ON THE RARE OCCASIONS that Great-aunt Winifred ventured down from her hilltop, she never exceeded fifteen miles per hour in her vintage Chevy, and the only drivers who didn’t mutter under their breaths when they got stuck behind her were farmers on their tractors. These rare occasions included the visits she paid the Tuttles on birthdays and, weather permitting, Christmas.
That Christmas, weather permitted. A few inches of snow fell on the twenty-third, but by the twenty-fifth even the road up her hill had been plowed.
Great-aunt Winifred, not being much of a shopper, always brought homemade gifts. Dr. and Mrs. Tuttle got her latest version of The View. John Henry, who was turning into a daredevil snowboarder, got a hand-knitted ski sweater. Tim’s present was the smallest: just an envelope. It contained a hand-painted card with a miniature version of her latest View on the front. Inside, in her cramped handwriting, was the following message:
Dearest Timmy,
You always seem to like watching me at my easel, so this year I thought I’d offer you painting lessons (if you want them).
All my love, GAW
If he wanted them! He jumped up and hugged her so hard, her laugh turned into a gasp. While watching her paint, he often felt his fingers itch for a brush. “I’d use a little dark blue there,” he would say to himself, or “I’d stick in a cloud over that birch tree.”
Great-aunt Winifred’s latest painting of the view ended up, as usual, in Dr. Tuttle’s lab. As for the ski sweater, John Henry chalked up points with his mother by donating it to the Women’s Shelter. The sweater featured splotches of pink and purple, and he wouldn’t have been caught dead in it. But Tim’s present was a success. He only wished it wasn’t winter, so he could have a painting lesson every day! But at least there were the weekends.
For the first few lessons, Great-aunt Winifred had Tim make pencil sketches. They sat at her kitchen table, which was covered with a checkered oilcloth, and she guided him through a drawing of a plate of fresh-baked ginger snaps. It took three sessions. By the end of the first, the cookies were stone cold, but he added the steam rising off them from memory. His next project was the wood stove, which he drew with the oven door open and a spice cake inside. Then he drew the old gingerbread man who leaned in the window over the sink. Tim stuck in a blackbird hovering outside, hungry for a bite.
After the lessons they had hot cocoa in the living room, and Tim’s eyes always wandered to the paint box on the candle stand by the easel in the picture window. Finally, on a Saturday in February, Greataunt Winifred decided he was ready to try her paints.
She preferred good old-fashioned oils herself, but she also had fast-drying acrylics, and Tim took to these. He set up a makeshift easel right beside hers so they could both work on The View. His first attempt took six weekends.
“Why, it’s quite good,” Great-aunt Winifred declared when it was done. “It really is, Timmy—though the clouds are a little odd. I never saw clouds with green in them.”
“Everything’s so black and white in the winter,” Tim explained.
“And you wanted some color. Of course. I never thought of that. It adds atmosphere, doesn’t it?” Her eyes sparkled behind the thick lenses of her spectacles. “You know, I think sticking in the windowpanes is a wonderful touch. At first I thought it was a mistake—probably because I never thought of it myself. They make it look so cozy, don’t they? Just like us. We’re snug as two bugs in rug, aren’t we, dear heart? I couldn’t be happier if I were twins!”
Tim laughed, leaning against the plump old lady.
“Now all we need is something to celebrate your first real painting,” she said. “I made a batch of peanut brittle last night. Would it be gilding the lily if I made a carrot cake to go with it?”
“No! I’ll bring in some more wood for the stove.”
Tim wasn’t getting any skinnier, and when the sap started to rise in the maples and the robins started returning from the south, his parents encouraged him to join John Henry’s Little League team. John Henry wasn’t so sure this was a good idea. Needless to say, he was a much better fielder and batter and base runner than Tim—in fact, he’d finished second in the Most Valuable Player vote last year, and this year hoped to win. But although it was always fun to outshine his older brother, Tim was so crummy at baseball that John Henry feared the team might turn against him just for being related. Besides, you couldn’t help feeling a little bit sorry for the poor klutz. So when Tim argued that he would get plenty of exercise walking up to Great-aunt Winifred’s house every day after school, now that the snow had melted and the days were longer, John Henry sided with him. He also pointed out that if Tim joined the team, he would probably just end up sitting on the bench eating peanuts. So Dr. and Mrs. Tuttle finally conceded the point.
