The Art Fair

The Art Fair

“How much?”

The middle-aged man in the COLUMBIA sweatshirt, pointing to the painting of the Montauk shore, had been at Paul’s booth for about five minutes, which was unusual at an outdoor art fair. Paul could usually determine the likelihood of whether or not there would be a purchase, and sometimes he’d adjust the price if he felt the prospective buyer was close to a decision.

“Two hundred,” he replied.

“Thanks, I’ll be back.” This was a refrain Paul heard often.

Many people come to an art fair with no intention of buying anything. But they all want to look. On this day with the sun glowing on the Berkshire Mountains, there were many here to do just that. And so much to see for the art enthusiast. Row after row of ten-by-ten structures, each with an awning, an eight-foot table, and two chairs. Photographers, ceramicists, painters, jewelry makers, leather crafters-all vying for the attention, and the money of those in attendance.

Paul brought his paintings to many of these fairs which dotted New England in the spring and summer. He was accustomed to the behavior of those who attended. Some would look quickly at his work and move on. Some, however, would not even glance toward his booth. Those people kept their eyes forward so they wouldn’t catch his eye and feel compelled to engage with him, lest they feel pressured to buy something.

There were always some who would talk to him about the subject, or the location of the painting. Most had positive comments about his work, and many would say “I’ll be back”. Of course, ninety-nine percent of the time they would not be back unless they were on their way out, in which case they would hurry past his booth, embarrassed by the truth that they had no intention of purchasing a piece of Paul’s artwork.

Then there were a few who would stop and take in what they looked at. They would get up close and take in the composition of the paintings, sometimes standing, thinking, and in Paul’s mind, wondering if they should buy what has captured their attention. Few of them did. There were many occasions when he didn’t sell even one of his paintings. If he sold two, it was a good day.

***

Despite the constant stream of people parading past his booth, Paul noticed her. Perhaps because she had passed him twice, in a short amount of time. She carried a red backpack on her shoulders but what caught Paul’s eye was that she abruptly stopped and stared at one of his paintings. That and the silver streak in her brown hair.

When Paul saw her a third time, he decided to be more proactive and ask if she found anything particularly interesting. Before he could open his mouth, though, the young woman pointed to one of the paintings, and blurted out, “that’s me and my mom.” Paul followed the young woman’s finger to a portrait of a middle-aged silver-haired woman and a young girl. Her remark startled him. And as he sharpened his focus on the woman, his heart leaped into his mouth rendering him almost unable to speak. He stared at her and managed to utter, “Are you, Sarah?”

“Yes, I am but, how do you…” Now it was Paul’s turn to see the shock of recognition. “Oh my God…Paul?”

Paul immediately disconnected from his surroundings. People continued to walk by his booth, but they were just blurry images. He could only see the young woman in front of him. As he looked at her, she morphed into the ten-year-old he remembered her to be.

Before he could say anything, the blurry images came back into focus and the young woman was gone.

Then the guilt flooded back.

At once, Paul found himself replaying his history with Sarah’s mother, Gina. They had both come out of relationships that ended badly, but theirs started off as if it were the answer to each other’s unhappiness. Paul was sensitive to Gina’s efforts to fold him into her family. They were able to make the most of their time together and quickly forged an exclusive pairing. Early on, it seemed like a new beginning for both of them. It was a stormy relationship, filled with passion but also with problems. While they didn’t live together, they’d argued as if they did.

Gina grew frustrated with how much time Paul was devoting to the community theatre and became obsessively jealous of any contact he had with women in the company. This was no doubt, connected to Gina’s husband leaving her for another woman. Paul grew tired of being the receptacle for Gina’s anger toward her ex-husband when she wasn’t taking out her bitterness on Sarah. He often found himself shuttling little Sarah back and forth between her parents’ homes. He could see that Sarah was having a tough time. She became much less communicative and her previously healthy appetite would vanish for days at a time. When he spoke to Gina about it, she reminded him in a stern tone that he was not her parent.

This was not a memory he liked to revisit.

Paul tried to fill Sarah’s time when her mother was doing other things. He attended her dance recitals, took her to the zoo and the aquarium, and made countless mall visits. Paul felt that if he could somehow maintain a good relationship with Gina, things would go easier with her ex, and she’d be kinder to Sarah. As he came to realize, Paul was operating under the delusion that he could be the answer to this family’s problems. Eventually, Gina’s anger, unhappiness, and jealousy were too much for him, and Paul broke off their relationship.

***

From behind a booth filled with black and white photographs of New England winters, Sarah edged her way to where she could see Paul’s booth. Her feelings of being abandoned by a father figure resurfaced, years after she thought they were buried. Still, the memories of their relationship seemed to be moving her back to Paul’s booth. But why? To express her anger or to hear from Paul, why he made the abrupt departure from their lives?

