Free An Emergence of Green by Katherine V Forrest Page A

afternoon and all weekend to read.
    On Monday she changed into shorts and a blouse and walked out to the pool to greet Val. “So how was backpacking?”
    “Hot as hell. But great.” Val had emerged from the pool and was toweling her hair. “How was your weekend?”
    “Boring,” Carolyn admitted after a moment of reflection. “Will you help me with some packages in the car? Then can I come over and get my painting?”
    As she looked into the trunk of Carolyn’s car Val said accusingly, “What’s all this?”
    “A gift. If you can give me a gift I can give you a gift.”
    “No. You can’t do this.”
    “Of course I can. I can do anything I want.” Carolyn chuckled, enjoying herself. “I’ll take these packages if you carry the easel.”
    Carolyn lowered her packages to the work table in Val’s house, staring at the painting propped against the box, framed in a paper-thin band of silver. “It’s perfect. I love it more now than when I first saw it.”
    “I think the framing is right, it extends the painting to the edge. And the varnishing went well—only took one coat.”
    “Is that unusual?”
    “No, just lucky. Often there’s a flat spot or some matte areas and you have to give it another coat.” Val was opening a package. “Holy Christmas morning,” she said softly, “will you look at all this. Sable brushes.” She picked one up, stroked the bristles with sensual delicacy.
    “The woman at Carter Sexton said that painters always need brushes, and sable is best. I told her you made your own colors; she said to get basic colors and lots of white, dry pigments and linseed oil. So everything here is her suggestion—the watercolors and watercolor paper, it’s their best. And the roll of linen canvas.”
    “Even a carrying case.” Val’s voice was a purr of pleasure. She had unlatched the wooden case filled with tubes of watercolor. “I’ve always needed a decent case to carry supplies when I paint somewhere besides here.”
    Carolyn watched, smiling, as Val touched the tubes of paint with caressing fingertips. Impulsively she hugged Val, and was surprised by the softness of her body; she had expected muscular solidity. “Can you come over for a few minutes and help me hang my painting?” She knew exactly where it would go—across from where she usually sat on the sofa, so that she could glance up and see it.

    “It’s interesting,” Paul said.
    Carolyn clearly understood that he disliked the painting. “I think so too,” she said relentlessly. “I think it’s wonderful, I’ve never seen a painting I like so much.”
    “That’s going a little overboard, don’t you think? I don’t know that it looks best in the living room—”
    “I definitely do. I love it, Paul,” she stated, defying him to deny her the pleasure she felt in this painting. “ I love it.”
    He nodded. “I’m starved.”
    As she served their dinner she tried to recall another time she had successfully asserted herself on any issue of importance during their marriage. She could not remember any. She could not remember trying before.
    At dinner, as they watched Peter Jennings report on the Reagan administration’s unhappiness with the Reverend Jackson’s activities in Cuba, he said, “Tell me, are all Mrs. Hunter’s paintings like that one?”
    She replied carefully, “What do you mean, ‘like that one’?”
    “Modern.” He grinned, trimmed a piece of lamb neatly from the bone. “Does she paint navels in the middle of foreheads?”
    She said coldly, “Is that your sole understanding of modern art?”
    “Come on, Princess. I was just trying to be funny.”
    She knew better; she knew he had not really accepted the painting in the living room and this was an indirect attack on it.
    “Forgive my levity,” he said sarcastically. “I should have realized you’re an art critic now that you’ve read a few books.”
    She remembered the pride she felt during the past weekend when she looked at examples of