The Matchmakers of Minnow Bay (12 page)

While she runs out to the lot behind the inn, I stare into my tea and self-flagellate. The tea is sweet-smelling and the color of an overdyed red Easter egg. I can't drink and cry at the same time, so I drink. Try to get my composure. Try to figure out how I'm going to come up with a couple hundred dollars.

After a moment she's back. Wordlessly she hands me my phone. I'm so mad at myself. I'm so embarrassed. And then I look at my screen and see four missed calls and realize I forgot to call Renee back last night, to tell her I'm safe. She's going to be livid. And then I'm going to hit her up for my hotel bill? Oh, shit. Shit, shit, shit. I call my stepbrother.

I go straight to voicemail. “Hey Charlie, it's Lils. I'm sorry, I realize this is going to piss you off enormously, but I need to borrow some money and it's an emergency. Not a lot,” I say, and then look at Colleen who mouths, “One seventy-five.”

“Two hundred bucks is all I need,” I say into the phone. “The thing is, I need it, like, today. I had to travel up north. It was an emergency. God, I'm sorry. Just. I
will
pay you back. Call me.”

“He didn't pick up,” I say needlessly. “I'll try a friend.”

Daniella doesn't answer. Probably sleeping something off. I leave another message. Same for Renee, only in this one I start by apologizing profusely about not texting her last night and then segue into apologizing profusely about the money. Now I'm down to Mitchell. Mitchell, who answers on the third ring.

“Oh, thank God,” I say into the phone when he picks up.

“Lily, my love,” he says. His voice is calm. Always calm. Always adult.

“Mitchell, I have never been so glad to get you on the phone. I need a huge favor.”

He laughs. “And I thought you were just calling to hear my handsome voice.”

I try to force a smile into my voice. “Well, always that, you know. But ah, I'm in a pinch.”

“Same pinch as you were in on Tuesday?”

Tuesday. When I found out I'd been evicted, and asked if I could crash with him. “No, no.” This couldn't be more embarrassing. Well, I could be doing all of this in my underwear, like a bad dream, but beyond that, this is as humiliating as it can get, I hope. “I seem to have overextended myself financially.”

He laughs again. I am not in a position to be hurt, but I'm hurt nonetheless. “Mitchell, I know what you are thinking. I just need some help. A one-time thing.”

“Lily,” he says. “Beautiful, brilliant Lily. You
don't
need help. The fact that you're convinced you do is why you keep getting into these situations.”

If he only knew, I think, remembering Ben Hutchinson's expression at the coffee shop this morning. “No, I really do need help. I owe this innkeeper in Wisconsin two hundred dollars and all my credit cards have been maxed out. All I need is a tiny loan.”

There's silence on the line. Then, slowly, scoldingly, he says my name again. “Lily. Honey. You know you can't do this to me, professionally speaking. It puts me in such a difficult situation. What will I tell all the other artists I represent when they come to me for advances on their quarterlies, if I give one to you just because you're my girlfriend?”

I flounder. “I'm not asking for an advance from my gallerist,” I say, though, wouldn't that be nice? “I'm asking for a loan from my boyfriend.”

He sighs loudly into the phone. “That's even worse. Bringing money into a relationship that's supposed to be about passion, and connection, and trust?”

I prop my elbow on the table and sink my face into my hand.

“Lily, the best thing I can do for you right now is say no. You will thank me later. Now, will you be home from, ah,
Wisconsin,
in time for the weekend opening? This artist is so demanding. She will take it personally if I don't bring you. You're like a signal to the art world. A signal that I am excited enough about something to get you excited too. People so admire your taste.”

I pick up my head, defeated. “I'll try,” I say.

“My dear, if you only understood how capable you can be, when you put your mind to something. I wish I could make you see that.”

I wish he could make me see $200. “Thank you, Mitchell,” I say glumly. “See you.”

“See you shortly!” he calls cheerily. And the line goes dead.

I look up at Colleen. She is looking back at me with pure, painful pity.

“I will find someone,” I say. “Just—don't worry. I'm not going anywhere.”

She sighs deeply.

“I mean, I will leave. Once I've paid you. Which I will do. Soon.”

