I loved Joey as an artist, and, being something of an artist myself, I really wanted to explore that side of her, and how it develops and grows as she grows up.
Enjoy!
i.
"Remind me why we're doing this again?" she grumbles, squinting out at the water.
"At least yours looks alright," says Dawson next to her, frowning at the watercolour pad on his lap. "Mine's just turning into a big green blob."
She sighs. "I told you, Dawson, you can't just throw all the colours on like that. It's not the same as normal painting."
"Easy for you to say, you're actually good at this," he says, mashing his brush against the little blue circle in his paint tray.
She pushes her hair back from her face and looks down at her own lap. It's not terrible, maybe, but she definitely wouldn't call it good. The water's too bright, and her trees have all bled into each other. The clouds are too round. The shore is an ugly brown. At eleven years old, she's already got high standards, and at the moment, her sixth grade art class is soundly defeating them. "This is stupid."
"Hey, it beats math. Pass me the water?"
She holds the red plastic cup they're sharing towards him and he stirs his brush in it furiously, making a little brown whirlpool. Behind them, Hannah and Claire are giggling about Trevor Lorrie's new haircut. To her left, Joey can see Madison Hart with her paper propped up on her knees, working diligently at her own painting.
"Ugh," she says.
"What?" replies Dawson absentmindedly, smearing brown across the bottom of his page.
"Nothing," she mumbles, putting the cup back down on the grass. "Just—I mean, isn't Madison annoying?"
"Wait, what?" he says, blinking at her, then glancing over her shoulder. "Why?"
"What, like her mom puts her in an art class and now she's suddenly some kind of artist?"
"Did she say that?"
"She didn't, okay? But she obviously thinks she is." Dawson gives her a confused look. She rolls her eyes and hunches back over her own painting. "Whatever."
"Yours is just as good as hers is."
"No it isn't," she mutters in annoyance. "Mine isn't even good."
ii.
They're painting portraits today, which she's been nervous about all week. But with the canvas in front of her and a safe palette of browns and blues in her hand, the model looking somewhere over her left shoulder, the human face seems less like an enigma and more like a puzzle she can crack.
She squints her eyes and begins blocking in the colours. The curtains are drawn over the windows, and the room is dim; a spotlight lights up the model's face from the right. The shadows take shape before her in cool grey, while the planes of the woman's face come out in pale brown. Joey takes in the shape of the eyes and the nose, the length of the neck, and adds a cloud of near-black to frame the face, eyeing Mrs. Tilly's perm.
Because it is Mrs. Tilly, isn't it? Which is weird. Because Joey sees her at least once a week in the supermarket, where she's just another lifeless Capesider. And yet, when she's in the model's chair, it's like she's a brand new person. There is a difference, she is learning, between seeing someone's face at the supermarket, and really seeing them; seeing the shapes and lines and colours that make a person look different from everybody else. The longer she stares, the more the woman in front of her is a stranger.
"How are you doing, Joey?" asks the instructor, startling her.
"Um, alright," she says, lowering her paintbrush to her lap.
"You're doing really well with the blocking, especially here, I think, through the cheek and nose," says the older woman, tracing her hand through the air. "And I see you're getting into the eyes, and some of the detail in the structure of the face—here, do you mind if I just give you a little pointer?"
"Sure," she replies, sliding back in her seat. "Yeah, please."
Sarah grabs a smaller paintbrush and takes Joey's palette, quickly mixing out a slightly brighter brown. "I see you like the flat brush, which is fine," she says, adding a bit of blue. "But I prefer the filberts, myself. More versatile. Anyway, I don't want you to get so caught up in the lines, you know, in what you know you should be seeing. I want you to focus on the light, and the shadow. You like to sketch, right?"
"Uh, yeah, I guess," she says uncomfortably. "Sometimes."
