“Sure,” said Willy agreeably. They sat on the couch and ate storebought sandwich cookies shaped like maple leaves, but Sevana noticed he was less talkative than usual. Certainly the earlier, rollicking mood was gone. After just one cup of coffee he walked to the door and opened it. “Restless,” he remarked. “Feel like a walk?”

“All right,” she agreed, a little surprised, but always game for the out-of-doors—especially with the moon as it was, a perfect half-slice suspended over the prairie. They walked out past the church again, dark now except for one window in back where David had his study, and into the open plain.

“Nice night, isn’t it?” Willy remarked, looking up at the sky. “The streetlights in town are too bright for any decent stargazing.” Gravel crunched beneath their shoes. “I’ve been thinking…” he mused. “I’ve got me a notion. Want to hear me out?”

“Of course,” she said, not knowing what to expect.

“Well,” he began, “I like what I’m doing, you know…the shop and painting classes and all. But I’ve been thinking, why stop there? Think of it, Sevana,” he beseeched her, halting in the road. “I could have what I have here in a big city like Calgary, and earn a much broader recognition.”

“But Willy,” she objected at once, “you’ve got such a good name here. I’ve seen the admiration wherever you go. Everyone knows and respects you.”

“Everyone in town,” he corrected her. “But that’s only Lethbridge. I’d like my name to go beyond this city, and I can think of no better way than to open a shop in Calgary. What do you think?”

“I don’t know.” She considered it as they resumed their walk. “The people here are proud of you—that’s not to be taken lightly. It might not be the same in a big city. Your name would be known to more people, but it might not mean as much. It almost seems this should be enough.”

“Maybe it should be,” he said, with a little edge to his voice. “But it isn’t.”

She hurried to pacify him, remembering the temper he could have. “If it’s in your heart, then do it, Willy! You’ve got such talent. I’ve never seen such pictures as I saw tonight. Wherever you go, you will be successful. Someday I will tell people that I received my training from the world-famous William Cassidy Calihan.”

He stopped her with a hand on her arm. “Is that all I mean to you, just that I helped you with your painting, Sevana?” he asked, and his tone was wheedlesome.

She was thrown by the turn in the conversation, but faced him honestly. “No, of course not, Willy. You know you’re a dear friend.”

“How dear?” he demanded.

Sevana looked into his face revealed by the moon’s cool rays, and knew what he was asking. Through her mind flashed her real appreciation of him, the many things they had in common, his quick, optimistic sense of fun, his good looks and compelling charm—and thought how easy it would be to give him the answer he wanted. After all, her hopes for Joel were built on nothing but unsubstantiated wishes. She had already spent one summer with him, throughout which he had steadfastly continued to love Chantal. She opened her mouth, but no words would come. She pressed her lips together in the complexity of her emotions.