Painted Moon Part 3

"Where'd you grow up?" Jackie settled at the kitchen table and pulled her feet up onto the chair. She tucked the robe around them.

"Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Mennonite country."

"Amish?"

"Amish who use machinery. Cars only come in black in those parts and the chrome is painted black too. Can't be too gaudy." Leah smiled ruefully.

Jackie thought of Leah's thick tempera and semi-precious metal canvases that she'd seen pictured in art journals. "Your early work was an answer to that, wasn't it?"

Leah laughed. Jackie couldn't believe it - a genuine laugh. "Are you psychoa.n.a.lyzing me?"

"No, just guessing. After all, in Many-Splendored Black and Red, you painted over all except the edges of the silver with black. I'm just your average art student."

"And I know what garbage they teach at art school."

"My mother was appalled, too. She said that the curriculum has fallen off about twenty percent and the lack of teaching about non-Western Civilization arts is criminal."

"She's right. The more I know of your mother, the more I like her. Can I interest you in a dash of Kahlua in your cocoa?" Jackie nodded a yes. Leah poured the steaming cocoa into two mugs, doctored each from a small bottle of Kahlua, and brought them to the table.

"She's a good mother and still somehow very cool," Jackie said. She sipped her cocoa, the soothing chocolate warmth coating her throat. The Kahlua added a little burn and made her nose tingle. "It's hard to explain. She always knew when to be my mom, when to be an adult person I could proudly show off to friends, and when to be my friend. It was my dad's idea to name me after Jackson Pollack, though."

Leah's lips turned up with the closest thing to genuine amus.e.m.e.nt Jackie had seen so far. "Your parents sound like intriguing personalities."

"They are. My father is a wit and very charming. He taught me how to dance and walk a reception line without feeling like a robot. And if Mom hadn't been an artist she would have made a great therapist. As I get older I realize how hard both my parents worked to make a home for me that felt safe and secure, even in places where there was a lot of conflict."

"Were you ever in danger?"

Jackie shook her head. "Not that I knew. But when my dad was transferred to Egypt in the early eighties, I was sent to boarding school. I worried about them a lot, though. Particularly my mom. She didn't like to be cooped up in an emba.s.sy - she'd go off to the local markets to sketch or take language lessons. And she loves to cook with local foods."

"That explains a lot." Leah sat up in her chair with an intrigued look. "I wondered about the rhythm of her work. It's not strictly Western. And the shapes of the figures and choices of stone - it's because she got inside the different places she lived."

"She couldn't help it. Even in the U.S. she goes to flea markets, wherever people are buying and selling. She says that's where people are the most real."

"And that series called Wall Street. It was chilling. I literally s.h.i.+vered when I saw it."

Jackie sipped her cooling cocoa and smiled fondly. "Proof in point. She spent a week at the Stock Exchange. Have you seen her Weavers series?"

Leah shook her head. 'I haven't really been keeping up."

"She did three figures based on a textiles market. All female figures. The forms are somewhat indistinct, but their hands and the yarns are amazingly detailed. It's as warm as Wall Street was cold."

Leah looked pensive. "I suppose I should get out, but not... not right away. Um, listen. Is it okay if I sketch you in this light? It'll help with the detail on the other sketches-well, if I decide to take them to canvas."

Jackie blinked. "Sure. That's okay." She had been sketched a lot. Her mother liked to teach kids drawing and Jackie had often been called upon to be their live subject. Her mother insisted art was a universal language.

Leah returned with pencil and sketchpad. "Keep talking. You can move. Just keep the light on your face."

Jackie sipped her cocoa. The Kahlua had left her with a pleasant glow inside and a tendency to smile. Parker drifted to the dim recesses of her mind. "If the snow stays light do you think anyone will come for me tomorrow?"

Leah shrugged as her pencil scratched over the paper. "I'm going to guess probably not. They won't plow up here until after the highway's cleared, and they won't be starting that until tomorrow - if the snow breaks." She stopped talking to stare intently at her.

"Oh goodie." Jackie leaned back in the chair and crossed her ankles. It was unsettling to have Leah's piercing gaze focused on her. "That means I can play in the snow and have a real day off instead of making nice with relatives I haven't seen since I was a baby."

"Why'd you come up to see them? Turn a bit to the left."

"My mom made me." Jackie laughed. "I know, I'm a little big for that, but she's very good at guilt when she wants to be. My coming up here lets her off the hook for another ten years. They don't really get along. My mom's way too outrageous for them." Her other reason, time away from Parker, she kept to herself.

"I would have never said Jellica Frakes was outrageous. Cutting edge, yes."

