Rendering

Short shots- February

Rendering

The once charming cottage had been vacant for many years. Caved-in front steps no longer welcomed. Empty windows with broken shades were lazy lidded eyes as if hiding some secret. It was tucked away from the road down a dirt two-track. The yard was an overgrown tangle of weeds and thistles, the pond out back choked with rotten logs and green with algae.

***~***

Emily arrived with two plaid suitcases on the afternoon train. She picked the tiny town on a whim. When she had boarded the old train in Salem, Massachusetts almost twenty hours previously, she’d no set destination in mind. Yet approaching the out-of-the-way small village, she decided she’d arrived wherever it was she was heading. Standing on the platform, looking at the old-fashioned town with only one street light, Emily felt as if she’d stepped back in time. Emily had no notion that the last time a train had stopped at the dilapidated depot had been fifty years ago. She never noticed the stares from the town’s people who couldn’t begin to imagine why the train had actually stopped there that day.

She wandered along the Main Street shops, looking in windows. She stopped before a storefront with a hanging sign that said ‘Properties for Sale,’ put down her two bags, turned the brass door knob and stepped into a dusty office with an old roll top desk and said, “Good Afternoon.”

While Emily was walking up to his storefront, he’d been gazing absentmindedly out his front window and watched the young woman come down the street. She was a slim, waif-ish looking woman with a sleek cap of black walnut hair cupped around an elfin face. She had mossy green eyes and a small mouth that bowed upwards in delight as she looked around. Definitely a stranger, he thought. But she seemed, he paused mid-thought, special.

Mortimer was paunchy, edging past his fifties, bald and perspiring even though the day was cool. He pushed his reading glasses up on his forehead, swiped his damp palm across his wrinkled grey slacks and shook the small, cool hand she held out to him.

“I am Mortimer Babcock,” he stopped, cleared his throat, “May I help you, miss?”

“I’d like to buy a little farmhouse or cottage, that is, if you have any available,” she said in a soft voice with a hint of Scotland around the edges.

“You lookin’ to move here, then?” he asked, taking in the excellent cut of her red wool coat, the straight little back and the firmly lifted chin.

“I might be,” she answered. “Perhaps an out of the way place, maybe with a pond and a flower garden. I don’t need a big house as it is just me. I’m Emily White.”

“You take a job here ‘bouts?” he asked ruffling through the papers on the unorganized desk.

“I am an artist. I paint,” she paused, “…things. Pictures, mostly. I have another showing in New York in a few months. Do you have any homes available?”

Hastily clearing off the over-piled chair next to his desk, he gestured to her to have a seat, and then lowered his bulk into the creaky wooden desk chair. He looked down briefly, and then shook his head. His chair felt different. He shrugged and reached for a slim notebook. Sliding his glasses down so that they perched on his bulbous nose, he opened the book.

“We have several excellent properties, here in town, that are in move-in condition. One is just off Main Street and the other…”

Emily gently interrupted him. “Mr. Babcock, I really should prefer something a bit farther out of town, off the beaten path.”

“Oh. Well, I really don’t know. There’s the Hampton place, but, no, it burned in a fire last month. Oh wait. Maybe Old Mrs. Grady’s place... No, it simply wouldn’t do.” He looked over at her, peering myopically over the top rim of the glasses, and helplessly shrugged. It gave him something of an owlish appearance.

“And, why shouldn’t it, Mr. Babcock?”

“Well, it has been empty for years, it needs major work and the yard is all unkempt. Hmmm, it does have a bit of a pond though and it comes furnished, after a fashion, if you don’t mind if it is old.”

“You’d be amazed at how handy I am,” she smiled. “Work doesn’t bother me. I enjoy it. Maybe it just needs to feel lived in again. Will you take me to see it?”

“I suppose I can. The price is good and it is a nice piece of property just that it’s…”

“I don’t recall asking a price, Mr. Babcock. Shall we go?”

Two hours later, Mr. Babcock drove back down the rutted and pot-holed drive with a check in his wallet for the entire price of the house. He shook his head. I’d better get this in the bank, pronto, he mused. Funny, he wasn’t worried about it clearing, not in the least. Two days later, when he checked in at the bank, he found out that it, indeed, had cleared, that Miss White had opened an account and that Mrs. Beany, the teller, was in a better mood than he’d seen her in in years. She actually smiled at him!

Emily wandered through the house, letting her fingers slide over the newly polished breakfront in the dining room and smiling at the kitchen with its red and white cabinets. She wandered upstairs. She looked first into her room, bed neatly made with the antique quilt done in squares of blue and yellow she’d found in a closet. She walked into the other bedroom with the wide, crystal clean windows she’d decided would make a great studio.

