Salt Spring Island
december 5, 1972
i’ve just finished painting a gleam on the claws of the demon dragging Pat down to hell when Jimmy Page’s guitar solo jerks to a halt. I turn to find that my subject has yanked out the power cord on the radio. The studio is so quiet, I can hear her wheezing. “I thought you went to town,” I say, voice shaking.
“I knew you were up to no good, so I turned around before I got to Southey Point Road. Someone has to watch you.” Pat clocks the canvas, recognizing herself. Her face turns purple with rage, and she bellows, “Who do you think you are?”
Tuna cowers in his bed. And I yearn to curl up next to him and hide. I must contain my rage. Little Jeanie suffers when she dares to face big Pat. “Perhaps I’m a renowned landscape artist who raises the bar on transcendence,” I say, feeling too much like a newborn lamb being stalked by a wolf. She storms past me to snatch the new canvas off its easel and breaks it over her knee.
“That might have been worth something,” I say, brandishing the invitation over my head. I wanted to play it cool, but with Pat steaming in front of me…hell no. She doesn’t get to be angry in this situation. If I don’t confront her now, I’ll never be able to live with myself.
Recognizing the fancy invite, her face crumples—in either shame or regret. “You…you…”
“You better fucking believe I know.” Choking on the words, but ah, it feels good now, almost weeping with rage. “Octavius Karbuz is my art dealer? And there’s going to be a bloody show at his gallery in Europe?” I stare at her, breath heaving. “Tell me, evil fiend, how many shows have there been? And how much do my paintings actually sell for?”
Pat’s eyes dart blindly around the room, clearly struggling to come up with another lie. She gives up and says, “You should be focusing on your work—”
“Really? That’s where you want to go right now?” My braid has come loose, and I tear hair out of my eyes, still waving the invitation. “This says a collection of new works—just how many are we talking about?” I flick the envelope at her like it’s a frisbee. “Tell me, Pat.”
She raises her chin in poorly misplaced defiance. “Fourteen.”
I’m stunned and, for a moment, speechless. “I want to see the books. Right now,” I finally manage.
“There are no books.”
“There are always books, always a paper trail.” I say this with conviction, trying to hide the doubt in my words. What do I know about accounting and paper trails? This is why I’m a patsy. “You’ve turned my studio into a workhouse, then you complain we never have money. You’re a liar.” Pat is silent, her mouth so tight, her lips have disappeared. With sudden, intense clarity, I realize the truth: She’s taken advantage of me since the beginning, telling me I’m useless, but all the while using me to line her pockets. “You told me I’m a lousy artist who sells the odd painting.”
I want nothing more than to throw Pat out of Gladsheim, then have her arrested for fraud, but as a tear slides down my face, the reality of my situation hits me square in the gut. I can’t really punish Pat, because, for better or worse I need her. She’s all I’ve got.
Pat blinks, solid as a rock in a Japanese garden. “Did you really think this place runs itself?” She gestures to my studio. “That I work for free?”
My anger flares again and I grab some large brushes—that she so helpfully cleaned last night—and throw them across the room. Then I pick up a palette knife, still loaded with paint, and wing it at Pat’s head. She ducks, cursing, and I hold up my hands. “Do these look twisted and contracted? I’m going to turn up at this show and tell my agent, this…this art dealer Octavius Karbuz, that you’ve been forcing me to work, while feeding me lies that my paintings rarely sell. And pocketing the proceeds.” I rub my face in disbelief. Now I understand her stylish new threads. She fancies herself a sophisticated member of the international art world. Jesus, Pat!
She smirks at me. “You want to go to Brussels? For your opening?” My heart leaps into my throat, but I know the too-familiar glint in her eye. “You think you’ll be able to travel to Europe?”
“I don’t have the money for that. But you do.”
“You can’t even behave in a room full of morons,” she snorts. “Remember what happened at your show in Vancouver? You got drunk and made a fool of yourself.”
“You can’t stop me from going to Brussels.” I snatch the invitation off the floor and tap it against my hand. “Octavius Karbuz has called my new show The Great Return. How prophetic. I might perform a few miracles—turn water into wine, or—”
Pat finally snaps, closing the distance between us. I can smell coffee on her breath. “What would you do if your plane crashed and was engulfed by flames?” she says. I start so violently my heart seems to stop. Swallowing tears and dread, I wait for my heart to resume its slow, ponderous thud. Why does she always win? Like a dog rolling over in submission to its master, I bend my head, almost feeling the heat of the fire she threatens. “I’m adjusting your medications again. You’re acting crazy.” She yanks up her sleeve and thrusts her arm out, which is still melodramatically bandaged, as if she suffered a major injury.
