LITMIR.BIZ

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They have to eat. Just like everybody else.”

      Dinah rolled her eyes. “This conversation is clearly over,” she murmured to Maris as Angela left the room, muttering about some people never putting things back where they belong.

      “That was a conversation?” said Maris. “I thought it was a sermon. From the high priestess of the Church of Business.”

      “As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew I shouldn’t have said them,” said Dinah. “I’m sorry.”

      “Don’t be,” said Maris. “Maybe I needed to hear it. I have to do something to stop this inertia. I’m not going to take Prozac, that’s for sure, but I have to make a change.” Dinah handed her a penknife and pointed to some boxes that needed opening. “Angela’s right in a way,” Maris continued. “Art is my work and without it I’ll starve. And not just from the lack of money. It sounds corny, but I’ve lost something, some part of my soul. Peter sort of re-invented me as an artist. He made me believe in myself. Before, I had only seen myself as a painter, someone who put colours and shapes on canvas. Peter made me think about art. I mean really think about it as a medium for ideas. He believed I had something to say.” She slid the knife across the tape sealing one of the boxes. “And now I’ll have to learn to live without that — whatever he gave me — and find it somewhere else. But what are the chances of finding another mentor like Peter?” She sighed, lifting the flaps on the box. “I guess I’ll have to create my own internal ego-booster. Can people do that?” She smiled at Dinah, but just thinking about it made her tired.

      “I think they can if they want to,” said Dinah. “You can’t go on waiting for someone or something to come along and do it for you. In my experience that doesn’t happen.” She started unpacking the opened box, stuffing Styrofoam popcorn into a plastic garbage bag. “But it’s easy for me to say,” she continued. “I’m not an artist. I don’t have to be inspired to work. I’m just the hired help. ‘No tickee, no washee,’ as my ancestors used to say.”

      They looked at each other and they both started to laugh. “I have no idea where that came from,” said Dinah, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye. “What a stupid thing to say.”

      “Yes, but it was funny,” said Maris. “It’s probably because Angela makes you feel like a coolie. She makes you run around and do grunt work all the time. I’m sure if he could have, Peter would have left his half of the business to you. I don’t see why a half-sister should have fewer rights than an ex-wife.”

      “I know, but they had an ironclad agreement that if anything happened to either one of them, the other would own the business outright. Though I doubt that Peter envisioned anything like this happening. Still,” she said, looking into the box, “I’d rather be working for Angela than not working at the gallery at all. It’s what I love.”

      Maris sighed. “You know, art isn’t just about inspiration. It’s also about putting pencil to paper and brush to canvas. Even if the result is bad or mediocre, it keeps the juices flowing. It’s like practicing the scales if you’re a musician. You have to be doing whatever it is that you do. And I haven’t been doing anything, not even looking at other people’s art or doodling, for months. I think I have to do something drastic before it’s too late.”

      Dinah looked alarmed. “How drastic?” she asked.

      Maris laughed. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m not going to jump off a bridge. I’ve been thinking about going back to Canada for a while. Maybe a change of scene will help. I could stay with my mother. She has a house north of Vancouver where she makes pottery. Pretty good pottery, actually. She’s been doing it for years.”

      “Maybe you could send me some,” said Dinah. “I could put it in the gallery and sell it. Authentic Canadian handicrafts.”

      “That’s not a bad idea. Why not?”

      Just then, Angela came back in the room, a large pair of scissors in her right hand. “Haven’t you finished opening these boxes yet? Do I have to do everything?”

      Dinah looked at Maris. “Don’t worry,” she whispered. “I’ll deal with her.” She lifted an ebony carving of a woman’s face out of the box. An expression of beatific tranquillity on the face suggested she had seen Shangri-La. “Isn’t it exquisite?” she said.

      After the funeral, Maris and Dinah had sorted through Peter’s stuff and decided what to do with it. Angela had flown back to Germany almost immediately to attend to the business that had been interrupted by Peter’s death. She told them not to get rid of anything without consulting her first.

      In his will, Peter had left instructions for certain things to be given away, and they attended to them first. To Maris he had left an old leather trunk that at first glance appeared to hold nothing more than some old books and paintings — probably from his childhood and not the kind of thing he chose to display in his elegant apartment. Peter was not sentimental, but he wouldn’t have kept the old trunk if its contents hadn’t been important to him.

      To Dinah he had left his precious art deco furniture, but with the stipulation that she could sell it or dispose of it in any way she chose if she didn’t want to keep it. She had cried when that part of the will had been read. Later she told Maris, “I’ve always loved that furniture but I never told Peter. It wasn’t as if I had to have it. I was just happy to look at it whenever I went to his place. He must have known.”

      “Peter was pretty good at reading people,” Maris said. “I’m sure that’s why the gallery was so successful. He had a knack for matching people with the things he knew they’d love.”

      “Is that why he gave you his childhood mementos in a trunk?”

      “Maybe. He never did something without a reason.”

      “Then I’m sure all will be revealed,” said Dinah.

      Maris hadn’t examined the contents of the trunk before she left Singapore. She believed Peter’s decision to leave them to her had been deliberate and she would have to figure out why. But for now she wasn’t in a frame of mind to figure anything out. She was beginning to wonder if she really was depressed, as Dinah had suggested. Maybe she should talk to someone. But even the word “psychiatrist” made her uneasy. She knew a shrink would prescribe some kind of drug, and she believed that it would suffocate any creative impulses she might have. I have to find a way to work this out through my art, she thought. Words are not a good way for me to express myself. I never quite say what I mean. But a painting is either right or it’s not. It’s not finished until its meaning is clear. To me, at least, if not to anyone else.

      She was looking forward to seeing her mother again. She’ll know what to do, Maris thought. After Maris’s father had left them for both another woman and a completely different life, her mother had been forced to re-invent herself in her mid-thirties. She had married Maris’s father, a California draft dodger, when she was twenty-one years old and they had moved to a hippie commune northwest of Vancouver. There they had raised three children: Maris, her sister Terra, and a brother, Ra. Maris had been thirteen, Terra twelve, and Ra nine when their father left to marry an heiress whose money had been made in automotive parts. Arthur Cousins had so transformed himself after marrying his second wife that he was now a successful businessman and owner of a BMW dealership in the posh Vancouver suburb of Kitsilano.

      Sheila Cousins, or “Spirit” as she was called in those days, had been devastated. Arthur’s betrayal had gone way beyond breaking her heart. He had cast aside everything they had believed in and moved into the enemy’s camp. Had he just been playing a role all those years? And if that was the case, why had he loved her? Or had he loved her? Sheila Cousins was Spirit, in her heart and in her soul. She had not been one of those costume hippies who wore gypsy skirts and beads and feathers. She had been a believer. Meeting Arthur, who’d introduced himself as “Freedom Man,” had been pure destiny. She knew they were meant to be together. He’d heard about a hippie commune somewhere on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia.

      “Pure Earth,” she’d said.

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