"Creativity Takes Courage."

~Henri Matisse

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 In Groundhog Day, Bill Murray keeps waking up to the same day over and over.

As I sit down on the couch for the sixth time, craving a few seconds of seeing what ditzy blonde is going to try to woo Jeremy tonight, Eloise brings me the phone, interrupting my moment of peace.

I am Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.

Reliving the same night over and over. Trying to sit on the couch. Getting a phone call or being interrupted by monsters in the closet.

Will there ever be primetime peace in this house ever again?

I take the phone from Eloise and lay back down on the couch, closing my eyes. "Hello?"

"I got a call this afternoon." It's Aimee. Here to rip off one of my limbs from the sound of her voice.

"Considering you're a lawyer, I expect you get a lot of calls," I reply tiredly.

"Well, this one was particularly interesting." I can hear her words being hissed through her teeth.

"Aww, did that one Indian telemarketer try to hit on you again? Geez, will that guy ever give it a rest? Just tell him, "no, I don't want a free cruise to Botswana, and no, I won't fly all the way to India to meet you, even though you say you have a cottage near the Taj Mahal". Then again, you are single—"

"Jemma got into a fight, Bev!" Aimee shouts, making me pull the phone away from my ear. "Principal Douglas called me after you decided not to!" She gives a short, frustrated laugh. "It's just day three, and my daughter has a black eye!"

"Cheek."

"What?"

"Never mind, you're on a roll, keep going."

"I entrusted my children to you! I can't have them getting into fights like...like street rats!"

I roll my eyes behind my closed lids. "How's it my fault that your kid got into it with some rich boy who has an ego shoved so far up his butt that he goes around punching blue-haired girls? You may think the PTO solves all issues, but there's nothing I could've done."

"You could've called me," Aimee said, her voice growing smaller. Helpless. Oh please.

A spark of anger rises in my chest and I sit up. Honestly, who does she think she is? Exhaustion and the inscrutable amount of energy it takes to be nice makes me snap in half. "Look, Aimee, if you're going to keep calling to nitpick everything I do, don't even bother picking up the phone. You're the one who made me do this."

"They're my children!"

"Yeah, and where are you?!" I shout back. "You're in Japan. And I'm the one here with Eloise and Jemma and Dusty."

"How dare you."

"Feel free to come at me, man. I'm legit trying my best here. It's not like that one time during my driver's test when I said I'd suffered from polio, which made my legs not work, so whenever I hit the cones I said I was trying my best, okay? I'm actually trying."

"Getting into fights is unacceptable," she says hollowly.

"Yeah, and stabbing someone counts as assault. Tell me something I don't know. Can I get back to watching my show?"

"Don't forget that soccer starts on Thursday. Put me back on the phone with Eloise."

Soccer?

"Eloise!" I call. "The Wicked Witch of the West wants to talk to you!"