"Because that's obviously great for lines. But today I want you to look at hues and shades. Like if we look at the forehead, here," she says, leaning over towards the easel and making a few short strokes below the hairline. "See? If you add just a little bit of light, suddenly you've added depth, you've added texture, the form is coming out… And we can do that here, across the nose, and along the cheekbone…" She makes a few more strokes. "And don't worry if it's choppy. Choppy is good. Anybody can blend, blending isn't the hard part, it's seeing that's hard. Look for the planes, look for the colours, you know?"
"Yeah," she says slowly, lifting her brush back up. "Yeah, I think so."
"Good," says Sarah, smiling and clapping her on the shoulder. "But seriously, you're doing an awesome job. You're really getting her likeness."
"Thanks," she says, biting her lip, as the instructor moves to the next person. Sarah barely did anything, really, but suddenly, the painting has come to life. She slowly picks her palette back up and swishes together a lighter shadow, getting to work on bringing out the left side of Mrs. Tilly's face. Her brushstrokes seem clumsy and unsure next to her teacher's on the canvas; she tries to keep them short and concise, but her inexperience shows.
She thinks of the painting hanging above the mantel in her house. She and Bess don't really talk about it, but it's there, and sometimes it pulls her gaze to it without her permission and makes the air in her lungs feel thick and heavy. Her mother didn't make portraits, but she did draw little cartoons on sticky notes and put them in her lunchbox, and sometimes she would paint beautiful, breathtaking landscapes. The one on the mantel is small, about twice the size of a postcard, but it shimmers with life; sunset over the water, with sharp little yachts and colours scattered over the waves. Her mother, then, had understood the balance of line and shape, form and colour; she had made a hundred short and choppy strokes with her brush and created something soft and beautiful and true.
She blows a stray piece of hair out of her eyes and frowns. Mrs. Tilly's mouth has managed to get skewed, but she likes the way the colours are contrasting. Does she sacrifice her brushwork to get the likeness right? Or does she ignore what Mrs. Tilly's face is supposed to look like and keep painting, pretending it's just some random, imaginary mouth?
There are no portraits by her mother hanging in her house, it's true, but that doesn't mean her mother never made any. Did she paint people? Joey wonders. Did she draw them, in sketchbooks and notebooks and grocery lists? She adds shadow to the bridge of the nose and wonders if her mother would have known how to teach her.
Of course she would've, she thinks to herself. She was way more talented than I am. She bites on the end of her brush in frustration. She often gets caught up in the details, in the individual features, and forgets to consider the picture as whole. Leaning back and looking at it, she's disappointed. And frustrated. She knows, of course, that practice makes perfect. Besides which, Sarah's favourite mantra is that 'you can't make good paintings until you've made a thousand different bad paintings'. But Joey's never been patient, and she doesn't just want to be good at this. She needs to.
"Fifteen more minutes, guys," calls Sarah from the front of the room. Joey squints at the model, then back at her canvas. It's the eyes, she sees, that are frustrating her. She's made them too close together. It's throwing everything off.
She picks up a big, flat brush, runs it through the dark blue, and considers. Screw it, she thinks, and paints a broad stripe right across the middle.
iii.
"Where's Jack?"
"Ugh, God knows," says Jen, unscrewing a bottle of nailpolish. "I haven't seen him in like, three days."
Joey pops a pretzel in her mouth and tilts the bag over to Jen, who reaches in and grabs a handful. "But he lives here."
"I'm not sure Jack-o remembers that at the moment." She puts her tongue between her teeth as she runs the nail polish brush carefully along the nail of her pinky finger. When she pulls away, it's a bright purple.
"What colour is that?" asks Joey. "It's nice."
"You just want to hear the ridiculous name some balding, middle-aged marketing executive thought would appeal to the female masses."
"Well, yes, obviously," she says, biting another pretzel and boosting herself up onto the counter. "How will I know if I like the colour without hearing the atrocious pun that goes with it?"
"'Louvre me, Louvre me not.'"
Joey wrinkles her nose. "Oh my god. That's terrible."
"Yep."
"I can't believe you paid money for that."
"Interesting. A minute ago you said it was nice."
