aemWORKS
word.art.design
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Episode 131January 25 / 12
Clare brought her own robe the second week. She’d gone and found one, lightweight, blue, cotton, at the second hand shop. It felt good. It looked relaxed, and wholesome and sexy by turns. Calvin had said they probably wouldn’t need her this week, but she was on his list of people to call as models. She wanted to be prepared. She knew she would be drawing this week. You couldn’t expect that kind of luck again. Or that amazing new sense of self, but she brought the robe. It reminded her of that new sense of self. It reminded her she wasn’t Michael’s anymore.This week her drawing time had been spent doing her feet, her back, using two mirrors. All the pictures were taped up on the wall around the drawing the fellow had done last week. Yesterday morning she had sat studying them. She could see the improvement in the work. That pleased her. But she couldn’t understand why Michael had not found that woman sexy. Beautiful. Worthy.
“Hey, our pinch hitter. Glad to see you back. Pull up a chair. We’ve actually got a male model this week.” The other woman raised her eyebrows up and down. Clare felt a blush rising. The other woman grinned. “Yeah. Hey, turn around there he is.”
Clare turned. A man stood across the room. He was wearing a short green plaid robe. Clare felt the blood run from her face.
Episode 132February 1 / 12
That wasn’t one of the robes in the change room left for the models. It wasn’t one she’d given him. It looked new. Clare couldn’t believe she was thinking about his robe when he was about to turn around and see her. When he was about to turn around and take that robe off for God and everyone. What was he doing here?“Are you alright?” asked the woman beside her? “You nervous about drawing a man?” She smiled with slight condescension. “You didn’t seem shy last time.”
“It’s my ex husband.” Clare said. She turned her back and began digging in her bag, moving her pencil case back and forth as though looking for something. How was she going to get out of here?
“Ohhhh. Carrie said he was getting a divorce. She said his wife was a…oops.”
Clare stared up at the woman from her position hunched over her art bag. The lovely blue robe she’d brought with her was under her pencil case.
“Well, my God, Clare.” Michael’s aren’t-I-a-great-guy voice from across the room; his yes-I-am-a-wonderful-husband-isn’t-Clare-lucky voice. “I didn’t know you were here.”
Clare’s hand closed on the pencil case. She felt a pencil snap.
Episode 133February 8/ 12
Sanjeet closed his eyes. She had described her room to him. The one in Nigel's house, where she would live for the next month with Rhys. Her voice bubbled through him with its excitement. "It's just lovely, Daddy, all grown up. Granda's friend said it was okay if I put up posters if I wanted to. Grandda is taking me out tomorrow to get some. And he said, if it's quite alright with you, that he would get me a phone, like his, that is just for me. To use, you know, while I am away from home. Mummy doesn't need to know."
No, Sanjeet thought, Mummy doesn't need to know. Mummy doesn't need to know anything. "A phone for me to call you, whenever I want to. May I?"
May she. May she do everything she ever wanted to do and ever wants to do.
When would she call him first, on her own, with her own phone? How could he stand this month before he could come and get her? They all knew he dare not come now. If Julia found out he'd come it would be all up. No matter how much she wanted to have her young boyfriend to herself, she would not allow that.
Sanjeet's eyes opened. He got up. He went to his bedroom door. He wanted to stop himself, but he couldn't. He went downstairs and began to tidy the already tidy living room.
The Winning Chicken will be back on February 22nd.
Episode 134February 22/ 12
It was, thank God, Rafe who answered the door.
“You’re late.”
I’ve been sitting in the car for an hour, she didn’t say out loud.
“Trying to be Dad?” she snapped before she stop herself. “How’s Mom?” she asked, quick with the second question to cover the sting of the first.
But he did not ignore it. “I am trying to look out for my mother. She’s been worried. She’s worried enough. You should have arrived on time. It was rude. Dad’s fine by the way. He’s watching the game. We didn’t tell him you’re coming.”
“Why?”
“Didn’t want him upset for no good reason.”
“No good reason?”
Suzanne stared at her brother. She hadn’t crossed the threshold yet. She could just turn around and go back to the car and drive away. Damn them all.
