Shades of Truth (3 page)

I
adjusted my backpack as I walked down the hall, preparing for Frankie and her friends. My second day at the school. All I had to do was get through the day. Afterward, I had my first art lesson with Vivian.

The elfish girl, Ruth, stopped me before I reached the classroom. “Hey. I liked your project. I’m sorry Frankie and Co. were horrible about it. I wanted to talk to you at lunch yesterday, but Ms. Barton made me eat in the classroom and catch up on a test.”

I blinked at Ruth, taken completely by surprise. “Frankie and Co.?”

“Speaking of …” Ruth raised her eyebrow, causing me to turn.

Frankie breezed past with Nicole and Tess. “Careful, Ruth. Sparkie might give you fleas.”

Ruth waited for the door to shut. “Last year, I was new. My dad is a pastor, so they teased me too.”

“Well …” I tried to shrug it off. “So your dad is a pastor?”

“Yeah. Our church is a few miles out of town. People from Owl Creek come, but we’ve got more from Eagle’s Nest and Hiawatha.”

“We used to go to church. Not much, I guess — just Christmas and Easter. Since your dad’s the pastor, do you have to go every week?”

“Something like that.” Ruth laughed. “Don’t look so shocked.”

She held the door for Ms. Barton, who had walked over balancing her usual pile of papers and books.

“Planning to come to class today, girls?”

“Yes,” we said in unison.

Ruth caught my arm. “I have to go to the dentist today, but tomorrow, want to go for ice cream?” When I hesitated, she added, “Black Bear Java has sixty-two flavors.”

I couldn’t help smiling. “Sure.”

Fortunately, Ms. Barton didn’t have any share-your-soul art projects in store for us. We spent most of the day at our desks, studying light and sound waves, algebra, and poetry. When we did get out of the classroom for lunch and PE, Ruth had already gone. I felt split in two. Half of me — California Sadie, the ringleader who organized the parties, who launched the adventures, who didn’t care what anyone thought — coolly observed Frankie’s jabs and taunts. The other half — Michigan Sadie — felt each word’s sting. By the
end of the day, I felt bruised and battered as though I’d suffered a wrestling match.

Dad had dropped off my bike so I could ride to Vivian’s house. Mom was supposedly resting at home, but more likely, she was climbing up the walls. Of all the doctor’s advice, the worst was, “
Take it easy
.” Lying around never made Mom feel better; instead, it made her depressed. The only thing worse than being sick with a disease doctors couldn’t treat, was being sick
and
depressed.

The ride to Vivian’s took me through town and up a one-lane road. Almost as soon as I turned off Main Street, I plunged into the forest. A wooden sign carved with the name
Harris
marked Vivian’s gravel driveway. Cement sculptures covered with glossy ceramic shards peeked through the forest surrounding the driveway.

The front of Vivian’s house was one enormous floor-to-ceiling window, with a wrap-around porch and a swing hanging next to the door.

“Can I help you?” A man’s voice startled me.

I spun around. “I’m sorry. I’m looking for Vivian — for art lessons. I suppose I could knock, but I hadn’t gotten to the front door yet since I was admiring the view.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” The man held up his armful of branches. “I was out collecting kindling. I didn’t mean to surprise you. I’m Vivian’s son, Peter.”

I smiled, feeling more like myself than I had all day. “I’m Sadie.”

“This way.” When Peter opened the front door, the smell
of lavender and baking cookies wafted out. “She always bakes when she’s excited about a new project.”

As I stepped into the entryway, I stopped, stunned by the enormous canvases that covered the log walls. The painting to my right was of a lemon yellow and mandarin orange sunset above the ocean. To my left, a wall-sized fish tank swarmed with bright tropical fish. Four abstract paintings in shades of red hung on the wall behind the tank.

“Mom!” Peter called.

Vivian bustled around the corner in a zebra-striped apron, her nose streaked with flour.

“Sadie. You’re here!” She wiped her face. “We’ll paint in the blue room.”

Peter smiled at me. “A rare treat. Not many people visit the blue room.”

“Oh posh. Go away and let us work.”

“Save me a cookie,” Peter said.

I couldn’t help liking Peter, particularly because I had been nervous about art lessons. Vivian had surprised me when she told me I had skill, and now I wanted her words to be true, so much that I nearly ran two stop signs on my bike ride over. Peter had set me at ease. Vivian loaded a tray with cookies and led me through the house into a sunroom art studio. Through the glass ceiling and walls, the woods beckoned. She’d painted the one wooden wall indigo and dotted it with galaxies of stars.

