on to paint scenery for the drama club, or if they needed posters or signs. But the rest of the time, no one paid any attention to him, in school or at home. The other students referred to him as “the wacky artist,” which had been a deep insult at first, and then he decided that he liked it, and played it to the hilt. Sometimes, as a teenager, he wondered if he was insane.
“I figured out that if I let myself be just what they said I was, a wacky artist, I could do anything I wanted, so I did. I did whatever I felt like.” And eventually, since he never bothered to study, he got expelled from one school after another. He had dropped out of school finally in his senior year, and never bothered to graduate, until his wife forced him to get his diploma once they were married. But school had meant nothing to him. It was just a place where he was tortured for being different. According to Liam, no one except his mother had ever recognized or cared that he had talent. Art was not an acceptable occupation in his family. Only sports and academics mattered, and he didn't qualify in either, or even attempt to. Sasha wondered if he had had an undetected learning disability to be so resistant to school. Many of her artists did, and it had been a source of deep unhappiness for them, compensated for by their artistic talent. But she didn't know Liam well enough to ask him, so she didn't, and just listened to his story with compassion and interest.
He insisted that he had known he wanted to be an artist from the moment he came out of the womb. Once on Christmas morning, before everyone got up, he had painted a mural in their living room, and after that he painted the grand piano and the couch. The shirt was obviously just a more recent version of the same form of art. He had been seven on that fateful morning, and couldn't understand why no one liked or appreciated what he'd done. His father had spanked him, and in a somewhat disconnected but emotional recital, he explained that after that, his mother had gotten very sick. She died the following summer, and from then on, his life was a nightmare. His only protector, and the only person who loved and accepted him, had vanished. Some nights, they didn't even bother to feed him. It was as though he had died with her. And art became his only comfort, and outlet, his only remaining bond with her, since she loved all that he did. He told Sasha that for years and sometimes even now, he felt as though he was painting for his mother. There were tears in his eyes when he said it. Everyone else in his family acted as though he was crazy, and still did. He said he hadn't seen his father and brothers in years.
He had met his wife, Beth, during a ski trip to Vermont, after he left home at eighteen and was painting in New York. He had married her at nineteen, when he was painting and starving in Greenwich Village. She had worked like a dog, according to Liam, and supported him ever since, much to her family's chagrin. They were as conservative as his family and didn't like him either. They hated him for his lack of responsibility and inability to support their daughter. He and Beth had three children, two boys who were seventeen and eleven, and a little girl who was five. They were the light of his life, and so was Beth, until she went back to Vermont, to her family, the previous July.
“Do you think she'll come back?” Sasha asked with a look of concern. There was something so gentle and vulnerable about him that it made her want to put her arms around him and fix everything for him. But she knew from experience with other artists that the messes they created in their lives were often damn near impossible to fix. His relationship with his family sounded as though it was beyond salvation, and probably not even worth trying. But it tugged at her heart when she listened to him talk about the lonely childhood he'd had and then about his wife and kids. He seemed lost without them, and Sasha sensed much left unsaid. Liam looked at her honestly in answer to