Episode 135February 29/ 12
The door shut behind her, shutting out the quiet night, the moments in the car, but shutting in her anger at Rafe. It was safe to be angry at Rafe. It was easy. He was Dad now. He’d shown her that. Just starting, not full out, but Dad. It was rude. Never be rude. Never be loud. Never disobey.
Suzanne stepped forward and slipped off her coat. It was not her protection. As Rafe took it she wondered if she had any protection. The child inside her had stopped screaming about this house. She was curled, comatose at the centre of Suzanne’s soul. Frances knew where she was. As Rafe opened the front hall closet and pulled out a hanger, she could almost see him doing it in her mind thought he stood behind her, she stared down the narrow hallway. It was so narrow. And the stairs to the second floor, had they really been so narrow? She remembered putting her child hands out, running them up the walls as she climbed. She had not had to stretch her arms to reach the walls of the stairwell. Now in her mind, as the sound of her coat being hung came from behind her, she pushed in her mind with her hands, she grew up from the child of memory into the adult she was. The child in her soul stirred. With the hand of her mind Suzanne soothed the unconscious head. She let out her breath.
She stepped away from Rafe who was just shutting the closet door. She started down the hall toward the noise of the football game playing on the TV.
Episode 136March 7/ 12
Michael’s hand came down familiarly on Clare’s upper back. “What are you doing here?” Still that caressing ugly condescension.
Clare ground the broken pencil in her hand. She stood up and turned. Michael kept his hand on her shoulder. He was smiling. The woman next to her was avid in her interest. Gleeful almost. Clare crushed the urge to stab Michael with the pencil. Her best daughter-of-the-minister smile came over her face. Her mother would be proud.
“Michael,” She looked him up and down. “No need to ask what you are here for? Feeling a little short…of cash?”
Michael took his hand from her shoulder, a great relief. He opened his robe and dropped it on the floor. The other woman’s avid gaze shifted for a moment. “No, I am the model today. My Carrie is an artist. She loves drawing me so I thought I’d give everyone the pleasure.
Clare’s face froze. She felt like a whore. She wanted to crush the picture the fellow had given her from the last session.
“Hey,” snapped Calvin from across the room. “You disrobe when we’re ready to start drawing. You’re not here to flash people.”
Episode 137March 14/ 12
Michael turned to look at Calvin. “It’s a natural drawing class, I’m just being natural.”
“At the moment, what you are being is unprofessional. If you can’t manage to be professional, you’ll have to leave and we’ll have another model.”
“You don’t have one.” Michael looked around the room to prove his point. He smiled at a younger woman. She glanced at Calvin and did not smile back.
“Yes, we do have one. Clearly this is not the class for you.”
“This is exactly the class for me. My girlfriend draws here. I am here to support her. She…”
“Put your clothes on, thank you. And leave. We will not require your services today. Or any day in the future.”
“Hah,” Michael said. He took a step toward Calvin. But as he did the expressions of the other people in the room finally began to get through to him. Clare had a singing moment of vicious triumph. Her presence had thrown him. His desire to hurt and embarrass her had caused him to miss the social cues he was usually so attune to. And he had mistaken Calvin for a rival. Clare could almost see him shuffling his impressions in his head.
Michael turned and pulled his robe up off the floor and put it on. “Hey, sorry, that was stupid of me. Let’s start again.” That smile.
Episode 138March 21/ 12
Clare shaded just a bit more along the nose as one of the senior artist’s in the group called time. It was the last pose. She’d done only faces. She was calm now, but it was more than she could have done to drawn all of him. Even if, the thought escaped into her conscious mind, he did have a very nice backside.
Calvin stretched from his semi prone position and pulled on the robe. The regular robe, that all the models used. This last pose had been thirty minutes. Calvin pushed his palms into the wall and released the tension from his legs.
Clare gathered up her pencils, squished her kneadable eraser into a ball again, and pushed them all into her pencil case. The snapped pencil was in the bottom. It was her h2. She liked the b’s better, so that was okay. Fine to waste it on Michael. If it was a waste to save herself from stint in prison for murder?
Michael had ended leaving in a flamboyant sulk when Calvin and the other senior artists of the group stared him down after telling him he had to leave.
