We worked in silence for a bit, me propped up next to the dresser and putting clothes away while Gardner organized my sketching materials on the nightstand.
“Oh shit!” he suddenly exclaimed. “I forgot something!”
He dashed out of the house and came back a minute later with a tackle box. Greg’s eyes went wide.
“You want to do some fishing?” he asked.
“Um…no…” Gardner brought the tackle box over to my bed and opened it. It was full of pencils, pastels, paintbrushes, and acrylic paints. “This is for you. I like keeping my drawing stuff in a tackle box—it just makes it easy to organize. I have some canvas and an easel back in my hotel room for you since you said you’d like to give painting a try.”
“Damn.” I whistled as I looked through all the supplies. “Thanks! Maybe this way I won’t drive Greg too nuts when Nicole goes back to school.”
“Yes, you will,” Greg replied. “You always drive me nuts. Just next time you and Nicole are having one of your ‘moments’ in the bathroom, give me some damn warning!”
“Dad!” Nicole screamed from the kitchen. “You swore you were never going to mention that again!”
The lock on my bathroom door at the rehab center didn’t work. Greg thought we were down in the exercise room or something and…um…walked in on Nicole and me in the shower. Right as he opened the door to take a piss, Nicole was yelling out something a little on the colorful side.
He chuckled and covered his eyes.
“Sorry,” he said, “but I think I was scarred for life.”
“Tell me about it,” Nicole grumbled in response. “Dinner in ten!”
“Um…well…” Gardner babbled as he turned red and tried to divert the conversation. “Um…so anyway…I was talking to Kathrine, and she’d like to see more of your work. I think she might even be thinking about showing it in her gallery. What would you think of that?”
“I’d think no fucking way,” I responded.
“Thomas…”
“Don’t give me that,” I snapped. “I told you before…it’s just a hobby.”
Gardner sat on the edge of my bed and stared at me. It still made me feel all funky when he did that—it was too much like looking in the mirror.
“It doesn’t have to be a hobby,” he said—again. “You have talent—a lot of it. I’d like to think it came from me, but you are far better than I, despite my PhD in art, and you haven’t had any formal training at all.”
“I’m not going to move to Chicago,” I told him, because I knew that’s where this was going—again. “Nicole’s here. Greg’s here. When Nicole graduates, it’s not like she’s going to be able to do marine biology in Chicago.”
Gardner sighed and ran his hand through his hair. I mentally stopped my hand from doing the same.
“What if…what if you went to school here, too?” he asked.
“What? For art?”
“Yes.”
I frowned. I hadn’t really thought about it too much.
“I have an offer,” Gardner said.
“What are you offering?” I asked.
“No, no,” he corrected, “that’s not what I meant. I mean I have received an offer—to come and teach at the community college. You’d get free tuition with me there, and you’d be close to Nicole.”
“Are you crazy?” I asked him. “You didn’t tell me anything about that.”
“I didn’t want to say anything until I had the actual offer,” he said with a shrug. “I just got it last week.”
“You’re going to leave Chicago Art Institute to teach at a community college? Really?”