Forests of the Heart

  Her legs had stopped trembling, but she still had a shaky feeling inside, a pressure behind her eyes.

  No, she wasn’t going to cry. She wouldn’t give piggy-eyed Henry Patterson that satisfaction. But what was she going to do?

  What she should do was another bust of him, this time staying relentlessly faithful to his likeness. Do him with those bloated features and the bulbous nose, the flapping jowls, little piggy eyes and all. Then when Patterson took her to court, she could wheel it out as “Exhibit A.” She’d point at it, then at Patterson. “Your honor,” she’d say. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Is it still defamation when all I have done is copy what nature has already provided?”

  Better yet, take a great big lump of clay and drop it on his head from, oh say, the top of one of those buildings he owned downtown. Hide out on the roof, thirty stories up from the street, and just let it go, bombs away.

  Yeah, right, she thought. I don’t think so.

  She sighed and pushed herself up from the couch. What she really had to do was get out of here. She put on a pair of boots, collected her parka and knapsack, and left the studio to wander aimlessly through the wintered streets of Lower Crowsea. Anything to get in a better mood than this.

  This being January in Newford, it wasn’t warm, not even close, but she didn’t mind so much today. The bite in the north wind helped clear her head, though after a while her forehead and temples got that feeling like an iced Slushie drunken too fast. She didn’t have the streets to herself either. A winter’s Saturday in the Market couldn’t compete with a busy summer weekend, but the streets were still crowded. What always surprised her was how not even the frigid temperatures could keep the itinerant vendors from selling their wares, everything from fresh vegetables—imported, of course—cut flowers and various maple syrup products, to clothing, antiques, and a surprising diversity of arts and crafts.

  The fast-food carts braving the weather were doing a booming trade with line-ups four or five people deep. There were even some buskers out, though the two she saw were standing over hot-air grates in front of the old Keller-man’s Department Store. The long, brick building now housed a half-dozen smaller businesses, from a pawn shop on one end to a wonderful Italian grocery store on the other, with two restaurants, a gallery, and a used record store in between. One of the buskers was good—a Native fiddler playing those strange syncopated versions of Kickaha jigs and reels with their odd jumps where you felt a few notes were missing. The other was the inevitable folkie butchering Dylan and Crosby, Stills & Nash.

  The shakiness that Ellie had suffered in the wake of her dispute with Patterson finally dissipated after a couple of hours of walking. All that remained was this sense of impending doom. The whole thing was so depressing. Not only the business with Patterson this morning, but how he might very well be able to scuttle what had developed into a fairly lucrative sideline for her. She’d worked hard to get the kind of commissions she was getting now and it wasn’t fair that he might be able to take it all away, just like that, with a wave of his hand and the flapping of his jowls.

  She caught herself staring at the icy pavement as she walked along, not even paying attention anymore to all the flurry of life bustling around her.

  Enough, she told herself. This is just letting Patterson win.

  She looked up to find herself back on Lee Street once more, just across the street from the Rusty Lion where she spied Donal sitting at a table by himself in a window booth. He was reading a newspaper, the remains of either a late breakfast or an early lunch on his table. Crossing over the street, she went into the restaurant and made her way through the tables to where he was sitting.

  “Were you saving this seat for me?” she asked.

  Donal lowered the paper to look at her. “Jaysus, Ellie. You look worse than I usually feel.”

  “Well, thank you for sharing that.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean it like that.” He folded his paper and set it aside on the padded seat beside him. “Sit down.”

  “Thanks.”

  Ellie sat down and signaled to the waiter. When she caught his eye, she pointed to Donal’s coffee mug.

  “I’ve had a lousy morning,” she said, turning back to Donal.

  “Welcome to my life. I’m still trying to air out from the deadly combination of Miki’s cigarettes and accordion, both of which she has to experience in excess before going in to work. But today’s worse, since she’s got the day off to get together a last-minute gig for tonight. So it’s going to be smoke and noise in the apartment, all bloody day.”

  “Why do you guys even live together?” Ellie asked.

  “We’re family.”

  Ellie shook her head. “Most siblings I know don’t live together into their twenties. Not unless they’re both living at home with their parents.”

  “And that’d be a whole other bottle of fish.”

  “Kettle,” Ellie said.

  “What?”

  “It’s ‘kettle of fish.’ “

  The waiter came by with her coffee then and asked if she wanted to order. She was about to say no when she realized that all the walking she’d been doing earlier had left her with a real appetite.

  “I guess I’ll have the brunch special,” she said.

  After she went through the multitude of choices that ordering the special entailed—how did she want her eggs, toast or pancakes, bacon, sausage or ham, what sort of juice—she turned back to Donal.

  “It’s because of us, isn’t it? I mean, your living with Miki now.”

  He shrugged. “I know. We should have taken it slower. I never should have given up my apartment. You don’t have to say ‘I told you so.’ “

  “I wasn’t going to.”

  “It just seemed the right thing to do at the time,” Donal said. “She needed someone to help with the rent when Judy moved out.”

  “Right.”

