The Singing Trees by Boo Walker

Chapter 20

THE CONTOURS OF A NAKED MAN

On the same day her art lessons with Sharon Maxwell began, Annalisa started her new job. She was nervous when she rode the escalator down to the basement. Though it wasn’t as glitzy as upstairs, and it smelled like mothballs, the Bargain Bin was lined with racks of incredible clothes that she could buy at a very nice discount—once she was more financially stable, of course. The order of priorities might be art classes and supplies, a few bargain outfits at work, and then eating. Most of the clothes were a season or more out of style, but just like her mom, she could always pull out her Singer for some alterations to make something current.

Greta, Barbara, and Catherine welcomed her to the team, and they spent a few minutes prodding her with questions before returning to their tasks. Greta was the manager and showed her how to work the cash register and fold clothes to company standards and all the other details of her new gig. Between instructions, Greta mentioned that her husband had enlisted and was currently in Vietnam. Considering both Annalisa’s cousin and Thomas were on a similar path, Annalisa could empathize, and the two instantly hit it off. Annalisa caught herself asking Greta what she knew about the training process for a soldier on the way to Vietnam, as she often wondered what Thomas’s (and her cousin Michael’s) life was like now.

After her shift, she decided to swing back upstairs to see if she could get a moment with the manager of the Advertising Department. Before she even passed through men’s shoes, Ted Miller came duck-footing from out of nowhere. “What are you doing here?”

She wondered if he was constantly on patrol. “I’m sorry, Mr. Miller. I was on my way home and hoped to speak with Patty.” Annalisa felt like a cat burglar who’d been busted creeping toward a diamond.

He shoved his hands into the pockets of his khaki pants. “What would this be in regards to?”

“I want her to know I’m interested should a job become available.”

“Oh God,” Mr. Miller said, extracting his hands from his pockets. He punched a fist into his palm. “Let’s not start daydreaming. Frankly, I’d prefer you stay in the basement, where you belong.”

Annalisa wanted to snap at him but couldn’t possibly risk losing her job. “Yes, sir, Mr. Miller.” She turned and felt so damn small as she went back down the escalator and out the revolving doors.

Nearly a year after she sat to show her portfolio to Jackie Burton at her gallery, Annalisa found herself sitting across from Sharon Maxwell with the exact same feelings of excitement and fear, as if the keys to the universe hid in the woman’s pocket.

Sharon had asked her to arrive a few minutes early so that she could take a look through Annalisa’s portfolio. They were in Sharon’s studio in the back of the warehouse where the two had first met, both facing a long wooden table covered with Annalisa’s favorite pieces. On the walls and multiple easels were the many works Sharon had in progress, and the aftermath of her work was splattered in a rainbow of colors on the concrete floor. She had enough art supplies in that room to equip a small army of painters, and Annalisa thought she could only dream of such a studio.

Annalisa had included a couple of the pieces that she’d shown Jackie, including the one of Annalisa standing over her mother’s casket, but she’d mostly included works she’d done during her senior year.

Incense burned and the Grateful Dead played in the background, filling the studio with a very easy vibe. Sharon was Annalisa’s first true hippie experience, and Annalisa was intrigued in the way one might follow a butterfly through a field. Sharon was dressed as wildly as she’d been at her show, bright fabric with rings on almost every finger and large, dangly earrings. She’d been so kind in receiving Annalisa a moment ago, her silver eyes incredibly inviting, but now she—and the moment—were about as intimidating as any experience Annalisa had ever known.

Annalisa studied the paintings along with Sharon, all of people dealing with the struggles of the modern day. Never had she worked so hard as this past year, and she was sure she’d gotten better, but Annalisa’s opinion didn’t matter now. Sharon was the critic, and her opinion was gold. The more Annalisa had heard and read about Sharon Maxwell, the more impressed Annalisa was of the woman’s talent, and the more sure Annalisa was that she’d found the right teacher.

