The Art of My Life (5 page)

Cal sat atop a ladder at the bow of
the dry-docked
Escape
. He balanced a pallet of black, white,
and various shades of gray left-over marine paint—the most
expensive paint in the world as far as he could tell. Sodden clouds
bunched in the August sky like his boat repair bills, the meeting
with his probation officer, and the hundred and fifteen pound
question mark of Aly.

He eyed the freshly-painted expanse of
the
Escape’s
hull and envisioned the figurehead the boat
begged for. Flowing locks of hair spilled from his brush. Aly’s
hair. Her graceful neck, chin, mouth.

He wanted Aly with a passion that
eclipsed even his seventeen-year-old starvation for her. He didn’t
have another eight years to waste. He wanted his body fused to
hers, his name tacked onto hers. Kids someday.

She’d framed and gallery-positioned
some old sketches he’d tossed. That had to count for something.
She loves me, she loves me not
sing-songed in his
head.

Oh yeah, he was going to find out
whether she still loved him. No more waiting his turn because she
had a boyfriend. But he wouldn’t go after Aly until he had a
driver’s license and money in his pockets. Aly’s father was a
doctor. Her college diploma hung on the wall of her cubicle at the
bank. He had to win at business before he had a prayer of winning
Aly.

His grandmother’s nineteen ninety-one
Toyota Corolla rattled through the boatyard gates and coasted to a
stop in front of the
Escape
.

He grinned and waved. His chest
expanded, warmed. How like Henna to show up to admire his boat
repairs when he’d seen her dozens of times since he got out. His
kindergarten art still hung in her bathroom, encased in clear
contact paper. He pictured her oohing and aahing over a mud
sculpture he constructed in her back yard as a kid.

The car coughed and sputtered as Henna
scooted her muumuu-clad bulk from the driver’s seat and submitted
to Van Gogh’s epileptic greeting.

Cal climbed down the ladder and bent
to hug her. The patchouli scent of her skin recalled a lifetime of
hugs she gave him no matter how sweaty or dirty he’d gotten—a skill
his mother never mastered.

She squinted up at Cal’s work. “Love
is in the paint,” she trilled.

Cal’s gaze skimmed from the sloppy
white bun on top of Henna’s head to the face taking shape on the
bow. Well, it was too late to disguise Aly now. Maybe no one else
would notice the resemblance. “Let’s keep it our
secret.”

Henna beamed at him, both chins
smiling. “Ready to float your barge?”

“
Yeah,
tomorrow.”

“
She’s looking peachy
cream.”

Cal shook his head at her fractured
clichés and turned back to the figurehead. Did Henna think them up
intentionally or did they just come out that way? Missy would shake
her head, say, “Silly Grandma,” and kiss her cheek. Jesse would
never admit it, but Cal swore Henna had always embarrassed his
brother, even more so now. He shrugged. She might be slipping a
little mentally, but she was still so deeply Henna, his
Henna.

“
I bet it cost a pretty
nickel.” Henna hobbled toward the stern, taking her positivity with
her.

With the rebuilt engine, the repairs
had come in just under forty thousand dollars, twice what he’d
anticipated and leaving nothing for startup costs.

Twenty minutes later, after Henna’s
Corolla putted away, he brushed the last strokes on the figurehead.
There was nothing to do but wait for tomorrow when the boatyard
Travel Lift would hoist the
Escape
off her wooden blocks and
jack stands and deposit her back into the inlet.

He surfed all afternoon as though
mastering the waves would conquer his worries about advertising
money and whether Aly was seeing someone. And maybe it would
have—if Fish had been with him. A thousand problems had shrunk to a
manageable size while floating on his board beside Fish.

Stashing the joints in Fish’s locker
had been monumental stupidity. He should have flushed the stuff. He
needed a do-over. And epic grudge-holder Fish was unlikely to make
it easy. He’d never imagined a life without Fish. He was more of a
brother than Jesse had been. Salt stung the edges of a scab on his
elbow, and he headed for shore.

Cal propped his board in the sand
against Leaf’s hot dog stand and poked his head through the
window.

Missy! He hadn’t seen his sister in
months. Man, did it feel good to run into her. She wore yellow
rubber gloves and scrubbed the counter to some country tune about a
guy wanting to check a girl for ticks.

He laughed. “Sissy Missy! You
seriously need to upgrade your music choices.”

