July 10

ON THEIR TENTH DATE, Misty asked Peter if he’d messed with her birth control pills.
They were in Misty’s apartment. She was working on another painting. The television was on, tuned to a Spanish soap opera. Her new painting was a tall church fitted together out of cut stone. The steeple was roofed with copper tarnished dark green. The stained-glass windows were complicated as spiderwebs.
Painting the shiny blue of the church doors, Misty said, “I’m not stupid.” She said, “A lot of women would notice the difference between a real birth control pill and the little pink cinnamon candies you switched them with.”

Peter had her last painting, the house with the white picket fence, the picture he’d framed, and he’d stuffed it up under his baggy old sweater. Like he was pregnant with a very square baby, he waddled around Misty’s apartment. His arms straight down at his sides, he was holding the picture in place with his elbows.
Then fast, he moved his arms a little and the painting dropped out. A heartbeat from the floor, from the glass breaking into a mess, Peter caught it between his hands.
You caught it. Misty’s painting.
She said, “What the fuck are you doing?”
And Peter said, “I have a plan.”
And Misty said, “I’m not having kids. I’m going to be an artist.”
On television, a man slapped a woman to the ground and she lay there, licking her lips, her breasts heaving inside a tight sweater. She was supposed to be a police officer. Peter couldn’t speak a word of Spanish. What he loved about Spanish soap operas is you could make what people say mean anything.
And stuffing the painting up under his sweater, Peter said, “When?”
And Misty said, “When what?”
The painting dropped out, and he caught it.
“When are you going to be an artist?” he said.
Another reason to love Spanish soap operas was how fast they could resolve a crisis. One day, a man and woman were hacking at each other with butcher knives. The next day, they were kneeling in church with their new baby. Their hands folded in prayer. People accepted the worst from each other, screaming and slapping. Divorce and abortion were just never a plot option.
If this was love or just inertia, Misty couldn’t tell.
After she graduated, she said, then she’d be an artist. When she’d put together a body of work and found a gallery to show her. When she’d sold a few pieces. Misty wanted to be realistic. Maybe she’d teach art at the high school level. Or she’d be a technical draftsman or an illustrator. Something practical. Not everybody could be a famous painter.
Stuffing the painting inside his sweater, Peter said, “You could be famous.”
And Misty told him to stop. Just stop.
“Why?” he said. “It’s the truth.”
Still watching the television, pregnant with the painting, Peter said, “You have such talent. You could be the most famous artist of your generation.”
Watching some Spanish commercial for a plastic toy, Peter said, “With your gift, you’re doomed to be a great artist. School for you is a waste of time.”
What you don’t understand, you can make mean anything.
The painting dropped out, and he caught it. He said, “All you have to do is paint.”
Maybe this is why Misty loved him.
Loved you.
Because you believed in her so much more than she did. You expected more from her than she did from herself.
Painting the tiny gold of the church doorknobs, Misty said, “Maybe.” She said, “But that’s why I don’t want kids . . .”
Just for the record, it was kind of cute. All of her birth control pills being replaced with little heart-shaped candies.
“Just marry me,” Peter said. “And you’ll be the next great painter of the Waytansea school.”
Maura Kincaid and Constance Burton.
Misty said how only two painters didn’t count as a “school.”
And Peter said, “It’s three, counting you.”
Maura Kincaid, Constance Burton, and Misty Kleinman.
“Misty Wilmot, ” Peter said, and he stuffed the painting inside his sweater.
You said.
On television, a man shouted “Te amo . . . Te amo . . .” again and again to a dark-haired girl with brown eyes and feathery long eyelashes while he kicked her down a flight of stairs.
The painting dropped out of his sweater, and Peter caught it again. He stepped up beside Misty, where she was working on the details of the tall stone church, the flecks of green moss on the roof, the red of rust on the gutters. And he said, “In that church, right there, we’ll get married.”
And duh-duh-dumb little Misty, she said how she was making the church up. It didn’t really exist.
“That’s what you think,” Peter said. He kissed the side of her neck and whispered, “Just marry me, the island will give you the biggest wedding anybody’s seen in a hundred years.”