"That was before I heard the travesty that is its name." She kicks her heels against the wooden panels below her. "How did your midterm go? You had one on Thursday, right?"
"Yeah. The moral of the story is, never take psych. It's a trap."
"That bad?"
"You know," says Jen, starting in on her index finger. "You sign up for a class, you think it's going to be fun and exciting and you're gonna learn all about how to read people and make them tell you all their darkest secrets, and then instead you just end up memorizing the parts of the brain. Who knew getting educated would be so boring? And hard?"
Joey pops another pretzel into her mouth and chews meditatively, looking out the window. "It is hard, isn't it? You spend all of high school so focused on getting out of the purgatory that is Capeside living that you kind of forget you're gonna have to keep working when you leave."
"Exactly, thank you. Hey, Joey, would you do my other hand for me? My left hand is beyond inept."
Joey slides off the counter and onto a stool, spinning around to face Jen. "I might not do a much better job," she warns.
"I believe in you," says Jen. "Pretzel."
Joey pulls one out of the bag and puts it between Jen's teeth, then grabs the nail polish.
"So," says Jen, drawing the word out as she waves her left hand through the air. "Have you talked to Pacey lately?"
Joey twists her mouth and brings the brush to Jen's pinky, making three quick strokes. "Let's not talk about that, okay?"
"Yeah, sure," she replies softly. "Sorry, I don't mean to push you, or anything. I just want you guys to be okay."
"We're fine," she says, moving to her ring finger. "I mean, I'm fine."
"Good." Joey watches her face as she casts about for a topic. "Have you been painting lately?"
"Not so much," she says with a laugh. "I've been doing a bit of sketching, I guess, but, I don't know."
"What?"
"Well, it's just that..." She bites her lip and moves Jen's pointer finger to get a better angle. "I mean, I don't really have the time. Between school, and everything, I'm just so busy right now. And I'd have to do it in my dorm room, which is just too bizarre."
"That's too bad," Jen says, brushing her bangs away from her face as she slouches against the counter.
"I mean, it's really no big deal," she says, shrugging and starting in on Jen's thumb. "I wasn't really that good anyway."
Jen says her name so firmly that it startles her into painting over her cuticle. "Joey. No, Joey, you were great. No, look at me, I'm serious. You are so talented."
"No I'm not," she says uncomfortably, trying to even out the polish on her friend's nail.
"Yes, you are. You're the most talented artist I know, but more importantly, Joey, you love it. You love art, okay. You shouldn't let go of that just because you're a bit busier than you used to be. Okay?"
"Okay," she replies uncertainly, screwing the brush back into the bottle.
"Good," says Jen happily, slapping her hands down. "Wow. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to get all preachy there."
"Nah," Joey says, pulling her hair over her shoulder. "It's fine. Now, do me," she says, and spreads her hands on the counter.
iv.
"I don't know about this," she says, biting her lip.
"Know about what?" Audrey asks, helping herself to the free hors d'oeuvres lined up on the table next to them.
"Just—this whole thing. This whole exhibit thing. I don't think it's such a good idea."
"Joey," says Audrey, exasperated. "We are not going over this again. Look, we're already here. You did the stupid painting, you've got your little table with your name on it, all these people are here to look at it, it's done, okay? Just put it on the table."
Joey looks around. The room's still mostly full of artists, setting up their pieces, sipping free coffee and chatting. The exhibit's in the basement of the sociology building, and it hasn't technically started yet, but she's already starting to regret it.
"I don't know. I just—it feels so personal, you know?" Not for the first time, she regrets her choice of subject. Then she regrets submitting to the exhibit at all. Really, she regrets letting Audrey talk her into joining the Worthington Fine Arts Collective in the first place. "I never should have told you about the whole art thing."
"What, like this is my fault now? Joey, put the damn painting on the damn table before I have to do it for you." Audrey bites into a canapé with gusto, chewing loudly. Joey sighs, steels herself, and then slides her portfolio bag off her shoulder, dropping it onto the table. There's a little pink card on the side with her name stamped on it. Josephine Potter, Senior, it reads. 'Mom'.
