Page 60 of The Singing Trees
All Annalisa wanted was for Sharon to say, “Yes! Yes! You’ve got it. And would you do me the great honor of exhibiting your work on my walls in the spring?”
Getting tougher every moment, though, Annalisa gave each exercise her all and continued to fill her apartment with new works, so much so that she had to shift her budget around to afford the supplies. As much as she wanted to indulge in the deals she found at the Bargain Bin, she rarely allowed herself even one treat. Her diet suffered as well, and soup with a small chunk of bread, maybe a piece of fruit, became her routine. Though she’d grown up with food at the center of her life, it became little more than a means for sustenance, the fuel she needed to make art.
Annalisa didn’t just paint on her balcony or in the studio in her bedroom either. Listening to Sharon’s advice in one class, she set up her easel in places like Monument Square or Longfellow Square or even along the sidewalk on Commercial Street, where it stank like dead fish from the markets.
In late September, on a Saturday morning, Annalisa had a breakthrough. She was setting up her easel in Longfellow Square when a stunning woman strutted by. She was striking; the way she carried herself, the way her outfit popped, she looked almost like Brigitte Bardot but with darker hair.
As the woman disappeared down the sidewalk, Annalisa held fast to her image. She could still see the details of the woman’s white-and-brown leather purse, the way it hung just past the hem of her plaid silk shirt. The woman was all color, from the velvet beret to the green handkerchief around her neck down to her stark white culottes.
Annalisa had always considered herself fashionable, a passion she’d carried over from her mother, but she’d learned so much more at Pride’s, where she caught constant glimpses of some of the most fashionablewomen in New England. The woman who’d just walked by had the magic, and Annalisa felt a desperate need to put her on the page.
She gave the woman a name and a story and then reached for her pencil. Under Sharon’s tutelage, Annalisa had become much more liberal in her art, stretching boundaries any way she could. She gave the beret on the woman’s head flowers that rose up like fireworks to the top of the canvas. A trail of money spilled out of the purse.
After a satisfactory sketch, she reached for her paints. With the rest of the world on hold, she fell into her creation. She’d never worked so fast in her life, and after a couple of hours, she was mostly done. She stood back and examined her work. Something was clicking.
Deciding to do the finishing touches at home, she headed back to her place for a sandwich. She spent the stroll thinking about her subject and this particular piece. Was this the voice that Jackie had brought up so long ago? Was Annalisa finally breaking through? What if she was supposed to paint women?
Stylish, fashionable, powerful, and hardheaded women.
Something felt divinely right about it. She’d painted three pieces from the Women’s Strike for Equality in August, and maybe that had been the seed. Her calling might be to give voices to these strong women. There was no doubt Annalisa wanted to be one of them herself. It wasn’t necessarily about the money that these women possessed, but that was part of it. More so, it was their confidence and strength and fearlessness. That was what Annalisa liked the most about city women. Even seventy-year-old women weren’t afraid to hop on a bus alone.
Passing by Walt’s shop, she decided to pop in and share her revelation. After waiting impatiently as he helped a customer with a broken pocket watch, Annalisa met him at the counter by the cash register. “I think I’ve found my voice. Only a few months here and I’ve found it!”
Though he didn’t share her elation, she told him about her idea of giving voices to all the women out there by putting the strongest ofthem on the page. Nearly shaking with glee, she drew the painting out of her tote and showed it to him.
“Oh my.” Suddenly engaged, he pointed at it from the opposite side of the counter. “This is what you should be doing for a living.”
She laughed. “That’s the idea, Mr.Burzinski.” Her heart raced with a youthful feeling of having discovered her true calling.
“Please call me Walt, young lady.”
“Walt, I just need to find a gallery willing to take a chance on me.” She’d been turned down by two other galleries in the last month. Then something occurred to her.
“Would you be interested in selling some of my work? For a cut, of course.” She didn’t mention that he could use a little color anyway. He had every shade of black and brown covered. Even her most lugubrious pieces might lighten up the place.
“I’ve got stacks of good stuff upstairs that needs a home,” she continued. At least she thought they were good, even if the galleries weren’t yet interested. Sharon still pushed her to connect. If Annalisa heard Sharon say, “Annalisa Mancuso, let go and dive into their skin!” one more time, she was going to throw someone through the warehouse window. Sometimes she’d even snap back, “I am letting go!” Then Sharon would give a silver-eyed wink and walk away. Maybe this new avenue of strong women would pique Sharon’s interest.
Walt scratched his two-day-old beard. “You are a determined person, aren’t you?”
Determined and thick skinned,she thought, as she decided to push the idea. “It might bring you some new customers. I imagine anyone looking for a fine watch or clock is in the market for a nice painting.” She eyed him like he’d be crazy to say no.
“How sly you are,” he finally said. “Well, I don’t see why not.”
Five hundred noes and two yeses,she thought. She could play those odds.
While discussing the terms, she eyed the back wall, where several metal shelves held boxes overflowing with mechanical parts and who knew what else. Feeling connected to her muse more than she could ever remember, she decided she’d love to make a new set of wind chimes that afternoon, a gift to herself for accomplishing so much in these first few months in Portland.
She leaned in. “Can I ask you one more thing?”
He chuckled in his very Walt way, almost as subtle as Nonna’s. “I have a feeling you’re going to ask anyway.”
“I want to make a set of wind chimes to keep the others company. It looks like you have all sorts of goodies back there, and there’s a hook that needs a purpose upstairs. Would you let me poke around and see if I can find something that might work?”
As grumpy as he could be, he might have said something about how the wind chimes hanging on her balcony now were nothing but a racket, but she’d told him about making them with her mother a few days prior, so that argument would have been rude.
As if realizing he couldn’t say no for fear of feeling guilty, he said, “If you must. It’s forty years of parts doing nothing but collecting dust.” What wasn’t collecting dust?
He went back to work, and she fought off sneezes as she rummaged around. For an artist, these shelves were a treasure trove of possibilities. A dusty one but special nonetheless, full of wonderfully alien parts.
