After she picked the duly-impressed Mina up from school, Greta was jittery. Too much had happened already that day, both good and bad. The conflicting emotions conspired with the inspiration she was feeling, and there was only one way to deal with the maelstrom inside of her.
“Hey, Mina, wanna do some painting this afternoon?” It was her evening off, but she’d already been out once. Twice, maybe, if you counted the restaurant and the tattoo shop as separate outings. Either way, it was plenty for Greta, who much preferred not to go out at all if she could help it.
“Can I use your good paints? The ones my dad bought me suck.” Mina batted her thick baby eyelashes.
“Don’t say suck. It isn’t nice.” Those paints totally sucked. How was an aspiring artist supposed to learn their craft with kindergarten art supplies? She would have shared her paints anyway. And she was also pleased Mina could tell the difference.
They’d only just walked in the house when Bob emerged from his room, tossing on his motorcycle jacket.
“Hey, Greta, I meant to tell you. I’ve got plans tonight. Might not be back for a couple days. Be good, Meens.” He was halfway out the door before she unfroze her dropped jaw.
“Um, it’s my off night. And tomorrow too. Remember?” Although it wasn’t the first time Bob had rudely switched her schedule without prior notice, she thought after she’d explained last time just how inconvenient it was, that he’d not do it again.
“Oh, yeah, well—it’s unavoidable. And it isn’t like you have anything more important going on than my daughter. Right, princess?” He chuckled, and headed into the garage for his bike without so much as hugging his daughter the “princess”.
Well, he obviously did.
Mina looked up at Greta with an expression she recognized from her own childhood. It was the look that said, “I’m really trying not to cry, but don’t you dare talk about this or I will sob.” Greta took a deep breath to calm herself. What an ass. What an absolute ass. What kind of a person treated their child this way?
“You know you are the most important, right, kiddo?” She forced herself to use her calmest voice. “And that obviously means that after painting we’re going to destroy your dad’s perfect kitchen with ten batches of cookies. I may even start a food fight.” A bizarre idea of inviting Jon to join them floated through her head. But she stopped that thought from going any further.
“What if I was a baker that baked children into cookies?” asked Mina, with a tentative half smile.
“Then you’d probably be the witch from Hansel and Gretel. What if I was a wily hunter who found the children and set them free?” Greta threw open a few cabinets in illustration.
“What if I decided wily hunters should be baked into pies?” Mina slammed them all shut again.
“Then you’d belong on Fleet Street with the other demons. What if I was a fairy who had magic glitter-dust to make you mend your ways?” Greta opened the doors again.
“What if fairy pie was the only thing that would make the evil king happy and release me from the spell that made me naughty?” Mina carefully moved the doors to halfway.
“No one can make you bad, though, kiddo. There will always be people who make you want to be better, and people who bring out the naughty side of you. The real magic is in being able to tell the difference, and in being strong enough and clever enough to pick the right people.” She knew she was breaking the unofficial rules of the game, but hey, teachable moments weren’t something Bob apparently planned on dealing with.
“Anyways, if the only way to save you was being baked into a pie, well.” Greta pushed the “bake” button on the oven and turned the dial to 350. “I’d always do that.”
Mina looked like she was biting back the tears a little again. Shit, that wasn’t what I meant to do. “I love you, Greta.”
If only Greta believed in love. She knew Mina was attached to her. She was attached to the little girl, too.
“More than French fries?” She asked.
“Yep,” said Mina, turning off the oven.
“More than Minecraft?” Mina pretended to consider for a minute.
“Yep.” She closed the half-open cabinet doors.
“More than the BBC?” Greta led the way toward the spiral staircase at the back of the restored Victorian.
“Don’t push it,” Mina answered, and Greta laughed out loud. Fair enough.
Someone else’s house or not, Greta could breathe easy in her own room. Her easel was permanently set up by the window, and Mina’s little foldable one was easily set up next to it. They’d been working on still lifes, but nothing was ready for the impromptu session. She started wandering around, grabbing things while trying not to focus on the throbbing in her wrist.
An old, fabric-covered book.
What. Was. She thinking. Kissing a man who had no chance with her. Kissing a man at all. Okay, fine, maybe it felt good. Like really good. But that was just a lack of kissing in her life.
A flower from the farmers market, on its last legs.
Not that she wanted the kind of life with loads of kissing. Although, after reminding herself how nice it felt, maybe she did? No. No she didn’t. Because as Riley Kilo said, kissing always led to more and more. And then things sucked. Well, that was paraphrasing, but still.
A half-empty wine glass from her last bath-and-book night. AKA the last night she’d spent at home. And every night before that.
Okay, so what if there was a distinct lack of sex in her life? She wasn’t the type of girl who could one-night it. She was an artist. Emotional. There was no such thing as a one-off for her. And there was no such thing as a guy who was willing to commit. At least not the ones who had steady jobs, mortgages, and dogs. And were straight. That was why she’d made the decision not to date. Because every love interest had broken another little piece of her heart off, and at this point? There wasn’t much of it left.
This was good, a good arrangement. The book and the flower had some nice texture, and it was never too early to learn how to paint reflections. Those were the toughies in any still, but also the ones that made the whole picture sparkle.
Greta remembered hearing a story on an art museum field trip about two artists competing on still lifes. The first painted his so realistically that birds tried to peck the canvas fruit. Determined to reveal his opponent’s picture for ridicule, it took the second artist a couple of attempts before he realized the cloth covering the still life was actually the picture itself.
