How to Tame a Silver Fox novel · Chapter 30 of 32

Chapter 30: The Studio Opens

The show was called Unresolved, because my professor had said it four times and it had begun to sound like a prophecy.

She stood in the center of the carriage house on opening night in four scarves, which I understood to be a compliment.

"Beautiful," she said, turning slowly. "Terrifying. Don't change a thing."

I had hung the walls in pairs.

A canvas of my mother's, then one of mine, then hers again, so the room read like two women answering each other across a table.

Her lawn at dusk hung beside my window at three in the morning.

A conservator had mended the torn sky, and you had to look for the seam.

The old light-struck brick glowed in the lamps.

Junie had baked for six days.

She stood behind a long plank table with a hairnet over her red curls and an expression of terrible joy, pressing lemon squares on strangers.

"The dean tried to leave without taking a plate," she told me, low. "I blocked the door."

The dean was at the far wall, in his bow tie, regarding a painting with his head to one side.

Near the door, the investor's wife in pearls was speaking with the white-haired director.

He had come in a corduroy jacket and seemed ten years younger in it.

Arlen's mother had found the one good chair and was holding court from it.

She had a glass of cider and a catalogue she did not need.

A woman with a gallery lanyard stopped me by the elbow.

"Is it true the man on the pier sat for it?"

"He's a composite."

"He's standing by the cider."

I looked.

Arlen stood at the end of the room before my first canvas, the pier, in a charcoal sweater with his sleeves pushed up.

My professor had lent it back for the night.

He was looking at the figure on the pier with silver at the temples.

He did not look merely painted.

He looked truly seen.

"That one is for sale," the woman said. "I'd like to know the price."

"It isn't for sale."

"Everything is for sale."

"It was sold once," I said. "I bought it back."

She wrote something down.

Arlen turned, caught my eye across forty heads, and lifted his club soda in a small toast.

I did not drop anything.

By ten the room had thinned to a handful.

By eleven it was Junie's brother, loading the last tray into the pickup, and Junie kissing me on both cheeks with frosting on her chin.

"Eat something," she said. "You've run on lemon bars and spite since Thursday."

"They're a balanced meal."

"Goodnight, Arlen!" she called through the door. "Don't stand too close to the paint."

She did not wait for his answer.

The lamps ticked as they cooled.

The studio smelled of linseed, cider and my mother's brushes, and there was silence in it, finally, with room to move.

He shut the door and turned the key.

I stood in the middle of the floor in a smock over the green dress.

My fingers were still blue from touching up the last frame an hour before the doors opened.

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