She looked at him and stilled. Her
face paled.

He grinned at her. “What are you doing
here? Where’s Leaf?”

She crossed her arms and looked down
at him through the window. “Working. Leaf didn’t say what he was
doing today.” She shrugged, her tone chilling him like the wind
hitting his wet skin.

What was her deal? “It’s not safe.
What if one of his customers gets PO’d because you won’t sell him
weed? I’ll stay with you till closing time.”

“
I’ve been running the
store whenever Leaf doesn’t feel like working for months. I’ve got
pepper spray,” she said through wooden lips.

“
So much for protecting
the baby from the family dirt,” he said.

“
Maybe you should have
thought about that before you got yourself arrested.”

It would hurt less if she’d slapped
him. “What are you pissed about? I’m the one who got locked up for
three months.”

She planted her palms on the counter
and looked him in the eye. “Think about anybody but yourself
much?”

“
Excuse me for being
self-centered during the shittiest time in my life. If anybody
should be pissed, I should. You could have visited me.”

“
Forget it.” She turned
her back on him.

He watched her Brillo the hot plate,
movements jerky, shoulders stiff. His stomach growled. “How about a
dog and an A&W?”

Missy slipped off the gloves, fished a
hot dog out of the crock pot, slapped it into a bun, ran two
stripes of mustard and one of catsup down the middle just the way
he liked it, and handed it to him. She snagged an icy root beer
from the cooler, slid it across the counter, and turned back to the
hot plate.

His gut churned. He stared at the hot
dog in his hand and inhaled the salty-sweet scent. No way could he
chew and swallow. “Mis, look, don’t be this way.”

She spun around. “I don’t know why you
care. I hardly saw you for months before you went to jail. Did you
even remember I existed?”

“
That’s not fair. I walked
up here expecting Leaf, and I was glad to see you.”

Tears sprung to her eyes. “It’s almost
September. You’ve been out a month and a half. Did it cross your
mind, like, ‘Hey, I miss my sister, I think I’ll text her and hang
out.’?”

“
You couldn’t have texted
me?”

“
Whatever.”

“
Why are you being such a
drama queen about this? It’s not your life that was totally
screwed.”

“
When you got arrested, I
cried buckets. I’ve never known anybody who went to jail. Locked in
there with evil men. I imagined you getting beat up. Worse.” She
shuddered. “I couldn’t face seeing you behind bars. I was terrified
you were suicidal.”

He didn’t want to think about how his
going to jail affected Missy. Maybe he actually had been avoiding
her on a subconscious level. “Don’t worry. I don’t have the balls
to kill myself.”

Missy stared over his shoulder. “When
I got my hair cut, your ‘cool’ made me feel like the prettiest girl
in third grade. Jesse was always off doing big kid stuff. But you
let me tag along to the playground with you and Fish, patted my
back when I cried over a skinned knee, made sure I didn’t watch
inappropriate TV shows on Henna’s watch. In middle school and high
school you were my hot big brother who reduced my friends to
stuttering idiots.” Her eyes returned to him. “You were my
hero.”

The sun warmed his shoulders. He
really did love Missy, but how could she expect him to worry about
her when his life went into nuclear meltdown. He took a bite of his
hot dog.

“
Now, I worry that you’re
going to get murdered in some drug deal gone wrong. What if you’re
doing coke or meth or fill-in-the-blank?”

The food turned to sand in his mouth.
“I’m clean.”

“
Save your words. They
don’t mean anything. The only way I’ll know if you’re telling the
truth is if you don’t turn up dead or in prison.”

The fear in her eyes and in her voice
soccer-cleated him in the stomach.

“
I thought I knew you. But
you’ve turned into a stranger. I wish I could climb inside your
head and know how you think. But I can’t.”

“
I’m telling you the
truth. I never dealt. I’m clean.”

She stared at him. “Next time you’re
going to do something stupid, stop and think about how it will slam
me—and everyone who loves you.”

Her anger finally sparked his, but he
clamped down on it. “I care about you, Mis. A lot. None of this has
anything to do with you. Try not to take everything so
personally.”

Missy leaned through the window on her
elbows and got in his face. “Trust me, Cal, if it were possible to
quit loving you, I would have done it already. Now, I’m just
begging you not to screw up my life along with yours.”

He slammed the hot dog and soda into
the trash can, grabbed his board, and stalked into the
sea.