Page 7 of Mine to Worship

I squeeze my eyes shut. She wraps her arms around me, and I whisper, “Will you ever tell me your story?”

Aunt Esther nudges me to the couch, carrying over two glasses and a bottle of wine. “It’s time,” she says in a small voice.

I take a small sip, and she curls up next to me on the couch. I lift my knees and rest my chin on them.

Her green eyes lose their focus, and her lips tilt up in a wistful but long forgotten sentiment. “While you give people the impression of having to discover what’s behind your paintings, my work was a quest for rebellion, escaping the conventional prison, bright colors, chaotic forms and sharp edges. A friend of mine liked what I did and made a call. Lisa came and was so in awe, I had my first gallery opening the following week. I never expected the success. It was a wild time, and years later, I concluded Walter might have been a curse but also a blessing.” A small smile lifts the corners of her lips, and she continues, “This artistic world has always been extreme. We are free spirits, curious, and have a slight tendency to addiction of any kind. Well, instead of other drugs, I had him.”

She takes a gulp and continues, lost in her story. “I still remember the first time I saw him… my entire world shifted. I have never seen a man like him, as if he came straight from a black and white movie. He wore this bespoke black suit, everything immaculate, and those greenish eyes undressed me in a way that beckoned me. I had never felt like that before. He approached me and I knew that was it. Crazy, right, how you fall in love with someone? I guess it’s called falling because you break something when you hit the ground.”

Her words resonate with my pain.

“Walter bought every one of my paintings. And my success only grew, like my feelings. He never lied to me. He was married, and I became his mistress.”

I cringe inside when I hear her words.

Aunt Esther peers outside. Her pain is so palpable, it hovers around us like a cloud bursting with a downpour. The corners of her lips tip down and her nose scrunches up, twisting some freckles.

“Awful, I know. It’s why my relationship with your mom is strained. Elaine could never understand. She had the perfect man, white picket fence, one point five children, and a career, while I was in New York, being the other woman. Walter’s wife, Olivia, knew. Everyone knew. But I told myself, her place was secure. I might have had his heart, he was spending more time at my place than at theirs, but he would never leave her. He’d told me that from the start. They were married for life, and no one would ever be able to leave. Even if they wanted to.”

What does this mean for me? I’m married to Kian, but he said he’d find a way. He has to because I can’t imagine living my life like Oliva. I tasted it for a while, and it would kill me.

“She was spectacular, the definition of sophistication, and I always wondered why he kept coming to me. He didn’t hide me. We even had dinners together. Between us, it was this rule, we would forever share him. I tried to find someone else, but no one ever compared to him, no one ever will. Olivia became ill, and everything changed.” She empties her glass and leans further into the couch. “We women tell ourselves a lot of crap to accept what we can’t change, but it catches up to us, and the house of cards we constructed falls on our damn heads. She said it was him who made her sick, and our relationship. I saw the war brewing inside him, the pain of the words of a woman that had to swallow one antidepressant after another. I knew he wouldn’t choose me over her, and still when it happened, I wasn’t ready. I got pregnant, isn’t it ironic? My greatest wish came true, but I lost the baby. That day, alone in my hospital bed, I realized I couldn’t live like that anymore. I packed my stuff and disappeared. I lived from one motel to the next, until I found this place.”

She exhales, puts the glass down, and pulls her auburn locks in a bun over her head.

“Did you two ever speak after that?”

“No… I saw him again for the first time at your gallery opening.”

“And?”

“And what? He chose her. I loved him without boundaries. Losing him crushed me, and I was never the same woman again. I knew for whom you’d be working, and I sensed how fate once again would mingle. And I was right.”

“You survived. I will, too,” I say, forcing determination in every syllable.

“That is not the issue, sweetie.”

I search her eyes, needing to know when survival will switch to living again. “What is it, then?”

“What will you look like and who will you be on the inside after?”

Her words are like shredded glass cutting at my heart. Every time images of Kian surface, the bleeding starts all over.

Exhausted over being chained in the walls of my mind, I turn to her.

“How was it?” I ask not even being able to pronounce the word and how I feel about it. Sad, enraged, destitute.

“Being Walter’s mistress?” she asks matter-of-factly, drawing idle patterns on the armrest. “After a while, you ignore it. Only in the dark hours and in the privacy of my home did I allow myself to feel like shit. I would paint and swallow one flute of champagne after the other. I was on top of the world. No one ever called me a mistress or a whore. Never to my face anyway. But still they were there, the looks, and it killed me every time. But I couldn’t stop it. I loved him too much and I became desensitized to everything else.”

She crosses her legs under her and lifts her chin. “Your turn.”

I lift the glass to my lips. It’s only fair that I share with her the real reason why I’m here. “Kian broke my heart, so I said I slept with his brother.”

Her eyes widen and she throws her head back in laughter. “I would have never expected this from you.”

“I was mad.”

“Why did you marry him, Ellia?” she asks, the earlier amusement gone.

---