"It all depends on your point of reference. To her family, she's leading a completely bizarre life. To most artists I suppose she seems conservative."

"Lift your chin." Leah was leaning closer, the pencil moving across the paper at light speed. "For my parents, guilt was a way of Ufe. Any form of aspiration, creativity or love that wasn't directed at salvation was a sin. No ifs, ands or buts. My father was an elder in the church."

"When did you leave home?"

"When I was eighteen. It was evident I had some artistic talent and they sent me to a Christian university near nowhere, New Mexico, to teach me how to be a nice, Christian artist. That's where I met Sharla."

Jackie decided there was something special about the way Leah said Sharla's name. It vibrated. The way Jellica vibrated when her father said it. "Love at first sight?"

Leah shook her head. "It took a while. But she was resourceful and determined. And she was determined never to go home again. Sharlotte Kinsey from Norman, Oklahoma. Can you imagine being from a place so off the beaten track that the main sight for miles is an oil field? Lancaster County is small but beautiful, full of life. The greens in the spring would actually hurt my eyes..." Leah's pencil paused for a moment and her eyes glazed. Then she shook her head and the pencil began moving again. "After a while she was determined that I would never go home either. So I didn't. Could you lean forward? Rest your elbows on the table."

"It must have been hard," Jackie said as she complied with Leah's request. Leah scooted her chair closer and scanned Jackie's brows and forehead. Jackie dropped her gaze, unable to stare back.

Leah was silent for a long time. She reached across the table, tracing the eraser end of her pencil along the laugh line that creased the left corner of Jackie's mouth. Jackie controlled a s.h.i.+ver. Leah's mouth had parted slightly and she felt as if Leah's gaze was burning her lips.

Leah sat back suddenly and made a last addition to her sketch. She flipped the pad closed. "No," she said softly. "It wasn't hard. She made everything easy. For thirteen years everything was very easy. Only the last few have been a b.i.t.c.h." Leah got up abruptly and took her mug to the sink. "I think I'll turn in. Are you sure you're warm enough?"

Jackie raised her mug in salute. She was devoutly grateful the sketching session was over. "I am now. Thanks. The Kahlua was nice." Truth be told, she was sweating slightly. She grabbed a toasty warm blanket from the clothesline and tucked herself into the sleeping bag. Leah clambered up the ladder out of sight. After a few minutes, all was quiet.

Except for the rapid beating of Jackie's heart.

5.

A feathery snow persisted until noon on Sat.u.r.day. Jackie tried to earn her keep by shoveling most of the huge drift against the garage door to one side. Butch kept her company. The weather report said that the snow would continue in higher elevations - what's higher than here, she wondered-through the day, but that the sun would be out tomorrow. Towards sunset she thought she heard the faint echo of a snowplow hard at work, but it sounded a mountain or two away.

Leah helped shovel for a while but at Jackie's urging went back to her sketches. She seemed grateful for the turkey sandwich Jackie forced on her in the early afternoon. Refres.h.i.+ngly worn out with physical labor, Jackie turned her attention to stripping the turkey carca.s.s and making soup stock, all the while not thinking about Parker. After that she made soup. And baking powder biscuits. The door to Leah's studio remained closed.

Long after sundown, Jackie finally knocked and carried in a steaming bowl of soup and some biscuits. Leah was dishevelled and drawn, and she murmured in a distracted way Jackie knew all too well from her mother's fits of artistic pa.s.sion. She stoked up the fire in the pellet stove that heated the studio and left again, not even sure Leah had noticed her.

An hour later Leah emerged, bringing her dirty dishes. She held out the bowl like an adult Oliver Twist. "May I have s'more, sir?"

Jackie looked up from her novel and nodded at the pot on the corner of the stove. "It's still hot. Biscuits are wrapped in the tea towel in the basket." She sat up and stretched her spine. The kitchen chairs weren't that comfortable, but the heat from the stove was too blissful to leave.

"I had no idea my kitchen could turn out something so tasty. And the biscuits are good."

"There were a number of spices shoved in the back of that cabinet." Jackie pointed. "Plus some things that had changed organic states. I tossed them into the composter."

Leah shrugged as she sat down at the table. "I hope Parker appreciates you." She dunked a piece of biscuit into her soup. "At this point, anyone else's cooking seems like manna to me, but even so, this is extra good."

"The key to a successful Thanksgiving is using everything up. You now have several gallons of turkey stock. Butch, by the way, tells me she likes warm turkey stock on her kibble when it's cold."

Leah made a derisive noise. "Yeah, right." Butch didn't even raise her head. She looked like a worn out, pleased dog. "I'll bet she said she should get turkey every day."