As a man with a gruff, bluesy voice sang, “Turn On Your Love Light,” Sharon finally took a step back to formulate her words. “You have an incredible gift.”

Her words hit Annalisa’s ears like the breath of God. By now, enough people had told her that she was good to know it was true, but to hear Sharon tell her that she had a gift was validation she could trust. She was in the big city now, and Sharon was the real thing. All she had to do was agree to let Annalisa show some of her pieces at next April’s art show, and Annalisa would skyrocket to stardom.

Annalisa held her breath as her new teacher meandered down the line of ten paintings, touching the edges, breathing them in. “There’s something missing, though.”

Wham, there it was. Annalisa could already hear the rest, that she was gifted but not quite there yet. Still searching. As much as she’d gotten used to rejection during her job search, her heart sank.

“Now, now, don’t get down,” Sharon said, reading Annalisa’s mind. “You really are good, but I’m not feeling you in these paintings. I’m not seeing a connection between you and your subjects.”

So much for getting into the show in April. Couldn’t it have been that easy? Wasn’t there such a thing as a break? It’s not like she hadn’t worked her tail off to get to this moment. How many paintings had she done since she was two years old? Hundreds, thousands!

Not connecting with her subjects? That had been her main focus in the last year, diving into the feelings of everyone living through these wild times. She looked at her ten pieces: a soldier in the jungle, a protester pumping an antiwar sign in the air, Nixon getting his head shaved, a nude woman looking in the mirror. How could she ever connect if she hadn’t done it by now? How could Sharon see it anyway? Was she some sort of mystic?

Sharon pointed at the one of Annalisa placing her hand on her mother’s casket. “Except for this one. This is you, isn’t it?”

Annalisa remembered Jackie pointing out that painting, saying close to the same thing. “How’d you know?” Annalisa asked.

Sharon jabbed her finger down hard onto the table next to the painting, her bracelets jiggling like musical beads. “Because this painting is incredibly rich with life. I can feel this young girl.” Sharon wiped her eyes. “You’re putting tears in my eyes with your brush. This is who you need to find with the rest of your paintings.”

Annalisa felt so frustrated. “But she’s easy to connect with. She’s me.”

Sharon faced her. “Let me ask you this. Why do you think Sophia Loren is so wonderful on screen?”

A shrug. “I don’t know.”

“Because she becomes her character. That’s all you have to do, Annalisa. Become your subject. Understand exactly what it’s like to be in their skin. Look at this protester. Have you really thought about his life? Sure, he’s angry at the war; that’s easy. What’s he going home to after the protest? Who does he love? Or does he love at all?”

“I hadn’t quite gone that far.”

“You’re eighteen, Annalisa. Don’t beat yourself up.” She paused. “I want you to do something with me.” Sharon stretched her arms out in a star shape and drew in a long breath. The Grateful Dead still played in the background, and they were into a musical jam that Sharon’s movements seemed tuned in to. “Let’s go.”

Annalisa looked at her like she was crazy.

“What’s wrong?” Sharon dropped her hands and put them on her waist.

“I feel silly.”

“Who cares?” She looked across the giant space of the warehouse. “No one is even here yet. What are you worried about? Now, c’mon.”

Sharon closed her eyes and opened up into a star, as if nothing could hold her back. “Turn on your love light,” she said, repeating the singer from the record filling the room with sound.

With a burning face, Annalisa mimicked her. She couldn’t believe she was doing this.

“Now, breathe,” Sharon said. “Take it all in. Take in the atoms that make up all of us. Connect with me and with this music and with all the other souls out there fighting their own battles. Don’t open your eyes; just let go. Let your love light shine.”

Annalisa felt like a fool as she sucked in air. Her eyes were closed, and she was thinking that Sharon might be a bit too much when she felt the woman’s hands touch her elbows, urging her to raise her arms higher.

The touch startled her so badly that she gasped, and she jerked her arms back down as her entire body tightened. The music turned to noise and made her even more uneasy. She was so ashamed as she looked Sharon’s way, but the teacher wore a smile, as if nothing were wrong.

