Part Three
Jane parked in front of the Morgendorffer house and removed her paintbox, easel, and canvas from the car. As she headed up the sidewalk, Daria opened the door. She was wearing her usual raw sienna pullover shirt and black pleated skirt, but no green jacket. Jane looked down and saw that Daria was barefoot. "Hola, amiga. I thought you'd be au naturel by now."
Daria relieved Jane of the easel, then stepped back to allow her to enter. She looked down at her toes. "After you hung up, I had second thoughts."
"Awww, dammit!" Jane gave the foyer carpet a bitter, disgusted glare. When she looked back up at Daria, her expression was merely one of disappointment. "Well, I don't want you to do anything you don't feel comfortable about."
Daria's face lit up with an affectionate smile. Jane couldn't help but smile back. "Oh, not about that. About lying around naked with the front door unlocked." Daria locked the door as she spoke, then twisted the knob to make sure it was locked. "Come on up."
Jane breathed a big sigh of relief as she turned to follow Daria up the stairs. "I can still hardly believe you're actually going to do this."
"You're not nearly as surprised as I am"
"I meant what I said about you not doing it if you don't feel comfortable with it." Jane said sincerely.
Daria paused at the top of the stairs and smiled down at Jane. "I know, and I appreciate that. I definitely don't feel comfortable, but you've known me long enough to know that I don't operate on feelings." She continued down the hall to her padded room.
Jane walked in prepared to tell Daria where to put the easel, but Daria was already setting it up exactly where Jane wanted it. She smiled as she put down her paintbox and unfolded a plastic dropcloth. Daria lifted the easel for Jane to spread the dropcloth on the rug.
Jane looked at Daria's blanket, the most hideous shade of brownish-greenish orange imaginable, and knew it would have to go. Besides being ugly as homemade sin, its reflected color would raise havoc with Daria's skin tones. "Daria, do you have a blanket or bedspread in the green-blue-purple range we could put on your bed?"
"I've got a blue blanket that went slightly purplish in the wash one day." Daria opened her closet door and pointed to the blanket on the shelf.
"That's perfect. We can just put it on top of that other one, being extremely careful to cover it completely, of course."
"Hey, it complements the curtains."
"Anything that compliments those curtains is lying." Jane stated.
Daria smirked a little as they spread the blanket.
~*~
"So, what made you decide to model for me, if you don't mind my asking?" Jane was squeezing a glob of Alizarin Crimson onto her palette as Daria was removing her bra. "I didn't even ask you to, this time."
"Well shoot, if you don't want me to..." Daria made as if to put the bra back on.
"Nonono! I want you to! I want you to! It's just that you never would before, and it's not..." Jane trailed off.
"Not the sort of thing I'd do?" Down to plain white panties, Daria tossed the bra onto her pillow. The logical part of her mind pondered why she should be so self conscious about this. Her gym locker was next to Jane's. She'd undressed a thousand times with Jane closer then she was right now. There wasscarcely a square inch of her epidermis that Jane hadn't seen at least part of, except parts of her scalp.
"Well... yeah."
"You're right. It isn't. But I want to help you earn that money you need for college if I can, and this was the best way I could think of that didn't involve physical labor. I had to think about it, sort out the principles involved. You know, all that philosophical stuff that makes everyone think I'm weird. I'm still not positive, but I think it's the right thing to do." Daria slipped out of her panties and laid them on top of her shirt on the bed. "And anyway, it's not like this is the first time I've modeled nude."
"What?"
"Take a look at that photo shoot on the desk. Full frontal." Daria pointed, smiling almost undetectably.
Jane's eyes got big and round. She moved to the desk and looked at the prints laid out there. Her surprised look turned to a grin. "Awww, they're precious! You were such a cute baby! No wonder you turned out so good looking!"
Daria made a rude noise. "Yeah, right!"
Jane turned back to her friend, who was standing rather awkwardly in the corner. "Daria, you are beautiful. You know it. When are you going to accept it?"
Daria shifted her feet, looking even more awkward. The start of a blush appeared on her cheeks. "Are you gonna paint, or are you just trying to see how long you can get me to stand around bare-assed before I wise up and throw you out?"
Shaking her head and smirking ruefully, Jane said, "Okay, let's start. Cop a pose."
Daria took a step toward the bed, then hesitated. "Any pose in particular?"
"Well, you mentioned lying on the bed reading. Let's try that. There's a practical reason most nudes are reclining nudes. This is going to take a while."
"Okay." Daria walked over to the bed and lay down on her stomach, head toward the foot end. She'd placed a large book at that end, and she opened it up to a bookmark. Propped on her elbows, she crossed her arms so as to conceal her breasts as much as possible. Her feet were on the pillow, her legs straight and tightly together.
