The Art of My Life Read online

  Endorsements for The Art of My Life

  Tracy Krauss' 2013 Top 5 Reads

  Book Review Sisters 2012 Top 5 Reads

  When I read one of Ann's books, I can't put it down. The multi-layered relationships that develop between the characters, the painful honesty of complex human emotion and depravity, and the vivid descriptions engage me in a way not many people can.

  Sandi Greene, English professor, Author with Desert Breeze Publishing

  and Written Word Communications

  I can't tell you how many times I wanted to grab Cal by the ear, drag him over to a chair and give him what-for about his bad choices and stupid decisions. That's how real these people will become to you.

  Traci Bonney, Author and blogger at Tracings, Where Words Collide

  Ann is an amazingly talented writer. If you have read Kicking Eternity, you know what I'm talking about. She grips you on the first and won't let you go EVEN AT THE END.

  Anne Baxter Campbell, Blogger at A Pew Perspective

  The story and conflicts were written and spun in such a way that it kept me not only engrossed, but intrigued and interested. I felt the characters' desire, their passion, their pain and frustration. I couldn't help but fall in love with all of them and wish them the best, learning from their pain and seeing how similar it rang with challenges from my own past.

  Nona King, Author and Reviewer at WordObsession.net

  The Art of My Life

  By

  Ann Lee Miller

  This is a work of fiction. The events and characters described herein are imaginary and are not intended to refer to specific places or living persons. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal right to publish all the materials in this book.

  The Art of My Life, All Rights Reserved, 2012

  Copyright © 2012 Ann Lee Miller

  Published by Flawed People Press

  Gilbert, Arizona

  Produced in the United States of America

  Cover Art by Robin Roberts at Red Red Design

  RedRedDesign.com

  Ashland, Ohio

  Edited by Susan Meissner

  SusanMeissner.com

  Thank you for downloading this ebook. It remains the copyrighted property of the owner and may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical, without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy at Smashwords.com. Thank you for your support.

  To learn more about Ann’s books and what is coming next from this talented author visit www.AnnLeeMiller.com. You can follow Ann on Twitter (@AnnLeeMiller) or Like her Facebook Author Page: Ann Lee Miller

  For Bryan

  My Son and My Friend

  Glossary of Sailing Terms

  Aft—a part of the boat at or near the rear

  Ballast—weight stowed in the keel (bottom of the boat) to stabilize the boat upright

  Barnacles—small, hard-shelled marine animals that cling to any surface submerged in saltwater

  Binnacle—compass housing

  Bulkhead—an upright partition separating rooms of a ship

  Boom—horizontal beam attached to the mast and bottom edge of the mainsail

  Bow—the front of the boat

  Chart—nautical map

  Chock—a guide for an anchor, mooring or docking line, attached to the deck

  Cleat—a fitting used to secure ropes

  Cockpit—area from which the boat is sailed containing the wheel and engine controls.

  Companionway—a stair or ladder leading from inside a boat to the deck

  Dinghy—ship's small rowboat

  Dock box—all-weather storage box anchored to the dock, roughly the size of cedar chest

  Drink—a slang reference to a body of water

  Dry Dock—location where boats are removed from water for repairs

  Fore—a part of a boat at or near the front

  Gangplank—a ramp leading from dock to boat to facilitate boarding

  Head—ship's bathroom

  Hatch—entryway into the cabin of a boat, usually a slab of wood or fiberglass that slides open and shut

  Helm—the wheel by which a ship is steered

  Hull—the body of the boat

  Jib—the foremost sail of a ship

  Jib telltale—a scrap of sailcloth sewn to the jib that reveals wind direction

  Keel—a fin down the centerline of the bottom of the hull

  Knot—a nautical unit of speed equaling l.l5 MPH

  Lifeline—a wire guardrail surrounding the deck to prevent people from falling overboard

  Luff—the flapping of untrimmed sails

  Mainsail—the largest sail attached to the main mast (The foremost and tallest mast on a Yawl)

  Mainstay—wire support for the mast that extends from the top of the main to the foot of the mast

  Mast—the tall pole holding up the sails

  Mooring lines—the ropes that tie a boat to a dock

  Painter—rope used to moor a dinghy

  Piling—a long heavy beam driven into the ground underwater to support a dock

  Port—left, as a sailor faces forward; the opposite of starboard/right

  Porthole—window on a ship, usually round in shape

  Seawall—cement wall erected along the shore to prevent erosion

  Sheet—the rope used to control the sail

  Slip—parking slot for a boat tied to a dock in a marina

  Sole—the floor of a cabin

  Stern—the rear of the boat

  Transom—the back of the boat

  Wake—disturbed water left behind a moving boat

  Yawl—a two-masted sailboat with the fore mast taller than the aft mast

  Chapter 1

  July 15

  Ever have a painting you’ve stared at for years—and loved? Then, one day, you see something which alters the way you view the piece forever. And you have to decide whether the art has been irreparably marred or merely deepened.

