Draft 1

It took five months for Ewan to muster the nerve, nay, the gallantry
to make a first move on Robyn.

Ewan spent an excess of twenty minutes locked inside a pizzeria

that was built like an oven. He had been here before, but never this late
in the year and never with all of the ovens running in unison. He
convinced Robyn the pizza was worth the wait but regretted convincing
himself that it was still pant weather.
The two grabbed a bench together outside and, over pizza and iced
coffee, they traded stories of the school year they just finished and about
John, who they met in class. Ewan argued that the amount of coffee in his
iced coffee was a waste of Robyns money awhile Robyn praised the pizza
he had waited so long for. He was never sure how to deal with these
situations, he did not really mind how little coffee he had, but arguing
about something so asinine kept his from deciding whether or not
something was happening between the two - Ewan was no stranger to
thinking there was more going on than there was.
Finding the Steveston Pizza Companys portions more than
adequate, the two took to the shade under a sycamore tree. Ewans
attempts to accidentally brush his hand against Robyns were punctuated
with him tossing leftover crust at the local ducks.

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Unnoticed, John found the couple half asleep; Robyn resting on

Ewans shoulders and their hands interwoven. He tapped Ewan awake,
Took you two long enough.

"Well? asked an aggravated Robyn, how is it, any good? She will
be here in, like, 15 minutes.
Ewan wiped dry his forehead with the heel of his wrist, Its good, I
promise you its good, I just have to clean up these pancakes
I thought you made soup
Green onion pancakes, I have done this before, it works. Dont
worry one bit, I am the one destined to mess this up and it is not with my
cooking.
Well, I appreciate the condolen the phone rang, frightening a
small plate from her hand into a dozen pieces on the floor, ces
condolences, shit, Im sorry.
Through clenched fists and pinched eyes he inhaled deeply, Grab
the phone, dont let her dont worry, I got this, dont let her up, get her
at the door or something.

Hello Robyn, this is your mother.

Hey mom, need me to come get you?
No, I am fine, I know how to
Ill come get you, Robyn hung up the phone and rushed down
the hallway, remembering to both regulate her breathing and to button
the rest of her blouse.

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Ewan had planned this day for months; the first few were spent
arguing with himself about whether or not he should even bother, the final
few were spent trying to avoid her indignant mothers schedule.
He was feeling elated when he told Robyn he wanted to make her a
proper dinner and take her out those weeks ago, less so when he was
informed her mother was going to show up. Lynda had a way of
interrupting Ewan, it was if she knew everything that a painting ever said
to him.
Whatever fear Ewan held that caused him to take five months to ask
Robyn out was dwarfed by that of her domineering mother. The fact that
the only way that Ewan could survive being around Lynda was being
incessantly sarcastic did nothing to help her opinion of him. If he was
going to go anywhere with this girl, he knew that he had to either get over
her mother or she had to get over him.

Ewan was just about finished sweeping away the dozen pieces of
deceptively inexpensive dinnerware when a knock on his door startled
him, Its open, come on in.
Hello boy, greeted Robyns mother, moving from under the
doorframe to seething space in less time than felt natural.
Good evening Mrs. Holliday, how have you been? We have both
missed you ever so much.
Robyn sent a piercing glare.

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Its Miss, thank you very much, but I have been better. Call me
Lynda, please, no need for platitudes.
Mom
No platitudes maam, would you care for some tea? Dinner is just
about finished, Ewan ushered Lynda to a seat opposite to the painting he
had just finished framing and hanging up earlier that afternoon.

"The bright colours remind you of the trips to the cabin with your
grandmother, the reflections under the waters surface, the interlocking
streams of sea-foam green, a million different blues and the odd flash of
sea life"

"Oh, you got a Hassam? How quaint, pandering will get you
nowhere, dear. Just a bit of cream, thank you," Robyn poured her mother
some cream for her tea, but not after delivering her some scorn.
"Mother, he doesn't even know about your book on Hassam, do you
Ewan?"
He shook his head, "I promise."
"How much did that set you back?" she may have been a bitter
woman, but her passion for the artist Childe Hassam sometimes poked
through her veneer of paranoid motherhood, "for that size I would say
somewhere between five and six-hundred, but you cant afford an honest
reproduction so Lynda stood up to feel around the edge of the canvas
to find some wiring and pinhole speakers.
Mother, please

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Yes, it is a print, and yes it is simulated, well get an honest one

later once we have the money, Ewan interjected, breaking his brief
stint of cool and calm, heading back into his kitchen.
We? What is this we he speaks of, Robyn? If you had stayed living
with me, or if you had stayed in school like you were supposed to then you
wouldnt need to resort to such knock-offs.
Lynda Ewan barked from the kitchen.
Mom, it has been almost five years, we are allowed to buy things
together. And yes, living in Vancouver is expensive, but I am almost
thirty, I needed to get out of that house of years long before I did."
Lynda, not used to her daughter standing up for herself resorted to a
cough into her sleeve.
"Five years, mom, three more than you and dad ever
Soup is ready! said Ewan in the calmest and most reserved form
of a shout that he could manage, trying his best to avoid getting in the
middle of Robyn and her mother arguing again.