Jane refrained from shaking her head. Daria couldn't have looked less relaxed and comfortable if she'd been impaled on a barbecue spit. Jane realized she'd have to handle the situation very carefully. "Um, how about putting your feet in the air?"
Daria lifted her feet, then moved them back and forth slightly until she found the position where they balanced over her knees. "Like this?"
"Good. Try crossing your ankles." Daria did so, then searched for and found the balance point again. "Better. Yeah, I like that. Can you hold them that way?"
"Yes."
"Great. Now can you put your hands on the book, like you're holding the pages open?"
Daria looked down at her crossed forearms and at what they were partly concealing. Hesitantly, she uncrossed them and laid her fingers on the corners of the book.
"Good. Now this first pose will be fairly short while I work out the composition." Jane stepped forward, reached out a finger, and lifted a stray lock of hair away from Daria's face and back onto her shoulder with the rest, then returned to her palette and easel. Daria felt herself blushing. For no good reason she could think of, that trivial contact had seemed very intimate. She gritted her teeth and resolutely began reading The Gulag Archipelago.
~*~
Jane very carefully drew her brush along the line of the back of Daria's thigh, capturing that slight and subtle curve just right, and ending within the buttock area. Reloading the brush with the carefully blended range of skin tones in a slightly different spacing, she started at the lower back and, with a single stroke, laid in Daria's left nether cheek, perfectly capturing the bluish skylight that illuminated it through the window. Turning the brush over and holding it at a slightly different angle, she touched down gently at the upper end of her previous stroke and laid in the skylit left side of Daria's back, stopping in the middle of the shoulderblade area, so that the ragged end of the stroke would be overpainted when she put in the shoulderblade and shoulder strokes, whose ends would then be overlapped by the strokes that would define her hair.
Jane paused and looked back at her model. Daria had such exquisite lines, slender but modeled and defined by the musculature beneath her pale, somewhat translucent skin. Since she'd begun that Jeet Kune Do class and started swimming regularly, her figure had gone from slightly out of shape to willowy to slim, taut perfection. The play of the light over her skin, with its slight rises and dips hinting subtly at the overlapping layers of muscle beneath, was endlessly fascinating. Jane knew that she could draw, paint, and sculpt her friend for years, and not begin to capture the beauty of Daria Morgendorffer.
An unpleasantly factual part of her brain insisted on reminding her that she'd never get that chance. This one short summer, already partly over, was all there would be. Then Daria and Jane would go off to their separate colleges. Oh, there might be bits of time here and there, when they'd have the opportunity to do it again, but there would be other claims on those bits of time too, and few, perhaps none at all, would be devoted to painting sessions like this. Jane was chagrined to feel tears start to build up in her eyes. She inhaled deeply and pinched herself to try to break out of the maudlin mood, but wound up having to blot away a tear with her jacket sleeve.
Daria was having trouble concentrating on The Gulag Archipelago. She felt so exposed lying there, so unprotected, and yet, at the same time, so strangely free. Her mind couldn't help picking at that feeling, trying to analyze it. She knew, almost instinctively, that her parents would disapprove, probably strongly. But they could no longer forbid her, because she was eighteen now, officially an adult. Maybe that was it. This was one of the first, maybe the first, exercise of her rights as an adult. She had left childhood behind and stepped through the door into... the door!
"Jane, did you lock the door?"
"No, my hands were full, just like..." realization dawned on Jane and she stepped swiftly toward Daria's bedroom door.
Suddenly the door opened and Quinn walked in. "Daria, can I... eep!"
Daria scowled fiercely but held her position. "All right, Quinn," she said, blushing furiously, "How much?"
"How much what?" asked Quinn, sounding puzzled.
"How much do you want to keep quiet about this?"
"Oh, Daria, surely we're past that." Quinn closed the door behind her.
Daria didn't like the sound of that. "If not money, then what?" Don't push it, Quinn."
Quinn shot her sister an irritated look that softened into a lopsided smile. "All right, Daria, I promise not to rat on you if you'll..." she put on an evil calculating expression. Daria controlled an urge to wince. She felt as if she were about to get stuck with a hypodermic in her bare derriere. "...lend me one of your books to read." Quinn finished, smirking.
Daria looked startled. "Are you..." "pulling my leg" wouldn't come out. "...kidding?" she finished.
Quinn gave her a slightly sad smile. "Oh, Daria. I wouldn't do something like that to you, especially now that you're going to be leaving for Raft so soon. If I did, you probably wouldn't speak to me for a year. And anyway, I think this is great. You're finally starting to come out of your shell. You picked sort of an unusual way to do it, but..."