Gathering up her art supplies, she decided today might be a good day to paint outside. Putting paint, brushes and a canvas into her over-sized bag, she went back downstairs, passing by a new painting she’d already done; a still life of a bowl of apples on a round drum table with a pretty view of the kitchen beyond.

Outside, she settled herself on a slight rise overlooking a front garden and looking back towards the house. Her mind’s eye could see where once hollyhocks and bramble roses had crawled along the railing by the front porch and where tulips and daffodils had been sprinkled out towards the edge of the birch trees. Black window boxes had overflowed with petunias and ivy under multi-paned windows with bright red shutters. Wasn't there once an old wooden bench under that tree where one could sit and ponder?

Saturday morning, Sarah Peabody straightened the pretty picture that Miss Emily had dropped by the library on one of her weekly jaunts in for more books. She could remember the Grady place looking exactly the way Miss Emily had painted it. Must have seen an old picture of it somewhere, she mused. Sarah walked upstairs to put away some books. Funny, thought Sarah, these stairs don’t bother me quite as much as they used to. Checking her watch, she put the books in their proper places. Miss Emily will be here soon,she thought, looking at another of Miss Emily’s paintings, ‘The Librarian,’ painted of Sarah, seated in the old rocking chair near the fireplace reading a Christmas story to the local children.

Trust Emily to make her look so young, as if ten years had vanished, but then Emily had a way about her that just seemed to make you feel good about anything and everything. Regular as clock-work she was, never a day late with her books and always a kind word for everybody. Oh, she must remember to mention to Miss Emily about the gentleman who had stopped in asking about her. Sarah frowned. She hadn’t thought much of the way the man had high-handedly asked about her. Didn’t much like his looks, either.

“Well, he was about five foot eight or nine, just about a head taller than you are, blue eyes and had shaggy brownish hair.” responded Sarah to Emily’s question about what the man had looked like. “Reminded me of a used car salesman, but sneakier somehow. Do you know who he is? Seems like someone to be real careful of.”

Emily smiled and said, “Oh, I can take care of myself, Mrs. Peabody. His name is Walter. I don’t expect he will be around here for too long. Did you hear about the garden party I’m giving next week? I do hope you’ll come. Some of the ladies in town have been asking about my pictures, so I’ll be having a small showing. And we will all have lemonade and cookies, of course.”

Changing the subject, she continued. “Have you seen dear Mr. Mortimer lately? Don’t you think he is looking like he’s lost some weight? I saw him hanging around the bank the other day. I think he’s sweet on Mrs. Beany, and truth be told, I think she’s sweet on him as well!”

“Her husband’s been gone, oh, four or five years now,” responded Sarah, happy to move on to a much more interesting subject. “Did you know that Mortimer was sweet on her way back when they were in school? I remember how he asked her to the Spring Dance one year. I always thought they might end up together, but then she went away to college and ended up with Bobby Beany instead.

" I’ll see you next week at your party," Sarah continued. "I can’t wait to see more of your work. I just might walk out there. Seems these old bones of mine are liking long walks these days.”

Two days before the garden party, Emily sat out by her pond putting the finishing touches on her latest painting. She’d painted the pond. She’d painted it with its overhanging willows, the long wispy green branches just kissing the still water, the scattering of lily pads in bloom and a big fat frog perched just at the end of a large log that was half submerged. She’d captured the serenity of the pond adequately, she thought. She’d added in large, over-sized ‘Earth Angel’ hosta plants, and a small stone wall that just begged sitting on. She sat there, a half-smile gracing her face, thoughtfully tapping the end of her paintbrush on her bottom teeth. Yes. This painting was finished. She signed her name near the bottom, letting the letters follow a curve of one of the large leaves. She rarely painted herself into one of her paintings, but this time, it just felt right.

Gathering up her paints and closing them and her brushes into her paint box, she picked up the canvas and walked slowly down the shady path to the back door. Flowers bloomed in a colorful riot along the stone edged walkway and curled around the base of the birdbath. Bright flashes of robin or cardinal settled on bird feeder or wind chime bedecked branch. She climbed the freshly painted steps to the back porch and elbow-opened the screen door.

Up in her office, she leaned the canvas against the wall, scratched the ears of the calico cat that was just waking from its nap on the window seat and went downstairs. The cat jumped down and walked over to the canvas sniffing at it, her head tilted to the side. The cat hissed.

The garden party was a huge success. Not that anyone doubted it would be because Miss Emily just had that way about her. Her paintings were a big success and she sold several of them that afternoon. She’d demurred at a handsome offer for her painting of the pond, which she’d entitled, ‘Artist Rendering.’ It was not one she’d ever sell. She bent over, closer to the painting and lightly tapped one pink fingernail just below where the log entered the water. Only if one looked very closely would they ever notice the faint outline of a shaggy head blended into the shadows.


1998 words