I - The Stars Align


As she nervously flipped through her sketchbook, she noticed, not for the first time, how uninspiring her earlier artworks were. Sure, she had enjoyed these pictures then; she had to admit that the oriole posed in the leafy arbor seemed about to fly from the page, warbling as it went, but she thought it was so sterile. It seemed to portray the world as one eternal spring. It was a pathetic drawing, bright and sunny, unconcerned and conventional; a bird was, at best, a meaningless, bestial emblem without any real poignancy whatsoever. She had matured in the twelve years since she drew that high-school sketch - she had realized there was more to art than straight-angled pictures of creatures and flowers, gardens and mountains. That was why she was going to work with the pioneering Jeff Snead, head of the Art department; she was going to be a professor at Central Iowa State; and at the thought she felt fulfilled, like she hadn’t gotten her Ph.D. for nothing. She now knew that art was supposed to be expressive and moving, unlike the colorful, penciled-in bird which chirped over its shoulder into the blankness of the page; the fifteenth century could have its landscapes and still-lives!

With that sentiment, Horatia Miller snapped her sketchbook closed, got up, and surveyed herself once more in the full-length mirror. For an interview with Dr. Snead, she needed to look scholarly, but she figured that wasn’t much of a problem: her customary leopard-spotted glasses with the rectangular clear plastic lenses (she had never been nearsighted) accomplished the desired effect, she figured. Her light-colored hair was piled atop her head and secured with black bobby pins - a style that had taken her at least thirty minutes to achieve. She smiled at her reflection, patted her hairdo, brushed a roguish strand out of her eyes and anxiously walked out to the hotel parking lot.

--

He scratched his bald head impatiently as he waited for her to enter. She was twenty minutes late for her interview - and professors were supposed to be efficient, hardworking, and good role models. He took another chicken nugget from the KFC to-go tray, clicked “Buy Now” on the iTunes webpage, and waited some more, watching the Central Iowa Shucks playing Michigan on the television in the corner. “Touchdown!” he cheered.

He faintly heard knocking on the door under the music, football, and crunching, and, quickly and shamefacedly, turned the TV and his iPod off. “Come in,” he said, and the door swung open. There stood she who called herself Horatia Miller, smiling, in the doorway. “You must be Dr. Miller?” he said.

“That’s me, Dr. Snead” she replied, entering the small, canvas-festooned room. Her heels snagged on a tear in the office carpeting, and she fell backward. She reached a hand out, and it caught at the door, closing it behind her.

“Sorry about that,” Dr. Jeff said.

“Oh, you don’t have anything to be sorry about,” she gushed, gathering her courage to take another step on the tattered rug. “I was just closing the door.” She sat down in the straight-backed chair opposite his desk.

“So tell me a bit about yourself,” he asked her.

“Well, I’m Horatia Miller, and I’ve always loved art, and…” she faltered.

“How old are you?”

Horatia lightened up slightly. “Guess,” she said, almost daringly, knowing he wouldn’t think she was over twenty-six.

“Forty-three. You look pretty good.” She grimaced slightly in an attempt to smile and bit her lower lip.

“Thank you. I’m only thirty-one,” she said. “Anyway, I majored in art at the University of Iowa, and went on to get a Ph.D., and then I worked as a tour guide in Des Moines’ art gallery, and I finally decided I wanted to be a professor, so here I am.”

“What did you learn from your experiences?”

“Well, I learned a lot about art. When I was in high school, I was still drawing things like this” - she shoved the sketchbook like a snowplow through the mountainous papers and bric-a-brac that covered his desk, open to the oriole - “but over the years, I realized that the human situation wasn’t one eternal spring, and so I depicted my own search for meaning, the timeline of my own life -” she turned to a page on which was one red streak. Jeff gazed at the second painting for quite some time, and then looked back into her eyes, which peered out expectantly from behind her glasses.

“You’re hired,” he said. “You’ll be teaching your first class tomorrow.”

II. They Grieved Together

She had only been there for a week, and already a catastrophe had struck her. Queensbury, five miles from the college town of Rapid Point, was going to host an art auction, and she and Jeff had both chosen some of the works they thought their best to display there. It was on the day of the auction, they were to almost laughingly reminisce in later years, when the calamity set in. It had been a fairly normal day, almost better than usual - the townsfolk were in high spirits (for it was in resplendent victory that the Shucks returned to their hometown) and so were they. They were eating donuts together at one of the restaurants on campus when they first watched the sky cloud over; and then they heard it.

It sounded like a freight train was whipping through the trees; their boughs snapped and flew in the wind. In the distance they could see the funnel cloud reeling back and forth over the prairie. “Oh, Dr Sne… No, Jeff, look at it!” Horatia’s voice was shrill with panic. On the one hand, Jeff wanted to cover his ears at the piercing sound; but on the other, it was gratifying to have someone talk to him in that terrified way.

“We’ll be all right,” he said reassuringly, lifting a cinnamon roll the size of her head out of a cardboard box and holding his hand under it to catch the dripping glaze. He licked his fingers and began to eat it. “They’ll probably reschedule the auction.”

“But what will happen to us? Oh, Jeff, it’s coming towards us! Help! Help! Oh, this couldn’t be the end-”

“Horatia, we’ll be fine. Listen, tomorrow we’ll go to the auction, and maybe after that you and me can go to dinner, and we’ll be perfectly all right, you hear me?”

“Yes, Jeff, of course I hear you.” He noticed that a change had come over her; her eyes were almost worshipful behind the clear plastic lenses as she first looked at him, and then watched as the tornado veered to the side, heading northward and away from Rapid Point. He picked up another donut and consumed it in three bites, but she stared into the returning sunlight pensively and silently.