"I'd say I was completely out of my shell, and everything else but my skin." Daria replied, still blushing. "Including my mind," she muttered.
Quinn giggled. "You spend entirely too much time in your mind. You need to get out more." Quinn had strolled over and was admiring Jane's work, somewhat to Jane's irritation, but she'd decided not to get in Quinn's face when she was being so uncharacteristically sisterly. Daria, to her surprise, found herself appreciating Quinn's quip.
"Oh, Jane, that's beautiful! I didn't know you could paint real looking stuff! Daria, you're really going to like this!"
"That's good. Uh, Quinn, could you leave now so Jane can lock that..."
"Daria, I could use a little... what in the world is going on here?" Helen said as she opened the door. Daria fought the urge to bury her face in her hands.
"I'm reading and Jane is painting," she said evenly, moving only her head to give Helen a near-perfect deadpan stare.
"And why aren't you wearing any clothes?" demanded Helen, crossing her arms and staring back.
Daria wanted badly to cross her own arms and cover what Helen was obviously staring at, but she defiantly held her pose. "I'm in my bedroom. This is one of the places it's okay not to have clothes on."
"Not in public, it isn't."
"I wouldn't be in public if you two hadn't come barging in without knocking," Daria replied with a bit of heat. She was acutely conscious of her bare bottom shining in the north light. She was finding it very difficult to project righteous indignation while naked.
"Sorry, Daria." Quinn said softly. "Come on, Mom, let's go."
Helen noted Quinn's unusual behavior. "And what are you doing in here, Quinn?" she asked in a hard tone, glaring at her, "Waiting your turn?"
Quinn thought this was totally unfair, but held back an angry retort. "I wanted to borrow a book, and forgot to knock."
"You're not the only one," muttered Daria. The painting session obviously having been interrupted for the present, Daria rose with all the dignity she could muster and donned her bathrobe. She didn't notice the effect this had on Helen, who was seeing her daughter naked for the first time in thirteen years.
Helen was astounded. She had seen Daria in that too-daring bikini that Quinn had chosen for her, and had been amazed at what a fine figure she had somehow been keeping secret. But Helen knew very well how many imperfections even such a brief garment could hide or disguise. But Daria... didn't have any imperfections to hide. She had grown into a beautiful young woman. As much effort as she'd put into hiding her figure, Helen had thought that certainly there must be something... but there wasn't. Collecting her thoughts with an effort, she walked around to where she could see Jane's canvas.
"Oh! Oh, my, that's very good, Jane. It's uh, much less abstract than your other work that I've seen."
"Uh, thanks, Mrs. Morgendorffer. I believe an artist should be able to paint a subject realistically before attempting to abstract it, and I haven't had much practice with figure studies." Jane continued to hold her temper. Didn't these people know that they were supposed to ask the artist's permission to look at a work in progress?
"So you're just doing this for practice? You're not going to display it anywhere?" Helen began grilling Jane as if she were a hostile witness.
Daria stepped in. If there was going to be a fight, it was time to stake out her position. "If it turns out well, which I'm sure it will, Jane is going to enter it in the local artists exhibit at the art museum, and hope to sell it, or win the purchase prize. She's trying to raise money for college." She looked Helen straight in the eye.
"She's going to sell it?! Daria Marie Morgendorffer, I did not raise my daughters to display their naked bodies in public, and certainly not for money!"
"Again, I'm not in public. This is my bedroom."
"Don't split hairs with me, Daria. Jane is painting a very accurate likeness of you, which will be displayed in public and sold to the highest bidder."
"As I recall, you were quite insistent that I display my ninety-seven percent naked body to thousands of people at the beach, remember? Over my strenuous objections? And you took photographs of me doing so, which you don't seem to mind displaying to others."
"You were not naked at the beach, even though that bikini was smaller than I would have chosen."
"That's the bikini you coerced me into wearing, the bikini chosen by your designated representative." Daria pointed out. Helen shot a glare at Quinn, who looked away. "And this seems a strange time for you to come out against public nudity, after raising not one single objection to the humiliating public nudity I've been forced into for the past six years."
"What?! What are you talking about?" asked Helen, shocked.
"Gym class, Mother. Every school day from seventh grade on, I was forced to strip naked twice, and shower once, in front of forty to fifty girls whom I knew barely or not at all. No pun intended. How much modesty do you expect me to have left after that?"
Helen looked irritated. "Daria, don't be ridiculous. That's necessary. There's no other way to have physical education in schools. Everyone does it."
"That doesn't make it right. But if you're going to claim that it's right in school, how can it not be right in my own bedroom?"
"Because they're not making a permanent visual record of it in school," Helen replied with a smug smile, a look that faded somewhat when she saw a stronger version of the same expression form on Daria's face.
