IN THE END, Alice went far easier on me than she should have, by all accounts. I got a lecture, an “I was so worried about you, you have no idea!” and after I promised to never be out later than midnight again without telling her, she pulled me into a hug and told me how angry she was, still hugging me. It was a distinctly non-Alice experience. I have to imagine the sea air or all the greenery, or else the time away from work, has had a calming effect on her, not to mention Evelyn, who let her know that the children from the Deece are known to stay out all night together, and this was a perfectly normal occurrence.
When I leave to meet Maeve in the studio (after a long, long nap and a cup of Evelyn’s jasmine tea), I tell my mom I love her, and she says she loves me too, still shaking her head like she can’t believe she had to survive the torture of worrying about me all night.
* * *
We’re carving linoleum plates. In my head, the image I’m trying to carve looks perfect—a cup of coffee swirling with steam. I can picture it so clearly, but then when my hands try to scrape the picture out of the rubbery linoleum, it becomes warped and childish. This is already my second plate—with the first one, I pressed too hard, and the knife went all the way through, ruining it.
“Try to make longer, more shallow troughs, like this.” Maeve puts her hand on mine and demonstrates the right amount of pressure. Already, with just one stroke of Maeve-assisted carving, my plate looks significantly better. But before I can feel even the slightest bit good about my piece, I peek over at Maeve’s, and any semblance of self-esteem I had disappears like eraser residue being blown off a page. Maeve’s plate depicts the face of a Greek god representing wind, his cheeks full with effort, his breath curling around him in gusts as he blows. My little lopsided coffee cup looks pathetic.
“Have you made these before?” I ask.
“Actually, no,” Maeve says. “My mum asked me to try it out before the class does them Monday. When we finish with the plates, we’ll roll them in ink and then press them like stamps.”
“Oh. Cool.” So this all just comes naturally to her.
I put down my small knife and watch Maeve work for a few minutes, the way her wrist flicks around the plate as if it has a life of its own, the look of placid concentration on her face. She’s gifted. That’s the thing I need to wrap my head around. I might be good, and I might work hard and become better, but I will never be better than someone like Maeve, who has the sort of effortless talent that people talk about in speeches at lifetime-achievement award ceremonies.
But you got into the program, a little voice whispers in my head. They wouldn’t have accepted you to the Deece if you didn’t show potential—if you weren’t actually, truly talented.
But your grandfather is Robert Parker, another voice from somewhere dark coos. They probably only let you in because they thought you’d add prestige to the program. Or because they thought he’d donate. You’re nothing but a name to these people.
I stare at my own plate again for a few seconds. Every line seems wrong. I keep hoping that if I stare long enough, the picture will morph into something that looks as good as I want it to. What superpower is that? The ability to make things as good as you want them? Oh, right: talent.
Just as I pick up my knife to try again, maybe add some shadow, the wooden studio door swings open and clangs against the wall.
“Nice to see you, Cal,” Maeve says, not looking up from her plate.
Callum swaggers up behind her and gives her a kiss on the cheek. I remind myself that he’s just like that with everyone. He’s Joey from Friends. “I thought I’d find you ladies here. On a Saturday. When you don’t have class.”
“We,” Maeve says, “are testing out a new project for Áine and Declan.”
“Teacher’s pet,” Callum says and sidles over between us to look at our work. He takes on the voice of a cliché snooty art gallery director. “Very nice,” he says toward Maeve’s work. “Ve-ery nice. Ah! And what do we have here?” He brings his nose almost to my plate. “Masterly use of lines and perspective. The coffee cup is obviously a metaphor for colonization in South America, yes?”
“But of course,” I reply in my own snooty artist voice. “I thought that was obvious.”
Maeve giggles. “You’re just jealous you’re not allowed to play with knives,” she says.
“It’s true,” Callum says, picking up one of the extra knives and twirling it in his fingers. “I’ve always wanted to master the art of using a knife the size of a fingernail to carve up a piece of plastic.”
If I wanted my plate to look better before, now that Callum is here I’m wishing about ten times harder. Callum liked me in the first place because he thought I was a talented artist, and now here he is in the studio, looking back and forth between my plate and Maeve’s, getting firsthand, empirical evidence that I’m average, at best. Maybe if I just go over the outline of the mug one more time, deeper, it’ll look kind of art deco . . .
I cut all the way through the linoleum again. “Fuck.”
Maeve and Callum are too busy joking about something Michael did years ago even to notice how frustrated I am. I try not to let it show. I feel like I’m about to cry, and all I can think about is getting far away from Callum so he doesn’t see that my cry-face is uglier than Kim Kardashian’s.
“I’m going to do a painting,” I say. They both look at me. “I forgot that I was supposed to make one for Grandpa,” I add quickly.
“Do you want me to press your plate for you?” Maeve asks.
“No,” I say, too fast. “It’s garbage, really.” And before she or Callum can protest, I throw the ruined plate away, grab my bag, and head out the still-open studio door.
My strap gets caught on the doorknob, and they’re both silent, watching me while I struggle with it for a few seconds.
“Okay,” I say when I finally yank myself free. “Bye.” And as I head out, the tears come quick.
* * *
I take my canvas and paints up the craggy coast until I can see the lighthouse in the distance, and I set up my easel in the grass. I’ll paint a landscape. Grandpa didn’t give me an assignment for Ireland, assuming that I’d be doing enough art at the colony, but I still feel the need to make something for him, to show him how grateful I am here and how much better I am after even a few weeks of expert direction. Back home, I never drew landscapes—they seemed like the type of boring art that ends up on the wall of a dentist’s office. But after a lecture that Declan gave us on J.M.W. Turner, I’m suddenly fascinated by the idea of painting the water. Turner painted turbulent seas and ships fighting to remain upright. Declan talked to us about the way he used light to highlight certain areas of the canvas and create contrast between the harsh reality and the way people dream they might be.