Clare stuffed the pencil case down into her bag next to the blue robe. She shuffled the drawings together. She wanted to give one to Calvin, but didn’t have the nerve. Instead, timing it carefully so as not to be noticed, as she paused next to him on her way out.
“Thank you.”
Calvin smiled.
Episode 139March 28/ 12
“It was after this that Pirandello…” Margaret paused, she accentuated the glasses on the face of one of the six characters and turned to see what had caused the distraction behind her. She’d felt the attention of her student’s shift.
Marcia, who always sat in the front row, laughed. “Sorry, it’s just that there is this gorgeous guy in the hall.”
Margaret raised an eyebrow, but smiled. She could appreciate a gorgeous guy.
“I think he’s looking for you.”
Margaret turned. Then turned red. This was certainly a gorgeous guy she could appreciate.
Sanjeet was standing in the doorway, but he was nearly vibrating with excitement. His smile was bright.
“Excuse me, professor Reid.” He glanced at the black board covered in drawings; stick versions of people, a large beard over disembodied shoulders, a violin. Six small people with large glasses looking around for something. A momentary eyebrow lift reminded her of the calm Sanjeet. But he was only passing by. The excitement flowed off this man.
“May I borrow you from your class for a moment?”
Episode 140April 25/ 12
As Suzanne walked on down the hall toward the sound of the game on the tv she felt her protection rise in her and surround her. It was her professionalism. She was a priest. She became the priest as she, not the daughter, the disappointment, the betrayer moved toward her father. Reverend Suzanne Ellis could face grief, destruction, distrust, anger, even in her time violence. She could face an angry old man loosing his mind.
She entered the room. Her father didn’t move. His hair was white. When did that happen? And he, like the hallways, was smaller. Suzanne walked further into the room. She pulled a chair away from the wall and put it next to him. That would make him mad. Do not shift the furniture. It is arranged properly. The remembered voice rang in her head and she clutched momentarily at the back of the chair. But Reverend Ellis prevailed. She sat down in the chair next to the old man who in some distant way was her father.
“Hello,” she said.
His eyes moved before his head. Then his whole head turned. Then he glanced quickly at the door behind him. Rafe had not followed her down the hall. They were alone.
“Did you get the cookies?” He whispered.
Episode 141May 2/ 12
Margaret guided Sanjeet out of view of the classroom door. She could feel his excitement though her hand on his arm.
“Sanjeet, what is it?”
“I have had a call from my father. I have cleaned the house twice since he called. I am sorry to interrupt your class, but I had to tell you.”
Margaret felt herself swelling up with his excitement. She bit back the desire to tell him to come and clean her house instead of his already clean one. She put one hand against the brick wall behind her and set her feet apart.
“Let fly, my man. I’m ready.”
If possible he grinned more when she said ‘my man’. “Olivia. My daughter. She is with Rhys.”
Margaret cocked her head and looked at him.
“She is not with her mother. Julia has let her go. She is out of that house. She is safe.”
“Safe.” Margaret was startled by the word, but quick to hide her surprise she came away from the wall and hugged him hard. “I am so glad,” she said, more in answer to his mood than her understanding of his words.
Episode 142May 9/ 12
“No, really, I do it because I’m lazy.” Clare said over her shoulder, and then turned to focus on leaning with the bike around the bend. It was a sloped curve and she loved it. It went around a small slough and there were often ducks paddling about. This morning the first daisies were showing along the path. A small gopher kept right on eating his grass next to his hole. He was used to bikes. She called a silent hello to him.
Calvin seemed to slide up next to her. His bike was new, light, serious. He and Sanjeet could probably have talked for hours about the pros and cons of it. Clare smiled, imagining them doing it.
“You bike 20 k for amusement because you are lazy?”
“No, I bike because I’m lazy. I could walk the 20 k, but it would take so much longer and my feet would hurt. I am essentially lazy. On a bike I sit the whole way. I pedal a bit, I coast. It’s a beautiful thing.”
Calvin shifted gears again so he could keep his legs moving at a set speed, his bike even with hers. Clare laughed as her momentum carried her effortlessly forward.