Fifty-three

MORGAN AND ADOLFO were fully committed to working with me every day instead of leaving school for spring break. We invited them to stay with us, but Adolfo was using the time to shack up with his girlfriend. Morgan was more than willing to join us. That shouldn’t be interpreted as anything more than staying at our house at night—not our bedroom. Kate, Morgan, and I left early every morning that week and met Adolfo at the chapel. Kate applied tiles to the twelfth mosaic and we managed to do five full panels.

I planned to crash Saturday and totally veg out. But Friday a sign had been added in our yard. Our home was officially for sale. We spent Saturday touring open houses on Queen Anne, Magnolia, Fremont, and Wallingford. By the time we were finished, we were ready to tear down the sign in our yard and think again about remodeling.

The next weekend, Melody and Lissa had a huge opening at Nordstrom featuring their new line of summer fashions and maternity sportswear. It was fun to watch Lissa ‘work the dress’ with her six-month baby-bump. God! She is so beautiful. All the manufacturing and warehousing was being done off-site now, so Melody had doubled her design efforts and Lissa upped the promotion a level. Nordstrom had an exclusive on the season. Penny worked her tail off with the Ice Queen accounting but still found time to help with our partnership accounts and to explain my royalty reports to me.

“Tell us the story, Tony,” Andy said when I came down off the lift. I looked around. My whole family was there. Doc, Clarice, Bob, Morgan, and Adolfo had joined us. My review committee, Coach Jacobson and Prof. Strait were joined by Doctor Bychkova. Father Michel joined the crowd. More people than I’d told a story too since I started work.

It was April Fool’s Day and I’d just finished the fortieth panel.

“This is a story about dreams and obsession,” I began. “This sweet girl—well, she’s a young woman now—has always dreamed big. From the time she was tiny, she always said, ‘I’m going to be a beauty queen.’ Of course, you could substitute your favorite dream here. Astronaut, rock star, artist, corporate executive, mommy, movie star, firefighter, cowboy. For her, it was beauty queen. She dressed in tutus and tiaras and convinced her parents to enter her in beauty contests when she was five. She walked the walk and talked the talk. She worked hard at her talent and took care of her body. But never quite won the big one. It was just possible that she could have won the prize for ‘Best Second Place Beauty Queen Ever.’ And she was unhappy.”

I’d talked to Andy for hours about this painting. We’d rehearsed the story a dozen times to make sure I didn’t implicate an individual. But I wanted to make sure the archbishop got the message. The woman in the painting was a prostitute. Giving up everything she believed in to become the one thing that was beyond her grasp.

The trickiest part was getting models for the piece. A man mounting a woman thrown down on her back with her head turned aside, her eyes glistening, but tears resolutely held back by her determination. I needed a model who couldn’t be recognized. And I had to carefully pose the couple so contact was implied, but no genitalia was visible.

Wendy had taken me shopping for a model. After our experience at the strip club in Las Vegas, she took me to a local strip club and as each dancer went to the stage or approached us for a dance, I shook my head. I just couldn’t get the right look and I wasn’t comfortable approaching one of them to pose for me. It was a disappointing evening until we got home and Wendy put on her own dance for me.

I finally went with the most beautiful queen I knew. Drag queen. Kevin and Eric were still dating and Eric agreed to come up for a long weekend while I sketched the couple. Kevin in his full makeup is beautiful. It wasn’t difficult to give a little swell to his breasts. Eric with a day’s growth of beard was a suitable dominating man that was her price for success. I hadn’t told Andy that the beauty queen in the picture was a gay man with his lover.

“In the end, becoming Miss Galaxy wasn’t as thrilling as she thought it would be. Selling herself made the victory hollow. As she thought of the people she had trampled, the lovers she had used, the lies she had told, the honor she achieved was a dark hole in her heart. But there was no going back. She would always be what she had become.”

Andy snapped the recorder off and said, “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

We cleaned the chapel, making sure there were no plaster or paint splatters, and set up for Erika’s return. Art history papers had been turned in on Wednesday and I had lots of reading to do as I moved into the next phase of the project—writing and publishing.

Kate and I decided to drive around Queen Anne on the way home to look at the neighborhood. We hadn’t found anything suitable in this area, so we’d reluctantly started moving our search farther north. We stopped as we turned down Comstock just to look out over the Sound and the cruise ship terminal. It was a great view.

“I’ll miss living up here,” I said as we turned to head home.

“Why not there,” Kate said, pointing. There was a for sale sign in front of what looked like a modest entry. It was a nicely landscaped Tudor with high hedges blocking the view from the street.

“Sure. Let’s just buy it and surprise the family,” I joked. I stopped the car and Kate jumped out to get the literature. “Remember, we’re supposed to find something bigger than our place,” I laughed as she buckled in. Kate started reading the glossy four-page brochure.

“Yeah. Listen to this. Six bedrooms, five and three-quarter baths, master suite with dressing room and full bath, nursery and nanny’s quarters. Master suite includes marble spa, shower system, elegant fixtures, fireplace, and French doors opening to a private deck.”

“Holy shit!”

Kate and I announced our find to the family and we arranged a viewing on Friday. We had to clean house first. Our agent was bringing prospects through Friday at noon. Wendy organized the cleaning and staging. She went so far as to put cookies in the oven and leave them on the kitchen counter when we left. Our house smelled delicious.

The house we went to see left us all breathless.

The master suite occupied the entire third floor. The dressing room wasn’t an alcove, it was an entire room the size of one of our bedrooms. Two smaller rooms adjoining the bedroom were set up as a nursery/playroom. Even the nanny had a connected bath. The master bath was huge. We found out what a shower system was. There were sprayers at every conceivable location—some high overhead, some pointing out of the wall, and some that looked almost normal, including detachable sprayers at each end. I looked at the family crowding into the shower. Yep. We would all fit. The fireplace between the bedroom and sitting room was a nice touch and the view from the deck was spectacular.