She shakes her head. I can tell she does not believe me. But still we both sit there. “Where will you go?” she asks.

I take another gulp of tea. “I'm going to go stay with Charlie. My brother. Stepbrother, actually. He lives in our dad's old house in the suburbs. Where I grew up. He kind of owes me after a lifetime of me bailing him out of trouble and covering for him to Dad.”

“It's a long drive down there. The forecast tonight is not good.”

“I know,” I say, shaking my head. “I saw a paper at the café. I was supposed to be gone by now. But I was waiting because…”

At once she remembers the FedEx package and snaps her fingers. “The package you mentioned. Let's go see if it came.” A minute later she returns, holding a slim, legal-sized express envelope. “Maybe there's cash in here?” she says. She's being so charitable. It almost makes me feel worse.

I smile meekly. “I sincerely doubt it. Still, I'll understand if you want to hold on to it. As collateral.”

She looks at me curiously. “Don't get me wrong, I do need that money. But I'm not going to hold your mail for ransom. Even if I wanted to, I think that would be totally illegal.”

“So's credit card fraud,” I say.

“I don't think you meant to defraud me. Did you?”

I shake my head. “I totally didn't. It was an accident. I'm doing a lot of accidental defrauding these days. You and Ben Hutchinson can have a good laugh about it. Someday. I hope.”

Colleen looks surprised. “
Benji
Hutchinson? Hutch's son?”

“I think so. I've been accidentally married to him for the last ten years.”

Now she looks genuinely stupefied.

“That's why I'm here. Once I sign whatever is in there,” I gesture to the FedEx package, “we'll be divorced and I'll never have to see his stupid jerk face again.”

“He's a really nice guy actually. I mean, he's a friend. A great teacher too. And he built out my website for free.”

I let my head fall back against the high back of the upholstered dining chair. “Of course he is. Of course he's a decent guy, a friend of yours, a mensch. I'm the problem.”

She looks at the walls, the furniture, anywhere but at my face. Then she says, “I hope you're not offended when I say you seem to be having a sort of rough couple days.”

I bring my chin back down and scan her face, unable to tell if she's being serious. Then I break into laughter. “I'm not offended. I'm touched that you put it so nicely. In case I didn't mention this, I got evicted from my shitty apartment and then found out I've been accidentally married without knowing it for ten years. In those years, I have desperately and fruitlessly attempted to date, marry, and procreate with several of the worst human beings who have ever walked the planet. I have lived like a college student, wracked up crippling credit card debt, slept on a futon, and watched friend after friend leave me behind for husbands and families, while waiting for my latest boyfriend to make even the slightest commitment. All while I have, completely unbeknownst to me, been married to the Nicest Most Attractive and Wealthiest Man in America who is polite to everyone in the universe except for me.

“And,” I go on after a breath, “after a humiliating and utterly degrading reunion with said man, I am trapped in a hyper-quaint bed-and-breakfast in the middle of nowhere with absolutely zero dollars and no clean underwear. You, my friend, are the queen of understatement.”

Colleen puts her hand to her mouth, maybe in shock, but more likely to conceal laughter.

I wave my hand dismissively. “No, no, it's okay. Have a laugh. I owe you much more than a laugh at this point.”

So she does. Her laugh is silly, giggly, and contagious. Soon I am laughing too. Because what else is there to do?

“You're telling me you're married to Ben Hutchinson?” she finally gets out. “That's not so bad. He is hot.”

“And a wonderful teacher, and probably also a Nobel Prize winner, and a genius, and a zillionnaire. Oh, and he threatened to sue me for um, I can't even remember what, last night. All the things you can sue for.”

She lets out a few more giggles. I put my face in my arms, crossed on the table, and pretend to weep dramatically.

“Okay, we're going to figure this out,” she says. “Your brother's good for the money, right? So we can take that stressor off the table?”

I think for a long moment, thinking of something. Something that came to mind while I was sitting on the velvet sofa, staring at the fireplace, wondering about the closet full of baby gear with no baby to go with it. “I have a better idea. If you're open to it.”

“I'm listening,” she says.