The dinner, spicy chicken and noodle soup, went relatively well.
Lynda was also confused by the idea of a green onion pancake, but no
amount of bitter prejudice could override her reaction to dipping it in the
soup. When asked where he got the idea, Evan told her it was part of the
practical exam at the culinary school. It was never the cooking he was
worried about, though. She was the director of the Vancouver Art Gallery,
art was her thing, it was all that she was. When Robyn told her that she

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was switching majors from Art History to Culinary Arts she was more than
a bit perturbed.
Lynda sat down with a cup of tea and Ewans first attempt at a
marble bundt cake for desert. Ewan saw no visible objections after her
first bite and finally let his toes uncurl.
You know, Robyn, with your grades you could have sailed through
the first portions of that Art History major in a year or two and gotten
yourself a solid job at an art gallery, or even at Bartels. With that kind of
money you could have easily paid for
Mother, please, Robyn nipped at her boyfriends hand when she
felt him inhaling to say something, We like it here fine, and Art History
was never my thing, it was never Ewans thing either. You just want to
leave some sort of, I dont know, some sort of legacy or something.
Lyndas face replied with an exaggerated nonplussed expression,
her daughter knew how to get to her, and she knew what she pretended
to do when she did.
She coughed, Okay, Ewan, why did you take that class if you were
so eager to drop it? Where you stalking my daughter, was that it, did you
see her skirt one day and think it afforded you some license to-
Ewan was also getting used to Lynda, No, I was not stalking Robyn,
I was not stalking anyone. I took the class because it was an elective that
fit with my work schedule.
Lynda shrugged.
It still is interesting, I still enjoy is every now and then, but Ewan
and I do not want a career in it, Robyn left Lynda with a want for words,

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and this is Vancouver, if I dont care to make a living talking to painters

and their paintings someone will sure want to.
Besides, Ewan butted in, If this culinary art thing doesnt work
out for us we can just I dont know, take up shop in Yaletown or Granville
Island and call our food artisan or something.
With her mouth stapled shut, Lynda got up, walked to the front door,
grabbed her umbrella and started to put her shoes on.
Okay then, the couple uttered in unison and left their apartment
to Bartel's Art Museum and Gallery.

"It was your twelfth time out together, you had not planned
anything but the two of you were friendly enough to excuse the odd
coffee and lunch together, so meeting at Garry Point was not uncouth.
After dancing around the idea for a few months

Ewan heard someone walk into the paintings periphery, breaking

whatever link the oils and the strokes had to his memories and quickly
switched to a less private topic.

The thin lines in the water, the shapes and the muted colour
remind you of the farm town you grew up in. Half of your friends spent
their weekends on fishing boats, the other half pretended they did

"Duck Island from Appledore by Frederick Childe Hassam," the voice

that interrupted him kissed him on the cheek, "you sure you aren't trying

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to get into my mom's pants?" and familiar fingers wrapped themselves

around Ewan's.
Lynda! Listen to yourself, Jesus Christ
He is just a very good painter and this painting, it speaks to me.
Theyre paintings, Ewan, they all speak to us.
With variations depending on the ageing and restoration process,
along with the type of paint used and the bru
Yes, Lynda, I know this stuff. I am just saying it gets deeper than
the usual painting. Its really nice, helps me reflect, Ewans hands were
acting as much as a tenured professor as he could remember, helps me
get my mind off of having to put up with you constantly, he smiled at
Lynda.

It was not unusual for a painting to speak differently around a

viewer. Ewan and Robyn had visited Bartel's often enough in the past few
years for the paintings to remember them, to remember to greet them. A
mans memories are rarely specific, they are usually often just a bundle of
emotion and stress and fear wrapped around an amorphous shape of a
memory. Some of the better painters here, Hassam, Monet, El Greco and
Courbet instilled such emotion into their paintings as to be able to identify
emotion, to identify when that amorphous shape of memory was walking
within its periphery with her bratty mother.