--

The tornado had ravaged their paintings; and it was his fault entirely, Jeff decided as they sat together in the studio, trying to salvage their windblown artwork. And yet she hadn’t blamed him; he felt a pang of remorse as he watched her grievingly clear the leaves and debris from her masterpiece. He remembered how lovingly she had spoken of it - it was called Looking into Light, and the two red dots on the white canvas would have done an excellent job of conveying that sentiment had there not been the streak of clay smeared across the bottom.

Seven of their artworks had been found on a farm outside of Queensbury; they had gone to salvage them after the farmer had reported seeing a painting signed “J. Snead” in the cornfield. They had found three around campus, but two were still missing. He bitterly remembered the places they had found them: in the haystack, the cow pasture, the chicken coop… Right then he was scraping the muck off of his favorite painting. He had found it face-down in the pigsty, and even where the design was showing through again, the mud had mixed with the rain-sodden paint, and turned the pigments into a sickly brown-green. Horatia’s best work had been defaced; his was entirely ruined; and their spirits were dampened even more than their canvases.

“I’m sorry about all of this,” he finally said. “I never should have suggested that we should even try that auction.”

“It isn’t your fault - but I never should have come to Central Iowa State. I came here to escape some misfortunes I was having, and look at us now!” Tears formed in Horatia’s eyes and streaked saline trails down her glasses. “My best work and yours, both ruined!”

“Horatia,” Jeff murmured, “it will be all right. There will always be time to start over again. You’re only thirty-one - there will be more and better inspirations coming to you.”

“These - were - my - best paintings ever, and now they’ll - never be replaced - and - yours too - even better than mine - I can’t start over!” she wailed.

“Listen,” he said, grasping her arm and forgetting his own misfortunes in his gallantry, “we’re going out to dinner tonight, and I want you to forget about our paintings and be happy.”

--

Horatia hadn’t known until now that she cared for Jeff, but nothing in or out of her closet seemed good enough to meet him in. It appeared that the cyclone had accidentally struck the local mall and deposited its contents into her bedroom - she had unpacked all of her trunks, and her clothing lay on the bed, the floor, the closet door, and a slinky black dress even hung from the ceiling fan. She had decided against wearing her customary glasses, so in lieu of them she had green eye-shadow completely covering her eyelids, which enhanced the color of her eyes and made her look modern and alluring. For shoes, she had decided in favor of her neon orange heels, which although she found difficult to walk in, had such a striking glow that they were worth teetering back and forth in, and she knew she was going to wear her sophisticated-looking black coat made entirely out of rows of sleek synthetic fur, but none of her dresses seemed tasteful enough to match it. Settling on an electric-blue dress that resembled a bright-colored drinking straw, she put it on, straightened her coat, and wobbled down the stairs to the living room.


Jeff, on the other hand, felt no such uneasiness as he dug into a bag of potato chips and absently shoveled a handful into his mouth. He didn’t feel that strongly one way or the other (crunch) about her; it was as a matter of course he would marry her (crunch); he didn’t regret that he was twenty-two years older than her or forty pounds overweight (crunch), because it was her job to look good (crunch) and his to do her the favor of marrying her. If he could get her that vouched for his own merit (crunch), and he thought of how impressed his friends would be (crunch) when they heard the news (crunch-crunch). So he reluctantly folded up the bag, taking another handful out, and went off to meet his bride to-be.

III. Finding Happiness

Jeff unwillingly and slowly opened his large, black leather wallet. Their courtship and betrothal had been monumentally expensive, and he found that marriage was a financial burden he had not been prepared for. The dress had made her look striking and beautiful, with its silver rhinestones and sequins adorning the bodice, and gauzy lace-cloth swooping about the skirt, but wasn’t five hundred dollars asking too much?

Horatia was beaming behind the clear plastic lenses. Not only was the garment beautiful and sophisticated, but it was downright literary. She marveled that such a dress would only be five hundred dollars.

“Oh, Jeff dear, isn’t it marvelous?” she cooed, hanging on his arm.

“Yes, it is,” he reluctantly said, as they left the store, with it rhythmically swishing back and forth in its bag.

--

Horatia, in a fit of romance, had sat him down and made them write each other’s vows. Jeff regretted his decision to marry her as he glared down at his nearly empty page, while she lamented the fact that she had run out of lined paper while her busy hand streaked across an assortment of sketchbook paper, index cards, the remainder of a block of sticky notes, half of a roll of paper towels, grocery store ads, used lunch-bags with smears of jam across the bottom, and anything else she could think of.

“Let’s hear yours,” she said enthusiastically, as she put a flowing signature across the bottom of a slightly torn sheet of Kleenex.

“It isn’t much,” he said.

“Come on,” she said, “I’m going to have to promise it, aren’t I?”

“All right. ‘And do you, Horatia Johnson Miller, promise to love, honor and cherish Jeffery Snead, so help you God?’”

“What’s next?” Horatia asked expectantly.

“That’s it,” he confessed.

--

As a bride, Horatia felt herself a stunning success, despite the lack of vows on her husband’s part. She allowed every man at the wedding to step on her feet and call it dancing, she was a gracious hostess who smiled all through the ceremonious dinners and useless wedding presents, and she felt as well as looked less pinched ever since she removed her glasses.

“How did I do?” she asked Jeff, as she read a book on the sofa of her new home later that night.

“Beautifully,” he murmured through half-sleep, watching TV in the armchair.

IV. A Change in Style

Horatia was in the garden, reposing on the grass with her sketchpad in front of her. She had somewhat tired of dark streaks and red dots, and was attempting to capture (on the page opposite the picture of the singing oriole) the way the light shone through the leaves which hung above her. She was happy; a peaceful, natural sort of happiness, that made the world seem - well, one eternal spring.