This is a story I wrote many years ago but it's one of my favorites. I haven't gone back to change it much since I first wrote it, so that tells me I did it right the first time. Enjoy! - Shan
THE ARTIST by Shannon Edwards December 2000
Autumn is the season of death, Daniel said once. Driving, thinking about many things many people had said, Liz disagreed. It was a time of change. The old goes out and the new comes in, though you can't see the newness yet because it's still frozen, deep inside. The leaves were just turning, so the leaves on the trees were part green and part red; some tipped with orange.
The colors reminded Liz of "Fire," her first painting. One night after staring into the fireplace for too long, she realized not only did she want to, but she had to, express the colors she saw. She’d never painted before; in fact, she didn’t even have any supplies. She even showed up at Daniel’s at the end of the long weekend and asked if he had some paints and some extra canvas she could use. After two weeks of intense concentration, she produced “Fire.” The local critics at Daniel's gallery in St. Paul saw it as a sexual unity thing, but she would always think of it as the colors in the fireplace.
When she had finally shown her work to Daniel, he was ecstatic, hugging her and grabbing the sides of her face and kissing her forehead in his most energetic best friend way. He said he could get her a show in a small community center east of St. Paul. "A lot of local exposure, little initial cost," he said with a grin, convincing her as soon as it was out of his mouth. All along, during those long weeknights and even the fifteen-minute stints at the easel on the weekends, she knew inside that one day she could show her interpretation of the world to someone besides Daniel. It was just a matter of confidence.
Now Daniel was pressuring her to quit her full-time job to concentrate on her painting, but she wasn't sure she could give up the security yet. She told Daniel she'd wait to see how this show went. Daniel gave her one of his mischievous looks and said he'd invite all his rich friends to the show to buy all her paintings. “Then see how right I am, sweetie, you don’t belong in the catering business, really,” he said.
The gold sunset behind Liz disappeared quickly, but in its hanging glory, it glinted off each leaf on each tree. "Each leaf is a flake of gold in the crown of September," said Liz out loud. Boy, if anyone at the restaurant heard that … She wondered how the Budman reception was going, if they got the right centerpieces after all. Then she shook the thought away. I'm not thinking about work tonight, she told herself.
As she passed a small car, Liz wondered what she would do if her show was successful. Would her family take her seriously if she quit her job? Would anyone take her seriously, besides Daniel? She turned on the radio. A familiar song was playing:
Every time that I look in the mirror - All these lives, my face getting clearer
The past is gone...It went back, like dusk to dawn
There's another way - Everybody's got their dues in life to pay
I know, nobody knows, where it comes and where it goes
I know, everybody sing - You got the nose to know, oh, oh.
Dream on, dream on, dream on, dream until your dream comes true.
Yeah, dream on, Liz thought sarcastically. The same worries crowded her mind again. A new artist is lucky to sell a painting to her own mother, even at a first show. Sixteen months to accumulate the work I’ve done, and all of it will be in the show tomorrow, some of the not-so-great stuff there just to fill space. What do I do after this? Wait another sixteen months for success, or failure? How can I compete with these artists who have shows every six months?
As she drove into the last of the sunset, she noticed that people were flipping their lights on in preparation for twilight. She made herself think creatively, hoping some new images would come to her. Okay, she thought, if you had a hat, an old man's hat, what would you do with it to make it alive, or dead? What color would you paint it? From what angle? Using what kind of light?
A huge brown blur, crunching metal, the crack of a rock, blood spattered. The car’s tires squealed against the roadway as she applied the brakes almost instinctively. Liz's forehead lightly smacked the steering wheel at the same time her seatbelt pulled at her groin. What in the world, she thought, looking into the ditch through a large crack in the windshield. Slightly dizzy, she managed to unbuckle the seatbelt and opened the driver’s door. Her car was at an angle to the road, pointed into the median.
Behind her were hundred-foot skidmarks, beside her was her car - the hood of which looked more like an accordion now - and on the ground in front of her car was a large, bleeding deer. Stepping carefully towards it, she could see that it was a doe. She knelt down next to the animal, feeling its warm side and jumpy heartbeat. It gave her a terrorized expression, as though it were trapped, then its eyes glazed over, still open.
Liz held back tears. "Oh God," she whispered several times. She fought with herself mentally for a moment, wondering why this had to happen now, while she was on the way to the show, but trying to calm herself down to think what to do next. Where could she get help? She remembered seeing an exit a couple of miles back. It couldn't be more than two miles, she thought. She grabbed her purse and keys from the car, shoved her hands into her coat pockets, and began walking.
The walk was cold, but it didn't seem to take long, because she was thinking all the way. She tried to continue the creative exercises, but nothing came to her but the sight of that brown shape hitting the bumper. The image tormented her over and over until she reached the Dairy Queen at the exit.