  Aly at www.The-Art-Of-My-Life.blogspot.com

  Cal walked through the tinted glass jail doors into the loamy scent of Bermuda grass, pine bark, and freedom. The surf shorts and T-shirt he’d worn three months ago when the cop clamped metal on his wrists hung loosely, misshapen, like a life that no longer fit.

  He scanned the weather-bleached asphalt, the smattering of cars roasting in the Daytona Beach summer. Sun glinted off the windshield of a silver Honda—Aly’s?—blinding his eyes, yanking her last words to him into the whiteness. I love you, John Calvin Koomer. Usually he blocked out Aly’s admission, but in jail the video had played over and over—the certainty in her eyes, the tremor in her voice.

  He squinted at the Honda. Sweat slicked his armpits and tickled the side of his face.

  Maybe he should have slept with Aly when she offered. He shook his head, dissolving the idea. No. It didn’t matter that protecting her from another guy taking what he wanted had earned him two and a half years of looking at the back of her head. It had been the right thing to do.

  He’d smoked weed to forget her, crammed Evie into Aly’s place inside him, but going to jail had ripped away everything but the truth.

  He loved Aly. Always had. Always would.

  And it was time to do something about it.

  The rumble of an engine pulling into the lot jerked his head around. His mother’s minivan puttered toward him, mowing down the stubble of his hope.

  He glanced back at the Honda. No college graduation tassel dangled from the mirror. No silhouette of the Virgin Mary was rus
ted into the right front bumper.

  The car was empty. Like he felt inside.

  Mom angled into a parking space, her maneuvering as precise as everything she did.

  His flip flops scraped the blacktop as he shuffled toward her. As his hand closed around the chrome door handle, heat branded his palm. He climbed into the stream of the air conditioning blowing from the dash, and the door clunked shut behind him.

  Mom reached for him, and his breath stuttered.

  When was the last time they’d touched?

  She wrapped awkward arms around him. “I—I’ve wanted to hug you ever since the first day I visited you at jail.”

  His hand lit on the fabric stretched across her dancer’s back. He sucked in gulps of human affection and the talcum scent of childhood while his mind tried to solve the puzzle of his mother. He coughed, searched for words to fill the silence, and found none. For a heartbeat he was ten with tears pricking the backs of his eyes.

  She released him.

  Relief, then the desire to cling to her, flushed through him making him feel lightheaded.

  His mother’s slim fingers shifted the car into reverse. Her dark hair, slicked back from her face in her customary ballerina bun, exposed the scar running from her temple into her hairline. It whitened now, the only hint of emotion on her face.

  According to Grandpa Leaf, Mom had been dropped on her head as a child—causing her to rebel into conservatism from her hippie upbringing. Leaf always cackled after he told the story.

  Why couldn’t Henna—his lumpy grandma—have picked him up? He pictured her, in one of her bird of paradise muumuus, beaming at him—someone he didn’t have to measure up for.

  “Your grandmother is giving you her boat.”

  His jaw swerved toward Mom. She might as well have said Cape Canaveral would launch another Discovery with Henna as pilot. The forty-one foot Catalina he’d sailed a thousand times materialized in his mind.

  “Your father and I thought it might give you a fresh start. You could run charters like you and Fish used to talk about when you were kids.”

  That was before Fish fell in love with politics in tenth grade. He could almost see Fish’s perennially sunburned face. God, it had been a long three months without Fish.

  His mind swerved back to Henna, the dots connecting. Henna held herself responsible for his going to jail. He’d tell her she didn’t owe him anything. But he knew she’d make him keep the Escape.

  So what if he’d been caught with Henna and Leaf’s weed? He’d rather do the time in the Volusia County Correctional Facility than watch his grandparents go to jail. They were more like leftover flower children than drug dealers. And he loved them. His favorite childhood daydream had been imagining Mom sitting him down and saying, all serious, that she was sorry, but Henna and Leaf were his true parents. He’d sniffle, plow a hug into Henna’s soft middle, then race free and wild into the rest of his boyhood—the way he was meant to be raised.

  As they passed the New Smyrna Beach City Limits sign, Mom glanced at him. “I don’t have to tell you that whatever you do in this town sticks to you for the rest of your life. Promise me you’ll never smoke pot again. Salvage what’s left of your reputation.”

  He’d always been The Scream to Mom’s American Gothic. “Your reputation. I don’t care about mine.”

  “How can you go to jail, have to report a record every time you apply for a job—”

  “Leave it, Mom.”

  “Is pot why you never got through college?”

  “I never got through college because I hated everything but art classes.”

  “Maybe you’re self-medicating for ADHD—”

  “I can paint a canvas for six hours straight.”

  “Or bi-polar. You’ve always been mercurial.”

  “Yeah, I get it from you.”

  “Funny.” She didn’t crack a smile as she wheeled the van into a marina parking space.

  He could sure use a good smoke about now. Maybe it was time to quit weed. But it wouldn’t be because his mother extracted a promise. It was his own damn life.

