Page 28 of Memories of the Lost

“Recuperating after the big party last night, honey.” He yawned. “No surfer boy?”

“I tried. Unfortunately, Jared was here when we arrived and spoiled the mood.” Picking up a gessoed canvas, she placed it on a sturdy easel. She started drawing, tethering herself to her best friend. “How did you celebrate?”

“Drinks with Alexander, and then to Train. I missed you. I wish I could cure you of those damned migraines.”

“That’s nice of you.” She picked up a burnt sienna oil stick and drew a broad curve, a back. Made a mark for an eye.

“Are you still going to your mom’s place tomorrow?”

“Yes. The Realtor is meeting me.”

“Sure you don’t want to wait until I can go with? I’ve been a little worried about you. I mean, you don’t know what happened to you when you were a child. Maybe you have trauma that’s just now surfacing with your mom’s death.”

“Liam said the same thing, and while I appreciate your worry, I really do need to get the farm on the market. I can’t stand to be there without her.”

“I wish I loved my mother the way you love yours.”

“I wish you’d had a mother who loved you the way mine loved me.”

“Yeah,” he said with a sigh. “Me, too. Anyway, let’s talk about happier things. Guess who I saw last night?”

Tension seeped out of her body toward the floor as Jon launched into a gossip fest. It was exactly why she’d called him, his butterfly flittering through the world of humans. His art was solid and melancholy, but you’d never guess it from his chatter.

It served to keep her grounded as she worked. Sitting at the big table, she sketched the cat, then started painting, seeing a girl on his back, his ears tufted like a lynx.

Jon slowed down, and she heard him yawn. To keep him going a little longer, she said, “Tell me about the trip to Crete.”

“I’m waffling.” He’d broken up with his longtime partner almost the same week Tillie and Jared had split up. They joked it must have been a deep astrological shit show, but it really had been quite a bad month. They’d done a lot of whining over the past few months, Jon more than Tillie, since she’d initiated the break in her relationship, and Jon was the one devastated. “It just won’t be the same without Reggie.”

“It won’t be,” Tillie agreed, tilting her head to check the balance of values on the painting. “But it will be a celebration of your enormous career victory.”

“Who wants to go on a vacation by themselves?” He sighed. “I’m not really all that comfortable on my own. You know, childhood judgment and all that shit.”

“You’ve had too much therapy.”

“Is that even possible?”

“Maybe not.” She stepped back and brushed hair out of her eyes, feeling a streak of paint mark her jaw. “I think it would be good for you, but you’re the one who has to live your life, so you do you.”

“Thank you,” he said with some irony. “Just think about going, okay?”

“I can tell you I will, but you know as well as I do that I can’t take the time right now.”

“I get it.” He yawned massively. “I’ve gotta go, honey. I can tell you’re painting and want company, but I’m falling asleep.”

She half smiled. “It was nice when we shared a studio.”

“See? People are good!”

“You’re good.”

“No, you’re good. Good night.”

She hung up. Music played from the speakers overhead and kept the worst of the silence from squashing her, but the room was open and echoey, and right at this moment, it made her feel small. She wished to be able to call her mother, who’d stayed up well past midnight, making soaps or reading her latest tome, and always welcomed a call from Tillie. It was easy to visualize her in the cottage, dressed in her favorite long-sleeve flannel pajamas, her feet bare, the long, wiry gray hair trailing down her back.

Longing burned. Tillie wanted desperately to be able to bend down and hug her. Arlette had been very plump during the past ten years, and her hugs were like sinking into a soft blanket. Standing in her studio, paintbrush aloft, Tillie fancied that she could smell her, that she was still with her. A ghost who would not abandon her.

After Arlette died, Tillie spent three days clearing out the farmhouse. She’d boxed up the kitchen and the living room, given away the aging furniture, the sparse artwork. Arlette had lived mainly in the greenhouse, amid the shelves and pots, the strings of peas growing to the ceiling in the winter, the tomatoes producing even in December. Tillie couldn’t even enter it at the start of her clearing frenzy. She didn’t know what to do with it, how to keep things going, or even if she should.