Without her old friends, without Shelly still around to hold her up, she crumbles, erodes like a sand castle under the repeated waves of maternal advice.

"See, Sweetheart! I told you it'd be wonderful!" cheers the Mother, "and, of course, you can still paint on the weekends or whatever. I'm sure once that lady manager, what was her name again?, sees some of your work she'll want to decorate the office with it exclusively! Have you mentioned it to her yet like I told you to?" The Daughter says she's forgotten. Doesn't want to repeat her co-workers' opinions, talk about Beverley's comments. "But, sweetheart, for heaven's sake, why not?"

Why not? She'd like to dump buckets and buckets of the swiftly-eroding sandy fortress of her self-esteem straight into the telephone receiver. A gritty, sopping wet mush of why not. Drown both of them in her anger and helplessness.

But that's the one thing she can't do.

If she speaks, says what she most wants to say, she knows what they will answer, fears it, feels it creeping into her joints and fingers while she works, hears it whispered in waking dreams while she searches for subjects, considers themes.

Well, if it's like that, Sweetheart, then maybe it's best if you. . .

give up

come home

find a man

start a family

Without tangible artistic breakthrough, she knows she doesn't have a leg to stand on in the shadow battle with the Mother and Father. Her wages from the agency cover almost everything, but only almost. Without the occasional card and check, she'd never be able to afford her art.  

And so she falls back on the only tactic she knows.

During their Mother-demanded bi-weekly telephone calls, she paints lavish, over-wrought pictures of the properties the agency represents, all of the houses she takes photos of, all the dozens and dozens of possible homes, possible lives.

She takes clues from the tone of the Mother's voice, the shades of lightness or heaviness, follows the feather-light indications of taste and covetousness, interest and secret lusts, chooses the tones, the textures she knows will quicken the Mother's breathing, prompt her to ask questions, make her eyes glisten although she can't see them from so many miles away. Oh, sweetheart! You must be having so much fun!

The Daughter moves the receiver from one ear to the other; doesn't listen to what the Mother is saying. She stares across the room to where a new, blank canvas is waiting for her on the easel.

Is this what being an adult is like? she silently asks the canvas.

It doesn't know. It stares back at her, unmoved.

Why not say something?

Because the only tangible compensation for her talents are the occasional watercolors she does of businesses and institutions. Insurance companies who want a picture of the squat, cheerless building they inhabit to proudly hang on the office walls of the squat, cheerless buildings they inhabit. Churches who want their tiny, white-washed frames nobilized for the Christmas newsletter. Farmers who want their acumen of barns, storehouses and cows immortalized for an imaginary, or existing but disinterested, posterity. 

She works directly from the photos they give her. An exact copy is what they're after. Not a blade of grass changed, simply bathed in a cozy, idealistic wash of warm sentimentality.

It's hack work that reflects the self-satisfied mediocrity she sees every day at the agency.

The biggest success of her real art is the sale to the local bank of a series of four canvases depicting the seasons in regional articulation. Cars stuck in the snow; a herd of wild flowers growing higgly-piggly on the shoulder of the local highway; old men mowing their front lawns as their wives look on fanning themselves with newspapers; an almost abstract close-up of bushels of just-harvested, glistening apples.

They hang in the bank's lobby ignored by tetchy, distracted people waiting in line to cash checks, pay bills.

Her work has appeared in shows. She's submitted them to contests for scholarships, stipendiums.

No response worth mentioning. 

Scrutinizing her finished canvases, attempting to puzzle out the reason for their lack of popularity, searching for the invisible holes where interest smashes into acerbic shards of indifference. That is what she has come to devote more and more of her time to than to actually painting.

She completed only four canvases last year.

She doubts she'll finish that many this year.

It isn't going to be like she'd thought, her life. How it was explained to her in childhood. Instead, there are set-backs, road blocks where she least expects them. In places she was never warned about.

She's carelessly lost the confidence she once had in her eye for spotting form and weight on the floor of one of the hundreds of empty houses she feels she's been jostled through by an invisible hand. She feels her smile becoming more and more painted on, her hands moulded into a pointing gesture by the recycled, lacquered air in the agency office. Perhaps a different property in our show binders would be more to your taste?

Why don't you say something?

Is this what it's like to be an adult?