"A permanent visual record, eh? I think you just shot yourself in the foot." Daria smirked.
"What are you talking about?"
"Look at that set of photos on my desk. What do they record and who took them?"
With a puzzled and slightly anxious expression, Helen stepped to Daria's desk and looked at what lay there. After a few seconds, her head drooped and her shoulders sagged.
"Your Honor, the defense rests." Daria said.
When Helen turned around, she was wearing a rueful little smile. "All right, Perry Mason, you win," she sighed. "Apparently our commonly accepted views on nudity are somewhat.... inconsistent. Just the sort of thing you'd pick up on, it seems. Well, you're an adult now, and I suppose I have to respect your decisions on matters like this."
Daria smiled affectionately at her mother. "Thanks. I'm glad you were the one who said it."
"Said what?"
"That I'm an adult now. I was afraid that if I said it, you might come back with the 'as long as you're under my roof' thing."
Helen returned Daria's smile. "Daria, I'm painfully aware of how short your remaining time under our roof has grown, and I don't want to do anything that might shorten it further." She took a deep breath and let it out. "You do what you think is right. Just keep your door locked when appropriate." She turned to Quinn. "But you, young lady, are not an adult. Remember that. Get the book you wanted and come downstairs. I need an extra pair of hands." With a last look at the painting and at Daria standing there in her white terrycloth bathrobe, she turned and left the room.
Walking down the hall, Helen shook her head ruefully. What was the use of all those years of law school if her teenage daughter out-argued her all the time? How did Daria do that? Not for the first time, Helen wished she could see the world as Daria saw it.
In Daria's bedroom, Jane was grinning. "Way to go, Daria Allred! Color me impressed! I was seeing my hopes of tuition money flutter away. How did you do that?"
Quinn smirked. "As Mom is so fond of recounting, Daria cut her teeth on law books. Literally."
Daria smiled a little. "It's probably more helpful that I actually read a few. On one of those take-your-daughter-to-work days, I wound up stuck in Mom's office alone while she ran from meeting to courthouse to conference all day. There was nothing to do but read law books. But I think it's mostly just having a logical mind." She turned to her sister. "Now let's find you a book and shove you out the door so I can get done with this. What did you have in mind?"
"Hmm. Do you have anything about how to stay youthful looking forever?" Quinn asked facetiously.
Daria smirked. "As a matter of fact, I do." She took a book off the shelf and handed it to Quinn. "I think you'll like it, and you'll also be getting a jump on English Lit next year."
Quinn looked at the book's cover. "'The Picture Of Dorian Gray?' Ha ha! That gives me a great idea for a title for that painting!"
Daria knew exactly what idea Quinn had gotten. She spun her sister around and pointed her at the door. "Jane does her own titles. You have to go now. 'Bye."
"'The Picture Of Daria's Rear.' What do you think? Hey, quit pushing!"
"Out."
~*~
With Quinn gone and the door securely locked and deadbolted, Daria hesitantly removed the robe and resumed her pose on the bed, and Jane took up her palette and brush and resumed her stance at the easel.
"What's that you're reading, anyway?" Jane asked.
"It's 'The Gulag Archipelago' by Solzhenytsin."
Jane looked thoughtful. "Hmmm... 'Nude Reading Solzhenytsin.' Has a nice ring to it. I believe that would make a good title for the painting. 'Nude Reading Solzhenytsin.' Yeah. What do you think?"
Daria kept her eyes on the pages of the book. "Gee, Jane, why don't you say 'nude' five or six more times, and see if you can make me turn a bright blotchy red all over?"
Jane grinned. Daria was always at her funniest when she was a little bit cranky. "Come on, Daria, tell us what you really think." she teased.
"I really think you could paint faster with that long-handled brush stuck up your ass," Daria deadpanned, eyes still on the book. "I bet that'd break you from sucking on it too. What do you think?"
"Eep! Can't talk now, busy painting!"
~*~
Part Four coming soon. If you got this far, please review and tell me what you think, good, bad, or so-so. You know, reviews are the closest thing to pay we poor fanfic writers get. Thanks.
Those of you new to FanFiction.net, you can check out my other works by clicking on Lawndale Stalker. That'll take you to my author page, where my other fics are listed. Pick one and click on it.
Galen Hardesty [gehardesty@yahoo.com]
Disclaimer
"Daria" and all related characters are trademarks of MTV Networks, a division of Viacom International, inc. The author does not claim copyright to these characters or to anything else in the "Daria" milieu; he does, however, claim copyright to all those parts of this work of fiction which are original to him and not to MTV or to other fanfic authors. This fanfic may be freely copied and distributed provided its contents remain unchanged, provided the author's name and email address are included, and provided that the distributor does not use it for monetary profit. (as if.)