Although no one had made a similar mistake on one of hers yet, it was her life’s goal to paint something so startlingly real that the viewer gasped. Maybe not even real. Something so beautiful. She pictured, again, Jon’s lips. His bright green eyes. So beautiful. She wasn’t going to paint him, though. Particularly not the way Summer had suggested. Trailing the soft bristles of her brush down his warm back, tracing the musculature …
“I brought the water cups,” Mina announced as she broke into Greta’s thoughts. “And some ice for your wrist. It looks owie.”
“I’m not sure ‘owie’ is a word. Thanks for the water.” Greta started doling out brushes and paint dabs, determined not to let those synapses fire ever again.
“Why not? Shakespeare made up words anytime he needed one. My teacher told me.” Mina pulled an apron over her school clothes and backed towards Greta for the tying.
“Fair enough, kid, but I think it’s a little different when you’re writing them into plays for posterity. Although—never mind. It’s gotta start somewhere, I guess.” They wet their brushes in unison, blotting them on paper towels. Greta inhaled deeply, pulling the scent of pigment and her favorite candles in, preparing for the release she felt when she was creating.
“Are you going to marry Jon?” Mina caused Greta to choke on her meditative breath.
“Oh. No. No, no. Honey, I’m not going to marry anyone.” She flooded part of the block, a bit heavier than necessary. That kiss though …
“Why?” Of course.
“Why what? Oh, here, use a bit more pigment on the edges of the book, makes it look like shading.”
“Why won’t you marry Jon?” Stubborn child. She wasn’t adding the pigment either.
“I just don’t believe in marriage. No biggie. Some people don’t. Heavier on those edges. Otherwise you won’t have any depth.” Her own was lacking as well, best to take her own advice. Maybe in more ways than one. She loaded her brush with more carmine and started in.
“Why?” Mina was swishing her brush all over the place now.
“Because marriage is a contract two people make when they think they are in love. Look here, you’ll want to leave that background alone for now. You can’t skip out of order and end up with a coherent picture.”
“So … why?” This was why Greta did not want kids. She idly wondered if Jon did. Not that it mattered. She was just curious. She should get to know her fake date in order to be convincing.
“Because if you fill in the back first, how will you put the shapes you want in the front without color confliction?” That should have been obvious to anyone with a basic knowledge of the color wheel, and a sense of how watercolor works.
“That’s not what I was asking. Why aren’t you going to get married?” It couldn’t have been as simple as the color wheel. Of course.
“Because if you don’t believe in love, you don’t make a contract like that. Simple. I see you are still on that background I told you to stop with.”
Mina smiled winningly. Greta wasn’t blind to the fact that Mina’s piece looked better than hers. She pretended to be, though. Cause she hadn’t followed the rules. Otherwise, she’d happily compliment. Rules were important.
“Love is real. My dad and my mom were in love.”
Oh, were they? Pretty hard to believe that a guy who had loved his wife wholeheartedly could treat their only child so callously. And be such a dick in general. Like, how could someone who didn’t tip their servers even be capable of love? In Greta’s expert opinion, no compassion equaled no interpersonal skills on which to even begin building a real relationship. Jon had tipped extravagantly. No that that mattered either. Just an observation.
“I’m sure they were.” Greta decided it wasn’t a lie if she didn’t say explicitly ‘oh, definitely.’ Because Mina was creepily good at picking up on lies.
“They were very super in love. Dad says.” Mina smiled to herself, and continued doing the exact opposite of what Greta had explicitly told her to. Arrrrrg. Also, seriously, how was it that the kid still believed her lying liar of a father about anything?
Because it’s easy to believe the lies you want to hear. The thought hit her like a freight train, and she couldn’t blame Mina at all. She’d done it herself, with her own father.
“You want to go change out the water for us?”
“Mine’s still—”
“Go.”
Her little back had hardly turned the corner before Greta sank onto her bed. It all made sense, really. She, too, had wanted to believe in the redemption of love. Enough that she’d swallow anything else she was fed.
Dad. Just thinking his name made her cringe. Although in retrospect, maybe she should have thanked him, for teaching her that what passes for love is usually just a power struggle between people who should have dissolved their union when the shine wore off in the first place.
Except it took her a couple more men to learn that lesson. Like Tom, who’d seemed perfect in art school, but … wasn’t. And they’d both stuck it out until it wasn’t even possible to be friends after. Pointless. Then there was Oliver. Freaking Oliver.
In retrospect, she still wasn’t sure exactly what it was that had swept her so off her feet that every thought she’d had after meeting him revolved around him. He was nice, but so were lots of people. He was cute, but not that cute. Maybe it was his confidence, the way he’d walked into the bar she was in and just—owned it.
Whatever it was, it had utterly blinded her to the fact that he had not been nearly as interested as she was. She’d moved too fast, shown her cards too soon, and he’d ghosted her—just stopped calling one day, and never answered again. And it only took a couple weeks to rebound, disgusted with herself for mistaking hormones for more. It was a rule she’d made for herself after that, not to bother with “love”, or the combination of attraction and affection that passed for it. She glanced down at her still-swollen tattoo. No matter how good a kisser a guy was.
And again, she just didn’t know how to explain this stuff to a little kid. Especially a little kid who was too young to hear what a shit her father was, even from someone who knew from personal experience. Well—maybe not. It couldn’t do anyone any good to tell her. Yet it couldn’t do any good to let her get disappointed again and again, building up tree rings of broken promises. Someday her bark would be as thick as Greta’s, protecting her heart. There was just no way around it.