Vanilla

Chapter Eighteen

Dedicated to RewindTour2011 because her comment on the last chapter touched my heart. I am so, so flattered that this story means so much to you. This one's for you :)

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             The following morning, for the second time in the past three days, I found myself woken by the sound of a pounding electronic drumbeat. The first occasion had been bearable; burying my head under the pillow had adequately muffled the sound to allow me to drift back off.

            Today, however, was a different story. The artificial rhythm had been cranked up several notches on the stereo, and no matter how hard I tried to ignore it, sleep was fast becoming a wistful fantasy.

            I suppose seven a.m. wasn’t totally unreasonable – not when you took into account the peculiar hours of the night Gram was often known to clatter around at – but I would’ve been a lot happier with a couple of extra hours in bed. Accepting the fact it was more likely I’d fly to the moon today, I yanked back the duvet and headed downstairs to investigate.

            The noise increased exponentially in volume as I made my way down the stairs, layers of other obnoxious instruments combining with the drumbeat to make the overall effect significantly more awful. I was guided by the cacophony to the kitchen, where I found Gram. She was perched in her favourite corner spot, her easel angled towards the window, giving her a wide hilltop view of the Walden coastline. What was causing the racket, I discovered, was the ancient stereo on the dining table: through it pounded some kind of hardcore techno music that would’ve sounded more at home in some shifty underground nightclub.

            “Uh, Gram?” Unsurprisingly, she didn’t look up; I could barely hear myself over the pulsating beat. “Gram?”

            She glanced upward, looking slightly dazed, having been yanked from her artistic state of mind. “Yes?”

            “What are you doing?”

            Gram blinked, looking down through her thick glasses at the canvas balanced on her easel. “I’m painting,” she answered simply, going back to dabbing enthusiastically with her brush.

            “But what about the,” I paused, searching for a better adjective and coming up short, “… music?”

            “Oh, that.” A dismissive flick of her brush sent a splatter of miniscule blue droplets across the floor tiles. “Just a couple of old CDs I found. I like it, don’t you? I find it very… relaxing.”

            There was absolutely nothing relaxing about the pounding bass assaulting my eardrums at that particular moment, but Gram did look kind of at peace, even humming absently to herself as she worked. She’d been at it non-stop for the last week or so, in a last minute hurry to get all her pieces finished in time for her opening exhibit at the local gallery. One of her friends had connections down at Walden Arts, and after putting in a good word for her, a representative had been down to the cottage for a look at Gram’s paintings and, as simple as that, she’d landed a spot for an entire collection.

            “You know, I saw some of the drawings you keep in your bedroom,” she’d told me when she first announced the news. “They’re very good. I could put in a word for you at the gallery too, if you’re interested.”

            But before she’d even finished her sentence, I was vehemently shaking my head. “No, thanks,” I said. “I mean, it’s nice of you and everything, but…”