The Singing Trees by Boo Walker
Chapter 22
A SPEED SKETCH
Annalisa found Thomas’s response on her way back from work two weeks later, and she dashed up the stairs with Christmas glee, eager to read the letter. It was a Wednesday just after three, and she’d been thinking about her most recent class with Sharon on the walk home. She’d decided she wasn’t quite ready to tell her teacher about her breakthrough with regard to painting these powerful women and wanted to play with the idea more.
Kicking off her shoes, Annalisa settled into the couch to read.
If you knew only how happy it made me to open your letter and find your drawing. Can we call that tree by the phone booth the Leaning Tower of Treeza? How clever he could be, she thought, as she read the rest of his letter. Yes, he said, we heard about Jimi. Terrible. And Janis Joplin too. I’m sure you saw the Wichita State U plane went down. Tell me some good news, Anna. He said that it should be a crime for Louisiana to be so hot in October, that he felt like he already had one foot in the jungles of Asia. Then he asked her for a drawing of one of these women she had written about, wanting to see the style she was going after. He always asked her about her art and was unwavering with his support, which filled her up but also made her question her decision to leave him.
Thinking of Emma, she wondered if she was doing any better, if maybe she’d found some happy moments in the sunshine of summer. Annalisa wished there were something she could do, but Emma had shown she had no interest in continuing their relationship.
She sketched an idea of what she’d been doing and then accompanied it with her response. The good news is that Nixon is finally pulling soldiers out. She’d become an avid watcher of the news since she had such a vested interest now in the outcome. The day before, Nixon had promised to pull forty thousand troops out of Vietnam by Christmas. She felt so hopeful for Michael and for Thomas and for the other soldiers. Is there talk of the war coming to an end? When do you think you’d have to ship out? I pray every day that you won’t have to. She asked him about Emma and if he was still able to keep up with sports and if he was happy at all. She wanted to cheer him up and make more jokes about summer camp and building forts with his pals, but the closer he came to his tour, the less humor she could find.
She’d done this to him. What was funny about that?
As she licked the glue of the envelope, she thought of their last kiss, during one of his driving lessons, and that led her to thinking about backing into Walt’s car. She ultimately decided not to tell him about the accident, as she didn’t want to give him anything else to worry about. His car was as good as new now, so maybe it was a forgivable white lie.
About five o’clock, Annalisa went down the stairs and around the corner to the shop to see if she’d had any success today. “Did we sell any, Walt?” she called out as she entered.
He was on one knee polishing the glass of his watch counter. “About an hour ago,” he said. “That one with the money spilling out of the purse.”
“Really?” Her heart fluttered. That made six paintings at a total of five dollars each. She went to the wall he was letting her use and proudly saw that only five were left.
He grimaced as he stood, then cleared his throat. “Keep this up and your efforts will pay the rent.”
“Wouldn’t that be something?” she called out. Returning to his side of the shop, she reached for the rag. “Let me help. You’re gonna hurt yourself.”
“Oh heavens,” he said, as if she’d insulted him. “I’ve been cleaning glass around here for forty years. I think I can manage on my own.”
“Nonsense.” She snatched the rag from his hands and retrieved the glass cleaner from the counter. “So can I bring down more paintings?”
“Might as well.” He watched her with his hands on his waist, as if he were skeptical of her ability. She’d show him. You didn’t spend three years with her grandmother without coming away knowing how to polish glass.
She moved to the next section. “Tell me something, Walt. Why don’t you ever talk about yourself? We’ve known each other since June, and I still don’t know the first thing.”
“What’s there to know?”
She wanted to ask about his wife but didn’t want to get into more trouble. “Where are you from? What brought you to Portland, Maine? How does one get into repairing timepieces?”
He pointed to a spot she missed—or at least he thought she did. “You must be terribly bored to want to polish glass and ask me questions.”
“I’m curious; that’s all.”
As she polished the case that featured an incredibly stunning collection of wrist and pocket watches, he opened up. “I was always taking things apart—often to my parents’ dismay. The watchmaker next door to my father’s butcher shop in Manhattan took me in and encouraged my curiosity. I worked for him into my thirties, long after my parents passed.”
She glanced back and saw Walt relishing in these memories, even as he coughed into his white handkerchief.
“Then a woman named Gertrude walked through the door,” he continued, “and I was smitten immediately. I suppose we both were, and it was the Roaring Twenties, you see. Oh, you missed those years, Annalisa. The war was over, and New York was the place to be. I pranced her around like I was the king of Manhattan . . .”
Walt stopped and paused, and Annalisa knew he could see through the years back to one of those moments with Gertrude. “Then the Depression came and I lost my job. Gertrude’s father owned a shipping company in Portland and offered help if we moved north, so that’s what we—”
The bell above the door rang, and they turned.
“Oh good, you’re still open,” a lady said, searching the room, finally setting her gaze on Annalisa. “I’m looking for a gift for my husband. He’s turning sixty tomorrow, and I’ve put it off to the last minute.”
Annalisa had fallen into Walt’s story with him but was ripped right out of the dream when she saw that it was Patty Garner, the manager of the Advertising Department at Pride’s, the woman for whom she’d originally wanted to work. Patty was the hero of every woman in that store, a female who’d somehow shown enough force to climb her way to the top. She was Portland’s own Dorothy Shaver, who had risen to the top of Lord & Taylor, arguably the finest department store chain in the country. Annalisa had painted Shaver a week earlier, so she was heavy on her mind.