Jane parked in front of the Morgendorffer house and removed her paintbox, easel, and canvas from the car. As she headed up the sidewalk, Daria opened the door. She was wearing her usual raw sienna pullover shirt and black pleated skirt, but no green jacket. Jane looked down and saw that Daria was barefoot. "Hola, amiga. I thought you'd be au naturel by now."
Daria relieved Jane of the easel, then stepped back to allow her to enter. She looked down at her toes. "After you hung up, I had second thoughts."
"Awww, dammit!" Jane gave the foyer carpet a bitter, disgusted glare. When she looked back up at Daria, her expression was merely one of disappointment. "Well, I don't want you to do anything you don't feel comfortable about."
Daria's face lit up with an affectionate smile. Jane couldn't help but smile back. "Oh, not about that. About lying around naked with the front door unlocked." Daria locked the door as she spoke, then twisted the knob to make sure it was locked. "Come on up."
Jane breathed a big sigh of relief as she turned to follow Daria up the stairs. "I can still hardly believe you're actually going to do this."
"You're not nearly as surprised as I am"
"I meant what I said about you not doing it if you don't feel comfortable with it." Jane said sincerely.
Daria paused at the top of the stairs and smiled down at Jane. "I know, and I appreciate that. I definitely don't feel comfortable, but you've known me long enough to know that I don't operate on feelings." She continued down the hall to her padded room.
Jane walked in prepared to tell Daria where to put the easel, but Daria was already setting it up exactly where Jane wanted it. She smiled as she put down her paintbox and unfolded a plastic dropcloth. Daria lifted the easel for Jane to spread the dropcloth on the rug.
Jane looked at Daria's blanket, the most hideous shade of brownish-greenish orange imaginable, and knew it would have to go. Besides being ugly as homemade sin, its reflected color would raise havoc with Daria's skin tones. "Daria, do you have a blanket or bedspread in the green-blue-purple range we could put on your bed?"
"I've got a blue blanket that went slightly purplish in the wash one day." Daria opened her closet door and pointed to the blanket on the shelf.
"That's perfect. We can just put it on top of that other one, being extremely careful to cover it completely, of course."
"Hey, it complements the curtains."
"Anything that compliments those curtains is lying." Jane stated.
Daria smirked a little as they spread the blanket.
~*~
"So, what made you decide to model for me, if you don't mind my asking?" Jane was squeezing a glob of Alizarin Crimson onto her palette as Daria was removing her bra. "I didn't even ask you to, this time."
"Well shoot, if you don't want me to..." Daria made as if to put the bra back on.
"Nonono! I want you to! I want you to! It's just that you never would before, and it's not..." Jane trailed off.
"Not the sort of thing I'd do?" Down to plain white panties, Daria tossed the bra onto her pillow. The logical part of her mind pondered why she should be so self conscious about this. Her gym locker was next to Jane's. She'd undressed a thousand times with Jane closer then she was right now. There wasscarcely a square inch of her epidermis that Jane hadn't seen at least part of, except parts of her scalp.
"Well... yeah."
"You're right. It isn't. But I want to help you earn that money you need for college if I can, and this was the best way I could think of that didn't involve physical labor. I had to think about it, sort out the principles involved. You know, all that philosophical stuff that makes everyone think I'm weird. I'm still not positive, but I think it's the right thing to do." Daria slipped out of her panties and laid them on top of her shirt on the bed. "And anyway, it's not like this is the first time I've modeled nude."
"What?"
"Take a look at that photo shoot on the desk. Full frontal." Daria pointed, smiling almost undetectably.
Jane's eyes got big and round. She moved to the desk and looked at the prints laid out there. Her surprised look turned to a grin. "Awww, they're precious! You were such a cute baby! No wonder you turned out so good looking!"
Daria made a rude noise. "Yeah, right!"
Jane turned back to her friend, who was standing rather awkwardly in the corner. "Daria, you are beautiful. You know it. When are you going to accept it?"
Daria shifted her feet, looking even more awkward. The start of a blush appeared on her cheeks. "Are you gonna paint, or are you just trying to see how long you can get me to stand around bare-assed before I wise up and throw you out?"
Shaking her head and smirking ruefully, Jane said, "Okay, let's start. Cop a pose."
Daria took a step toward the bed, then hesitated. "Any pose in particular?"
"Well, you mentioned lying on the bed reading. Let's try that. There's a practical reason most nudes are reclining nudes. This is going to take a while."
"Okay." Daria walked over to the bed and lay down on her stomach, head toward the foot end. She'd placed a large book at that end, and she opened it up to a bookmark. Propped on her elbows, she crossed her arms so as to conceal her breasts as much as possible. Her feet were on the pillow, her legs straight and tightly together.