  “And now I’ve got my studio all set up.”

  “Of course.”

  Donal sighed. “I just forgot how annoying Miki can be.” He gave Ellie a mournful look. “She’s so relentlessly cheerful—especially in the morning. She makes Jilly seem positively dour.”

  Jilly was easily the most outgoing, cheerful person Ellie had ever met— until she’d been introduced to Miki—so it was difficult, if not impossible, for her to imagine anyone thinking of Jilly as dour.

  “I like happy people,” she said.

  “Everybody does,” Donal told her with his Eeyore voice. “And more power to them, I suppose.”

  Ellie knew that the real reason Donal had moved in with his sister was that he couldn’t face living on his own again after they’d broken up. She still felt guilty about it sometimes. They’d only lived together for a few months when she realized that it wasn’t going to work out. She knew that they could be great friends, but a more intimate relationship simply wasn’t going to happen. She’d probably known it from the beginning. Donal had been the one who’d been in love, but it was she who’d let herself be persuaded that the friendship she felt for him was something more when she really should have known better.

  Trying to explain it to him had made her feel terrible, but at least their break-up hadn’t been acrimonious. They’d actually had been able to stay friends—were better friends for what they’d gone through, perhaps, though she also knew that he was still more than a little enamored with her. She kept hoping he’d fall in love again, with someone who could love him back as much as he deserved. It hadn’t happened yet.

  “But enough about you,” Donal said. “Let’s talk about me for a change.”

  Ellie smiled at him over the rim of her coffee mug.

  “No, seriously,” he said. “What made your morning lousy?”

  She told him about Henry Patterson and had to force herself to calm down all over again, just repeating the story.

  “So now it’s your turn to say ‘I told you so,’ “ she said when she finished up.

  “
Not a chance,” Donal said. “Unlike you, I’m far too polite to rub it in. Except… well, I did tell you so.”

  Ellie nodded. “Don’t I remember. ‘Been there, done that, it doesn’t work out in the long run,’ “ she quoted back at him.

  “And it’s hard work,” Donal said. “It’s one thing pleasing yourself, and then maybe selling what you’ve done. Quite another being so bloody subject to the vagaries of your clients’ whims.”

  “I know,” Ellie said. “And when you deal with someone like Patterson, you feel like all you’ve been doing is wasting your time.”

  “I used to feel like that,” Donal told her. “But then I realized that I was getting paid to practice my craft. Not necessarily my own art, but at least I was learning what I could do with the tools at my disposal.”

  Ellie moved her coffee mug out of the way as the waiter approached with her breakfast.

  “The thing is,” Donal went on while she began to eat, “you’ll meet some grand folks doing portrait and commissioned work, but some of the punters are so bad you just want to chuck it all and get an office job. Sounds like your man Patterson’s one of those.”

  Ellie gave him a glum nod of agreement. She dipped a piece of toast in the yolk of her egg, but didn’t lift it to her mouth.

  “Do you think he’ll really sic a lawyer on me?” she asked.

  Donal shook his head. “It wouldn’t be worth his while. The bloody lawyer’d cost him way more than your deposit. There’d be no profit in it and from what you say, Patterson would be one to want a profit.”

  “Except he could do it for meanness,” Ellie said. She put the bite of toast in her mouth.

  “There’s that,” Donal told her. “I don’t know your man at all, but if he’s got the connections he says he does, you could find your commissions in the business sector drying up.”

  “What can I do?”

  “I’ve told you before. You need to do a show. It doesn’t have to be a big deal, but you have to get your own work out there for the public to see. Build up a reputation in the real world, not with corporate punters like Patterson. You know, the kind of man who likes to think that even his shite smells lovely and will turn him a profit.”

  “But I’ve got nothing to show. And what would I live on while I was getting enough together to do a show?”

  “Well… “Donal said.

  He let the word hang there. Ellie waited a moment, then she realized what he was getting at.

  “You think I should go up to Kellygnow,” she said.

  Donal nodded. “And find out what the mysterious Musgrave Wood has to offer.”

  “It might be nothing like you’re thinking,” Ellie told him. “With the caliber of artists that’s usually in residence there, I doubt there’d be either a commission or a residency in the offing.”

  “I think you’re selling yourself short.”

  “But still…”

  Donal wouldn’t let it go. “Until you follow up on it…”

  “I won’t know.” Ellie sighed. “I hate this kind of thing. I’d have no idea what to say.”

  “If it’ll make you feel any better, I’ll come up with you.”

  “Really?”

  He gave her one of his rare smiles. “Sure. And who knows? Maybe your man Wood—”

  “Who’s actually a woman.”

  “Maybe she’ll offer me a gig, too.”

  Ellie laughed. “Maybe she will.”

  “So that’s settled then. We’ll run by Kellygnow first thing tomorrow.”

  Ellie immediately had a flutter of anxiety.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe we should wait for a weekday.”

  “And maybe we should wait until Riverdance becomes a weekly sitcom— which for all I know, might actually happen, and I wonder, would your man Whelan be pleased with that? But we won’t. You have to seize the cow by the horns.”