“They glow in the dark,” Vivian said, apologetically. “Sometimes I get carried away and act like I’m six. Peter’s
right, I keep this room secret. I say it’s because of the clutter, but really it’s the stars. Most people wouldn’t understand.”

“I used to have glow in the dark stars on my ceiling,” I said.

“When you were little, right? Well, they say the older you get, the younger you are at heart.” Vivian chose a stool at the wide, paint-flecked table. “Have a cookie.”

Butter and sugar melted on my tongue, with hints of almond and lavender. I felt like I’d slipped into another world, of tropical fish, exotic spices, and color-coded rooms.

“Now we’ll start.” She handed me a blank sketchbook and charcoal pencils.

My palms went clammy as my earlier fears returned. I couldn’t draw. I mean, I could doodle, but those charcoal pencils looked like serious art tools.

“I’m not really sure …” I began.

“We’ll start with shape and proportion.” Vivian set a clump of grapes on the table. “If you really look at any object, you’ll see it’s made of very basic shapes. A circle, oval, square, rectangle, or a triangle. Maybe it is a combination. Drawing isn’t about your hand and a pencil. Drawing is about seeing.”

She took out her own sketchbook. “Time to draw.”

“But I don’t know how.” I felt dumb. She’d just said drawing was easy, but the clump of grapes wasn’t any one basic shape.

Vivian looked up, her pencil mid-stroke. “What shape do you see?”

“The grapes are ovals. But I don’t know how to make them look right together.”

“Excellent.” She traced a group of three ovals. “You’re talking about proportion — the relationship between objects. A clump of grapes is a bunch of ovals, but what is the overall shape?”

“A … triangle?”

“What do you need a teacher for?” Vivian added a light triangle to her page. “Start by sketching the triangle, and then draw all the grapes inside.”

I started to sketch. Thankfully, Vivian was busy on her own drawing, so I felt less like a fish in her tank. When I put my pencil down, Vivian wiped charcoal off her hands and handed me a rag to do the same. My grapes looked remarkably like the real clump, if a little flat.

“Its not as hard as I thought,” I said. “Just drawing ovals and triangles.”

“The first step is learning to see. Most people go through their whole lives seeing exactly what they expect, for instance, that grapes are little ovals. But when you look carefully, you see that each grape is a unique oval, slightly different from every other.”

I held my drawing at arms-length. “My grapes do look a little flat.”

Vivian looked over my shoulder. “We’ll talk about perspective next time. In the meantime, don’t worry about flat. Practice seeing shapes, and sketch every day. Want a cookie for the road?”

“M
om!” The screen door banged shut behind me. No answer. I looked around the living room, the kitchen, the backyard. She must be upstairs. I pushed their bedroom door open a crack. The curtains were pulled — never a good sign. She lay on the bed, eyes closed, her lips silently moving.

“Mom?” I whispered.

“Sadie.” Mom sat up too quickly and pressed her palm to her forehead. “I didn’t know you were home.”

“What were you doing?”

“Don’t be worried, sweetheart. I was just … praying.”

As far as I knew, Mom never prayed outside of church. “Are you okay?”

“Does it have to be a tragedy for a mom to pray now and then?” She rubbed her temples. “Sadie …”

I sat next to her on the bed. Some days were worse than others, the worst being the days she stopped believing she’d get better.

“Mom, of course you can pray. Whatever you need to do.”

“No, you’re right. Why would God listen to me now? I’ve said all of three prayers in my life.”

“I didn’t mean …”

“I’m just so tired, Sades. And the more I lay around, the more tired I get.”

“Give our new life a chance, Mom.” My words sounded hollow, even to me.

Still, Mom pretended to smile. We had played this game ever since she first got sick — both of us pretending that we’d send the monsters away by ignoring them.

“So how was school? How was art?”

“I drew grapes. And I made a friend.” There. No need to give her all the details and depress her even more.

Mom tried to stand but her legs buckled. I leapt off the bed and caught her. Her shoulders were skin and bones.

“Lay down, Mom. I can make spaghetti for dinner. Would you like a glass of water?”

Mom leaned back against the pillows. “That would be lovely.” She caught my hand, her skin soft as rose petals. “Thank you, Sadie.”

When she closed her eyes, I whispered under my breath. “One … two … three …” By the time I’d counted to fifty, her expression smoothed and her breathing calmed. She
would be all right. I filled her glass, closed the door quietly, and went downstairs to boil water.

