Read Online What We Hold In Our Hands by Kim Aubrey - Free Book Online

bright round fruit. Without worrying what anyone might say, she reaches for the apple, and slips it into her purse.

A Large Dark
    THREE AND A HALF MONTHS AFTER HIS WIFE LEFT HIM, André had signed up for an evening watercolour class held in a Sunday school classroom at a suburban church. He’d been looking for a way to get out of the house one night a week, to talk to someone other than his son, the nanny, the people at work, to meet a woman who’d praise his paintings and let him take her out to dinner.
    One mild Thursday evening in November, a fluorescent ceiling fixture was flickering in the art room. Barry, the white-haired art teacher, lumbered onto a stepstool to try to deactivate it, while André, thirty years younger and at least thirty pounds lighter, pulled a muscle craning his neck and offering unhelpful advice. When Barry finally gave up to let him try, André balanced on the stool, searching for the place where the narrow bulb was attached, but bulb and fixture seemed to be all one, conjoined and wired to the ceiling. Tapping the bulb, he leaned over too far, almost falling onto Barry.
    â€œDon’t hurt yourself,” Barry said, stone-faced.
    André took one last look before jumping down. Massaging his neck, he asked, “Why do they make them like that?”
    â€œTo torment us.” Barry grinned.
    From the portraits on one wall, past ministers, their faces grey and bespectacled, peered out over rows of collapsible tables and plastic chairs, while the windows of the opposite wall reflected the lit figures of the students within.
    André returned to his seat, feeling foolish and clumsy. He was sitting directly across from the flickering light, which promised to give him a headache. He removed his glasses, rubbing the grooves between nose and eyes, then placed the heavy, black-framed lenses onto the table in front of him. He considered moving to a free spot across the room, but Katya, who hadn’t arrived yet, always sat beside him, and he liked watching her chestnut hair fall across her face as she leaned in closer to her painting. Katya’s missing his attempt at fixing the light had been a lucky break.
    Even without his glasses, André could see the reflection of the teacher’s paper in the mirror overhanging the table at the front of the room. Barry always tilted the mirror so his students, tired after working all day, could opt to watch him paint from their seats. Consulting his reference, a photo of a seascape, Barry began his demonstration by floating cobalt blue into an orange wash. André relaxed his eyes, tried to breathe deeply. Tonight he hoped to let go of his perfectionism, and allow the paint to flow onto the paper, resisting his tendency to overwork the watercolours until they made thick pasty mud in the shapes of trees. That had been last week’s production.
    â€œDo a sketch first to get the composition,” Barry was telling the class. “Play with placement. Leave things out. Put them in. Multiply, subtract. It’s like math.”
    â€œI used to be good at math,” André joked. But no one laughed or even turned to look at him.
    When Katya appeared in a red jacket, bringing with her the mingled scents of her spicy perfume and the warm night, André thought how he needed a woman to make his life add up again.
    â€œHow much have I missed?” she whispered, unpacking her paints.
    â€œNot much.” He fiddled with his glasses. He could never think of the right words.
    â€œI used to live by the sea,” she said, peering at the reflection of Barry’s painting. There was a hint of the Ukraine in her accent.
    â€œMy father’s family came from Kiev,” he said.
    â€œShh!” said Miriam, the grey-haired woman who sat in front of André.
    Katya’s eyes were black with flecks of white where the light struck them. “Do you speak Ukrainian?” she whispered.
    â€œNo,” he said too loudly,