Chapter 32: Under Our Roof

Hutch was quiet for so long I thought he'd fallen asleep.

Then he said, "Not here."

I lifted my head off his chest.

"No?"

"She's been over my bed seven years. She's done her time."

"You don't want her back?"

"I want her where you said. Somewhere people walk past her on a Tuesday. With your name next to her."

I lay back down.

"Then what goes up there?"

"I don't know," he said. "You're the painter."

The retrospective opened on the first Saturday in June.

We went on the Tuesday after, at eleven in the morning, when the museum was half empty.

She hung in the main room, at the end, where you saw her from three galleries away.

A long blue wall. A bench in front of her.

The white card on the wall beside her was the size of a book.

GIRL ON A BLUE SHEET.

MODEL: NEVE CAHILL, AGE 21, BRIDGEPORT, CHICAGO. HER FEE PAID FOR HER MOTHER'S HOME NURSE.

I'd written that last line myself.

The curator hadn't changed a word.

A school group came through while we sat on the bench.

A little girl stopped in front of the painting and tipped her head.

"Is she sleeping?" she said.

"She's resting," her teacher said. "Somebody let her rest."

Hutch took my hand on the bench.

We got married at Moonlite on the third Saturday in June.

Fran did the flowers, which meant white roses in bowling shoes on every table.

The seniors did the cake.

It was shaped like a bowling pin and it leaned.

The bartender wrapped the 1981 nacho machine in white ribbon and refused to turn it off.

The notary married us.

He'd gotten ordained online in March "for exactly this," and he wanted it on the record that he'd stamp the license too.

We stood on lane seven.

The mailmen stood in their blue Team Cahill shirts in a row.

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