No Dark Valley (12 page)

Celia had already decided that anybody who could capture the Charleston waterfront this way with such grace in such a restricted medium, depicting it as neither too sweetly nostalgic nor too rigidly formal, must have been a fascinating person. To think that he had done it all using a block of wood, a carving tool, black ink, and white paper—well, she wished she could have met the artist. She was in the process of wondering what kind of husband such a man would make when she heard the electronic chime that signaled the entrance of a visitor to the gallery.

She set the print down with a sigh and left the workroom, hoping whoever it was wouldn't stay long. Maybe someone just needed directions to another shop along this stretch of road. People often stopped in to ask if they did framing here or sold cross-stitch thread, and Celia always directed them to the Framed for Keeps shop at the far end of the strip mall or the Yarn Barn a mile down the road next to the Exxon station.

Every now and then people came in “looking for a gift,” they said, but they almost always left quickly, trying not to look shocked at the prices. Celia would never forget the woman who, immediately upon entering the gallery, had shown such enthusiasm for a small stone sculpture of a seahorse. She had misread the price on the card as fifteen dollars instead of fifteen
hundred
dollars and had actually started coughing in a choking sort of way when Celia corrected her misconception. Of course, other people, the serious collectors, came in to buy. And came back to buy again.

Exiting the workroom, Celia immediately recognized the woman who had just come in. She was a frequent visitor here at the Trio Gallery. She was standing inside the center viewing gallery now, where the new exhibit was on display. She had positioned herself in front of a large abstract oil painting swirled with hot, bold colors. Integrated into the painting were a number of other textures—a straggly forked twig, for instance, and a swatch of burlap, torn bits of paper, some crushed leaves.

The piece fit right in with the show's title: “From the Pit, Rising.” A tornado had obviously gotten loose in that pit and flung out all sorts of things. It was wild and seething, unsettling yet oddly beautiful. The price was listed at forty-eight hundred dollars, and Celia had no doubt at all that it would sell. She had developed a pretty accurate feel by now for what would go home with somebody and what would be left.

More than once she had thought of herself in terms of an orphanage director, though the parallels were imperfect, of course. But this painting would be adopted, she felt quite sure. Though bigger children, for the most part, weren't as appealing to prospective parents as the little ones, there always seemed to be buyers for these grandly courageous paintings. And it did take courage to produce works of this size. If they didn't sell, the artist had to be prepared to store them somewhere.

Titled simply
Tumult
, the piece had been at the gallery for only two weeks, along with twenty other works by the same artist, Tara Larson, who was also one of the gallery's three owners, a thin slip of a woman in her forties. Over the years her art had become not only larger but also more and more . . .
tumultuous
was the only word Celia could think of to describe Tara's most recent pieces, especially the ones she had produced for this show. Yet if you saw Tara on the street, you might describe her as mousy.

Elizabeth Landis was the name of the woman who had just arrived at the art gallery, the one now staring intently at
Tumult
, stepping in closer and leaning forward slightly as if trying to decipher words spoken by someone with a heavy accent. Celia was glad at least that she wasn't a chatty woman. Usually Elizabeth Landis came in for short, quietly intense periods of time, and she liked to be left alone to wander from piece to piece. Rarely did she ask a question or offer a comment.

A year or so ago, however, she had bought a painting of wild jasmine vines, and as she was writing out the check for it, she had suddenly looked up at Celia and said, “I was so afraid on the way over here that someone else might have already gotten it. I didn't see how I could wake up tomorrow knowing I might not ever see it again.” When she had stopped talking, her voice had quavered a little as if she were on the verge of crying. Celia had watched her carry the painting out of the gallery that day. When she had gotten to her car, Elizabeth Landis had held the painting out in front of her and looked at it a long time. Right before stooping to put it into the back, she had lifted her face and closed her eyes reverently.