Jackie laughed. "She's not that greedy. Once a week would do."

Leah got up for a second biscuit. With her back turned she said, "You didn't say if Parker appreciated you. Does he appreciate your culinary prowess? Everything you do for him?"

Jackie was slow to answer. Honesty seemed important at that moment. "It's not perfect, but I care a lot about him. He doesn't talk about his feelings easily." With a start, she realized she wasn't sure he had feelings to talk about.

Leah was shaking her head as she sat down again. "Care? Caring is not worth wasting your time over. When you love someone, it invades every part of your life." She closed her eyes and idly stirred her soup. "It's not something you can describe, it just is. Every breath is a part of your love. There are no colors for it but it's every color, too."

"You're describing obsession."

Leah pushed the bowl away as though she'd lost her appet.i.te. "Who says where it goes over the line? Love is obsession. Every little thing about her is beautiful, even the little things you can't stand. You want to know her thoughts and how she spends her time away from you. And she shares them with you because she feels the same way. That's not obsession, not when she loves you back. Not when she's obsessed with you too."

Leah wasn't speaking to Jackie, she was speaking to the blank wall that bore the outline of a canvas. Jackie didn't agree with Leah's definition of love... it wasn't anything like what she felt for Parker.

"People don't want to admit to that kind of love. Because if you can feel it, you can feel pain, too. The kind of pain that cripples your spirit." Leah bit her lower lip. "If only..."

In the golden light of the kitchen lamps, Jackie could see the glimmer of tears reflected in Leah's eyes. With a part of her that had nothing to do with her eyes, Jackie could see the black aura hanging around Leah, a pall of sorrow and hopelessness. It sent a chill up her spine and dusted her arms with gooseflesh.

She didn't know why she pressed Leah for more. "If only?"

"If only I had checked the lines myself instead of leaving it to the rental crew. The weather report was good for sailing, but the wind blew up unexpectedly. If only I'd headed in then. If only I'd made sure she'd tied her life jacket on tight. The mast snapped," Leah said with half-gasp. "Like a toothpick. And we capsized. I saw her head hit the railing as she went over. I couldn't reach her. She just slipped away from me."

A tear spilled over and s.h.i.+mmered like a diamond on Leah's hollow cheek. "It was like watching a leaf wash down a flooded river. Her face, then her hair, then just her fingertips. Her life jacket slid off of her and then she was gone." On the last word, Leah ran out of breath. Jackie could see her fighting to breathe in. When she finally did, it was a long, racking sob that drew Jackie out of her chair to Leah's side.

Without hesitation, she pulled Leah into her arms, cradling her head against her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Leah pushed against her for a moment, then relented. From between them Jackie heard her say, "Her body washed up in San Pablo Bay two days later. Her family claimed it. They wouldn't let me go to the funeral. They took her body away and I never got to say goodbye."

"They shouldn't have kept you away," Jackie said. Leah's body was shuddering.

Leah pushed her away. "Where was their f.u.c.king Christian charity?" She gripped Jackie's arms with her powerful hands and stared up at her with eyes like hot irons. "If G.o.d is love and Jesus is their friend, then why wouldn't they tell me where the funeral was? Why wouldn't they tell me where she's buried?"

Jackie winced as Leah squeezed her arms. "I don't know, Leah. They were wrong."

Leah shoved her away and leapt up from her chair. She scrambled up the ladder to the loft without a backward glance, leaving Jackie to rub her bruised arms and stare up at the dark loft.

She had a lump in her throat. If something happened to Parker, would she feel that much anguish and grief? Two years or more later? No, she told herself. The answer was no. And she was a fool to continue thinking otherwise and to continue sacrificing for the sake of their relations.h.i.+p. She didn't feel for him or from him what her parents felt for each other. She didn't feel what Leah had obviously felt for Sharla.

That they were lesbians didn't trouble her. Both her parents had taught her that people's private lives were their own and it wasn't her place to judge them. She herself didn't have s.e.xual feelings about other women, but that didn't mean what they felt for each other was any less real. She understood it on an intellectual level. She turned away from that thought, though it troubled her somehow, and not intellectually. She did not want to think about Leah with Sharla.

As she poked listlessly at the fire in the living room stove, she dwelled on the subject of Parker. All her mother's pointed remarks to the contrary, it hadn't been until Leah had asked if Parker appreciated her that she'd realized what her mother had been trying to tell her. Parker didn't value her as much as she valued him. She hadn't quite realized how accommodating she had been to maintain their relations.h.i.+p.

