The Sky Beneath My Feet - By Lisa Samson Page 0,15

so selfish,” I say.

“That’s where you’re wrong. This is the most selfless thing I have ever done in my life.”

I’m not a throw-the-dishes kind of woman, but hearing those words, I can understand why they do it. He marches out, slamming the back door behind him, and part of me wishes I’d sent a bowl or coffee mug—one of the cheap ones—flying after him.

A few moments later I hear the shed door snap shut.

He’s gone temporarily crazy, that’s all. In an hour, he’ll emerge from the shed and make a joke of the whole thing. And I’ll make myself laugh. You had me going there for a while. Only an hour passes and he doesn’t come out. I make more coffee and take a mug outside.

At the door, I remember last night. I pour the coffee onto the grass and turn back.

Across the English garden, from the corner of my eye, I see a familiar figure emerge from the back of the big house. Deedee Smythe steps outside in a flowing white cover-up that opens to reveal an ecru one-piece bathing suit that must have been very chic when she bought it in the 1970s. Under one arm she carries a folding lawn chair, just like the Rent-a-Mob folks I met yesterday, and under the other she has a canvas and easel. When I first met Deedee, I thought she was a recreational watercolorist, one of those people who takes it up as a hobby. In fact, she’s a rather accomplished painter. Roy Meakin, one of the neighbors, filled me in on her illustrious career, and afterward I looked her up online. She’s the only person I know who has a Wikipedia entry.

Seeing me, Deedee raises her hand to wave. The cover-up slips down to reveal a long, bronzed arm. She is not the sort of lady whose age you ask, but as best I can work out, she’s in her mid- to late fifties. To hear Roy tell it, when she was younger all the men hovered around like bees at the honeycomb. She still carries herself that way. What I like about her, though, is how little care she seems to take. She dresses eccentrically, even badly, and never seems concerned about the impression she’s making. All she cares about is painting. And keeping her mother, Margaret, appeased.

“You’re out early this morning,” I call.

She beckons me over. “I had to get away from her. I was supposed to get her a Zagnut after mass yesterday, and it utterly slipped my mind. To add insult to injury, I made the mistake of letting her know that, at her age, maybe it was time to cut back on the sweets. You know what she said? ‘Don’t make me choose between you and a Chunky with raisins.’ I’m her daughter, but that only counts for so much.”

Another thing about Deedee: her voice. She has the deep, throaty timbre of a blues singer, like she gargled with Scotch as a girl, like her vocal cords were aged in oak casks. Not a pretty voice, but an interesting one, the way some faces can be interesting. I could listen to her for hours. And she must be accustomed to people listening, because she tends to talk in monologues.

“So you’re going to do some painting?”

“And some sunbathing,” she says. “Though it’s still a little brisk. I’m taking a break from the church mural. Maybe I shouldn’t have agreed to the thing at all. It’s not what I was hoping. I’m not happy with it at all.”

“I was going to stop by and take a look.”

“Well, don’t. You’ll only vex me, Elizabeth, and I don’t need vexing at this point.”

I love that she uses words like vex, and that she insists on using my full name. I remember her chagrin when I first insisted that Jed and Eli were my sons’ names, and they weren’t shortened versions of Jedediah or Elihu.

“All right,” I say. “No vexing.”

For as long as I’ve known her, Deedee has been complaining about the mural in the nave of her parish church. The artwork, she says, could have come straight from some pious child’s illustrated Bible. “It’s a particular sort of commercial kitsch. An affront to beauty, and probably to God too.” Then a few months ago the priest called on the Smythes with a proposition. As part of the ongoing renovation of the historic building, why not commission the famous artist in their midst to paint a new mural? “‘Absolutely