“Come here,” she whispered. “Take my hands.”

Annalisa felt afraid, but that was absurd. This woman holding her hands out was so utterly warm and kind.

Sharon gestured again with her fingers until Annalisa finally took Sharon’s hands. They stood three feet apart, but Annalisa felt like they were inches away. She wanted to recoil or turn or . . . she had to close her eyes.

“Look at me,” Sharon said.

Annalisa opened her eyes as if there were an openmouthed snake with fangs waiting. It wasn’t a snake, though. It was Sharon’s silver eyes.

“Annalisa, you can’t connect with your subjects on canvas without connecting with people in the real world.”

As if someone had just ripped off her dress, exposing who she really was, Annalisa’s eyes watered. “I . . . I . . .” She’d asked for this in moving to the city, but she wasn’t sure she could handle it. She dropped her head without getting out a word.

Then Sharon took her into a hug, and all Annalisa’s troubles went away. She had never felt so safe and secure.

Annalisa felt like she’d crossed the finish line of a marathon as she took her seat on the opposite side of the warehouse, where Sharon had set up twenty chairs and easels in a horseshoe around a stage. A man in a robe sat in a chair in the center of the stage, speaking with Sharon.

Knowing the man was nude underneath that robe, Annalisa was nearly frozen with nerves. After what she’d just been through, she now had to paint her first naked man? Had she not already committed with so much money, she might have run out of there. It was too much after what Sharon had done to her. She was all about becoming better, but this was not what she’d expected on her first day with Sharon Maxwell. What happened to learning to clean your brushes or a lesson on how to thin acrylics with water?

The man looked like a Roman god, and Annalisa could only imagine what he held under his green robe. Judging by what she could see, his broad shoulders and muscular legs, he was in superb shape and well toned. The artist in her was eager to study his contours, but the girl inside wrestled with a mild form of shock. He would be the first man she’d ever seen completely bare. Oh my God, why was she so embarrassed? She was young, yes, as Sharon had said, but not that young. She’d painted plenty of nude men from paintings. Still, the real thing before her was enough to make her squirm.

She looked to the other students in her class, a mix of all ages. Some chatted, some doodled on their sketch pads, and others looked toward the stage as if they couldn’t wait for the big reveal. Annalisa felt like she was certainly the most nervous of all of them.

Sharon eventually clapped her hands and commanded instant attention. Her voice echoed off the brick walls as she spoke. “My job in the coming weeks and months is to make you better painters, whatever that means to you. We’re all different, and we all have our obstacles. My hope is that we’re going to break down every one of your walls. Some of you will quit, and that’s the way the world works. I am going to tell you all how it is, and I’m going to push, and it won’t be easy. You are all wonderful artists—that’s why you’re here—but you can all be better. Even I can be better. My promise to you is that I’ll give you my all, and I want the same of you.”

After talking details about what to expect, she turned to the model and asked him to disrobe. Annalisa couldn’t believe this was happening, and by the time he’d dropped his robe off the stage and taken his pose, her jaw had hit China—or whatever was on the other side of the globe. The model was much more well endowed than the statue of David she’d painted at some point last year. He was lean with hardened ab muscles and tufts of brown hair about his . . . above his . . . below his belly button and across his chest.

Like a baby clawing for her pacifier, she reached for her charcoal pencil and opened up her sketchbook. She noticed some people reached straight for their paints. Sharon had suggested they follow whatever routine made them comfortable.

The model almost directly faced Annalisa, who now wished she’d chosen a position on the periphery of the horseshoe. Wouldn’t Emma get a kick out of this? she thought, remembering the first day Emma had come to the Mills.

She avoided his midsection like the plague as she first outlined his body and then went to work on the curvature of his lower legs, shading in the darker tones and imagining the colors she might use once she took to the paper on the easel.

