I don’t know how, but I’ve got to get Krell on my side.
Trees line both sides of the street, but I catch a view of Mrs. Mednikov lowering the shades on the tall windows on the second floor. My landlady comes down the stairs and works her way through the main room until one by one the paintings disappear behind long white shades. Wait for it, I think, and she reaches for the last shade next to the kitchen and pulls it down halfway. Every night, the same thing.
I finally get up the energy to unload my gear from the car. I thump up the wood steps, and when I open the kitchen door the scent of onion and dill envelops me. A pot of magenta-colored soup simmers on a stove decades older than I am.
Mrs. Mednikov stands at the counter, slicing a loaf of dark rye. She’s got to be over eighty, but she stands straighter than I do, and draws the knife through the bread so elegantly that if I didn’t know she was once a dancer, I’d guess it from watching her slice.
“Long day?” she says, her accent drawing out the word “long.”
“Do I look that bad?”
“You look tired. There’s soup if you’d like to join me.”
“Yes, I’d love some.”
It’s a play we perform most nights: Mrs. Mednikov pretending she made too much food and inviting me to join her, and me pretending I’ll scrounge around and make my own dinner if she doesn’t. I’m not exactly sure what started it, maybe me showing up the first night with nothing but a jar of peanut butter and half a loaf of bread.
I cross the little hall and stow my gear in my room by the kitchen. When I open the door, it barely clears the bed, but after months of sleeping in my backseat, I give thanks every day for this tiny, yellow room with its door and window, and space for all my stuff in the dresser and closet.
I peel off Iona Taylor’s boots, vowing never to wear them to CALINVA again, then pad back into the kitchen. It’s dark now except for the light over the table set for two.
Mrs. Mednikov sets a large bowl in front of me, and a white dollop of sour cream floats in the purplish-red soup. I swirl it with my spoon so it makes a bright pink comma. “My mom used to make borscht.”
“I could not resist the beets at the farmers market this morning,” she says. “So fresh.”
From where I sit, I have a clear view of the half-closed shade. I point my spoon at the window. “Can I ask why you do that?”
Mrs. Mednikov shrugs and gives me a smile. “An old widow’s habit? Many years ago, the FBI suspected my husband and his friends of being Communists. Agents would come to the house looking for Boris, and if he was not home, I would pull the shade closed to warn him.”
“And you keep doing it, because…it reminds you of him?”
“Yes, it reminds me of a wonderful time in my life.”
“When you were harassed by the FBI?”
“When I was young and passionately in love. Now you,” Mrs. Mednikov says, and leans across the table. “I’ve waited patiently to hear how your instructor liked your marvelous painting.”
“My instructor loathed my marvelous painting.”
“No! How is that possible?”
I twist in my seat and can’t bring myself to tell Mrs. Mednikov what Krell said, because what if I see a flicker in her eyes telling me she agrees?
“A grad student told me that Professor Krell thinks the Zoich Scholarship should have gone to someone else.” I hold my breath and wait for Mrs. Mednikov’s reaction.
Her eyes narrow, and she mutters a string of Russian words, none of which I understand. Her lips purse and she switches back to English. “This is not the first time I have heard such talk about him. Learn what you can from this man—and do your art.”
I nod so she’ll know I heard her, and dip into the sour cream floating on my soup. If only it was that simple.
Krell is still in my head as I scour Mrs. Mednikov’s soup pot. How is it that Adam saw what I was trying to say with Appetite, but Krell, who’s supposed to be such a genius, didn’t? I dig the scrubby pad into a black spot of burned-on beet. It makes more sense that Krell did see it, but he’s so pissed the faculty gave me the Zoich, he’s taking his anger out on me. At least I know now what I’m up against.
The pot’s gleaming and spot-free when I leave it in the drying rack and get ready to start in on my homework. Back in my room, I dig through my messenger bag for my pencil case. I can’t let Krell get to me.
Down deep in the bottom of my bag, my fingers close around a tube of paint. Crap, I think as I pull it out. Now I have to sneak it back on the display.
I stare at the silver tube in my palm, but the I need this feeling is gone. Why the hell did I take this? I don’t need it for the assignments I’m working on. The only things due are some pencil drawings and a pastel study.
But I don’t have time to waste wondering. Tomorrow’s assignment for drawing class is negative space. I’ve done this exercise dozens of times before, so I park myself on the bed below Mom’s dream catcher. We’re supposed to draw the space an object doesn’t occupy, and the dream catcher’s thin wooden loop, spiderweb weave, and dangling feathers, all its odd and irregular shapes, make it a challenge to get right.
I disappear into my drawing, to a place where nothing and no one exist outside the line, light, and shadows on the paper. When I finally surface, I catch the reflection of an unfinished painting propped up on the dresser. Oh. That’s why.
Not a painting I’m working on for school, it’s a portrait of a young woman with loose blond hair playing a guitar on an outdoor stage. Her head is tilted, she’s lost in the music, and her gauzy white dress waterfalls to the floor.
I hold the tube of paint up to the canvas, and it’s just as I thought. It’s not that Phthalo Turquoise Blue is the perfect blue, but it’s perfect for this.
The singer’s dress is embellished with two large bluebirds over the breasts, but the blue has never been right. Too bold, too harsh for the gentle singer.
The truth cascades over me. Blue birds. Songbird.
I pull the still life out of my portfolio case and hold it up. Blue bird. Dead bird.
You don’t always know why you paint something until after you paint it.
I collapse on the bed, and my heart squeezes. Appetite isn’t about greed at all.
My pencil dug into the paper, almost ripping it. I tried, but I couldn’t draw Iona’s face, just her words spinning like a hurricane.
WHERES YOUR MOM
CANT FIND MY BOOTS
BOYS NOT PACKED
LIMO DUE IN 1 HOUR
WHERES YOUR MOM
CANT FIND MY BOOTS
BOYS NOT PACKED
LIMO DUE 1 HOUR
The words flew apart, and the letters shattered into fragments like broken bones.
WHERE
WHE RE
WH E R
MOM
M O
M
O
M
I rarely look at this page and usually skip past it. Even though it’s nearly blank, today when my sketchbook opens to it, I drown in memories.
How Iona’s first text interrupted me when I was paying for her boots at the shoe repair. WHERE’S YOUR MOM. BOYS NOT PACKED.
How I texted back NOT SURE and tossed the bag with the boots behind the driver’s seat.
How my phone buzzed nonstop, but I refused to indulge Iona by answering as I drove back up Olympic to the elite dry cleaner.