The Wedding Tree Read Online Free PDF Page A

thought, dropping my keys on the bureau in the foyer. Gran’s house had always buzzed with possibilities, with wonderful things just about to happen—Christmas presents waiting to be opened, cake icing needing to be licked from beaters, long summer days stretching out like magic carpets, as full of promised delight as the stack of canvasses Gran always bought me.
    Mom used to fly me down to Louisiana when school let out in early June, then pick me up again in August. While she managed portfolios and brokered big deals in Chicago, I ran barefoot, frolicked through schedule-free days, and indulged my passion for painting.
    Gran has always been my biggest fan and supporter. She’d noticed my love of art when I was about four years old and she caught me sitting cross-legged on her white chenille bedspread, staring at the print of Van Gogh’s
Starry Night
that hung over her high oak headboard. I told her that if I looked at it long enough, the stars seemed to spin.
    â€œWould you like to paint a picture like that?” Gran had asked.
    I’d nodded, and that very afternoon, Gran had taken me to thestore, bought me paint supplies, and set me up with a little easel on the back patio. I worked out there until nearly bedtime, when I’d declared my painting finished.
    â€œThat’s beautiful, sweetheart,” Gran had said.
    â€œIt’s very nice,” my mother had remarked when I’d proudly shown her the piece a couple of months later. “But shouldn’t the big star be on the other side?”
    â€œOh, I wasn’t copying,” I’d said. “I looked at the sky myself.”
    â€œThat’s my girl.” Gran’s laugh had vibrated against me as she enfolded me in a big hug. “Don’t ever stop viewing the world through your own eyes, sweetie.”
    â€œWho else’s eyes would I use?” I’d asked.
    Gran had laughed again. “You’d be surprised, honey. You’d be surprised.”
    To my delight, Gran had hung my painting right over the Van Gogh print in her bedroom—and she’d taken to framing and hanging each summer’s crop of paintings in the “art gallery” between two of the three bedrooms upstairs.
    â€œYou shouldn’t encourage her,” I’d overheard my mother say one evening years later, between my sophomore and junior years in high school. She and my grandmother had been sitting in the kitchen, and I’d been in the dining room, sketching a mural on the wall. I was listening to my CD Walkman, but I’d pulled the headset off for a moment, and the solemn tone of my mother’s voice had made me put my ear to the door. “She needs to start thinking about colleges and majors, and art isn’t a serious career.”
    The words had knifed me in the heart. My mother was an investment advisor, all about P&Ls, track records, and potential.
    â€œShe seems pretty serious about it to me,” Gran had said.
    â€œCome on, Mom. There’s a reason the word ‘artist’ is usually paired with the word ‘starving.’”
    â€œShe could always teach.”
    â€œThen she’d be starving for sure. Traditional female roles don’t allow a woman to make a decent living.”
    â€œWell, dear,” Gran had said, “making a living isn’t the same as making a life.”
    I’d failed at both, I thought now. My shoulders slumping, I left the main door open so air could circulate through the screen, shuffled into the living room, and flipped the switch for the overhead light. The old chandelier cast a soft glow over the cypress floor, the floral chintz curtains, and the hodgepodge of furniture that ranged from inherited Victorian antiques to 1980s-era “modern.” My eye went to the crowded collection of photos that covered the walls—a rogue’s gallery of my family, with a special emphasis on my mother and Uncle Eddie as children.
    Centered over