Note # 47 – A Peek at Chapter One

I’ll be reading from The Date Square Dharma and signing books at Kichessipi Beer (2265 Robertson Road in Bell’s Corners) on Wednesday September 11th at 7:00 p.m to benefit The Leukaemia and Lymphoma Society of Canada. Pre-purchase tickets for $20 at staffordfalls@gmail.com

In the meantime, here’s the beginning of chapter one of The Date Square Dharma…

The Best Laid Plans

I have every reason to be happy.

The air in the Second Chance Café is infused with the sweet and slightly miraculous smell of coffee beans. It’s busy and people are jockeying for their favourite spots – the comfy chairs, the tables by the windows, the stools near the bar where you can watch Drew and Samantha perform their amazing brewing, frothing rituals. There’s a steady stream of people coming in and out of the door, and there is a kid, maybe seven or eight years old, who is rooted in front of the glass pastry case, trying to choose between one of Angie’s cinnamon buns and one of her new breakfast bars while his father looks at his watch over and over and tries to hustle him along.  

I am sitting in my favourite spot – the wingback chair by the window – I have my favourite morning drink – a double shot latté with cinnamon and chocolate sprinkles, thank you very much – and my sketchbook is open on my lap. I am watching Julia talk to the dad of Indecisive Kid, who despite his impatience and mild annoyance is being made to smile at something she’s said because it’s impossible not to be charmed by Julia, even when you’re in a hurry and your kid is taking forever. It is a glorious day in July – hot but not humid, which means that my paints will dry at a proper rate today and that we will most likely have a glorious supper al fresco in Nana’s garden tonight.

Every reason to be happy.  

And yet…

Indecisive Kid has made a decision and I watch Julia nod approvingly as she reaches into the pastry case for the cinnamon bun. She deposits it in a little paper bag, hands the dad extra napkins and his tray of coffees and says something to him that makes him straight up laugh out loud. She’s like that, my Julia, she has the power to turn your head with her smile, she warms you from the inside out. She is every bit as miraculous as coffee beans.

My Julia.

Every reason in the world.

And yet, there was a strange message from my best friend Pam the other day that has left me uneasy – she seemed uncharacteristically cranky and not her usual laidback but slightly wry self and it’s hard, when we’re so far away from each other, to suss out exactly what is wrong. And Nana was wobbly this morning – she still needs her cane (much to her great dismay) and she’s still doing physio once a week but I worry that this plateau she’s shuffling across isn’t a plateau at all but the new normal. 

At my age, pet, these things are to be expected…

And then there’s Eddie Spaghetti.

The thought of him hits me like a punch in the gut, as it always does –  a heavy, sinking feeling, as if my heart has suddenly turned to lead and fallen deep within me, and then tears – my eyes fill up so quickly that I have to duck my head and blink them away, hope that nobody notices the slightly unhinged woman in the wingback chair silently weeping into her latté, because that’s probably not the best endorsement for the café.

How can it still be surprising to me that he’s dead? Every time I remember, it’s joy to grief in less time than it takes to change my mind. Sometimes I worry that I’m losing my mind, but Nana assures me that grieving is like that, it can make you feel a little crazy. It’s been less than three months – only eleven weeks and four days and I know this figure because I can’t stop myself from counting – so I don’t know why I thought I would be over it by now.  

I’m not sure I ever will be.

In the midst of life, we are in death, Nana reminds me. 

Which is no help at all, but I don’t say that.

I miss him so much that it is hard to even look at pictures of him, and yet, right now that’s what I do all day, most days, when I’m painting, at least. I’m working on a portrait of him, a commission I’d promised before he stepped in front of the car that killed him, a portrait of his happy little family, him, Connie and his twins. I can only work from photos now, but he’s there with me in the studio, everywhere, taped to the walls, surrounding me and my canvases – photos of him on a beach, or playing basketball, or holding Bolognese and Carbonara, or peering out at me from an uncharacteristically serious staff portrait – Eduardo Spinella, Vice-Principal of Stafford Falls Public School.

Eddie Spaghetti, my friend.

There is a break in the morning rush just then and Julia ambles over and peers into my cup. “Oh, I thought you’d be ready for a refill by now,” she says and I realize that my extra-hot latté, untouched, has gone cold.

“I was distracted,” I say and I summon a smile.  

She glances at the open sketchbook in my lap, takes in the blank page and is not fooled. She says, “Let me go warm this up. I can bring it up to you if you’re going up to your studio.” Then after she turns away, she says over her shoulder, “And if you’re worried about Pam, you should call her.”

I watch her walk away, marvelling a little at her mind reading abilities, and then my phone makes a little ping. 

Darling! If you don’t soon return my call, I’m going to come in person to your little Arcadia!  XXOO Bianca.  <Bird emoji, smug yellow face with sunglasses, rainbow symbol.> Despite the cute little pictures (whose meanings, frankly, I can’t decipher) this is definitely more of a threat than a promise.

I turn off my phone and think about going to my studio, but don’t actually move a muscle.

