Page 59 of The Singing Trees
“Wait, what?” that same woman said.
Annalisa’s heart raced as she glanced at the model. He wore a smirk, clearly privy to this surprising turn of the lesson plan.
“Let’s go,” Sharon said again with a clap that seemed to be her calling card.
“Are you suggesting we paint all of him?” a guy Annalisa’s age asked.
Sharon looked at him and then at the model. “I expect you all to work together to make Damon into a masterpiece. And we’re not done till every last bit of skin is covered with acrylic. Now, let’s go.” Then she added, “Annalisa, no big flat brushes for you. I want you to use your smallest round tip.”
Annalisa looked around as if someone were playing a joke and an audience was about to come running through the doors charged with laughter.
“Let’s go,” Sharon demanded. “I’m sure we all have parts we’d like to put our bristles on. We don’t have all night.”
What in the hell had she gotten herself into? Payton Mills felt a million miles away from this warehouse and this woman.
A few things were for sure: Annalisa had never had a teacher like Sharon Maxwell, and even if she hadn’t learned anything as far as art was concerned during her first class, she could certainly say she’d never laughed so much in her entire life. The model had played his role with dignity, and by the end of the lesson, everyone in the class had come together, as if there were no strangers in the room.
When Annalisa returned home that night, she made a simple pasta with butter and parmesan and sat on the couch to call Emma Barnes. Because of her breakup with Thomas, she’d chosen to distance herself from his sister, despite wishing she could help. It had taken a while, but Annalisa finally dared to reach out, and with the story of the nude model, she had a good reason.
When Mrs.Barnes picked up, the two caught up with some forced surface chatter before Annalisa asked for Emma. Mrs.Barnes stalledwith several longums andohs before finally saying, “I don’t think she’s ready yet.”
Annalisa shook her head in frustration. “I understand. Well ... please tell her that I’d love to talk sometime if she feels like it.”
“That’s very nice of you, and I will. You’re getting along fine, Annalisa?”
“Yes, I am, thank you. How’s Thomas, by the way?” They’d been avoiding the subject. “Any word?”
Mrs.Barnes said, “He’s written once to say that he doesn’t like push-ups and that the army makes even me a great cook.”
Annalisa cracked a grin, thinking only Thomas would say such a thing to his mother and get away with it. “I never got his address at Fort Dix. Do you have it handy by chance?”
A long pause.
She shouldn’t have asked. Mrs.Barnes was no more a fan of Annalisa than Mr.Barnes, apparently, especially now that Annalisa was no longer a part of his future.
“I promised him I’d write,” Annalisa said.
Another pause. “One minute, let me see if I can find it.”
Once Mrs.Barnes gave the address and details to reach him, Annalisa hurried off the phone. She reached for a pencil and paper and wrote Thomas the note she’d promised him. She didn’t have much to say, so she simply told him in brief about finally finding an apartment and that it was above a clock shop that sang at noon and midnight. Then she asked him if he was having fun at summer camp and if he’d gotten to build a fort and shoot things with his little camp buddies. At the last minute, before she folded the piece of paper, she considered mentioning that she’d wrecked his car. Then again, she decided, some things were better left unsaid.
Chapter 21
A PHOTOGRAPH OFPAINFULMEMORIES
Annalisa found meaning and peace in painting the city. Though she spent a little time with her new friends from work, she held fast to her dream, typically only breaking away from her brushes and paints for her shifts at the Bargain Bin or to hang out with some of her fellow classmates from Sharon’s class. After nearly three years in Payton Mills, she was starved to talk with other artists. Having sent a clear message to the three guys her age in the class (none of whom compared to Thomas), they were no longer hitting on her, which made their group feel quite safe.
Behind her easel, Annalisa came to know her view from the balcony in ways she never could have imagined. With Sharon’s urging to connect more with her subjects, Annalisa gave names to the tenants of the buildings across the street. She sneaked peeks of their daily lives when they left their blinds open, and then would give them life—or at least try to—on the paper. With each brushstroke, she would attempt to wedge her way into her subject’s skin. She named and gave a story to the old lady across the way who was not ashamed to dry her underwear on the balcony, and to the younger family who always sat to dinner the moment the man came home from work.
To Annalisa, the phone booth across the street became a window to the world for all the people who lifted that receiver, and she divedinto their skin too. There was a pigeon that hung around the phone booth, pecking at crumbs before disappearing into the leaning fir tree or into the elm tree protruding from a square of dirt outside of a real estate office on the corner, and Annalisa would often include the bird in these paintings.
In attempting to get into her subjects’ heads, she let her imagination run wild with whom these callers might be speaking with. One woman might be calling her father for the first time in twenty years after learning he was dying. A man in a suit, whom Annalisa had named Philip, was making dinner reservations for himself and his wife, whose birthday he’d forgotten the day before. Perhaps this was what Sharon meant by connecting with her subjects. Maybe this was what Sophia Loren would do when stepping into a character’s skin. If she understood their motivations, then she might finally paint them true.
She continued her lessons with Sharon Maxwell, and Annalisa learned so much about a side of painting she’d not explored enough. She’d been focused on the technical aspect, but no one had ever taught her about the emotional necessity in painting great pieces. In a way, Sharon’s class wasn’t about painting at all, more about self-expression than technique. They had even had a class where they could paint with only one color.
Of course, Annalisa knew painting was cathartic—that was exactly why she did it—but she didn’t quite know that there was a philosophy behind giving everything you have to your art. How could she have, only knowing the hobbyist painters in the Mills? Sharon did a live piece in the end of July, painting for two hours as her students watched with mesmerized eyes. Annalisa thought it one of the most beautiful visions she’d ever seen, a true master who might have well cut herself and brushed her blood onto the canvas.
Sharon didn’t offer much commentary on Annalisa’s latest works other than quick tips or words of very mild encouragement over hershoulder. “What’s behind those eyes, Annalisa?” Or, “What’s going on inside your body right now? Paint it.”