Soccer. I'd almost forgotten about that...

~~~~~~~~~~

The PTO meeting on Wednesday morning was shorter than it had been on Monday. Thank goodness.

It takes me a little while to find Finn Watson's classroom since I'd only happened upon it by accident last time.

I'm not great at directions anyway (especially considering I once tried to use a map to get to this store a few miles away that sold automated lawn flamingos and ended up in Washington D.C.), but I eventually pull the door open to the art room.

I'm immediately overwhelmed with the scent of clay and paint on canvas.

I look over and see Finn leaning so far to the side, his head is almost touching his knee. He's using a tiny paintbrush and making beautiful, scrolling strokes across the baseboard of the wall.

"What're you doing?" I ask, warily approaching him.

He doesn't reply.

After a few moments, he straightens up, steps back, and nods slowly to himself, wiping his hands off on a colorful rag.

"Ah! Yes, yes that's just what it needs." He turns around, and I'm sure he's going to see me standing there, but he walks right past me to his desk.

I tilt my head to see what he's working on, and it looks like the start of a mural. I notice that some of the paintings that had been hanging up were piled in the corner to make room on the wall.

Finn brings some sort of tool over to the painted section and uses it to even out an edge.

Finally, he stands up again and turns.

He does a double-take at me before his eyebrows shoot up for half a second, and he grins a quick smile. "Beverly! Good to see you." He still never quite meets my gaze. "I've been working...well, I've been trying to work on this mural."

I step over and crouch down to see what he's done. A navy background covers the baseboards with golden trim neatly cut around the edge.

"Victorian," he says quietly. "Inspired, anyway."

"Victorian," I repeat. "Interesting choice for a classroom."

He looks sheepish as he shrugs a shoulder. "All art classrooms are decorated to make things look...fun, I suppose. Paint splashes across the walls, pictures of animals, or a globe." An excited glint sparkles in his eyes. "But I want every student who comes through those doors to see true art. Not something that could be on a Dollar Store poster."

I grin. "I like that."

Finn rubs his hands together and gestures toward a small table in the corner. "I set this up for you. So you don't have to sit at the student's desks."

A little vase of flowers sits on the corner of the table as well as a sturdy mug of...coffee? Tea? Probably tea.

Scissors sit neatly next to a large sheet of canvas.

I open my mouth, then close it for a second. "That's...really nice of you." My mind goes blank of any snarky comment that would make the kindness seem less awkward. "Thanks."

He flashes me another half-second grin and nods. "Good. If you don't mind cutting those out to be eight by eight-inch squares?"

I nod and sit down at my desk. I begin the process of measuring out each square, cutting it lopsided and uneven, then trying to fix it to no avail. The kids probably won't notice, anyway.

Finn hums softly to himself as he mixes up paints by scraping them across a palette.

I usually don't mind awkward silences. Mainly because I'm the one who creates them. But for some reason, I feel uncomfortable sitting in silence while Finn dashes back and forth from the mural to the desk. Maybe because it's too comfortable. I guess I like chaotic silences.

That can be the only explanation since I'm appalled at myself for saying, "So how'd you get into all this art stuff?"

Shut up! I shout at myself. I shouldn't even want to be here.

Finn sits at his desk and pulls out a pencil to start grading some essays the 12th graders had written on the complications of Van Gogh's theories. He glances up at me and flashes a smile, before ducking his head back down. "That's a...a rather long answer to a short question."

"I have time." No, you don't, you idiot!

He continues writing things on the papers. He writes how he paints; long, even strokes. Like writing 60% D is just as important as the mural he's painting.

"I grew up in Cambridge," he says, "with a single mother, who was quite well-off. She tried to put me in public school, but...I just couldn't do maths." He shrugs. "Since my Asberger's was more severe back then, she blamed it on that. So she put me in a private school. It was quite like Percival, actually." He gives a chuckle. "But it certainly wasn't my disability that made the numbers all...mixed up in my head. I was just no good at it."

"But you loved art?" I prompt.

He nods. "More than anything. I'd skip classes to go sit in on the art lectures for the seniors."

"Lectures? Really?"

He nods again emphatically. "It wasn't like they threw a load of paint at the students and told them to...to paint a portrait of their mother for mother's day. They taught the concept and movement of art—the philosophy behind the great artists and their works."

"And it all made sense to you?" I ask dubiously, though I can already guess the answer.

"Not all of it," he admits. "I was only fourteen. But I could tell there were hidden gems there. And I wanted to discover them." He grins again. "So, I became the youngest professor at Cambridge University and the first one with a mental disability."

I almost choke on my spit. "What?! Seriously? You were a professor at Cambridge? I mean, not that it's super shocking, honestly, but...why did you come to Percival?"

His smile turns soft as he grades another essay. "Because the art class in most schools is just...a waste of time. I remembered those days in my private school, and I felt my work would be more important to the minds of younger students. If I could show these children a fraction of what art truly is...it would be more fulfilling than stuffing the minds of hungover college students."

I find myself reflecting his smile. "Good for you, man."

He goes back to grading and mixing paint and humming and putting dashes of color onto the mural. But this time, the silence isn't so uncomfortable.