Love Letters From Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [43]
“But that’s a good thing, isn’t it? At least he got a chance to know his mother before she died.”
Lindsay shook her head sadly. “She made us promise not to tell him she was sick. And once he found out she was alive ... he didn’t want to see her. We’ve done everything we could to encourage him, without breaking our word. And she still thinks the kindest thing she can do is to stay away from him. So our hands are really tied.”
He shook his head sadly. “That’s a difficult situation. I have to admire you all for taking it on.”
She finished with the brushes and turned, wiping her hands. “He’s one of the family” she replied simply.
She liked the way he smiled at her, and when he turned back to look at the paintings she was flattered, and a little nervous, to notice that it was her work he seemed to focus on. And he studied the canvases as though he were in a museum.
“This is great,” he said, without turning from his appraisal of a large oil painting of a cardinal in the snow. “The way the bird takes up the whole canvas, and the trees are so small in the distance ... it makes you think about perspective, doesn’t it?”
Lindsay was pleased. “That’s exactly what it’s supposed to do! Well, that, and make you smile.”
He turned, smiling. “It does that, too.”
Lindsay began gathering up the plastic trash bags that were attached to each easel. Because the paint and turpentine-soaked paper towels that the students used in every class were highly odiferous—not to mention flammable—she knotted each bag before stuffing it into the larger one she carried. Dominic fell easily into step beside her, knotting and handing her the bags from each easel.
“These aren’t bad,” he said. “You must be a good teacher.”
“You need to take a class,” she invited him. “As it happens, I have an opening or two.”
“I don’t know about that. I’ve got a few talents, but, like I said, painting is not one of them.”
She smiled. “You might be surprised. The things we do in class are more like paint by number than fine art, and, frankly, talent is far down the list of course requirements.”
“It must be hard for you,” he said, with unexpected perception, “to go from those”—he nodded to the painting of the cardinal—“to paint by number.”
She chuckled and took her trash bag to the door. “Some people would say there’s not that much difference.”
“I wouldn’t be one of them.”
“That’s nice of you to say.” She smiled at him for a moment, then looked away, a little embarrassed.
She took an oversized bottle of baby oil from a shelf over the sink and poured a measure into her paint-smeared hands. “It breaks down the pigment,” she explained to Dominic as she worked the oil into her hands, “and it’s a lot easier on skin than mineral spirits. Smells better, too.”
He smiled at her. “I’ll have to remember that.” Then, “What’s first on the list?”
“Of what?”
“Class requirements.”
Lindsay wiped her hands with a paper towel, cleaning the paint from around her nails as she thought about that. “Oh, I don’t know. A willingness to try, I suppose. A sense of fun. Yes,” she decided, “that’s it. The people who come to my class don’t want to be artists,” she explained. “They already are whatever it is they want to be. For them, painting is a way to pass the time, to learn something new, and, maybe, to explore a different kind of self-expression. I promise them they’ll go home with a painting and a sense of pride in what they’ve done, and all I ask from them is that they have fun.”
“Well, in that case,” he said, with a small considering tilt of his head, “maybe I will sign up.”
Lindsay smiled and tossed the paper towel into the trash bag. “Well, you’re welcome any time—although exactly when you have time to do anything other than eat and sleep I can’t imagine. Between your full-time job and working over here for free every spare minute you have, when do you have time for a life?”
He gestured easily toward the vineyard beyond the open door.