Celia observed her now for a few moments and then spoke. “Oh, hello, Mrs. Landis.” She said it in a breezy, off-handed way as she passed through the center gallery toward the reception desk out front, as if she were very busy and had just noticed Elizabeth on her way to take care of something else. She didn't stop to initiate a conversation of small talk with her, knowing that it would suit them both better if she didn't. If she had been forced to choose a customer for this afternoon, if there had to be one, she couldn't have done better than Elizabeth Landis.

Celia kept walking when Elizabeth answered. “I just stopped by to see the new show.”

“Take your time,” Celia called. “I'll be out here at the desk if you need anything.” Secretly, of course, she was hoping Elizabeth Landis
wouldn't
take her time too much. She wanted to get the rest of those prints packed up, then take down some pieces that had been hanging in the side galleries for too long. She kept careful track of the rotation since that was something Ollie, Tara, and Craig had become quick to complain about.

Of course Celia knew for a fact that there had been no system of circulation before she had come along, that paintings had languished in the back storage bins forever while the same old things hung on display. After the first week of working here, she had asked Ollie one day about the high vertical storage shelves along the walls in the back room. She couldn't tell whether those were actual paintings standing up there all stacked together or maybe just old frames.

Nobody ever had the time to get a system organized, Ollie had told her, but that day he had suddenly been seized with the need for
her
to do so and had asked her to get started on it as soon as possible. “Tara doesn't care about organization,” he had confided to Celia, shaking his head, “and Craig . . . well, he's even worse.” Ollie had lifted both index fingers and twirled them around his head in little circles. “Craig's mind runs here, there, and everywhere.”

Reaching the reception desk now, Celia sat down in her rolling chair and swung around to a smaller table on which she had stacked a group of photos of some watercolor paintings by a retired artist, Angela Wortheimer, who lived in Hendersonville, North Carolina. Ollie had seen some of the paintings at a show in Asheville the year before and asked Celia to contact the artist about doing a show for the Trio Gallery. Though she had studied the photos many times by now and had even seen many of the originals after driving up to Asheville to pay the artist a visit, Celia looked through the stack again, hoping that an idea would come to her for the refreshment table on opening night.

Planning the receptions for the openings of shows was another part of her job she hadn't known about when she was hired. Actually, she had to admit that it was something else she had brought on herself. Before she had come along, Ollie, Tara, and Craig had taken turns planning the openings, most of which had been thrown together at the last minute without any thought as to a theme or an actual opening night program with artist's talk and refreshments. Two weeks after being hired, Celia had offered to plan a reception for an upcoming pottery show, and she had been doing them ever since.

Each of the three owners had spoken to her privately in those early days about the failings of the other two to open the gallery on time when it was their day to work and to plan ahead in booking the exhibits. It hadn't taken long for Celia to figure out that, though they secretly blamed one another, not one of them had a head for running a business. But she had sympathized with them. “You can't be an artist and a businessman at the same time,” she had said to all three of them separately, though she didn't really believe it.

She discovered that they had been ready to close the gallery when they decided as a last effort to try to hire a director. Celia had heard through a friend at the newspaper, who knew a friend of one of the owners, that they were looking for somebody, and in one of the most uncharacteristically daring moves of her life, she had put on her gray wool dress and silver hoop earrings and had gone to the gallery to express her interest in the job.

“I am not an artist,” she had told them forthrightly at the interview, “but you don't need another artist around here. You need someone who can keep things straight, and I can do that. I can learn whatever it is you need me to do. And though I'm not an artist, I do have a good eye for line and color and am moderately creative.” She didn't tell them about winning the school art contest in ninth grade for her sketch of a woman's stockinged feet surrounded by dozens of pairs of shoes she was trying on. She doubted that they would be much impressed by that, although her father had been so proud he had hung the picture behind the cash register in his shoe store.