Liz used the pay phone to call for a tow truck. She had to wait because the nearest truck had another customer further down the highway: "Forty minutes away, to be exact," said the nasal dispatcher. Liz sighed and said she'd wait, telling the dispatcher that she wanted to be driven to Grand Junction, but wanted her car to go back to St. Paul. She hung up and called Daniel, but he had already left, so she explained the whole situation on his answering machine, saying she'd try to make it. Hopefully he would think to call in for messages.
Maybe I can still make it to the show on time, she thought. Then the doe’s blankly staring eyes came back to her mind and she shivered a little. She decided she would order a coffee.
An hour and ten minutes and a large coffee later, the tow truck finally showed. A large dark-haired man in greasy green overalls beckoned to her from outside, behind the gas pumps. She looked around the restaurant and realized she was the only one there, so she went out to meet him.
“Where'd ya get stuck?" he asked as she climbed a ladder into the huge truck.
“Two miles south,” she replied.
During the drive to her car, the driver said nothing. The radio played some twangy country music, faintly, seemingly from a distance. As he pulled the wrecker in front of the car to position it, Liz turned around in her seat to look again in disbelief, her jaw dropped open.
The doe was gone.
She sat down, sliding slowly on the vinyl. How did it not die? It was dead when she touched it, she was sure.
On the way to the Grand Junction Gallery, the driver started asking questions. “Never seen a deer hit that hard before and live,” he said. “My brother-in-law hit a deer once, and he swears it bounced back up and kept runnin'. 'Course, he tends to exaggerate.” He looked at her. “I'm Ray. Whatta people call you?”
"Liz," she answered in a soft voice. "And I've never even hit a squirrel. I didn't know animals could do such damage."
"Oh yeah, I'm surprised you could get out of the car. Coulda been much worse." He paused, then asked, "Why are you goin' on to Grand Junction when your car's goin' back to St. Paul? Got a hot date or somethin'?" He grinned and his teeth shone in the darkness, white and straight.
"No, I have a show. I'm an artist." She smiled at herself, basking in the warm feeling from saying that out loud.
"You do sculpture? Or paintin'?"
“Paint. Mostly oils."
"Hmmm. You do any nudes?"
"Uh, no. Just natural scenes, you know, trees and things."
"You always been an artist?"
"No; in fact, this is my first show."
"I knew it!" he said. He smacked the steering wheel with the heel of his hand. "That's why I ask people if they been doin' something always, because they say no, I was a - whatever - once. I met a woman in Texas one time who used to be in a flyin' trapeze act when she was a little girl.”
Liz smiled politely. “I also run a catering service back in St. Paul.”
“Doin' a little moonlightin' tonight, eh?" Ray chuckled. " I won't tell no one."
She smiled at him again, then looked out the window, wondering when they'd arrive in Grand Junction.
“So, uh," he continued, "you go to college for this catering thing? They got a catering major somewhere?"
"No, I started working there when I was in highschool, and I just stayed on after that. I'm the manager now."
"I went to college once," he said matter-of-factly. "I was gonna be a stockbroker." She raised an eyebrow at him and he went on. "Oh, yeah, I was just gonna take this” - here he hit the steering wheel again - “as a temporary job, while I was in school, you know. But I took all the night classes they had, and I would have had to take time off work to get the rest of the classes. Well, I'd gotten used to the money driving truck, and when you get used to having money, you let go of some things. I let go of school." He laughed a little, saying, "But I was still tellin' chicks in bars that one day I was gonna be a stockbroker. Some of 'em even believed me." He shook his head. "I sure was a crazy one then. I figured out one day that the chicks liked me better if I just told 'em I was a tow truck driver." He paused, then said, "Helped me, too, because I knew way before that that I was only gonna get so far in life, then I’d have to settle into something.”
He looked to her for a response, but Liz said nothing. She was frowning out the window, thinking about how Daniel was explaining her absence to his friends. She hoped he wasn't telling them that she hit a deer. That would be really embarrassing.
Looking into the side mirror, she suddenly got an image so clear and full that it frightened her. She pulled a sketch pad out of her bag and flew the pencil over the rough paper. Ray watched her draw furiously, but wasn't sure what she was drawing. Neither of them said another word for the rest of the trip.
The tow truck slowed and then stopped in front of the community center. Liz unlocked the door and slid out slowly. Ducking her head, she smiled, then said, "Thanks for the advice."
"What advice?"
"Well, you helped me make a decision tonight. And I wanted to thank you. Here," she said, extending the piece of sketch paper to him.
The page was covered in round scribbles, like exhaust smoke, but under it all, was the back end of a tow truck, pulling a compact car, a doe running behind them like a wild horse.
(L) Dim sum - could not believe how crowded!
This is the view from their apartment on 106th St. looking down Broadway. (Hey mom I finally made it to Broadway, haha).
Here we are at the famous Central Park "sailboat pond," featured in many movies. 
Weather was great...just a bit of rain both Friday night and Sunday night (we dashed between the raindrops to get home from our dessert stop and walk through Columbia's campus) but we didn't melt. Otherwise it was HOT and humid.