  “You mean ‘bull.’ “

  He got a mischievous look in his eyes. “Strike while the peppers are hot.”

  Ellie didn’t bother to correct him this time.

  “All right, already” she said. “No more mangled phrases. We’ll go tomorrow.”

  “That’s grand. Maybe nothing’ll come of it. But maybe you’ll look back on this as one of those pivotal moments that changed your life.”

  “For the better,” she said.

  She was finished her meal now. Stacking her plate on top of Donal’s, she pushed them both to the edge of the table and looked around for the waiter, wanting a refill on her coffee.

  “Well, of course,” Donal said. “I’m glad we got that settled.”

  She turned to look at him. “Now why can’t I shake the feeling that I’ve just been manipulated into this?”

  Donal would only offer her a look of perfect innocence in return.

  “Admit it,” she said. “You just wanted to satisfy your own curiosity about this Kellygnow business, didn’t you?”

  “I had nothing to do with your man Patterson going all mad on you.”

  “I didn’t say you did. But I can tell by the tone of your voice that you’re pleased with how this all turned out, all the same.”

  “What sort of tone of voice?”

  “A satisfied one.”

  “Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph.”

  “And your accent gets stronger, too.”

  “Will you give it a rest, woman.”

  The waiter showed up at their table with a coffee pot just then, interrupting her attempt to get Donal to confess. She asked for some more coffee and her bill. Donal put his hand over the top of his cup when the waiter offered him a refill.

  “Are you working for Angel tonight?” he asked when the waiter had left.

  Ellie shook her head. “Tommy and I aren’t on again until Monday. Why?”

  “It’s that gig of Miki’s tonight. She’s playing at the Crowsea Community Center—filling in for some band that was originally booked to play. We should go. There’ll be music and Guinness and all the finer things in life.”

  “From the way you were going on earlier, I’d think seeing Miki play would be the last thing you’d want to do.”

  Donal gave her a look of complete indignation.

  “Jaysus, woman,” he said. “She’s my sister. And a bloody fine accordion player when she doesn’t mess around with all that jazzy shite. It’s my duty and pleasure to give her all the support I can.”

  “We are talking about you and Miki here, aren’t we?”

  “Unless the Queen of Sheeba’s taken up playing the box.”

  Ellie gave up. “Okay. I’ll go already.”

  “I don’t know,” Donal said, mournfully now. “Maybe you shouldn’t. You might find it so dreadfully dull you’ll barely be able to keep your eyes open. You could have the worst time ever and then you’ll have to blame it all on me.”

  “What I should do,” she said, holding up a fist between them, “is give you a good solid bang alongside your head.”

  Donal slid his chair back so that he was out of range. That rare smile of his lit up his face, and all she could do was laugh.

  7

  Miki had never understood the concept of stage fright. The only thing she liked better than playing her button accordion for its own sake was playing it in front of an audience. The larger the crowd, the better. It wasn’t that she had a big ego, though she certainly had more than enough confidence in her instrumental ability and knew she could keep an audience entertained. Nor did she need the additional validation of applause. That wasn’t the point of her love for playing music live. It was more that she didn’t consider the music to be real until it had made the circuit from player to listener’s ear and back again by way of the listener’s reaction—a circle that could push the music up another notch every time it came around, building through a performance until sometimes when she came off stage, she’d be almost staggering, drunk on the music.

  It didn’t have to be a big audience—only one that gave the music a fair li
sten, and was willing to express how they felt about it.

  So far as Miki was concerned, they had a grand audience at the Crowsea Community Center tonight. A dancing, foot-stomping, hand-clapping appreciative audience that was making the band work twice as hard since they’d started the set, just to keep the energy up. In short, the evening was unwinding exactly the way she liked it. She sat on a chair at one end of the line of four musicians that made up Jigabout, accordion bouncing on her knee, and was barely able to keep her seat she was having such fun, dancing on the spot, seated and all. Of course it helped to have musicians of this caliber to be playing with.

  Jigabout was a pickup band, put together for tonight’s gig when the New-ford Traditional Music Society’s featured act for the evening fell through earlier in the week. Miki had gotten the call from the society on Thursday evening and hastily put Jigabout together—not quite as difficult a prospect as might be imagined since all the musicians she’d rounded up had often played together.

  The other members included Emma Jean Wright from Miki’s regular band Fall Down Dancing on guitar. Unlike Miki, Emma Jean was a natural blonde, her corkscrew curls pulled back into a loose braid tonight. And she was tall— slender and wonderfully tall—a source of some envy to Miki, who got well and truly tired of her own diminutive size whenever something was out of her reach, which seemed far too often. Besides playing with Fall Down Dancing, Emma Jean doubled as a member of an all-female bluegrass group called the Oak Mountain Girls where she also played five-string banjo and provided vocals. She was one of the few guitarists Miki knew who could play as well in both styles, highlighting the proper accents of either a Celtic dance tune accompaniment or a flat-picked bluegrass breakdown as required.