Read Online Larque on the Wing by Nancy Springer - Free Book Online Page B

them.”
    â€œOh, I do, I do.” Doris sat down with her, chewing greedily. “See my palms?” She held them out—they were orange. So, customarily, were the soles of her feet. Because Doris could, and often did, binge her way through a two-pound bag of California carrots as if they were candy, she was golden all over, rather like a Perdue chicken, except rumor had it that the chickens were fed marigold petals. Larque wondered briefly about the possibility of feeding Doris quantities of something of a complementary color, say blueberries, by way of balance. Probably would have turned her gray. No good. Orange was bright, eye-catching, definitely made a better picture, and Doris was as orange as they come. When Doris cut herself the blood was orange. The whites of her eyes were yellow-tinged.
    As if to demonstrate Doris opened her eyes wide, looking past Larque into her living room. “Hey, who’s that? She with you?”
    It was Sky, of course, sitting on a hassock with her hands folded in her lap. Little Miss Muffet on a tuffet. “Yes.”
    â€œYou didn’t tell me you brought a friend.”
    â€œShe’s not a friend. She’s a doppelganger.”
    â€œOh? Of who?”
    â€œMe.”
    Doris looked again and shook her glowingly blond head. “No way. You were never like that.”
    â€œI didn’t think so either.”
    â€œHey, kid,” Doris called, “c’mere. Want a carrot?”
    Shyly and politely Sky came into the kitchen. Shyly and politely she said, “No, thank you.” Shyly and politely she seated herself.
    â€œMy mother did it to me,” Larque said. “I mean, to her. To both of us. Now we’re in deep shit. At least I am.”
    â€œExplain yourself, woman.”
    Larque tried. It took a while. Doris got her a Pepsi and listened intently. One good thing about Doris, she was a terrific listener. All that practice at Group.
    â€œBummer,” Doris sympathized when she heard that Hoot had yet once more quit his job.
    â€œAnd just when I can’t paint,” Larque said with equal parts anger and self-pity. “Which is the most awful feeling. Is there such a thing as painter’s block?”
    â€œI guess there must be if that’s what you’ve got.” This sort of tautology was logical by Doris’s standards. “Can’t you paint anything?”
    â€œI could do fuzzy kittens, I guess. Fluffy bunnies. Cuddly puppies with big brown wet eyes.”
    â€œWell, can’t you still make a living, then, doing that sort of thing?”
    Larque felt a moment of muted fury, but it was no use trying to express it or explain it. Doris worked as a receptionist for a chiropractor; how could she be expected to understand? Hardly anybody understood artists.
    Artist? Mentally Lark gawked at herself a moment, because how often had she told people—modestly—that she was just someone who produced a home-decoration product, not a real artist? Since when was she an artist?
    Since now .
    She said, “I’d rather look for a scutwork job than paint K-mart art.”
    â€œLarque, you’re nuts. You’ve got it good. Set your own hours, nobody bossing you, home when your kids need you, nice pay, you’re crazy.” Here it came. “Isn’t there some sort of a twelve-step program for, you know, creative people having trouble getting it together?”
    Larque shook her head. Though she would never say it to Doris, she loathed this idea of perceiving life as a series of symptoms. That was the way it had been for her during the early years of marriage and motherhood, but no more. More recently life had been … beauty, textures changing, colors burning their way up the sky—if only she could get that back. Twelve step, my eye .
    â€œWell, if you did have to go to work,” Doris was saying, “where would it be?”
    â€œA dildo factory.”
    Doris shrieked out a