Page 125 of Painting Celia

León wasn’t even surprised. He’d have come to the same conclusion if he saw himself moping around. “Celia.”

“A pretty name.”

“Yes.”

She waited, but he didn’t volunteer more. “What’s she like?”

Tender. Luminous. Sad. “Quiet.”

“A quiet girl for you? She’d be the first one.”

“She’s not for me,” he mumbled. “She doesn’t understand me. She thinks I’m crazy.”

“Well, and so you are sometimes, lolo.”

The heartsick lyrics of Qué Te Importa mourned behind them.

“I was painting her,” he finally offered.

“Ah, so she’s pretty, a model.”

“Yeah.”

“These are the paintings you said were your best ones?”

“Yeah.”

He dropped his chin to his chest, playing with the hem of his shirt. He couldn’t go on this way, too beaten to speak but too hurt to keep it inside any longer. How could he tell his mother any of this story?

“I wanted her to…agree to something,” he said, his voice halting and tight. “Something I felt strongly about, but she didn’t. I wouldn’t leave it alone, and she told me to go.”

“You must have felt very strongly. But so must she, I think, if she made you leave over it. You must be fair.”

“Fair?” he croaked, turning to her. “I just wanted to be closer! Why wouldn’t she agree to that?”

“Maybe she’s not the one for you.”

Oh, she was the one. She never left his mind, the soft warmth of her presence his constant companion. Her skin, bathed in the morning’s gold, haunted him. Her silhouette against the light, curves and lines he longed to trace with brush and fingers alike…he just wanted her near again.

The rejection, the need, the injustice of it came welling up, and the story tumbled out frantically on its own.

“She’s my muse. I could paint her for the next fifty years! She agreed, she was helping. She gave me a place to stay. She cooked for me. She’s so good at cooking, Mama. But she didn’t get how much I needed her! I couldn’t explain it right. And then she started her own work, and I saw her slipping away to it.”

His mother smoothed his hair, but it couldn’t calm the desperation writhing under his skin.

“She was too busy to help then?” she asked.

León’s cheeks burned with shame. “No. She helped all the time, every day. But I pushed her. I wanted more. I wanted her to be mine, more than a girlfriend, more than a wife. I wanted her to say she belonged to me.”

“She said no?”

“She wouldn’t even listen.”

His mother waited. The music flowed behind them as he stared at his hands in his lap.

“I finally realized I am hers,” he said, “not the other way around. Then she kicked me out.”

“This is what you wouldn’t let go? When she said no, you didn’t listen?” He grunted assent. “Well, then, you have some work to do.”

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