Page 30 of The Trouble with Love and Ink
But he hadn’t even heard my dig. He froze, staring at my cups. For a split second of horror, I thought a roach had gotten into the cabinet.
But then he pulled out a mug and said, “This is fantastic.”
He turned it toward me. With one glance, I knew which one he’d found. An Excel spreadsheet wrapped from handle to handle. Overlaid on that, the words Freak in the Sheets stood out in bold black letters.
I think I died a little at that moment. Or perhaps knocked a decade off my life. I turned back to the mirror to hide my face from him, only to get a look at my scarlet cheeks behind the lettering I’d completed.
“That was a gift from Hailey,” I mumbled like an apology.
“I think I’d like her,” Beck said, filling the mug with water instead of using a glass like a normal person.
“Everyone does,” I said, going back to lettering. “I’d offer to set you two up, but she’s run off to Florida with her boyfriend of two whole months.”
Beck was quiet for a few beats, and that’s when I realized my error.
“Is that why she can’t finish Victoria’s wedding?”
I risked a glance at him in the mirror. His eyes locked on mine, waiting for an answer.
“Yes.” I turned to face him, afraid to ask my next question but needing to know the answer. “Does that make you mad?”
His fingers tapped on the mug as he decided. “I think it would if I weren’t staring at your work right now.” He stepped closer, once again seeming mesmerized by my lettering. “How long have you been doing this?”
“Since eighth grade.”
“What makes a thirteen-year-old want to do something like calligraphy?” he asked, leaning against my shelf.
“It’s a long story.”
Beck looked at his watch. “Don’t you have two more hours on this thing? Can you talk and letter?”
I thought about telling him no, and it would be three more hours if he didn’t stop bothering me. But the truth was, I kind of wanted him to know this part of me. Maybe because I wanted him to understand where my passion stemmed from, so he’d understand how seriously I took my craft. Or maybe some small part of me wanted Beck to know this side of me so I could gauge his reaction.
“The year before, we were homeless for a little while.” Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Beck stiffen. He’d probably been expecting an answer like, I needed some cutesy lettering to go with my Lisa Frank pictures, or I wanted to ask a boy out to the dance, so I wrote him a pretty letter. Homelessness didn’t seem like a pathway to calligraphy. “Everything about calligraphy is controlled,” I explained. “And after months of uncertainty, I just wanted something in my life to be structured.”
Most people backed up when I told them about that time of my life. It was human nature to shield your eyes from the pain, from the harshness of reality. I think most people meant well; they simply didn’t know how to respond to that statement. I didn’t tell many people about being homeless, but those I did would often say things like, Look at you now. What a success story. Or Things happen for a reason. It looks like everything worked out in the end. They wanted to flip the script, give it a fairytale ending, and then move on.
Not Beck. He didn’t back up. He leaned in.
“What happened? Why were you homeless?”
“At the time, my mom was a teacher,” I said, surprising myself by starting a story that I usually guarded so closely. “But she dreamed of living off her art. One day, she thought she got her big break when someone bought a painting for quite a bit of money. She broke her teaching contract so she could focus solely on her art. She sold a few pieces after that but none for nearly as much as that first sale.
“Eventually, she ran out of money for rent. Some guy she met from an art class offered to let us stay with him for a while. Long story short, we felt the term ‘starving artist’ firsthand, and Mom’s art buddy . . .” I thought of how he’d screamed at me when he’d found me admiring his pens. How he’d told my mom the painting she’d spent weeks on was a far cry from art. Or how he had come home from a gallery and thrown a vase against the wall, littering the floor with amethyst-colored shards. “Well, he wasn’t nice.”
“Did he . . .” Beck swallowed, and his voice was gruff when he spoke again. “Did he hurt you?”
“No, not physically. It’s just, my mom is a gentle soul. She never raised her voice at us. So, moving in with someone so angry was frightening.” I tilted my head as if I could empty the memory of his hollering with the movement. “We didn’t stay with him long. He kicked us out when it was clear my mom’s paintings wouldn’t fetch a steep price anytime soon. We lived out of our minivan for a while.” The memory sat like a stone in my stomach. I could have spent hours telling him about that experience. But I didn’t want to be dragged back to that place, even if just mentally. “My mom eventually found a job teaching at an art studio, but it was a while before things felt steady.”
“What about your dad? Where was he in all this?”
“My mom was a single parent. I’ve only known my dad as a sperm donor and a spotty child support check.”
“So that’s why you haven’t pursued calligraphy as a career before this?” Beck guessed.
I nodded once, then started to write the next name on my list. “Living off your art is just too risky.”
Out of the corner of my eye, he seemed to mull that over, chewing on his cheek.