Patty must have been in her fifties and had thick, wavy hair. Her gray-and-white checkered wool dress was conservative but stylish. Annalisa imagined she took long baths in her claw-foot tub after work and then drank dirty martinis with her obedient husband. No doubt she wore the pants in her marriage. A substantial diamond that was even bigger than that of Thomas’s mother weighed down Patty’s finger.
“I actually don’t work here,” Annalisa said, pulling her eyes away from the diamond.
Walt stepped forward. “Oh, I have just the thing for your husband. Are you thinking a watch or a clock? What would he enjoy? I’ve some new Omegas and IWCs.”
Annalisa stepped aside, thinking she had to say something to Patty before the woman left. With Mr. Miller always lurking around, she’d never get a chance at work. She went to the other side of the shop and looked at the paintings left on the wall. Only one of them was recent, since her breakthrough. Deciding the time was now, she raced out of the shop and ran up the steps.
Finding her favorite pieces of late, including the one of Dorothy Shaver, she crammed them into her orange tote and dashed back down the stairs. Walt had put several watches on the counter that Annalisa had just polished, and Patty was inspecting them, one at a time.
Annalisa wanted so badly to interrupt, but she didn’t want to get in the way of a sale for Walt. He’d been letting Annalisa use his workshop to mount her pieces onto wood, so she stepped back behind the cash register and pretended to be busy. She was anything but busy, though. Her mind exploded with excitement at the chance of finally asking for a job.
Once Walt had made his sale and flung the cash register drawer closed, Annalisa came from the back and said to Patty, “Excuse me, Mrs. Garner? I have to say something. My name’s Annalisa, and I work in the Bargain Bin. We’ve never met, but I know exactly who you are. Actually, I applied for the fashion illustrator job that was open this summer.”
“Oh, I see,” Patty said, holding the bag with her husband’s new Patek Philippe watch. “So you’re an artist? And call me Patty, please.”
“I paint mostly but have been drawing all my life. I’m very comfortable with pen and ink.” She knew the fashion illustrators all used pen and ink.
Annalisa feared Patty was a second away from asking her age and then inquiring about a degree. Instead, she said, “Interesting.”
Reaching for her tote, Annalisa said, “I just so happen to have some of my work.” She unclasped the button and pulled out the three top pieces and set them on the counter. Each one featured one of Annalisa’s signature women, and she felt like Patty could have easily been one of them.
Patty looked them over. “I love these ladies,” she finally said. When she reached the one of Dorothy Shaver, a copy of an old photograph with Dorothy resting her chin on her knuckles, she said, “Look at her. You know she’s my idol, right?”
“Isn’t she everyone’s?” Annalisa asked.
Patty looked at Dorothy and then back to Annalisa. “My kind of girl. Why don’t you come by the office in the morning, say, eight on the nose? We can discuss.”
Annalisa had to keep from thrusting her right arm into the air as she said, “Yes, that would be wonderful.”
“I would be so proud to work up here,” Annalisa told Patty at 8:00 a.m. sharp the next morning. “No one will work harder.”
“I’m starting to believe that about you,” Patty said from the chair behind her desk. “Tell you what. Why don’t you sketch out one of those dresses for me?”
Annalisa turned to the three dresses with busy patterns hanging by the wall. “Right now?”
“Why not?” Patty slid a legal pad and pen her way. “I’ll be back in five minutes, and I want to see one of the women from your paintings adorned with your favorite of the dresses.”
Before Annalisa could say another word, Patty was gone. In the quiet, she spun her chair around and went to work. Though her nerves tried to hold her back, she pushed through them and settled into her art. When Patty returned, Annalisa handed her the pad. Feeling like she’d been in this situation before, Annalisa crossed her legs and awaited her fate.
“Okay, you’re pretty great,” she said almost too casually. Annalisa had hoped for jumping jacks. “So I do need help right now,” Patty went on, “and you’re more than qualified. All the winter clothes are coming in, and with Christmas around the corner, it’s super busy. I can’t guarantee you a full-time job, though, which means you might not have a job at all if I poach you from Ted Miller right now. You know how he can be, I’m sure.”
“Yes, I do, but I’m willing to take the risk.” The opportunity to finally make decent money was too tempting. Besides, she was exploding with excitement inside.
Rising to her heels, Patty said, “I don’t want to promise anything until I’ve spoken with him, so don’t get your hopes up quite yet, but let me see what I can do. He simply takes some finessing, a skill you and I both seem to have a handle on.”
Annalisa smiled broadly, feeling like she’d just been knighted a city girl by one of Portland’s finest. “Thank you so much,” she said, almost breathless. “I won’t let you down.”
Patty seemed pleased. “You’d better not.”
Feeling like she’d finally gotten a break, Annalisa prayed that Ted Miller wouldn’t get in the way. She went for a walk along Congress Street but was back in time for her 9:00 a.m. shift. Just before her lunch break, Ted Miller found her adding blue stickers to a bunch of older items that needed to be moved out.
“Got a minute?” he asked.
Annalisa backed away from the rack, thinking this could go very well, or very badly. Mr. Miller was not the kind of man who liked being undermined.
“We’ve decided to move you up to Advertising.”
“Really? Thank you, Mr. Miller.” Annalisa almost broke into a dance.
He straightened his bow tie. “Just remember who looks out for you. I had to go out of my way to make this happen.”
Annalisa knew it had nothing to do with him, but she let him take the credit. “You’ve been a great boss. I’m really going to miss you.” This might have been the biggest exaggeration of her entire life.
“Let’s just hope you’re not getting in over your head, little girl. Now head up to Personnel, and they’ll get you switched over.”
Annalisa immediately stopped what she was doing and rode the escalator toward the next level of her life, thinking she couldn’t wait to call Nonna.
And to write Thomas.