Page 105 of Breaking All The Rules
Thanks to her grandmother’s purge and her father’s passivity—or maybe complicity—in the less-than-flattering narrative that had been constructed around her mother’s life, Bea had none of her mom’s art. She hadn’t even gone online as an adult and tried to track some of it down, because her gut too often churned with her own conflicted feelings, and it had felt disloyal to the people who had raised her as best they knew how.
Her father and grandmother had tried to shield her from the worst of the mood swings that marred her mom’s mental health, to give her stability and structure both before and after her mom’s death. As an adult, Bea could see that. She didn’t blame them. But in doing so, Bea had lost that thing vital to every human being—connection.
To the person who had known and loved her first. And she still felt that loss today. Despite her determined denials otherwise.
It flared inside her now, standing in front of her mother’s painting, as bright and as strong as ever. Connection. To her mother. But more than that, to this thing that had nagged and nagged at her over the years no matter how hard she’d tried to suppress it.
Her muse.
The guy whistled as he took the card. “You have a very good eye, and lucky, too. It’s just come in this morning from a deceased estate and won’t last long. It’s from an LA artist called Phoebe Archer who was highly acclaimed back in the eighties. Super collectable,” he added as he walked away to ring up the sale.
“I know,” Bea said. “She was my mother.”
…
Twenty minutes later, she was back on the street, with the wrapped painting at her feet, waiting for an Uber, which was six minutes away. Without giving it much thought, she called her father. He picked up on the second ring.
“Hey, Dad.”
“Hey, Bea, how’s that corner office going?”
He and her grandmother had been thrilled that she’d come to her senses and was back working in LA. Even more so that she’d started out with an executive position and that much-coveted corner office. She drew in a shaky breath, knowing he wouldn’t like what she was about to say. “I think I’m about to quit.”
“Beatrice.” He sighed a sigh leaden with disappointment and exasperation. “Why?”
“Because”—she sniffled as more tears threatened—“I’m standing here on the sidewalk outside a curio store in downtown LA, and one of Mom’s paintings was on the wall and I bought it and it just…speaks to me.” She took a breath. “I’m an artist, Dad. I’ve denied it all my life because I didn’t want to hurt you or Granny and make you worry, but…I just can’t anymore.”
He didn’t say anything for the longest time, and Bea waited for him to lecture her about getting a reputation as being unreliable and flaky, but when he eventually spoke, he simply asked, “What painting?”
“Carrizo.”
She didn’t have to explain which one it was; she could tell from his silence that he remembered the circumstances and upheaval around its creation as vividly as she did. “Yeah…that one’s really pretty.”
Bea swallowed the sob that rose in her throat. “I wish Granny hadn’t gotten rid of her paintings.”
“Me too,” he said softly. “I’m sorry. It just…felt like the best thing at the time.”
Bea shut her eyes to stop the tears from falling. “Did you love her?”
She’d never asked her father that question. And he’d never volunteered the information. The topic of her mother was one that had been rarely ever directly broached. But Bea needed to know. She wanted to talk about her mom.
And maybe her father did, too.
“I loved her more than was good for me or her.” So often, he’d been brusque in any reference about her mother. Not today. His voice was wistful and tinged with sadness. “But it’s hard to love someone like your mom. She was such a free spirit, and trying to hold on to her was like trying to hold on to a moonbeam. But I did try, and when it worked, it was…wonderful.”
Bea remembered those times. Probably more vividly than the other times. Her father laughing. Her mother sparkling.
“And even when it wasn’t, even with everything that happened, I still loved her, Bea. I still do.”
It couldn’t have been easy for her father. To have been the straight man, the steady hand in a roller-coaster relationship, always trying to hold on when the other person was always trying to pull away. Loving someone whose capacity for love was so big and all-encompassing, it could never be contained to just one person.
“I’m not her, Dad.”
“I know, love.”
“But I need to know her, to connect. Which kinda sucks considering she’s dead.” Bea gave a brittle half laugh. “Until this morning, I had nothing of hers, but now I have this painting, and when I look at it, I feel her and I feel me in her, and I know how to connect to her now. Through my art.”
There was another pause that went on for so long, Bea almost asked if he was all right, but she didn’t. This was a conversation they should have had a long time ago; it was okay that he didn’t know what to say.
