The Wedding Tree Read Online Free PDF Page B

uncertain wobble in her voice. “. . . inadequate.” She’d clamped her lips together and turned her head to the passenger window. I’d kept my eyes on the road. I was afraid she was crying again, and the thought of my always-together mother crying scared me to death.
    Mom never said that her father was the reason she disliked spending time in Wedding Tree; she said Gran loved to visit us in Chicago and that there was a lot more to see and do there, which was true enough. Besides, she’d always add—Wedding Tree was too rural, the people too nosy, and the pace of life too slow.
    Which were the very things I’d always loved about Wedding Tree. The community was like a fuzzy blanket—it made me feel safe and relaxed and cozy. In Chicago, I always felt hurried and pressured. Maybe it was because Mom packed my after-school life with activities and appointments and play dates. When we were at our apartment, she was always working on something, and I felt like I had to be constantly productive, too. “It’s important to make something of yourself, to become someone,” Mom used to say.
    â€œIsn’t everyone already someone?” I once asked.
    â€œYou know what I mean,” she’d said. “Successful.”
    Yeah, I knew what she meant. Success to my mother meant academic achievements, professional accomplishments, and important titles. A type-A overachiever, Mom went from high school valedictorian to summa cum laude MBA graduate at Northwestern to vice president at a publicly traded investment firm at a time whenfemale executives were unheard of. She’d wanted her only daughter—the daughter she’d had at the age of forty-two—to follow in her footsteps and benefit from all the inroads she and her fellow female type As had made in the seventies and eighties.
    The problem was, my idea of success didn’t jive with hers. I didn’t want to become an attorney or doctor or high-powered executive. I didn’t want to wear designer clothes or go to power lunches or board meetings. I just wanted to paint—to lose myself in a flow of creativity, to produce art that captured my thoughts and feelings.
    Mother never said I was a disappointment, and I know she didn’t want to make me feel like one, because her father had done that to her. But deep inside, I’m pretty sure I disappointed her all the same.
    Pushing aside my thoughts, I opened the front windows to let in a breeze—it was a cool day in late March, not warm enough to warrant air-conditioning—then went upstairs to my mother’s old bedroom, the room where I always stayed. I dropped my bag on the floor, peeled off my clothes, and took a long shower in the vintage black-and-white-tiled bathroom. When I came out, I rummaged in my bag and threw on a pair of sweatpants and an old T-shirt. I thought about taking a nap, but it was getting late and I felt kind of wired. I decided to look around the house and see just what I was getting myself into. I wandered downstairs into Gran’s bedroom.
    It looked the same as it always had. Gran’s big oak bed with a curved footboard sat against the wall opposite the door, the large, elaborately framed print of
Starry Night
hanging over the high oak headboard, my smaller painting, in a simpler frame, hanging above it.
    I smiled and focused my gaze on the Van Gogh print. I still love it, but now I appreciate it for different reasons. Now I love the way Van Gogh lets you see his brushstrokes, how he didn’t try to hide the effort, how he lets you see where he dabbed and dawdled and meticulously layered color on color, where he reworked the parts that weren’t right until they matched the picture in his head.
    Even in a print, you can tell that his paintings are uneven andtextured and layered with paint, and you just know that there are probably different colors under the colors you see, and maybe even a whole other picture