Seeing Orange (4 page)
But I say, “Yes, now. Mr. Carling fell in the forest. He twisted his ankle. He will wait for us on the bus.”
“Thank you, Leland,” Madame Maillot says. She gets down on her knee and looks me in the eye. “Well done,” she says.
Mom doesn't usually answer the phone during supper, but tonight she jumps up when it rings.
She listens for a moment. “Yes! Great! Thank you!” she says. She hangs up and sighs. “That was no help. The caller saw Pumpkin on our streetâfive days ago.”
We're quiet as we clear the table. Mom opens the window and shakes out the tablecloth, which she does every night. Then she hangs the tablecloth over the back of her chair, which is normally the sign for us to get into our pajamas. Then the phone rings again.
“Hello?” Mom says. “Yes. That's our poster. Oh. My son, Leland. Yes, quite an artist. He did what? The house with the bird baths?”
Mom gives me a funny look. “Leland, someone wants to talk to you.”
I take the phone. “Hello?” I ask.
“Hello!” The woman's deep voice makes me think of chestnuts. “My name is Pamela.”
“Camelot?”
“No,
Pamela
. I got your picture, Leland. In my mailbox.”
“Oh, it's
you
!” I say.
“You didn't sign it. But I saw your poster. I hope you find your lost cat. I knew when I saw the poster that it was the same artist. You have a special way of mixing colors.”
“Thank you,” I say. Silas is Rollerblading around me, and Liza is practicing her fiddle. But all I really hear is Pamela's warm voice.
“I'm a painter too,” she says. “Would you like to paint with me sometime?”
“When?” I'm so excited I nearly shout.
“How about tomorrow? After school.”
“How about
instead
of school?” I ask.
Pamela laughs. “
After.
”
Mr. Carling is probably very mad at me. Delilah has to pull hard to get me to the classroom. Mr. Carling is on crutches. His left foot is in a pink-brown bandage.
“Is it broken?” Angela asks.
“It's only a sprain,” Mr. Carling says.
I give him the card I made last night. I drew dozens of feetâhuman feet, webbed seagull feet, bald eagle claws, bear paws. And I wrote very carefully:
I hope your foot is strong again soon. Sorry.
Leland.
“Thank you, Leland,” he says.
I can't tell if he's angry or not. He looks a little sad. He doesn't get mad at me all day. But it's raining, which means everyone has to stay in for recess.
After school, Mom walks me to Pamela's house. I've packed paintbrushes, paints and cookies in my backpack. Mom's best friend knows Pamela and told Mom I'd be safe with her. We open the gate to her yard, and it's like pushing a button: birds sing and the smells of grass and flowers swarm us.
Pamela bursts out the front door. She's wearing a long red skirt, a fuzzy olive-green hat and a thick white sweater with buttons made of pencil stubs.
“I hope you brought a sweater,” she says. “I don't turn on the heat unless the pipes are going to freeze. The cold keeps me sharp!”
Inside, the walls are covered in paintings and drawings. The shelves and windowsills are filled with seashells, bird bones, stones and nests.
“Your mom paid for ten painting lessons,” Pamela says. “But I'm sure you have as much to teach me as I have to teach you.”
She leads me into a room with a bouncy-looking velvet couch and two easels in front of the fireplace.
“First we're going to wash the windows,” Pamela says. She hands me a cloth and a spray bottle. “We can't paint without good light. Good light makes good shadows. Good shadows make good shapes.”
After the windows are clean, Pamela suggests we paint pictures of the fireplace.
“With no fire?” I ask.
“Sure. When we look at a fireplace, all we see is the fire. What will we see if there's no fire?”
I peer into the fireplace. The ash is like feathers. I stand back and look at the chimney. The bricks are orange and red, just like fire.
“Artists don't paint what things
look
like. Artists paint what they
see
,” Pamela says. “Just paint what you see, Leland.”
So I paint a pile of feathers in the grate and dark-orange flames licking up around it. The fireplace, the mantelpiece and the chimney are fire!
“Wonderful!” Pamela exclaims.
Her painting is spooky. She painted every piece of blackened wood, every soot stain, every dirty crack in the bricks.
“Why did you paint it so sad?” I ask. “You seem so happy.”
“I am happy,” Pamela says. “But maybe I'm happy because I don't hide from sad things. I don't pretend they don't exist.”
I have been thinking about what Pamela said about not being scared of sad things. I thought about the place under the back stairs with the broken pots. One day after school, I put on a sweater and drag a chair down the back stairs. I sit there with my notebook and drawing pencils and stare at the cobwebs and shriveled spiders. I feel frightened. But I take a deep breath. Nothing here can really hurt me.
As I draw, I see
why
the stuff is there. The spiders can spin webs, safe from rain. The pill bugs eat the rotting bouquets. I don't like the bits of plastic garbage though. They stand out too much. I color them superbright.
Liza opens her bedroom window and asks what on earth I am doing. A few minutes later she joins me.
“Here,” she says.
“What are they?” I ask.
“Gloves.”
“I can't draw with gloves on!”
“You're right,” she says. She goes back into the house and returns a minute later.
“Now try them.”
“Cool!” I say. She cut the fingers off the gloves!
My hands are warm, but my fingers are free to hold the pencil.
Pamela taught me to draw as if the nib of the pencil was my eye. She said to follow the edges of things as if the pencil was my eye moving along them. It is difficult to draw the broken edges of the pots. They're so sharp, they hurt my eyes!