Jane refrained from shaking her head. Daria couldn't have looked less relaxed and comfortable if she'd been impaled on a barbecue spit. Jane realized she'd have to handle the situation very carefully. "Um, how about putting your feet in the air?"
Daria lifted her feet, then moved them back and forth slightly until she found the position where they balanced over her knees. "Like this?"
"Good. Try crossing your ankles." Daria did so, then searched for and found the balance point again. "Better. Yeah, I like that. Can you hold them that way?"
"Yes."
"Great. Now can you put your hands on the book, like you're holding the pages open?"
Daria looked down at her crossed forearms and at what they were partly concealing. Hesitantly, she uncrossed them and laid her fingers on the corners of the book.
"Good. Now this first pose will be fairly short while I work out the composition." Jane stepped forward, reached out a finger, and lifted a stray lock of hair away from Daria's face and back onto her shoulder with the rest, then returned to her palette and easel. Daria felt herself blushing. For no good reason she could think of, that trivial contact had seemed very intimate. She gritted her teeth and resolutely began reading The Gulag Archipelago.
~*~
Jane very carefully drew her brush along the line of the back of Daria's thigh, capturing that slight and subtle curve just right, and ending within the buttock area. Reloading the brush with the carefully blended range of skin tones in a slightly different spacing, she started at the lower back and, with a single stroke, laid in Daria's left nether cheek, perfectly capturing the bluish skylight that illuminated it through the window. Turning the brush over and holding it at a slightly different angle, she touched down gently at the upper end of her previous stroke and laid in the skylit left side of Daria's back, stopping in the middle of the shoulderblade area, so that the ragged end of the stroke would be overpainted when she put in the shoulderblade and shoulder strokes, whose ends would then be overlapped by the strokes that would define her hair.
Jane paused and looked back at her model. Daria had such exquisite lines, slender but modeled and defined by the musculature beneath her pale, somewhat translucent skin. Since she'd begun that Jeet Kune Do class and started swimming regularly, her figure had gone from slightly out of shape to willowy to slim, taut perfection. The play of the light over her skin, with its slight rises and dips hinting subtly at the overlapping layers of muscle beneath, was endlessly fascinating. Jane knew that she could draw, paint, and sculpt her friend for years, and not begin to capture the beauty of Daria Morgendorffer.
An unpleasantly factual part of her brain insisted on reminding her that she'd never get that chance. This one short summer, already partly over, was all there would be. Then Daria and Jane would go off to their separate colleges. Oh, there might be bits of time here and there, when they'd have the opportunity to do it again, but there would be other claims on those bits of time too, and few, perhaps none at all, would be devoted to painting sessions like this. Jane was chagrined to feel tears start to build up in her eyes. She inhaled deeply and pinched herself to try to break out of the maudlin mood, but wound up having to blot away a tear with her jacket sleeve.
Daria was having trouble concentrating on The Gulag Archipelago. She felt so exposed lying there, so unprotected, and yet, at the same time, so strangely free. Her mind couldn't help picking at that feeling, trying to analyze it. She knew, almost instinctively, that her parents would disapprove, probably strongly. But they could no longer forbid her, because she was eighteen now, officially an adult. Maybe that was it. This was one of the first, maybe the first, exercise of her rights as an adult. She had left childhood behind and stepped through the door into... the door!
"Jane, did you lock the door?"
"No, my hands were full, just like..." realization dawned on Jane and she stepped swiftly toward Daria's bedroom door.
Suddenly the door opened and Quinn walked in. "Daria, can I... eep!"
Daria scowled fiercely but held her position. "All right, Quinn," she said, blushing furiously, "How much?"
"How much what?" asked Quinn, sounding puzzled.
"How much do you want to keep quiet about this?"
"Oh, Daria, surely we're past that." Quinn closed the door behind her.
Daria didn't like the sound of that. "If not money, then what?" Don't push it, Quinn."
Quinn shot her sister an irritated look that softened into a lopsided smile. "All right, Daria, I promise not to rat on you if you'll..." she put on an evil calculating expression. Daria controlled an urge to wince. She felt as if she were about to get stuck with a hypodermic in her bare derriere. "...lend me one of your books to read." Quinn finished, smirking.
Daria looked startled. "Are you..." "pulling my leg" wouldn't come out. "...kidding?" she finished.
Quinn gave her a slightly sad smile. "Oh, Daria. I wouldn't do something like that to you, especially now that you're going to be leaving for Raft so soon. If I did, you probably wouldn't speak to me for a year. And anyway, I think this is great. You're finally starting to come out of your shell. You picked sort of an unusual way to do it, but..."