As Sarah came closer, her gaze moved from the haunting portrait of who just had to be her and her mother, to the sixty-ish man in the baseball cap with a salt-and-pepper beard; the man who came into her life suddenly, twenty years ago, and treated her like his daughter. At the time, she was sure, as far as her ten-year-old mind could calculate, that they would form another, more stable form of the nuclear family that exploded when her father left. Then, with no warning, he was gone. Never to be seen again. Her mother’s explanations were incomplete, confusing, and always given in anger. Sarah always thought that Paul must have done something terrible to her mother. So terrible, that her mother couldn’t tell her. But she found it hard to reconcile that idea with the person who had doted on her and cared for her in her mother’s absence. Nevertheless, in her hurt, she joined her mother’s anger.

As Sarah thought back to her time with Paul, she thought most fondly of Paul encouraging the interest she had in writing stories, by drawing a picture, and then asking her to write a story about the picture. She enjoyed this so much that she started writing stories on her own and asking Paul to illustrate them. After Paul was no longer in the picture, she recalled, her thoughts about him faded into long-term memory as her mother became involved in relationships with other men. In truth, as she entered young adulthood, Sarah was more concerned with her own relationships than her mother’s. As Sarah became more independent, they led what amounted to parallel lives, and developed a stable if not close relationship. Until the diagnosis.

***

Though he didn’t regret the breakup, Paul could not think of his relationship with Gina as anything but a failure on his part. He felt should have been able to withstand the jealousy and understand where it came from; he should have been more committed to making the three of them a family. But he felt the most guilt about Sarah.

Over the years it had become progressively easier not to think about Gina or Sarah until he got a phone call from his friend George.

“Listen I thought you’d want to know, Gina died.”

“What?? When? How?”

George had no details except that someone responded to a message he left on Gina’s Facebook page telling him she had passed away a month earlier. Paul was reminded of their relationship, the good and the bad parts, but George’s call also made him wonder how Sarah turned out. Realizing he was unlikely to see her again or what he would even say to her if he did see her, there was one thing he felt suddenly compelled to do. He went to his easel.

***

Paul now looked at the young woman in front of him and could see Gina so clearly in her. “Wow, it’s been a long time”, he finally said.

“Yeah”.

“Sorry about your mom. I found out a month after she passed. What happened?”.

“Cancer, she went quickly. It’s been a while since I thought about how much I hated you.”

The words stung Paul and he felt a compulsion to explain what he was unable to, twenty years ago.

“I’m sorry. You probably don’t remember but things didn’t end easily between your mother and me.”

“I get that…but you just disappeared. That was pretty shitty.”

“I don’t think you know the whole story.”

“No. I mean, I didn’t know why. Not that I would have understood. But I don’t really know what happened.”

“What did she say about me not being around?” Paul hoped that Sarah’s response would give him a clear path to answer her unspoken question.

“She said you weren’t ready to be part of a family and the best thing was for you to just be out of our lives. Was it because of me? I always wondered.” Paul could see Sarah’s uncertainty as her eyes widened.

“No, absolutely not. I loved our time together.”

“So, what did happen?”

In the next ten seconds, Paul calculated the highs and lows of his relationship with Gina, how badly he wanted Sarah to think well of him, and, most important; what value there would be in explaining why he left which would include telling her things that she might not want to hear about her mother. But what about reconnecting with Sarah? And what about the truth? It’s amazing, he thought, how fast the mind can work sometimes.

“I’m too old to lie, and you’re old enough to hear the truth…if you want it.”

“Yes, I do.”

As gently as he could, Paul described the circumstances leading up to the end of his relationship with Gina. While he was quick to include that there were reasons for her mother’s behavior, that knowledge, he said, didn’t make it easier to live with.

When he was finished, Sarah nodded her head, and said “Okay. Look I gotta go. I’ll be back.”Paul had heard those words many times, but he had never attached as much hope that they were true until then.

***

Paul had begun packing up his work as did the artists in the booths near his. Ever since Sarah sped away from him hours before, he questioned whether or not he did the right thing by revealing the pain points in his relationship with her mother. He had sold nothing and was too distracted to engage with the handful of people who briefly stopped by his booth. As he slowly crated the smaller pieces, Paul looked up to see Sarah, ten feet from his booth. The people filing out of the fair became the sea between them. Finally, Sarah found an opening and approached the booth. As soon as she came near him, Paul blurted, “I’m sorry, for hurting your feelings.”

Sarah looked away for a moment, and then said, “Look, at some level, I think I knew my Mom was difficult, but…she’s my Mom. When I was young, all I knew was you were gone, I was unhappy and she was unhappy. She was pissed, so I was pissed.”

“I get that.”

“I didn’t experience the relationship the same way you did. I mean, I couldn’t. But I’m an adult… so I get why you wanted out.”

Paul didn’t know what else to say, but Sarah broke the silence. “It’s a great picture.” Sarah gazed at the watercolor of her mother and her ten-year-old self, standing side by side at the tree outside their home.

“Thanks. You really like it?”

“I do. I’m not even going to ask you how much it is because I know I can’t aff…

Paul quickly pulled the painting off the back wall of the booth.

“…Here, take it.”

“Are you sure?”

“I am. How about we grab a cup of coffee and fill in some blanks for each other?”

“I’d like that.”

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