"Has anyone even seen this thing yet?" Audrey asks between bites. "Last time you let me look at it, it was, like, this big grey blob."
"It's kind of still a big grey blob," Joey mutters, unzipping the bag. She pulls the canvas out carefully, face down, takes a deep breath, and then flips it up, setting it gingerly on the tabletop easel. Next to her, Audrey stops chewing.
"Oh, Joey."
"What?" she says self-consciously, busying herself with zipping the bag back up and stashing it below the table.
"It's beautiful."
"Stop," she mumbles, stepping backwards and running her hands over her hair. Audrey, instead, steps forward, her fingers hovering over the paint.
"No, shut up, Joey, I'm serious. This is amazing."
"Thanks," she says quietly, shifting her weight.
The painting is in black in white, which she'd been on the fence about as she was working on it and is resolutely regretting now. She'd found an old photograph of her mom and repainted it as though through water, broad, glossy strokes in grey oil suggesting the shape of a woman, smudged and flecked with light. The painting almost comes into focus around her mother's smile, but not quite; as it edges towards the corners, so the image falls out of focus, until it's nothing but smooth strokes of grey.
"I should have done it in colour," she says quickly. "And I don't like this part," she adds, gesturing to her mother's neck and chest. "And also—"
"Joey?"
"Yeah?"
"Shut up. This is perfect."
v.
It takes her five minutes to get the door open, since knocking seems to be doing nothing for her and the lock sticks like no other ("Look, darling, it just needs a little TLC—"), and when she finally jimmies the deadbolt around and pushes her way through, she's hit with the smell of paint and the sound of Marvin Gaye blasting from the speakers on the kitchen counter. She can hear Pacey, half singing, half humming along, from the bedroom at the back of the apartment.
She takes her coat off and drapes it across the back of a chair, dropping her bag onto the table. "Pace?"
He appears a minute later from behind the door at the end of the hallway. His sleeves are rolled up past his elbows and his feet are bare; he's cleaning his hands with a blue rag. Paint primer is flecked across the side of his face like white freckles. He turns the music down as he passes the kitchen and leans down when he reaches her, pressing his lips to hers. "Tell me, how did a beautiful woman like you end up in an absolute dump like this?"
"It might have something to do with the spare key you gave me," she says, wrapping her arms around his neck. "Also, my boyfriend lives here."
"Does he really? Is he here now?"
"Well, he's supposed to be at work."
"Ah, restaurant's closed on Mondays, sweetheart."
She closes her eyes and leans her forehead against his chin, smiling. He tilts his head and presses a kiss to her temple. "Lucky me."
"Really? Did you have something in mind?"
"Well," she says coyly, unlinking her hands and running them over his shoulders, down his chest. "A little of this, a little of that..."
"You know I'm always happy to oblige," he says, bringing his hands up to push her hair away from her face. "But I am sort of in the middle of something."
"You're repainting?"
"Your deductive reasoning skills are exemplary."
"Inductive."
"What?"
"Nevermind. Since when do you care about the colour of the walls?"
"I don't," he says, taking her hand and tugging her gently towards the back of the apartment. "I would, in fact, be the first to admit that interior design is not exactly my calling. However—desperate times, my good woman, desperate times." He pushes the door to his bedroom open and she follows him in. One of the walls is nearly coated with primer, but the other three are a stark, reddish brown. "Look at this. What would you even call this?"
"Putrid pomegranate?" she suggests, running her hand over the nearest wall. "Positively puke?"
"Positively Puke. Josephine Potter, you are a poet."
"Thank you," she says primly, and starts taking off her sweater.
"And just what do you think you're doing?"
She gives him a look before pulling it over her head. "Helping you? Obviously?"
"You know, I don't just invite you over for free labour."
"Who said anything about free?" she responds, tying her hair back. "I expect full compensation."
He laughs, running a hand through his hair and reaching down to grab a roller off the floor. "I'm afraid I'm a little strapped for cash at the moment. Turns out New York is kinda expensive. Who knew?"