“I'm a painter,” I tell her, though I'm sure she's already seen the canvasses in the back of my car and figured out as much. “I think I'm a decent painter. I mean, I sell well. My stuff is worth something. I can show you a gallery statement, show you what they charge, how there's a waiting list for my works … Or you can google me. Here:”

I hand her my phone, open to a browser window. “L-I-L-Y S-T-E-W-A-R-T,” I spell aloud.

She types it in, and looks at the results. Hopefully she's getting some nice articles from the glossies, and not just the occasional blogger who calls me a talentless hack. “Wow. Very impressive.”

“That space,” I say, gesturing to the wall above my pretty little white brick fireplace. There's currently a gilt mirror there.

“The mirror is beautiful,” I say, “but it's round, and the fireplace is arched, so the area looks too smoodgy.”

“Smoodgy?”

“There's no structure, no straight lines. Like an igloo, or a hobbit dwelling. Too whimsical, when taken with the rest of the house.” Colleen studies the space and I press on. “And there's no saturated color. White white white, round round round. If you move the mirror to the hole over there,” I indicate the long empty space above the buffet in the dining room, “then you fix the emptiness over there, add curves to the dining area, make the narrow space feel bigger with the mirror, right? But then you have a hole over the fireplace which is basically like, design suicide, right? I'm not an interior decorator, but visual artists do look at this stuff.”

“Where are we going with this?” she asks me.

“I have something. A landscape. It's perfect for that space. I know contemporary art's not your bag, but it's representational. It will fit in here okay. Actually, as soon as I came into that room on Thursday I thought of it. But saying something then seemed rude…”

She smiles warmly. “It doesn't seem rude now?”

“Well, probably it is. I'm so sorry. But it's yours. The painting. I know it's worth at least twice the money I owe you. I'm not just bragging; my stuff really does sell.”

She twists her mouth into a thoughtful expression, and looks again at the iPhone screen, at the search results. “I guess I could take a look,” she finally says.

“Yes! Yes, just look. Then decide.” I hop up and, leaving the phone and the FedEx package and even my coat, I dart out into the freezing cold to fetch the painting.

“Here,” I say when I'm back in the warmth, and thrust a paper-wrapped canvas toward her. “It's yours now. It has to be here. It just won't work anywhere else.” Even as I am speaking I realize how true this is. Even if I find a way to pay her back with actual money, I will always want the painting to live here.

“Is it okay to, um, take off the paper?”

I laugh. “Well, it will definitely look nicer if you do.” She and I pull off the kraft paper, her hands moving gingerly, as though she might accidentally ruin the whole thing, and mine less so, eager for her to see my work.

“There.” I spin it around for just a second, and show it to Colleen. Her eyes open wide. It is a landscape of a long, periwinkle-colored horse stable. A stable and a sky and one horse. That's all it is. Yet I am indescribably proud of it.

There is no depth whatsoever, and very little detail, so that you have the feeling of looking at something directly head on, standing in that one magic spot where all lines lead straight backward. But I've done shade work, in the rich blue side of the stable, in its joints and corners, that tells the viewer that it is spring, overcast, still cold, and early in the day. We know the sun will be moving high in the sky again soon for the first time in so long. We know animals will be out today, chittering. We know the warmth will make slicks of sweet-smelling mud.

The dark roof of the stable is a sort of green-brown, and it does recede a bit, the slightest nod to perspective, and then the sky is a hazy gray-blue that melts away into a few patches of leftover snow, here and there. I wanted to make the dreariest spring colors somehow cheery and inviting. I somehow knew it was destined to fit in a room of florals and velvet, before I'd even seen the room itself.

Colleen stands perfectly still, frozen and staring at the painting. I go to the fireplace and heft the mirror down. Carefully, I take it to the dining room and prop it against the wall. When I come back into the living room I find her clutching my painting with both hands. I know the look on her face, and I am supremely flattered by it.

“It was the horse,” I say, as I gently take the canvas from her and hang it, frameless, where the mirror had been. She still says nothing, but stares. Just to the left of that purple-blue stable is a dark, dark brown horse, not actually a brown at all, but a bay, with that rich chocolate mane. It is nearly monochromatic nose to tail but for a white blaze. The horse wears a saddle, but the cinch is loosened. Under it the light cream color of a blanket shows through.