The Art of My Life (30 page)

Starr handed a bucket of cleaning
supplies to Missy and grabbed the mop and broom from the back of
her mini-van.

Aly pulled into Henna’s driveway
behind them.

Thank God Missy offered to move in
with Henna. Henna’s getting lost on the way to Walmart last week
preyed on Starr’s mind. She could burn the house down
next.

Leaf was the logical one to keep an
eye on Henna, but he took off for parts unknown the minute the pot
garden disappeared. If they’d screamed at each other, she’d never
know if she had to rely on Henna to tell her. Her parents had
always split off like repelling forces rather than fight things
out. She couldn’t imagine her father sober enough to get
angry.

Aly and Missy hugged and chattered
about Missy’s moving in while Starr filled her lungs with the last
clean air she’d breathe until they were finished.

Now, if she could just get the job
done without dredging up a bucket full of emotion. You had to do a
lot of things you didn’t want to do in life because they were the
right things to do. At the moment, she dreaded shoveling filth and
memories from her mother’s house as much as she had dreaded waiting
for Cal to step into court in manacles.

Aly cradled a bulging box of cleaning
supplies.

Starr caught a toilet brush before it
tipped out of the box. She felt like hugging the girl. “Thanks for
helping us.” Starr’s arm snaked around Aly’s shoulders and squeezed
as if the thought morphed into action of its own accord.

Aly’s eyes widened. “Missy always says
I’m the sister she never had.”

Missy shot her an impish grin. “Marry
Cal, and we can be official.”

Aly coughed. “There are a few
complications with that.”

The yearning and hurt that warred in
Aly’s face embedded in Starr on a primal level. Love for Aly poured
into her like water from a lock. How could she have thought Aly
wasn’t good enough for Cal? “You’ve already been part of the family
for years. Whatever does or doesn’t happen between you and Cal
won’t change that.”

Aly’s lip quivered.

The silence stretched into
awkward.

She didn’t know what to do with the
rush of emotion eddying and forging new tributaries inside her.
First, she’d super-glued with Evie. Now Aly. She grabbed the bleach
out of Aly’s box. “Come on, girls, let’s do this thing.”

All day—as Henna puttered around the
house accomplishing little—dust bunnies of memory skittered around
Starr—setting the alarm and getting herself off to school every
morning from kindergarten on, eating a spoonful of margarine dipped
in brown sugar for an after-school snack in an empty house, doing
homework by flashlight under her sheet to diminish the marijuana
fumes.

The mayor’s words—she always looked so
sad and alone—haloed around each scene from her childhood. With
every bag of garbage taken to the curb, every dirty mop bucket they
emptied, Starr felt lighter. The memories remained, but the pain
ebbed away.

The little-girl Starr had never woken
up on her birthday with her parents standing by her bed singing
Happy Birthday
, holding cake and balloons, but that all
changed with Jackson. He loved her, all of her—her dancing, her
heart, even the hurts and emotions he had to beg to see. She needed
to find a way to tell Jackson how grateful she was, how much she
loved him.

Missy pulled up a corner of the carpet
in the living room. “Look at this hard wood! Mom, did you know
there were wood floors under the carpet?” Missy held up the grungy
rug with two fingers.

Starr sprayed furniture polish on her
rag and buffed a circle on the wood. “I had no idea. Text Dad and
Jesse, and see if they will rip out the carpet.”

Aly sunk onto the
still-damp-with-upholstery-cleaner couch in slow motion. Her mouth
dropped open. Her eyes widened and fixed on a stack of paintings
Starr had propped against the wall to be taken to the
attic.

Starr followed her gaze. She hadn’t
taken the time to examine Cal’s work when she cleaned his studio to
get it ready for Missy.

Cal had pictured a summer squall on
the beach. Sunlight poured through a gap in the clouds onto a man
whose peaceful face tilted up toward the light. Around the man,
indistinct figures lurked in the shadows, some running from the
storm, some hunched against it. A few drops of rain splattered into
the light, splashing against the man’s bare chest. He was walking
and looked as though he had just stepped fully into the
light.

Behind the man, whose colorless hair
was ruffled by the wind, the jetty jutted into a choppy sea
back-dropped by a nearly-night sky. A casual observer could easily
miss the shadowy items littering the rocks of the jetty—a Ziploc
baggie of weed, as familiar to Starr as the veins on her hand; a
mangled box of Trojans, a cracked bong, rolling papers fluttering
above the rocks like moths, a crushed Bic lighter, a spoon that
might have been bent in a tub of ice cream wedged between two rocks
near a discarded syringe.

Oh, God, not heroin. Starr folded her
arms across her waist and squeezed. Her eyes skimmed over the
crushed Coors cans, a broken bottle of Jack Daniels still half
covered by a paper bag.

Her eyes flicked back to the man
bathed in light. This was the central image, the message. The man,
who had to represent Cal, had stepped out of the darkness and its
clutter and walked into the light. There was a sense of joy about
the painting that ran inside and filled her up.

Henna spoke from the kitchen doorway.
“It’s not just run of the bill.”

Her mother’s voice startled Starr.
“When did Cal paint this?”

“
The night the kids made
hay with my garden. He didn’t sleep a blink. Every time he comes
over, he messes with it—a dog with his home.”

A sob escaped Aly, and Starr looked at
her. Tears slicked Aly’s face, but she was smiling. She must have
been crying the whole time Starr had been lost in the
painting.

Missy crawled over and hugged Aly’s
jean-clad leg, her focus, too, on the painting. “I just hope he
means it. I’m sick to death of his running over my
heart.”

The cocktail of hope and doubt in
Missy’s words swirled in Starr’s stomach. Starr stood from where
she’d been crouching to buff the floor and sank beside Aly on the
couch. She rested a hand on Missy’s shoulder and one on Aly’s back.
Wetness slipped down her cheeks—tears of sadness for Cal’s past,
joy for his present and future.

Henna walked across the newly spotless
living room, blotting out Cal’s picture for a moment, and laid a
hand on Starr’s shoulder. “Cal’s a good boy.”

Starr wanted to yank her shoulder out
from under her mother’s brand. Henna had no right to offer comfort.
She was the one who had grown the pot that plagued Cal’s
life.

But something stayed her.

Starr filled her lungs
. I forgive
you, Mama. For everything. All over again.
She breathed out the
bitterness and let it soak into the fifty-year-old carpet Jackson
and Jesse would rip out tomorrow.

Cal could find a different supplier
easily enough. But if the painting were true, he wouldn’t go
looking.

Henna had always offered Cal
unconditional acceptance, something Starr had never managed. She’d
always resented Henna for it, but now part of her was grateful Cal
had been fully embraced by someone, even if it hadn’t been
her.

The four of them who loved Cal stared,
unmoving, at his heart as if someone had posed them as an estrogen
American Gothic. Aly sniffled. The yellow kitchen clock shaped like
a frying pan ticked from one second to the next.

Henna’s fingers jerked into Starr’s
shoulder. She slumped across Starr’s lap and slid to the floor
beside Missy, trailing her long, gray-white pony tail and the scent
of patchouli oil.

“
Mama?”