"I'd say I was completely out of my shell, and everything else but my skin." Daria replied, still blushing. "Including my mind," she muttered.
Quinn giggled. "You spend entirely too much time in your mind. You need to get out more." Quinn had strolled over and was admiring Jane's work, somewhat to Jane's irritation, but she'd decided not to get in Quinn's face when she was being so uncharacteristically sisterly. Daria, to her surprise, found herself appreciating Quinn's quip.
"Oh, Jane, that's beautiful! I didn't know you could paint real looking stuff! Daria, you're really going to like this!"
"That's good. Uh, Quinn, could you leave now so Jane can lock that..."
"Daria, I could use a little... what in the world is going on here?" Helen said as she opened the door. Daria fought the urge to bury her face in her hands.
"I'm reading and Jane is painting," she said evenly, moving only her head to give Helen a near-perfect deadpan stare.
"And why aren't you wearing any clothes?" demanded Helen, crossing her arms and staring back.
Daria wanted badly to cross her own arms and cover what Helen was obviously staring at, but she defiantly held her pose. "I'm in my bedroom. This is one of the places it's okay not to have clothes on."
"Not in public, it isn't."
"I wouldn't be in public if you two hadn't come barging in without knocking," Daria replied with a bit of heat. She was acutely conscious of her bare bottom shining in the north light. She was finding it very difficult to project righteous indignation while naked.
"Sorry, Daria." Quinn said softly. "Come on, Mom, let's go."
Helen noted Quinn's unusual behavior. "And what are you doing in here, Quinn?" she asked in a hard tone, glaring at her, "Waiting your turn?"
Quinn thought this was totally unfair, but held back an angry retort. "I wanted to borrow a book, and forgot to knock."
"You're not the only one," muttered Daria. The painting session obviously having been interrupted for the present, Daria rose with all the dignity she could muster and donned her bathrobe. She didn't notice the effect this had on Helen, who was seeing her daughter naked for the first time in thirteen years.
Helen was astounded. She had seen Daria in that too-daring bikini that Quinn had chosen for her, and had been amazed at what a fine figure she had somehow been keeping secret. But Helen knew very well how many imperfections even such a brief garment could hide or disguise. But Daria... didn't have any imperfections to hide. She had grown into a beautiful young woman. As much effort as she'd put into hiding her figure, Helen had thought that certainly there must be something... but there wasn't. Collecting her thoughts with an effort, she walked around to where she could see Jane's canvas.
"Oh! Oh, my, that's very good, Jane. It's uh, much less abstract than your other work that I've seen."
"Uh, thanks, Mrs. Morgendorffer. I believe an artist should be able to paint a subject realistically before attempting to abstract it, and I haven't had much practice with figure studies." Jane continued to hold her temper. Didn't these people know that they were supposed to ask the artist's permission to look at a work in progress?
"So you're just doing this for practice? You're not going to display it anywhere?" Helen began grilling Jane as if she were a hostile witness.
Daria stepped in. If there was going to be a fight, it was time to stake out her position. "If it turns out well, which I'm sure it will, Jane is going to enter it in the local artists exhibit at the art museum, and hope to sell it, or win the purchase prize. She's trying to raise money for college." She looked Helen straight in the eye.
"She's going to sell it?! Daria Marie Morgendorffer, I did not raise my daughters to display their naked bodies in public, and certainly not for money!"
"Again, I'm not in public. This is my bedroom."
"Don't split hairs with me, Daria. Jane is painting a very accurate likeness of you, which will be displayed in public and sold to the highest bidder."
"As I recall, you were quite insistent that I display my ninety-seven percent naked body to thousands of people at the beach, remember? Over my strenuous objections? And you took photographs of me doing so, which you don't seem to mind displaying to others."
"You were not naked at the beach, even though that bikini was smaller than I would have chosen."
"That's the bikini you coerced me into wearing, the bikini chosen by your designated representative." Daria pointed out. Helen shot a glare at Quinn, who looked away. "And this seems a strange time for you to come out against public nudity, after raising not one single objection to the humiliating public nudity I've been forced into for the past six years."
"What?! What are you talking about?" asked Helen, shocked.
"Gym class, Mother. Every school day from seventh grade on, I was forced to strip naked twice, and shower once, in front of forty to fifty girls whom I knew barely or not at all. No pun intended. How much modesty do you expect me to have left after that?"
Helen looked irritated. "Daria, don't be ridiculous. That's necessary. There's no other way to have physical education in schools. Everyone does it."
"That doesn't make it right. But if you're going to claim that it's right in school, how can it not be right in my own bedroom?"