The sea could be dark and stormy and turbulent and terrible, but there, in the corner of the canvas, there’s a ray of light coming out through the clouds, piercing the painting like a sword. It’s like he was able to paint the confusion and anxiety that goes on inside a person’s head. Maybe I can too.
I’ve never painted water before, or at least I’ve never painted water like this before: the sea spanning out to the horizon, ebbing with light and dark spots and tiny plopping fish and capping waves that crest and disappear. I put everything that’s bothering me in this painting: My fears that my mom can’t seem to get a life of her own are represented in a looming wave that’s ominously close to crashing; my anxiety about not being a good enough artist are the craggy cliffs by the shore, casting a shadow on the rest of the work; and my loneliness is in the tiny sailboat I paint in the distance, a ship that’s not actually there but only in my imagination, manned by a girl who decided to leave all of her expectations behind and just try to live on her own. Maybe if my mom could empathize with this more, our relationship would be defined more by interactions like the one we had this morning and less by conversations that always turn into fights.
“Hey, Picasso!” Callum climbs up the hill behind me.
Just seeing him is enough to make me smile involuntarily. I wish I were the type who could hold a grudge, but I can’t help myself. My stomach does an entire gymnastics floor routine. Silver medal to America!
“I’m painting the sea,” I say back. “You should be saying, ‘Hey, Turner.’”
“And imagine you as Timothy Spall? Never.”
“Excuse me?”
He’s so casual. He’s acting like I didn’t just storm out of the studio like a maniac. He plops down in the grass and crosses his legs. “Timothy Spall played Turner in the movie Mr. Turner. And you two look nothing alike.”
“You watch a lot of movies.”
Callum cracks his knuckles. “Well, I’ve spent a lot of time on buses traveling back and forth between Donegal and Dublin. Visiting Mum, then Dad. Trying to make nice.” He cracks the knuckles on his other hand. When anyone else does that it drives me crazy, but for some reason, when Callum Cassidy does it, it’s the sexiest thing alive.
I sit down in the grass next to him. “How long have your parents been divorced?” I ask, a bit worried that I’m overstepping my boundaries.
“Since I was four,” he says, looking out toward the water. He doesn’t elaborate.
“I get it,” I say, scooting just a little bit closer to him. “My parents got divorced two years ago. My dad just got remarried. I think it’s screwed up my mom.”
Callum doesn’t say anything.
“Oh,” I add, “and my dad married my former math teacher.”
He still doesn’t look at me, but he does smile, and his hand inches closer to mine.
“My dad thinks that after uni I’m coming straight back here to work on the farm with my uncles,” he says. “My mum hasn’t told him I’m applying to law programs. He’d be furious—he thinks I want to be just like him.”
“And you don’t?”
“He’s never left Ireland in his entire life! He has lived in the same house since he was born. I just . . .” He trails off and looks at me. “What’s your dad like?”
“Well, the truth is, my dad isn’t even my biological dad.”
“What do you mean? You were adopted?”
I start slowly. The only person who knows about this is Lena, but I feel so comfortable with Callum that I want him to know everything about me. “My parents got married when I was three. My mom got pregnant with me when she was in college, and she dropped out to take care of me. Then she met my dad.”
“But you still call him your dad?”
“Well, yeah. He’s my dad. He raised me. He legally adopted me when he married my mom, and he’s still my dad even though they got divorced.”
“But do you know who your real dad is?”
“My dad is my real dad. The other guy is like . . . I don’t know, like a sperm donor. My mom said if I wanted to get in contact with him when I was sixteen I could, but . . . I don’t know. I have a dad. I never really felt the need to meet some stranger who shares half of my DNA.”
We’re quiet for a few minutes, just holding hands, looking at the water. I feel Callum’s thumb trace up my palm and then back down. He turns to me, grinning.
“So, how weird was it that your dad married your math teacher?”
“So weird. But as bad as it was for me, I don’t think it can compare to how my mom reacted. She walked around the house like a zombie for a full month before the wedding. I swear, the only time she opened her mouth was to tell me to choose a more practical career than being an artist.”
“She doesn’t want you to be an artist? But you’re so good!”
“I mean, I kind of get it,” I say. “She’s had to take care of me since she was, like, twenty-two, and my grandpa is an artist and didn’t become successful until he was already old, so she was really on her own for most of it. And now that Dad left, she has to make sure I have everything, and it’s hard, y’know? I think she doesn’t want me to have to go through that. She wants me to always be able to take care of myself.”
Callum kisses me, soft, right on the lips, his mouth parted just enough to let through a hint of wetness. He’s close enough that I’m filled with his smell: peppermint toothpaste and wet ground and clay. He pulls away, just an inch, and I can feel his cheek soft against mine. “I have a feeling you’re always going to be able to take care of yourself, Picasso,” he says quietly, right into my ear.
I am weightless. Dizzy in the best possible way. Desperate to keep him this near to me forever, his voice always so close to my ear that it sends tingles through my brain, neuron to neuron, firing back and forth until I can’t think of anything except him, that smell, that taste.
Why can’t all of life be like this? I make a mental promise to try to paint something that’s able to capture this moment—when you open up to your crush and he opens up too, and then the two of you lie in the grass listening to the water, waiting for the moment when you can kiss each other again.