Morning Glory(56)

Collin freezes. “You must be confused,” he says, regaining his composure.

“But Leary—I mean,” he says, shaking his head, “sorry, it’s just that you look an awful lot like a guy I knew, in Korea.”

“I’m afraid I’m not the person you remember,” Collin says.

The man stares at him a moment longer and shakes his head in disbelief, then finally nods, saluting him before walking on.

“That was strange,” I say a few moments later.

Collin flashes me an unsettled smile. “It happens all the time,” he says, his usual confident expression again intact. “I must have a familiar face.”

“A handsome face,” I say, grinning.

“Oh, look,” Collin says, pointing ahead to a crowd of people near the sidewalk by two long cafeteria tables.

“What’s going on over there?”

“Let’s go see,” he says. We tuck the remains of the picnic back in the basket, brush off the blanket, and head over to see what the commotion’s all about.

“I want to paint mine pink, Mommy!” a little girl squeals.

“Oh,” Collin says. “I read about this. Seattle citizens are invited to paint a tile for the walkway for the World’s Fair.”

I eye the table of white square tiles stacked in foot-long piles. A docent in dark horn-rimmed glasses stands behind the table passing out one to each person. “Collect your tile here,” the woman says, “and then proceed to the table to the right to paint them.”

“Want to paint one?” Collin asks.

I remember the time I borrowed one of Dex’s canvases and some paints and surprised him with a painting of my own. I tried to capture the lake in the morning, just after sunrise, when it’s as smooth as glass and fog lifts up like steam. But it displeased him greatly. My composition was all wrong, he said, and I had wasted a perfectly good canvas.

I sigh, feeling awkward in the presence of art. “Why don’t you paint one for both of us?” I say.

“All right,” Collin says, collecting a tile from the docent. I watch him set it down on the nearby table and reach for a brush. He selects a bit of red paint and squeezes it onto the palette in front of him.

“What will you paint?” I ask.

He grins. “You’ll see.”

I watch as he dabs his brush into the red paint. I can’t remember feeling such anticipation when I’ve watched Dex paint. Besides, he never lets me watch him. For him, the process of creation is deeply private, which is why he spends so much time alone in his studio.

Collin makes a simple heart inside the little square tile, and I smile. Next he selects a smaller brush, and he begins painting a message inside. The words flow from his brush freely: “Forever my love.”

I clutch my hand to my heart. “It’s beautiful,”

“I thought we could come back here,” he says, looking up at me timidly, “years from now, and see our tile, and remember how we felt today.”

I smile as he fills in the edges of the tile with red paint, then hands it to an apron-clad man behind the table. “Thank you,” the man says. “This will get glazed up and then embedded in the pathway that we’re forming for the World’s Fair.”

We walk back to the park in silence. My mind is a jumble of thoughts, and my heart is filled with emotion. Forever. He wrote the word forever. I haven’t dared to think so far into the future, and now that I have, it feels wild and wonderful at the same time. But a voice gnaws at me from a place deep inside. You belong to someone else, it says. This is wrong. You’re breaking your word. You must go home. You must not let this continue.

Suddenly Collin stops. He turns toward me. His face looks intense and desperate, as if he’s on the verge of expressing extreme joy or sorrow, or maybe both. He drops to his knees and looks up at me with yearning. “Run away with me,” he says.

“But I—”

“Don’t think of him,” he says. “He hasn’t been good to you. He doesn’t deserve you.”

“Collin . . .”

“I’ll make you so happy. I’ll love you every day, every night. I’ll show you the world. Just the two of us, traveling from port to port. I’ll give you the life you always wanted.”

The world appears to be spinning around us and I feel unsteady, but Collin’s grasp is like an anchor, keeping me here, keeping me safe.

“But I’m married,” I finally say.

“What does it matter?” Collin replies. “You’ll divorce him.”

Divorce. I haven’t ever factored that in. Mama didn’t raise me to be a woman who gets a divorce. She’d never be able to forgive me. And could I forgive myself?