"Because they're not making a permanent visual record of it in school," Helen replied with a smug smile, a look that faded somewhat when she saw a stronger version of the same expression form on Daria's face.
"A permanent visual record, eh? I think you just shot yourself in the foot." Daria smirked.
"What are you talking about?"
"Look at that set of photos on my desk. What do they record and who took them?"
With a puzzled and slightly anxious expression, Helen stepped to Daria's desk and looked at what lay there. After a few seconds, her head drooped and her shoulders sagged.
"Your Honor, the defense rests." Daria said.
When Helen turned around, she was wearing a rueful little smile. "All right, Perry Mason, you win," she sighed. "Apparently our commonly accepted views on nudity are somewhat.... inconsistent. Just the sort of thing you'd pick up on, it seems. Well, you're an adult now, and I suppose I have to respect your decisions on matters like this."
Daria smiled affectionately at her mother. "Thanks. I'm glad you were the one who said it."
"Said what?"
"That I'm an adult now. I was afraid that if I said it, you might come back with the 'as long as you're under my roof' thing."
Helen returned Daria's smile. "Daria, I'm painfully aware of how short your remaining time under our roof has grown, and I don't want to do anything that might shorten it further." She took a deep breath and let it out. "You do what you think is right. Just keep your door locked when appropriate." She turned to Quinn. "But you, young lady, are not an adult. Remember that. Get the book you wanted and come downstairs. I need an extra pair of hands." With a last look at the painting and at Daria standing there in her white terrycloth bathrobe, she turned and left the room.
Walking down the hall, Helen shook her head ruefully. What was the use of all those years of law school if her teenage daughter out-argued her all the time? How did Daria do that? Not for the first time, Helen wished she could see the world as Daria saw it.
In Daria's bedroom, Jane was grinning. "Way to go, Daria Allred! Color me impressed! I was seeing my hopes of tuition money flutter away. How did you do that?"
Quinn smirked. "As Mom is so fond of recounting, Daria cut her teeth on law books. Literally."
Daria smiled a little. "It's probably more helpful that I actually read a few. On one of those take-your-daughter-to-work days, I wound up stuck in Mom's office alone while she ran from meeting to courthouse to conference all day. There was nothing to do but read law books. But I think it's mostly just having a logical mind." She turned to her sister. "Now let's find you a book and shove you out the door so I can get done with this. What did you have in mind?"
"Hmm. Do you have anything about how to stay youthful looking forever?" Quinn asked facetiously.
Daria smirked. "As a matter of fact, I do." She took a book off the shelf and handed it to Quinn. "I think you'll like it, and you'll also be getting a jump on English Lit next year."
Quinn looked at the book's cover. "'The Picture Of Dorian Gray?' Ha ha! That gives me a great idea for a title for that painting!"
Daria knew exactly what idea Quinn had gotten. She spun her sister around and pointed her at the door. "Jane does her own titles. You have to go now. 'Bye."
"'The Picture Of Daria's Rear.' What do you think? Hey, quit pushing!"
"Out."
~*~
With Quinn gone and the door securely locked and deadbolted, Daria hesitantly removed the robe and resumed her pose on the bed, and Jane took up her palette and brush and resumed her stance at the easel.
"What's that you're reading, anyway?" Jane asked.
"It's 'The Gulag Archipelago' by Solzhenytsin."
Jane looked thoughtful. "Hmmm... 'Nude Reading Solzhenytsin.' Has a nice ring to it. I believe that would make a good title for the painting. 'Nude Reading Solzhenytsin.' Yeah. What do you think?"
Daria kept her eyes on the pages of the book. "Gee, Jane, why don't you say 'nude' five or six more times, and see if you can make me turn a bright blotchy red all over?"
Jane grinned. Daria was always at her funniest when she was a little bit cranky. "Come on, Daria, tell us what you really think." she teased.
"I really think you could paint faster with that long-handled brush stuck up your ass," Daria deadpanned, eyes still on the book. "I bet that'd break you from sucking on it too. What do you think?"
"Eep! Can't talk now, busy painting!"
~*~
Part Four coming soon. If you got this far, please review and tell me what you think, good, bad, or so-so. You know, reviews are the closest thing to pay we poor fanfic writers get. Thanks.
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Galen Hardesty [gehardesty@yahoo.com]
Disclaimer
"Daria" and all related characters are trademarks of MTV Networks, a division of Viacom International, inc. The author does not claim copyright to these characters or to anything else in the "Daria" milieu; he does, however, claim copyright to all those parts of this work of fiction which are original to him and not to MTV or to other fanfic authors. This fanfic may be freely copied and distributed provided its contents remain unchanged, provided the author's name and email address are included, and provided that the distributor does not use it for monetary profit. (as if.)