Finding Sam (Featured)

Chapter 9 - Passing Notes

Just as I had promised Olivia, I started painting her, but only if she agreed to sit for me. I didn't want to refer to photographs simply because she didn't mind sitting for me anyway. Sitting for me also gave me the opportunity to catch the many ways the light from the beach played upon her face and her hair, something that a camera would never have captured.

The first few days were a bit awkward, with Olivia not knowing how to sit and relax and with me not exactly knowing what I really wanted to capture until I saw it. She had such an expressive face, but I didn't want to paint an animated, bright-eyed Olivia Firelli, once the wife of an up-and-coming race car driver, always entertaining guests. I wanted to paint the real Olivia, the one who would look at her daughter the way only a mother could and in that look, convey the courage she had to muster to wake up each morning knowing the man she loved, the father of her child, was gone.

By the second week, I found the Olivia I wanted to paint, between the frequent breaks she had to take to nurse Bella as she remained seated on the giant armchair I had positioned by the window. And in the end, that was the Olivia I painted - the widowed mother and the child in her arms, the wistfulness in her eyes masking the courage to keep on living.

Bella would never know her father, I thought, though she inherited his dark hair and green eyes. And each time Olivia looked at her, I could see the man she saw, the man who had left her too soon. It made me cry just watching them both, mother and daughter, sitting on the massive chair that I had positioned by the glass sliding doors, the only spot to catch the light that I wanted.

I was grateful for the easel and canvas that stood between us, hiding my tears. They were not tears of pity, shed for the ones left behind, the ones who had to keep on living, but for the courage that they both exuded, especially Olivia. Maybe they were really tears for myself, I thought, at my own weakness for folding so easily, while others like Olivia, couldn't really afford to.

They sat for three hours that morning, and another two hours the following weekend. If Erik was home, he made sure not to disturb me though the signs that he'd been in the studio became more evident since I started painting Olivia.

It began with three brand new canvasses waiting for me the following Friday, accompanied by an almost undecipherable note. Erik wrote that one of his patients owned an art supply store, and that the canvasses were payment for a consultation over an eczema breakout. Or at least that's what the scribbles seemed to say.

The note was charming, his inscrutable handwriting making me think I was deciphering some ancient scroll of unknown origin. So this was probably the reason why patients ended up with the wrong prescriptions, I thought wryly. Erik needed to take a class in handwriting. Still, it was a cute gesture, and I thanked him for his trouble, leaving him a note saying so. I also told him that I was going to keep an accounting of such 'gifts' so I would not owe him more than I already did.

The following morning, a note was waiting for me along with two more canvasses and a set of camel-hair brushes.

The patient gave me a choice of tamales or canvasses this time. I've been eating tamales for the past four weeks as word has gone out that I enjoy them. So I am getting more tamales than my figure can handle. Enjoy your canvasses, and please do not worry about the cost. I'd no sooner eat a canvas than another tamale, although they are really very good. - Erik

It was cute but I still wasn't going to accept them for free, tallying the number of canvasses and other gifts in my leather journal. I slipped his latest note between the pages, grinning at his attempt to draw a tamale.

Thank you for your gifts. I am going to enjoy the FIVE (5) canvasses and the TWO (2) brushes very much. But that doesn't mean I won't be keeping a record of them, however, did you know that you can freeze tamales for future eating? Just letting you know as I notice that you have a freezer in the garage. - Sam