Thirty minutes must have passed as everyone silently worked. Annalisa had relaxed some, having gotten used to the naked man standing before her. She’d convinced herself he was simply flesh like herself. She’d moved to the easel now and was toying with skin-tone colors when Sharon, who’d been visiting with each of them, peeking at their work, interrupted the class.

“Annalisa and I were speaking about connecting with our subjects, and I think it’s a common obstacle among you. So I’d like to do something I’ve not done before.”

Annalisa couldn’t imagine what this wild woman might suggest, and she felt her shoulders turn back to stones.

Sharon smiled, as if this were all a game. “I want you to paint the model.”

The students looked around at each other in confusion. One of the older ladies said, “We are painting him.”

“No,” Sharon said, clearly enjoying herself, “I want you to take your paints up to the stage and paint him. Physically touch him with your brushes.”

A collection of gasps rose up in the warehouse air.

“Wait, what?” that same woman said.

Annalisa’s heart raced as she glanced at the model. He wore a smirk, clearly privy to this surprising turn of the lesson plan.

“Let’s go,” Sharon said again with a clap that seemed to be her calling card.

“Are you suggesting we paint all of him?” a guy Annalisa’s age asked.

Sharon looked at him and then at the model. “I expect you all to work together to make Damon into a masterpiece. And we’re not done till every last bit of skin is covered with acrylic. Now, let’s go.” Then she added, “Annalisa, no big flat brushes for you. I want you to use your smallest round tip.”

Annalisa looked around as if someone were playing a joke and an audience was about to come running through the doors charged with laughter.

“Let’s go,” Sharon demanded. “I’m sure we all have parts we’d like to put our bristles on. We don’t have all night.”

What in the hell had she gotten herself into? Payton Mills felt a million miles away from this warehouse and this woman.

A few things were for sure: Annalisa had never had a teacher like Sharon Maxwell, and even if she hadn’t learned anything as far as art was concerned during her first class, she could certainly say she’d never laughed so much in her entire life. The model had played his role with dignity, and by the end of the lesson, everyone in the class had come together, as if there were no strangers in the room.

When Annalisa returned home that night, she made a simple pasta with butter and parmesan and sat on the couch to call Emma Barnes. Because of her breakup with Thomas, she’d chosen to distance herself from his sister, despite wishing she could help. It had taken a while, but Annalisa finally dared to reach out, and with the story of the nude model, she had a good reason.

When Mrs. Barnes picked up, the two caught up with some forced surface chatter before Annalisa asked for Emma. Mrs. Barnes stalled with several long ums and ohs before finally saying, “I don’t think she’s ready yet.”

Annalisa shook her head in frustration. “I understand. Well . . . please tell her that I’d love to talk sometime if she feels like it.”

“That’s very nice of you, and I will. You’re getting along fine, Annalisa?”

“Yes, I am, thank you. How’s Thomas, by the way?” They’d been avoiding the subject. “Any word?”

Mrs. Barnes said, “He’s written once to say that he doesn’t like push-ups and that the army makes even me a great cook.”

Annalisa cracked a grin, thinking only Thomas would say such a thing to his mother and get away with it. “I never got his address at Fort Dix. Do you have it handy by chance?”

A long pause.

She shouldn’t have asked. Mrs. Barnes was no more a fan of Annalisa than Mr. Barnes, apparently, especially now that Annalisa was no longer a part of his future.

“I promised him I’d write,” Annalisa said.

Another pause. “One minute, let me see if I can find it.”

Once Mrs. Barnes gave the address and details to reach him, Annalisa hurried off the phone. She reached for a pencil and paper and wrote Thomas the note she’d promised him. She didn’t have much to say, so she simply told him in brief about finally finding an apartment and that it was above a clock shop that sang at noon and midnight. Then she asked him if he was having fun at summer camp and if he’d gotten to build a fort and shoot things with his little camp buddies. At the last minute, before she folded the piece of paper, she considered mentioning that she’d wrecked his car. Then again, she decided, some things were better left unsaid.