"The shades of green, of pine, moss and overgrowth remind you of

your old family trips to 100 Mile House during the spring and summer

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breaks. It reminds you of the grass and the trees, the weather at the
lake, of the breeze just cool enough to warrant a sweater or a fire just lit
enough to leave you smelling of smoke. You remember rotor of your
dads boat in various states of disrepair as you go hunting for oyster, you
remember the smell of trout and cod and

The cut of sunflowers harken back to your days visiting your

uncle's farm by the highway. You would have corn on the cob barbecues
in makeshift barbecue made of brick and your childhood summers. He
would leave each guest with a

You fell asleep fishing and returned bright red, were called
lobster for the rest of the school year

And only a few flowers survived the storm

Trees and Underbrush

Four Cut Sunflowers, Vincent

Vincent Van Ghogh.

Ewan paused for a moment, Lynda? Please, come on, his

girlfriends mother had purposely walked past the paintings rope dividers

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without backing out entirely, letting Vincent Van Goghs Four Cut
Sunflowers only think to speak louder to her.
My most sincere apologies, she stepped back as Ewan heard
someone come up behind him.
Excuse me maam, but may I borrow your sons time? the security
guard asked.
He is not my son, you insolent
-Hi John," Robyn smiled at her old friend, sure, go ahead, mother
and I need to get some water, dont we mother?

John met Robyn and Ewan rather surreptitiously in their Art History
class. Unlike the couple, who found no more than a passing interest in the
field, John kept going for his degree. To help pay off this degree, John took
a job at Bartels as a security guard. It may not have been the most
eloquent of job opportunities, but it got him a foot in the door with the
directors and got his friends a sneak-peak at whatever pieces and artists
they were featuring.

So, John asked, how did the dinner go?

Good in the way that food was good, Ewan replied, bad in the
way that it was with Lynda.
She still not giving you a break, eh?
Hey, um the paintings, do you know how often they go offscript?

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John found Ewan and himself a concrete tree planter to rest on, Its
fine, he said, waving off the NO SITTING sign that was leaning against the
plants stem, and yeah, but not a whole lot. It depends I suppose, what
do you have in mind?
Well, I have been visiting here for a while now, right?
John nodded in reply.
Okay, not 'off script' per se, but it just seems that a lot of the
paintings are changing the stories they latch onto. I dont remember
reading about paintings that changed their minds on what part of your
mind to look at.
It had been a long night and John let out a sizeable yawn, Well the
paintings, the the prints have a script of course, but the legitimate ones,
the originals and the proper reproduction, they go off of whatever you are
or were being reminded of or thinking about. They have some amplifiers
and deepening systems, but that is only to keep their volumes more or
less stable. Why, whats up?
I dont know, some sound different lately.
Maybe you just have a gigantic, life changing event stuck in your
mind and that is painting everything in a new light. Pardon the pun I
think.
You think they can see that deep?
Yeah, John said, trying to pull his yawning mouth closed, it just
depends on how good the painting is or how good the painter was.

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Ewan loved these paintings, but he was of a dying group. He may

not want a career in Art History, but at least he respected it. He preferred
to see a painting as privately as possible, as closely as possible, to let him
connect with the painters voice's and how it would echo through the
acrylic, oil, or watercolours, letting each colours voice reverberate over
each brushstroke.
No one knew how these paintings read and spoke their thoughts,
just that they always did.

Okay, good, everything else working out? asked John.

Yeah, Im feeling good about this. If we can get into your brother's
car then we can head off without Lynda even noticing. You sure this is
legal, borrowing his cab like this?
As long as you dont pay me, or as long as I dont charge you it
should be okay, John said hopefully.
You good? asked Ewan.
Im good."

On his way to the newer pieces, of those few artists featured whos
bodies had not yet rotted into connoisseurs worship Ewan walked past a
hallway. The hallway was clear enough to give way to a heated
conversation that sounded a lot like one between Robyn and her mother.
He slowed his pace down, but not enough to betray his motive.

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Robyn, dear, it has been almost five years and he has said not a
single thing, he is just using you
Mother! We just moved in together, is that not enough of a step
for you? Not like you are one to talk, we have already lasted longer
Do not bring your dad into this, you cannot use him as a stop-gap
for every argument we get into, that was years ago, things were
different.
Mother, time does not dilute hypocrisy. Yes, it has been a while,
time is different and that is good. Society has evolved enough that
getting knocked up isnt reason enough for you to stay with someone
Robyn
That will walk out on you years later. I mean shit, he did not
even smoke!
Robyn! Inside voices, please.

Ewan checked his pocket again and kept walking.

***

"The two of you are visiting Oregon for her friends wedding party.
The leaves were just breaking from their branch and piled atop and aside
an old farmhouse that rested on a lake. The rich red, the orange and
greens of the fall and the charcoal purple were perfect. Reluctantly you
came as her plus-one, but fell ill on the way there. While the rest of the

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party went exploring the area she never let out out of her sight and out of
her grip

- Oregon Gold, by Roman Youngquist.