Tim started painting every day. He didn’t lose any weight, thanks to Great-aunt Winifred’s baking, but he worked hard on his Spring View, keeping in mind all her advice. He completed his second painting just before school let out for summer, and his progress impressed Great-aunt Winifred so much that she secretly ordered him an easel and a box of acrylics from Pandora’s Paints in Burlington.
Two weeks later she was waiting for Tim out on her front porch when Jeb Grimsley’s Jeep pulled up next to her Chevy. Jeb carried her groceries up to the porch. He’d also picked up her mail for her, which included a box from Pandora’s Paints.
“Why, Jeb,” she said, “you look dry as a thistle. Did you bring any cider?”
“We was fresh out, Mrs. Tuttle. But I stuck in a half gallon of lemonade.”
“Then let me give you a glass.”
Jeb, who was twenty-five years old, would have preferred a beer, but he sat on the porch glider and downed a glass of the lemonade. He didn’t refuse a second glass, nor did he refuse to sample a piece of the cherry pie that was cooling on the porch railing.
He and Great-aunt Winifred were just finishing their slices of pie—Jeb was actually on his second—when Tim shuffled up with his hands buried in his pockets and his eyes on the ground.
“Hey, Tim,” said Jeb. “Didn’t see you on the road.”
“I came through the woods,” Tim muttered, climbing the porch steps. “Hey, Aunt Winnie.”
“Why, Timmy, you look like the undertaker who lost his last casket,” said Great-aunt Winifred. “What’s the matter?”
“We got final report cards yesterday. Mom thinks I should go to summer school.”
A piece of cherry pie had a cheering effect on him, however. And though it was strange to get a present when it wasn’t his birthday and he’d ended up with mostly Cs again, the easel and paint box lifted his spirits even more.
Best of all, his father soon managed to convince his mother that his grades weren’t quite bad enough to warrant summer school. So he didn’t have to give up his vacation. He spent a great deal of it sitting at his new easel on Great-aunt Winifred’s front porch. Their easels were separated by only a small wicker table, usually with a pitcher of lemonade and a plate of freshly baked cookies or lemon squares on it, but now they kept the easels angled away from each other so they wouldn’t be influenced by each other’s work. And when they quit for the day, they put their canvases in different rooms to dry. Tim worked even harder on his Summer View than he had on his Spring View—though it wasn’t really work, as far as he was concerned. The only thing he loved more than dabbing paint on the canvas was listening to his greataunt. His mother said she talked your ear off because she lived alone, but it didn’t matter to him if she was talking about painting (“I’m just a Sunday painter, Timmy—real painters are scarcer than feathers on a frog”) or the weather (“The wind was blowing so hard this morning, I’ll bet Mr. Cooley’s hens laid the same eggs four times”), there was nothing he loved more than the comfortable sound of her voice, with the wind chimes tinkling in the background.
Great-aunt Winifred was determined to finish her summer painting by Dr. Tuttle’s birthday, which was August twenty-fifth, and on the afternoon of the twenty-first she set down her brush and announced that she was done. Tim set his brush down just five minutes later.
“Both finished at once!” she exclaimed. “And started together too! What do you say we lean them on the porch railing and size them up?”
“But you always say comparing’s silly—like me and John Henry.”
“Not to compare, dear heart—not to see which is better. I just meant, for fun and profit. I’ll give you some pointers—and maybe you can give me some back!”
So they propped their paintings up side by side. Great-aunt Winifred looked at them with her glasses on, then with her glasses off, then with her glasses on again. For once, she didn’t have a single word to say.