“Slacker,” I know Eddie Spaghetti would say.  

The list of things I am avoiding is quite long and while I wait for Julia to return with my reheated caffeine injection, I almost feel compelled to write it out:

Things That I Should Probably Be Doing:

1.  Working on the portrait of Eddie Spaghetti and his family.

2.  Generating some new, preferably saleable, pieces.

3.  Possibly finding a job, besides painting, that pays, you know, money.

4.  Yard work, specifically cutting the grass, which gives me hives. 

5.  Replying to Bianca Wren’s texts, calls and emails (which also gives me hives.)

6.  Writing a blog post (worst hives of all.)

This last one is particularly odious (and thus, most avoidable.) In fact, I have been using the threat of having to write a blog post as leverage to get myself to do all the other things that I don’t want to do – in the past week alone, I’ve blackmailed myself into cleaning the gutters on Nana’s house, filing my tax receipts from the past three years and trimming all the dogs’ nails – although that last item turned into a bit of a French farce, complete with slamming doors, animals scurrying from room to room, and overly dramatic arias from Mortimer and Lucy, who both behaved as if I was trying to amputate one of their digits with a butter knife.

The blog that I am so assiduously avoiding was the brainstorm of Bianca Wren, my gallerist, quasi-agent and old art school chum (although chums is not quite how I would have described us while we were in art school, since I’m pretty sure she thought my name was Susan through most of first year.). “It’s the 21^st century, darling,” she constantly reminds me – as though I might have just dated a cheque for July, 1889. “This is what is required of artists of the new millennium: a social media presence, a public persona, a brand,” she says.

To which I say: having to have a brand would quite likely have made Vincent cut off the other ear.

In a moment of weakness or madness or possibly just to make her stop talking about it, I agreed to at least stake out a tiny corner of real estate on the interwebs, with the help of Drew’s D&D friend Proper Pete (to be distinguished from his D&D friend, Other Pete, who is equally savvy with computer code, but who is painfully shy and manages to have whole conversations while slowly edging towards the door.) In a tiny and probably meaningless bit of revenge, I called the blog, I’d Rather Be in the Studio, and I posted on it as infrequently as possible. (Other names I had considered for the blog: A Study in Solipsism; Watching Paint Dry with Olivia; and my personal favourite, Self-Indulgence: A Digital Portrait.)

I’m not usually this cranky about self-promotion. It’s just that writing about painting, as a wise person (or possibly Angelina Jolie) once said, makes about as much sense as dancing about architecture, although I made the mistake of saying this to Bianca, who then had a terrific idea about incorporating choreography and music and dancers into a painting session, “…so that the nature of the performance made it more accessible as an art form.”

She says things like this from time to time. I find it helps to be selectively deaf.

I consider making a move for the studio again, but do not actually stir from my wingback chair.

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take,” I know Eddie Spaghetti would say.

“Is that a sports metaphor?” I say. “You know I never understand those.”

“That’s exactly why I use them,” he would say.

I watch the mid-morning café traffic ebb and flow and I ponder my existential angst and wonder, what, in actual fact, is my problem? I mean, I had met the love of my life, Nana was recovering relatively well from her stroke, and not only was I painting again, my work was selling decently. It was my own highly idiosyncratic version of happily ever after. I don’t know what more I expected.

No, that’s a complete lie – I know exactly what I expected.

I expected sultry evenings spent sipping wine while watching the sun set in glorious oranges and pinks. I expected slow, cool mornings in Nana’s flower-filled backyard, reading the paper and drinking iced coffees with Julia until we felt sufficiently fortified to face the day. I expected to lose myself in my painting, to feel the ecstatic tension and glide of my paintbrush across the canvas. And if I’m honest, I expected sex – you know the kind, when it’s all still new and the very sight of your beloved leaves you a little breathless?

Yeah, that kind.

And to be fair, there has been sex and sunsets and wine and cool mornings in Nana’s garden. It’s been lovely, but I just can’t seem to enjoy any of it. It’s like I’m always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

From a great height. 

Quite possibly on my head.  

And so I’m extra vigilant – did Nana seem wobblier than usual this morning? Is her blood pressure up? Is she eating enough fish? Is she eating the right fish? Is she getting too much mercury? What if she has another stroke?  Did Mortimer actually take his heart medicine this morning or did he just cheek it and spit it out around the corner, like I caught him doing last week?  What if he has a little doggie heart attack? Is Julia really happy, living with me and an elderly women and three flatulent, needy dogs? Was it too soon to move in together? What if the café is failing and she needs to cut her losses and sell?  What then? 

“Jesus, Liv, did you know there’s a crazy lady living in your head?” Eddie Spaghetti would say. “You’re worrying for nothing. None of those things are going to happen.”

“Oh, yeah? Then how come you got hit by that car?” I say.

And this time, he doesn’t have a smart answer for me.

***
The Date Square Dharma is available in print and ebook on Amazon.

P.

P.S. Come see me at Kichesippi Beer on September 11th and donate to a very worthy cause…