At Home on Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [25]
Noah rushed forward and pulled the plug. The silence resounded. Cici stood still in the middle of the room, her hands clasped to the side of her head, looking from the scar across the floor to the hole in the wall.
No one spoke for a very long time. Then Lindsay said, timidly, “I guess you don’t want us to help, huh?”
Without turning, Cici shook her head.
“Maybe you’d like us to just get out of your way.”
Again without turning, Cici nodded.
Lindsay beckoned to Noah with an expression that clearly indicated they should go while the going was good, and they hurried away
Bridget lifted a finger as though the idea had just occurred to her, and said, “Lori, how would you like to go to the library with me and do some research on sheep ranching?”
They left so quickly that Bridget had to return to the house by the back door to get her car keys.
The stone dairy barn was one of the property’s most charming features. With skylights, clerestory windows, a loft for storage, and easy-maintenance stone floors, Lindsay had quickly seen it as the perfect place for her art studio. There was room for twenty or thirty students, when she got her classes going, as well as space for her own work, an office, and even a gallery if she chose.
Like most of the women’s ambitions for the place, Lindsay’s plans had diminished in scope since they’d actually moved in. Noah had spent most of the autumn last year dragging out rotten timbers, squirrels’ nests, and other accumulated debris, and Cici had patched windows and holes through which various forms of wildlife had been making their way in over the years. Eventually Lindsay had been able to scrub down the floors and windows, slap a coat of paint over the plank walls, and call it good. There were still randomly placed half walls throughout the building that indicated where stalls once had been.
The downside of having such an enormous space was that it was virtually impossible to heat, which made it unusable in the winter. Lindsay’s grand plans for having a bathroom installed had fizzled when she discovered that the main water line that led to the building was broken, and instead of the twenty or thirty easels she had envisioned, accompanied by eager art students, there were two worktables: one for her, and one for Noah.
She believed in keeping regular classroom hours and a regular classroom space, even though Noah was only in school three hours a day. She had chosen the art studio because it was neutral territory, the place in which they were both comfortable. It smelled of linseed oil and pastel dust, and on its walls were drying paintings and charcoal sketches. Cici had made a moveable partition out of two-by-fours and plywood to enclose their classroom—and also to conserve heat during the winter—and that was covered with thumbtacked photographs and pages torn from magazines that represented potential subject matter for future art lessons. There was also a whiteboard, which Lindsay used instead of a blackboard, and a bookshelf that held texts. But no one walking into the space would suspect that its main function was as anything other than an art studio.
Noah slouched over his worktable, working algebra problems with a chewed-up pencil, and glancing a little too often at the clock—which was shaped like a color wheel with paint-brushes for hands—on the wall behind Lindsay. He had learned the rules the first day and, after one or two false starts, had learned to abide by them: The art materials did not come out until all of the day’s assigned schoolwork had been completed to his teacher’s satisfaction. At last he tore the sheet of math problems out of his notebook and stretched across the table to hand it to her, waiting impatiently until Lindsay checked it.
“Very nice,” she said, after what seemed like a very long time. “You transposed your variables here on number six. Try it again.”
He erased, recalculated, and handed it back to her before she had resumed her seat. Lindsay lifted an eyebrow. “Learning comes easily for you, doesn’t it?”