“I have computer skills,” she continued, “and I've also worked as a journalist and freelance editor, so I can write, which I would think could help in a job like this.” She was the third person they had interviewed, and they hired her on the spot. After she left the room that day, she heard one of them say—she thought it was Ollie—“I like her moxie. And I think she's teachable.”

They wanted her to open the gallery every afternoon from one until five, including Saturdays, and as long as she devoted those hours to the business of the gallery, she was free to come in at any other times and use the desk and computer for whatever else she might want to do, which would come in handy, she decided, for her writing and editing on the side.

Elizabeth Landis continued making her way around the center gallery, stopping in front of each work, sometimes moving farther back, sometimes moving in closer. She glanced at her watch once, which raised Celia's hopes. It was already close to four o'clock, so maybe she had to get home and plan supper. Celia wondered if she was married, if she had kids at home. They had never talked with each other about things like that. She was an attractive woman in Celia's opinion, in an understated sort of way, tall and slim like a runner or maybe a former basketball player. Celia didn't have much to base it on, but she was sure Elizabeth was intelligent. She appeared to be in her late forties, though Celia didn't consider herself a good judge of ages.

Celia had separated the Wortheimer photos into three stacks according to subject, and she started through them all again. Because they were strictly representational, it had been quite easy to figure out categories for them: land, sky, and water. In the land group there were the meadows and fields, the houses and barns, flower gardens, and so forth. The sky group focused on sunsets and sunrises above the tips of evergreens or mountains, and the water pictures were lakes with lily pads and covered bridges over rushing brooks, also a couple of waterfalls, and Celia's personal favorite—a sidewalk scene depicting the aftermath of a rainstorm, with puddles and shiny wet leaves.

The show was coming up in a month, so she needed to get the details for opening night lined up. Thankfully, Angela Wortheimer had agreed to drive down to give a talk. Celia liked to somehow coordinate the reception with the paintings themselves whenever she could, but she had been struggling with an idea for the refreshment table for this one. Ollie's wife, Connie, who worked for a florist, sometimes helped her with the table, but she was coming up blank for this one, too. They really couldn't do anything seasonal since March was one of those in-between months, not really winter still but not yet spring, either.

Celia was thinking of putting together a large centerpiece using slender bare branches hung with silver wire balls and those miniature lights on a string. Maybe some moss underneath it all and tea candles in shallow clay pots artistically arranged under the branches. It wasn't all that exciting, really, and she didn't see a clear connection to the watercolor paintings, but it might work.

“You don't know anybody who plays tennis, do you?” The question startled Celia. She swung her chair around immediately and saw that Elizabeth Landis was now standing midway between the reception desk and the front door. It was clear that she was preparing to leave. She had picked up one of the leaflets listing the titles of the pieces in Tara's show and was rolling it into a little scroll.

Celia gave a small laugh. “Well, I played in high school and college, but I haven't kept up with it much since then.” She had a sudden memory of the last time she had played tennis. It was with Ward, the sportswriter she had dated before Al. After Celia had won one easy set and was almost ready to close out the second, Ward pretended to have a pulled muscle in his thigh. He grimaced as he kneaded it, then took a few limping steps around the court and said, “Sorry, Celia, but the old horse has pulled up lame. I'm gonna have to take him outta the race.”

An hour later, after they had gotten barbecue sandwiches at the drive-through over at C. C.'s in Filbert and eaten them in Ward's car, they stopped for hot fudge sundaes at the Dairy Queen. As they walked up to the order window together, Celia noticed that Ward's pulled thigh muscle had evidently healed itself.

Elizabeth moved a step closer to the reception desk. She had a hopeful light in her eyes. “Well, we really need another singles player,” she said. “I'm the only one right now. I joined this team last fall, and we're getting ready to start practicing for our spring season in a couple of weeks, but we're . . . I mean, I don't know how good you are. You may be way above the rest of us. Or you may not even have Monday mornings free. That's when we play our matches.” She shrugged. “Or you might not be interested at all. Most of us are older than you.”