Paint Me True: Sample Chapters

Eight: Sketches

I woke up fully clothed on top of the covers of the bed in one of the guest rooms. I had a hazy memory of helping Aunt Nora to bed before I staggered here. Everything was dark, which meant it was after sundown. I glanced at my watch and saw that it was four in the morning. That was the problem with jet lag. I was now wide awake and would be tired again before bedtime.

Still, there was no point just lying there. There was a bathroom just across the hall from this room, so I took a quick shower in the antique, footed tub. The chrome was all gold tone, which gave it a luxurious look, and the shower curtain was heavy linen, lined with plastic. I dried off with one of the fluffy towels, dressed, and went back to the guest room. This was the one I usually stayed in, and the last time I’d been here I’d left acrylic paints in the closet. They were there, just as I’d left them.

There was also a set of colored pencils, and I grabbed those and got my sketchpad out of my luggage. A quick perusal of the walls along the hallway turned up several pictures of my Uncle Paul. I chose the youngest looking one and carried it back to my room. With the lamp on and me positioned right underneath it, I got more or less the kind of light I wanted. I’d had a lot of practice in this room.

The picture of Uncle Paul looked like it’d been taken when he was in his late twenties, maybe early thirties. I did a rough sketch of his face with softer lines. The photo did show his gray eyes that had had my aunt so entranced all those years ago.

While I sketched, my mind wandered to how things had progressed with Len after that first meeting. I saw him at every church activity, from Monday night Family Home Evenings (which those of us unmarrieds did in groups at each others houses) to Thursday night sports (usually volleyball at church) and Saturday picnics and temple trips. He showed up without fail, always in clothes that looked like they’d been stolen out of the discard pile of a thrift store, his hair threatening to become a mullet, his PDA in hand, and a smirk on his face like he knew what everyone thought of his appearance and could only laugh in response.

He always greeted me with a, “Hey, Eliza,” then quickly looked away.

One Thursday night, about six months ago, the activities coordinators decided to make us play the Newlywed Game with partners we were to select at random. The only rule was that we couldn’t have ever dated each other. Now, this was a really, really stupid idea and I said as much to Len, who was seated right behind me on the floor of the gym. “Half the girls are gonna get left out,” I said. The gender ratio in the ward was way out of whack. “And what’s the point of quizzing people about each other when they’ve never dated? They won’t know anything.”

“They could be friends,” he pointed out.

“Well, right. Okay, look, I don’t want to be left out. Partner with me?”

“I dunno...”

I turned all the way around. This felt very high school, sitting on the wooden floor of the gym, worried about whether or not I’d get left out as people chose teams. “What do you mean, you don’t know? You got too many other girls lining up? You can’t choose?”

“I’m the membership clerk. I know all kinds of random facts about people from their records. Doesn’t seem fair.”

“Oh come on. You know our parents’ names, like that’s gonna come up. Or our baptism dates? And you’ve memorized them? Quick, what’s my birthday?”

He shrugged that off, but I felt mortified for a moment. He knew my birthday. He knew my age. Or if he didn’t, he could easily find out. Moreover, if I played this game, I might have to reveal my age. I’d tried to hint that I was about twenty-eight. Old enough not to be interested in the young guys just fresh off their missions, but not too close to that dreaded age of thirty-one.