  Mom killed the engine.

  The car popped and crackled in the silence.

  “Cal.”

  He gripped the armrest, poised to escape.

  “We want to give you a shot at making something of your life.”

  His failures throbbed in the car, the ones she’d spoken and the ones left unsaid—his part-time job at Stoney’s Ink Slab that fell short of Mom’s idea of a career, his want of religion. Did the list ever end?

  “We moved your stuff from Henna’s place to the boat. She kept your studio set up, so you can still paint there whenever you want.”

  He heard the but in her tone, the word that always followed her praise.

  She dug the boat keys out of her purse and handed them to him. “Your father and I are on the title for now because you need us to cosign for a startup loan. But if you default, you’ll have to sell the boat to pay off the loan.”

  The whiskey shot that he was twenty-five and couldn’t sign for his own loan burned all the way down. “Fair enough.” He swallowed. “How much is the loan?”

  “We figured forty thousand would cover repairs and get your business off the ground.”

  His head knocked against the headrest. He’d never had more than two hundred dollars in the bank at one time. And now he was getting a ninety-thousand-dollar boat and more money than his brain could compute. Henna had always been wacky generous, but his folks cosigning a loan—mammoth. Was it a last ditch effort to shove him into the sausage casing of society? Well, maybe he was willing this time.

  “I drew up a business plan—not so different from the one I did for my dance studio. We meet with Aly tomorrow at three to find out if the loan has been approved and sign the papers.”

  He sucked in a breath. “Aly?”

  “Who else would we go to? Aly’s practically family. She’s a loan officer—”

  He wrenched the door open. “Right.” He stepped out and turned back to face Mom. “Thanks for the lift. The offer of the loan.” He stared at her, gratitude and shame stopping up his words, dampening his eyes. “I’ll think about it.”

  She opened her mouth to argue.

  He held up a hand. “I said I’ll think about it.”

  Her brows arched into triangles and her lips pressed into a flat line, but she turned the key in the ignition.

  The minivan eased out of the parking space, his mother sitting ramrod straight.

  He released the air crowding his chest.

  He swung open the pier gate and breathed in the familiar fishy, gasoline scent of the marina. The shock of freedom left him feeling exposed.

  Afternoon sun baked his shoulders as he walked, dissolving the weirdness, leaving only a buoy of hope. A charter business could give him a life. In the next heartbeat the physical craving to paint washed over him. He inhaled, imagining he could smell the Vaseline scent of his oils.

  Selling his work, someday seeing his face on the cover of People magazine throbbed in his gut. But it was time to kill that dream. He’d always paint, but Aly needed a guy who owned yard tools, tires worth rotating; who carried AAA, Visa, and voter’s registration cards. His stinking driver’s license wouldn’t even be back in his wallet for another three months.

  If he worked the Plan B his family had dealt him and succeeded at running a charter sailing business, he’d gain a shot at Aly.

  The only shot he’d ever get.

  His gaze caught on Evie’s beater boat. The rotted rigging and his guilt flailed around its sail-less mast like a maypole in the hot breeze. The first part of his new start had to be ex-ing Evie—the epic mistake of his life—for good this time. The picture wasn’t pretty, but ninety days sober showed him he’d been using her.

  And now he’d see her every day, living eight boats apart on the same dock. Well, he was ditching her this time, like he’d told her six months ago. She’d have to accept it.

  A p
elican settled on a piling in a flurry of clumsy feathers. Cal shook off thoughts of Evie and grinned. He’d snag a hot dog from Leaf’s stand on the beach—just a hot dog, no weed—grab his board, find Fish, and hit the waves. Then, he’d head for Henna’s to paint— enough to get it out of his system so he could focus on Plan B. Not painting had been punishing enough.

  Frenzied barking erupted from Zeke’s fishing boat two slips down. Van Gogh! Cal’s chocolate lab-weimaraner, scrabbled across the gangplank, toenails dancing against the wood.

  Joy bubbled up, something he hadn’t felt since the arrest. His throat tightened.

  Had Mom brought the dog down to the marina? But what was he doing on Zeke’s boat?

  Van Gogh planted his paws on Cal’s chest, quivering, tail beating a frenzied rhythm against the light pole. A sandpaper tongue swiped Cal’s chin.

  “I’m glad to see you, too, boy.” Cal scratched soft doggy ears and inhaled canine and river water scent.

  Van Gogh shimmied, wagging his butt along with his tail.

  “I should have known you’d show up sooner or later.” Fish’s familiar voice.

  Cal’s head popped up and warmth pumped into his chest, washing away the time they’d been apart. It didn’t matter that Fish hadn’t visited him in jail. Like the hospital, who liked the lockup anyhow? They’d scarcely gone a day, much less months, without seeing each other since toddlerhood.

  Fish stepped from the fishing boat to the dock. Wisps of baby-white, surfer hair stuck out from under a backwards baseball cap that brushed the arch in the Zeke’s Fishing Charters sign.