Look at what’s real
,
Sadie
,
not at what you expect
. What did I expect? That Mom would get better no matter what? And God? If he hadn’t helped already, why would he help now?

“Sadie, Sadie, Sades!” Dad blasted through the front door and into the kitchen.

He picked me up, swung me around, and breathed in deep. “Smells heavenly.”

“You should check on Mom,” I kept my voice as light as I dared. “The spaghetti will be done in a few minutes.”

“Spaghetti Sadie-style. Love it.”

His footsteps echoed up the stairs, and soon his voice murmured in their room.

I took my time draining the water, letting the steam tickle my nose. Dad came back into the kitchen just as I started spooning noodles onto plates.

“I’ll take spaghetti up to Mom later. Let’s you and I eat in the kitchen.” Dad took his plate. He gave me a tight smile, but his eyes looked grim.

This was how we talked — in big looping circles. He was telling me Mom was okay, for now. The
for now
lodged in my mind, a jagged splinter of memories of Mom’s bad days, weeks, sometimes even months. When the exhaustion settled in, no one knew how long it would remain. No one knew how long we’d tell ourselves Mom was okay. As though okay was enough. Suddenly, I needed tomorrow to
be different. Tomorrow I had to escape the house, if only for a few hours, just so I could breathe.

“Can I get ice cream after school tomorrow with Ruth?”

“Who’s Ruth?”

As we ate, I told him about Ruth and then about Vivian’s house, the cookies, the fish, the paintings, and her art studio. By the time I finished describing my drawing of the grapes, I was grinning.

Dad put down his fork. “Sadie, this calls for a celebration. Let’s go into town and get marshmallows. Mom might even help us toast s’mores in the fireplace.”

We sang along to the country station all the way into town. Murray’s grocery store was a long building at the end of Main Street. We bought marshmallows and graham crackers and mini-chocolate bars and then piled back into the Jeep. On our way home, just after we’d crossed the bridge, a shot echoed through the forest, followed by a low bellow. Dad slowed, looking into the trees. He pulled onto the shoulder and left the Jeep running.

“Stay in the car, Sadie.”

I couldn’t just sit there. When Dad cleared the tree line, I turned off the car, jumped down and followed. I found him a little way in, squinting into the trees, listening.

My heart thudded, and I was too afraid to keep from asking, “What?”

“Sadie, you shouldn’t be here. This is really dangerous.”

Another bellow, closer now, just to our left.

I gasped, “Was that a bear?” At that moment a red-brown
bear burst out of the bushes a few feet in front of us. His back leg bled freely, and he held it at an awkward angle as he crashed past. I couldn’t breathe. I grabbed onto Dad, my heart beating like a hammer strike in my ears, behind my eyes, in my throat.

“Let’s go.” Dad pulled me toward the Jeep.

I wanted to run away, to hide from the bear and the gunner too, but the bear’s leg hanging useless tugged at my memory, reminding me of Cocoa’s leap from the top level of Pippa’s play structure. Just a puppy, he’d shattered his leg, but instead of letting us help him he had run, frenzied with fear and pain. “Shouldn’t we help the bear?”

“Helen will know what to do. Come on. And Meredith will want to know too.”

When we were almost out of the trees, Dad threw out his arm, holding me back. A dented black ATV bounced onto the road. We saw only the back of the driver’s head, his orange vest, and green fishing hat with a red feather. We waited until he’d passed and then sprinted for the Jeep.

Not fast enough. By the time we’d pulled back onto the highway, the ATV was gone.

“That was Jim Paulson, wasn’t it, Dad? He had that vest on the other night.”

“Lots of people could have that same vest.”

“But he was hunting, wasn’t he? It’s not September tenth yet.”

“Correct.” We pulled up to a red light, and when Dad looked over at me, the corners of his mouth were white, “Big Murphy.”

“What?”

“I don’t think that was just any bear, Sades. That was Big Murphy.”

Dad’s favorite. Hunting season hadn’t started yet, and already bears were getting hurt. “I hate this.”

“Me too.” The light turned green, and our tires screeched as Dad accelerated too fast.

“Then tell someone Jim is out shooting bears when he isn’t supposed to be. Isn’t keeping the law your job?”

“I will tell Meredith about Big Murphy. I’m just not sure it was Jim …”

“Dad!”

“Enough, Sadie.” He turned into our driveway. “I have to call Helen and Meredith.”