My anger simmers on low—much like her morals—for daring to bring this up. I force myself to ask after it politely. “Does it still hurt?” And I mean that, I’m sorry. It was horrible of me, truly ruthless. Three weeks ago, Pat had been cooking us dinner and rattling on about how Tuna needed to be put down, concluding her diatribe with a woefully cheerful threat to borrow a shotgun from the neighbor and do it herself. Some hopeless part of me broke. Had I sensed this scam she’s got going? One moment I was at the kitchen table working on one of the mixed media collages I do for fun, and the next I was on Pat like a banshee, forgetting I still had my blunt-nosed craft scissors in hand. The three-inch-long wound bled for so long, Pat feared an artery had been cut. She’d howled needlessly as she ran around the kitchen, a towel held to the injury, before finally stitching and dressing it herself.
Now my rage ebbs, replaced by a wave of instantaneous, crashing grief. “Is this why you’re locking me in at night—afraid I’ll scissor you to death?”
“I could have bled out in minutes. You’ll stay locked in your room until you can prove to me you haven’t gone insane.”
“You can’t lock me in my room,” I say quietly. “This is my house.”
“Poor wittle Jeanie get mad?” She widens her eyes and sticks out her lower lip, like a maniac.
Despite my thick sweater, I’m suddenly chilled to the core. “Let me come with you to Vancouver next week. I’ll prove to you that I can leave this island and fly to Europe for my show.”
Pat sucks at her teeth for a moment, considering. “You think you’re famous because you’re a brilliant artist?” she says. “You’ve only sold paintings because your accident makes you collectible. If you go to this showing, any showing, people will stare at you and whisper. They’re not interested in what you paint—they want to see what you look like. They want to know exactly what happened that night.”
For a split second I feel crushed, believing her, and my hand flies to my throat, yanking at the collar of my sweatshirt in case any scars might be on display. I force myself to speak. “I may not remember what happened that night…I may look like this now, but I know Michael loved me—”
“Love?” she laughs in my face. “Michael was simply dragged back to what he’d dismissed as a romp behind the bushes the moment his parents found out Sleeping Beauty was in the family way.”
Her words land on me like a cannonball. I think of that warm night in the woods. How I’d loved every minute—the sweaty, heated communion of our hormonally charged teenage bodies, the tender moments afterward when Michael held me in his arms. “So beautiful,” he’d whispered, stroking my hair. When I told him I was pregnant, he was shocked, but it hadn’t taken him all that long to come back with a marriage proposal.
I’d felt so lovely wearing the wedding dress Aunt Suze sewed for me, a confected bodice of French lace and a ballet-style tulle skirt modelled after Audrey Hepburn’s frock in the film, Funny Face—the fetching bateau neckline, the elbow-length gloves. I’d swept down that church aisle to Charpentier’s Te Deum, a knocked-up seventeen year old, positive that the boy twitching at the altar was a Disney prince. I never saw him again after that night. Our relationship had been built upon the shaky foundations of teenage lust and supremely unfortunate timing.
“What if I was in a car accident,” Pat says. “What then? Who takes care of you? Who goes to Vancouver three times a year to buy your paints and canvas? Who prepares these canvases, cleans your bloody brushes, and makes you grilled cheese sandwiches?” She pauses, glowering at me from beneath her over-plucked eyebrows. “I have to do it all because you’re afraid of fire.”
I recoil as if she’d just pointed a gun at me and threatened to pull the trigger. “Kay will do it,” I say meekly. “I asked if she’d be my caregiver. She’s probably on the next ferry.” But I know that Kay likely missed my last letter and is on her way to another, far more exotic place than Salt Spring Island.
I expect Pat to be knocked back on her heels at the mention of Kay replacing her, but her eyes flicker ominously. I’m overcome with a desire to run straight to the window and jump. Anything to escape.
“Kay has better things to do,” she says, with an edge to her voice I haven’t heard before. “She’s probably halfway to South America, or some other third world country.”
“South America is a continent.”
Pat swipes her hand, dismissing me. “I’m going to town now, and you’ll behave and paint like a good girl. It’s a commission, you know, so make it a cool scene.” Then she picks up the broken abstract canvas. Before slithering out the door, she glances back and chucks her final spear.
“It ain’t art unless it sells.”