I looked at my palette but didn’t pick it up. “No,” I said, raising my gaze to him again. He looked sincerely interested in my answer, blue eyes serious. “But they should have been.”
“That bad, huh?”
I let out a breath. “You have no idea.” I felt danger creeping in. A tightness in my throat that told me I was going to fall apart if I talked about the past. I was too tired. Too vulnerable. And yet, Oliver stood there with those kind blue eyes, and he looked so ready to listen. “My parents were alcoholics,” I said.
“Ah,” he said. “You learned from the masters?”
I nodded. “Not just that. They … I was their only child and they didn’t know how to be parents. They sucked at it, frankly. They were madly, sloppily, drunkenly, disgustingly in love with each other and had nothing left over for—” Oh, shit. I was going to lose it.
“Hey,” he said, a worried expression on his face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it was such a touchy subject.”
I sat down again, the muscles in my legs starting to quiver. I was surprised I was telling him about my growing-up years. I rarely spoke to anyone about my family. “The only attention I ever got from them was negative attention,” I said. “’You want to be an artist? You don’t have the talent to be any good at it, and you’ll never make any money at it, and don’t come running to us when you’re broke and living on the street.’” I looked down at my hands where they were locked together in my lap, my knuckles white. “They’d forget to pick me up after school sometimes, and they’d have these screaming, crying fights with each other. When I was little, I tried to get between them. Get them to stop fighting. When I was older, I just hid in my room.” I shivered with the memory. Sometimes I thought one of them might kill the other. Sometimes I actually wished that would happen. “They’d have friends over and everyone would get puking drunk and they’d expect me to clean up after them,” I said. I remembered my mother calling to me from her bedroom, asking me in her fake sweet voice to bring her the basin. I couldn’t have been any older than Nathan. I pretended not to hear her, burying my head beneath my pillow. “My parents never told me they loved me, Oliver,” I said. “Not ever. Not once. You tell Nathan, don’t you?”
“Of course. All the time.”
“He’s a lucky kid,” I said. “He’s surrounded by grown-ups who love him.”
Oliver stood up and walked over to me, pulling a handkerchief from his pants pocket. He handed it to me, and I burst out laughing as I got to my feet.
“What’s so funny?” he asked.
“You actually carry a handkerchief?” I asked. “I think you’re the only guy I know under fifty who carries a handkerchief.” I blotted my eyes, and when I handed the handkerchief back to him, he was smiling at me.
“Aren’t you glad I had it?” he asked.
I nodded. Rubbed my nose with the back of my hand. “You know,” I said, “Nathan’s a kid. Maybe he shouldn’t get to make this sort of decision on his own.”
Oliver shrugged. “It’s not a big deal,” he said. “I get him for Christmas this year. He and I can take a trip somewhere then. It was just the … the kick in the gut that got to me.”
Impulsively, I reached out to hug him. “I would have given anything to have a dad like you,” I said softly, my lips against his shoulder. The muscle and bone of his back felt good beneath my arms. I hadn’t touched another person this way in well over a year.
He squeezed me gently, then let go. “Thanks for putting everything into perspective for me,” he said. “And I’m sorry for what you dealt with as a kid. You act tough, but you’re pretty soft inside, aren’t you.” It wasn’t a question.
“I’m fine,” I said, and at that moment, I did feel fine. Fine, and something more. I was standing so close to Oliver, and I had a sudden urge to run the back of my finger over his cheek, the place that was always a little pink. When I first met him, I thought those pink cheeks gave him a boyish look. This close, though, I could see the gray shadow of his beard beneath his skin, the cut of his cheekbones, the sharp angle of his chin. He seemed anything but boyish at that moment, and as I turned back to my mural, I was surprised by a sudden pang of desire.
Chapter 36
ANNA
February 1, 1940
Today was the day they would stretch the canvas, the chore more intimidating than Anna had imagined. Fortunately, she thought, she had lots of help. Jesse and Peter, of course. Then Pauline arrived with Karl in tow, dressed in his police uniform and carrying a toolbox that she knew would prove invaluable. He looked so handsome. Anna hated to see him get the knees of his pants covered in sawdust from the warehouse floor, but he got down on the filthy floor, seemingly without a care. Anna felt some envy of Pauline as she watched Karl set to work with her young helpers. Someday she’d find a man with whom she wanted to build a future, she thought. For now, though, she was married to her mural.
Pauline wore her usual skirt, blouse, and hose, so Anna knew she wouldn’t be much help with the stretcher, but she cheered everyone on from one of the chairs near the paint table. Anna, Karl, and the boys ignored the cold of the concrete floor as they knelt and sat and twisted to tack the canvas to the frame. Anna used the hammer a bit, but was careful not to place the tacks too deeply. The tacks would have to be removed when the mural was complete, and the thought of digging those tacks out again with the claw end of the hammer wasn’t pleasant.
They were about a third of the way through the task when a knock came on the warehouse door.
“Come in!” Anna called from the floor, but the door was already opening and in a second, Martin Drapple stood grinning inside the warehouse.
“How can I help?” he asked.
Anna sat back on her heels, frankly relieved to see him. She could tell that even with four of them, it was going to be a chore to properly get the canvas on the stretcher. Besides, Martin would know what he was doing better than any of them. She thought it was very generous of him to come.
“Thank you!” she called across the space, her voice echoing against the walls and the beams of the ceiling. “Do you know Pauline and Karl, Martin?”
Martin walked toward them, nodding at Pauline as he passed her. “Nice to meet you,” he said. “And I’ve met Karl a time or two.”
Karl looked up from the stretcher. “Grab a handful of tacks,” he said in greeting, and Anna thought there was an uncharacteristic cool edge to his voice. She wondered exactly where the men had met “a time or two.”
An hour later, they had nearly finished tacking the canvas in place when the door to the warehouse suddenly flew open. Anna looked up to see Mrs. Drapple practically fly into the room, the skirt of her green dress whipping behind her. She wore a pink apron over the dress and no coat, although it had to be thirty-five degrees outside. Her blond hair was loose around her shoulders. Anna had only seen her once before—during that nasty altercation on the library steps, when Mrs. Drapple wore a scarf and gave her a terrible chewing-out. She’d looked old and haggard that day, but now, as she blew into the warehouse with high color in her cheeks and her hair wind tossed, she looked quite beautiful. And quite furious.