"I'm sure we can figure something out."
"And would this aforementioned compensation happen to involve the kitchen? Or perhaps, the bedroom?"
"I'm open to negotiations," she says, toeing her shoes off and kicking them into the hallway. "Although it doesn't look like the bedroom is up and running just yet," she adds, looking pointedly around the bare room. He raises his eyebrows to concede her point, and runs his roller over the paint tray at his feet.
"True. Although I warn you not to underestimate my creativity, nor, indeed, my dedication in settling my debts."
"Wouldn't dream of it," she says seriously as he turns away from her to finish his wall. She untucks her tank top from her jeans, bends over to grab the other roller, and on her way past him, flicks paint at the back of his neck. He turns around, narrowing his eyes.
"Watch yourself, Potter," he says, pointing a finger at her sternly. She winks at him over her shoulder and gets to work.
O
An hour later finds them sprawled on the floor of the living room, Pacey's back against the sofa, Joey draped half on top of him, her legs curled up over his thighs. The sun is setting, the bright square of orange light coming from the window rising higher and higher up the opposite wall.
"Hey Pace," she says, tracing her hand over his bare chest. His shirt is wrapped around her shoulders, buttoned up to below her sternum. (Hers had landed in the paint tray.) "Where's your roommate again?"
"That is an excellent question," he responds. His fingers are trailing up and down her thigh, tracing the white hand print he had left below her ass. "I believe he is on a date. Hopefully somewhere far, far away from here." She leans up, lazily pressing a kiss to his collar, his neck, the underside of his jaw. He hums in appreciation, wrapping his right hand around her ankle. "Let me tell you, you drive a hard bargain, woman."
"How so?" she asks softly, settling her head back against his shoulder. He brings his hand up to brush against her hip, her waist, and then traces over the band of her underwear.
"Well, here we are, lying on this less-than-spotless floor after barely an hour's work, and has the job been completed? No. Yet you've managed to extract payment in full."
"Actually, you haven't made me dinner yet."
"So what you're saying is, this was just the down payment."
"You worked in finance for a minute there, didn't you?"
He shushes her with a thumb against her mouth. "We don't speak of that." She bites the pad of his thumb. He turns her jaw towards him and kisses her, soft and steady. "Like I said," he says, pulling away and swiping his finger across her bottom lip. "A hard bargain."
She sighs happily and reaches an arm up to scratch the back of his neck. "So what colour are you going to paint it? Now that you've gotten rid of Putrid Puke, or whatever."
"Positively Puke. And I was thinking I'd go with a nice, sky blue. A little taste of home, or something, yeah?"
"Yeah," she says, catching his left hand and lacing her fingers through his against her hip.
"And," he says slowly. "If you want, you can have a wall of your own to let loose on."
She gasps dramatically. "You got me a wall?"
He laughs, the sound rumbling through his chest. "Well. It's rented."
"Fair. Tonight?"
"God, no," he says, still chuckling. "I mean, for one thing, I don't actually have the paint yet. But for another, I think we've done quite enough damage for one day, wouldn't you say?" By the last rays of light shining in through the window, they both turn their eyes towards the evidence: Pacey's belt slung across the back of the couch; her jeans lying dejectedly by the door; a pair of hand prints, one small and one large, half overlapping, starkly white against the yellow wall of the hallway.
She tips her head back to look at him. His face is still flecked with paint, and there's a smear from where she'd run her thumb across his temple, into his hair. His eyes, normally dark, are lit up by the fading sun, an errant ray lighting them up a clear, earnest blue. His gaze meets hers and he grins. She smiles back, big and bright.
"We did okay, though, didn't we?" she asks, nudging her nose against his chin.
"Yeah," he says indulgently, finding the hand print on the back of her leg and fitting his palm to it. "Yeah, Jo, we did a helluva paint job. A real work of art."
And some gratuitous Pacey there at the end, because he is my husband and he deserves it. Don't forget to review!