Ewan was startled again by a hand inside is own, Oh, sorry, I was
kind of
-Oh! That looks like the place at Dayton and Kristas wedding,
Robyn whispered from behind his shoulders.
Heh yeah, I guess it does.
Well, there you are, the air went dry with the snarl in Lyndas
voice, we thought you walked out on us.
I I didnt, Robyns reassurance went unheard.
The taxi will be here in a few minutes. You two, meet me outside, I
have a few things to pick up.
But I swear, I did not think that.

The two held together under an umbrella, waiting for their taxi to
find parking space.
So, what is this for again? Why has your mother decided to tag
along on our date?
Robyn pulled on his coat and kissed him, Im sorry I really am. I
promised her we would do something before her big conference and, well,
that is coming up tomorrow. You know how insistent she can be, dont
you?

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Ewan sighed.
But its okay, right? Dates are dates, we can have another one
soon, she smiled brightly and pecked Ewan on the cheek. Robyn felt his
pocket buzzing and pulled out his phone.
"'Ello?"
"I'm here," a taxi cab pulled up to the couple, the passenger seat
folded over. With palm in hand Ewan helped Robyn get into the seat
behind the capped driver as her mother came rushing towards the open
window.
"Sorry ma'am, you can grab the cab behind me.
What about your passenger seat?
He pulled his cap even lower, Inoperable, maam, but I am sure
but her attention was already at the couple behind him.
Mom, we know where everything is, rain or no rain we are going to
get there on time, we will see you in a bit.
Lynda stomped off in a huff.
Where to? his voice drilled with a rehearsed gruffness.
Before Robyn could reply, Ewan tore a page from his notebook and
handed it to the driver, Written directions are better than none, specially
in this weather, Ewan said to her
Robyn had all but settled herself in by the time their cab tip-toed
through the traffic and was all but asleep by the time they got past
Robson and Cambie, Ewan was still fidgeting with his pocket.
You okay? Robyn asked.

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Mm? Oh, yea, I suppose. She is just tiring to be around, you

know?
She let go a short chortle and a snort into Ewans coat sleeve, Pfft,
do I know? Do I ever
The roads in Vancouver do not deal well with torrential rain, so it
took more than enough time to get them onto Nelson Street and Robyn
was nodding off by the time they hit Cambie Street Bridge.

When the couple finally stopped, Robyn was shuffled awake she
didnt care to look where she was, but only how to best crawl out of the
car without slipping on the slick road beneath her. She was mid-stretch
when she grabbed her bearings and looked around her.
Uh, Ewan?
Hold on, dear.
Ewan, where are we?
She heard nothing but a window rolling down and Ewan uttering to
the driver as he stepped from behind the cab, strangely elated and with a
spring to his step.
Heh, thats the thing.
Thats what thing? Ewan, Im worried.
No, no, thats the thing with cell phones these days, he came
upon the curb Robyn was standing on, we cant just, you know, hang up
on people. Its never really final, he grabbed her hand and started
walking to across the field, It always has to be some procedure, you tap

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the phone icon, you press the lock button, you cant just nip a
conversation in the bud.
Babe, what are you getting at?
This! This is what I am getting at; I love you. It took me forever to
admit that I love you, but I did and I do, Ewan knew that this short stint of
bravado was soon to wear off so he had to get to the point quick,
marriage isnt even a big deal anymore, it used to just be a father trading
his property for someone elses property
Oh my Lord, Robyn grasped into her sweater-cupped hands.
And that is fine, its just that dammit, it was wearing off, you
know I love you, right?
She nodded a face of two dilated pupils and a pinched mouth.
And that is fine, its just that dammit, I dont mean to lay blame
on her, and Im not really, but your mom is one hell of a barrier of entry.
He paused when he thought he heard a door opening around him,
but you are more than worth it. Its just embarrassing some old, decrepit
painter and some shoddy harbour in Italy to remind me of how goddamn
lucky I am.
His pitch grew high and his eyes, disobedient. While Ewan fumbled
through his pant pocket, he feigned a coughing fit to give him time to find
himself.
Robyn, this is not saying that I am in love with you, this is just me
looking for another way to show you.
Ewan pulled out a small, black, velvet box and got down on one
knee, Robyn

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Ewan, the answer has been yes for half a decade, and she leapt
into him, wrapping her legs around his waist and knocking them both onto
the same wet grass and mud that they spilled coffee on, fed a duck on,
had their first kiss on.

After both running out of tears and kisses to give they rested under
that sycamore tree,; Robyn on his shoulders and their fingers interwoven.
He did not know how long she had been there, but it was the clink of a
champagne flute that alerted Ewan to John and Lynda sharing Ewans plan
B in the parking lot.

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