The more she thought about the car the more it p.i.s.sed her off. Just because Parker made more by the hour didn't mean his leisure time was more valuable than hers. Why was she always the one to go to him? And because she did all the commuting, she'd hardly had a moment to explore San Francisco. Never driven up to the Muir Redwoods, for example, a mere 30 minutes away. Or driven through Wine Country in the summer, or down to Monterey in the fall-both were no more than three hours away from San Francisco.

She unbraided her hair and slowly brushed out the snarls, all the while asking herself what she got in return from Parker for her devotion, her sacrifice and her steadfastness. What did he give of himself for their relations.h.i.+p? Including gas, groceries, movie, dinner, tax and tip, every weekend she went to see him cost her almost half of her net pay for the week. It wasn't that she was putting a price on seeing him - oh h.e.l.l, maybe she was. It just seemed like it wasn't worth it. She got nothing in return.

She couldn't think of anything. Not one single thing. Just last weekend Marge, the nurse she'd been meeting up with in the Jacuzzi, had brought along an extra couple of cookies on the off-chance that Jackie would be there. Her kind gesture was more than Parker ever managed. He'd even stopped keeping her favorite soft drink in the house. If she wanted some she had to bring it - and pay for it - herself.

She drifted to sleep without intending to and woke some time later because she was freezing. The living room fire had gone out. Her fault - she hadn't been concentrating on stoking it up before she went to sleep.

She warmed herself next to the banked kitchen stove, but it wasn't enough, even wrapped in a blanket. And she couldn't sleep on the kitchen floor - it would leach all the heat out of her body.

She looked at the ladder to the loft and shuddered violently from the cold. Maybe Leah wouldn't Uke it, but she had to sleep up there. Leah had said it was a king, so she should be able to slip in without disturbing her.

She moved as quietly as possible up the ladder, no easy feat since she was s.h.i.+vering from head to toe. She heard the steady sound of Leah's breathing. The temperature was almost bearable when she reached the loft floor. Her eyes were adjusted enough to the dark to see that Leah was on the near side of the bed, so she carefully stepped around to the far side.

She saw the dim glow of an electric blanket light, so she stripped down to her T-s.h.i.+rt and panties, then slipped between the sheets. Leah's breathing remained steady and deep. The warmth eased her s.h.i.+vers almost immediately, spreading a sensual relaxation through her fingertips and toes. In minutes she was asleep.

Leah was having a beautiful dream and she hoped it wouldn't end soon. Under her hand was soft stomach. She moved slowly, trying to keep the spell. Fine ribs under her fingertips.

It had been so long since her fingertips had felt this alive.

She ran her fingers over the velvet skin and in her dream heard a soft sigh and the rustle of bedclothes. The body was closer to her now. She could stroke the smooth back.

It wasn't Sharla's back. That's what she would have expected in a dream, but this back felt different. I still love you, my darling. But she would give herself this dream because it felt good.

Her own body felt ripe and heavy as she caressed the dream woman. She felt a little dizzy because her fingertips were sending her such vivid, tactile sensations. She moved closer very slowly, afraid of waking herself. Finally from out of a tousle of hair - too much hair to be Sharla - she could see a sensuous column of throat. She moved the silky brown strands aside and pressed her lips to the pulse.

The fire in her limbs leapt to full height. She kissed the throat, then the shoulders, again and again and knew she would wake herself, but she couldn't stop as her need burned stronger with each kiss.

Then the dream woman sighed - a soft oh and a deep breath. She moved into Leah's arms and Leah couldn't restrain herself. Her hands caressed the melting b.r.e.a.s.t.s, then she took one in her mouth. The dream woman quivered in her arms and her back arched, offering.

They moaned together.

Leah jerked herself away just as Jackie went rigid and gasped, "No."

"I'm sorry," Leah gasped back. In the dim light she could see Jackie frantically pulling her T-s.h.i.+rt down, yanking the covers up over her shoulders, putting barriers up between them. Leah said more calmly, "I didn't know what I was doing. I thought you were a dream."

Jackie said, "It's okay. I understand. I should have stayed downstairs, but the fire went out. I'm sorry. I didn't mean-"

"Of course not. I didn't either -"

"I was surprised, that's all-"

"It's okay. I started it. I thought you were Sharla. I was dreaming." That was a lie, Leah knew.

Jackie said again, "It's okay. I was just surprised."

And you were enjoying it, Leah thought. Until you were fully aware it was me, you were responding. Oh lay off it. She told herself crossly that even if deep down they were all s.e.xual animals it didn't mean that Jackie was on the verge of becoming a lesbian. She was probably dreaming about her boyfriend and one pair of hands is much like another. Sooner or later she would miss that all-important thing men've got.

"I promise to stay on my side," she said aloud. "I didn't know you were there. There won't be any repeats."