Joy Argento - Carrie and Hope (6 page)

“Come on in,” Carrie said, stepping back to let Hope pass. “I thought you didn’t drink.”

“I don’t, but I didn’t want to come empty handed. So I got you a bottle of wine.” She took off her coat. “Is red all right?”

“You didn’t have to bring anything. But, that was very sweet of you. Yes, red is great and this is a very good wine,” Carrie said, reading the label.

Carrie took Hope’s coat and hung it on the tall wooden coat rack that stood behind the door. Carrie noticed Hope’s pink button down shirt tucked neatly into her dark denim jeans. “I love that shirt,” Carrie said.

“Thanks. It’s new. I don’t usually wear pink but I liked this shade.”

“Very nice.
Come on in. Can I interest you in a glass of red wine?” Carrie asked, with a smile, holding up the bottle that Hope just brought.

Hope laughed. “No, but a glass of water would be great.”

“I can do better than that. How about some juice or soda pop?

“I actually prefer water, if that’s all right.”

“Of course that’s all right. Would you like ice and lemon in it?” Carrie asked.

“Sure,” Hope answered.

“Make
your self
comfortable,” Carrie told her waving toward the living room. “There are some appetizers on the coffee table there so help yourself, and I will be right back with your water.”

 
Hope went into the living room and looked around. Several pieces of framed art hung on the cream colored walls. Two were still life paintings and another was a painting of an older woman sitting in a wooden rocking chair. Her gray hair and wrinkled skin gave away her age, but her eyes still held the wonder of youth. A collie sat beside her, her hand gently resting on the dog’s head. A framed photo of the same woman standing beside Carrie hung on another wall. Carrie looked about ten years younger in the photo.

“Is this your grandmother?” Hope asked as Carrie returned to the room and handed her one of the two glass of water that she held. “Thanks.”

“Yes,” Carrie answered. “That picture was taken when I graduated from college. The painting of her,” Carrie said turning towards it, “I did a few of years ago. That was her dog, Duchess.”

“It’s beautiful. All of these paintings are. You are very talented.”

“Thanks. I have some drawings in the art room that I wanted to show you, too. Some of them are figure drawings. They are really rough, but it will give you an idea of what I want to do if you decide to pose for me. We can take a look at them after we eat. Supper is in the oven now.”

“It smells wonderful,” Hope said as she sat on the loveseat. Carrie sat down across from her on the matching blue couch. She sipped her water before setting the glass down on a coaster on the coffee table.

“It should be ready soon. Help yourself to some cheese puffs. It’s my grandmother’s recipe.” Carrie nudged the plate closer to Hope. “How did your visit with your son go?”

Hope picked up a warm cheese puff. She held it in her hand while she answered Carrie. “It was really nice. He surprised me by bringing home a new girlfriend.” She took a bite of the food she held. “
Mmm
, this is so good.”

“Thanks.” Carrie helped herself to a cheese puff. “So, you didn’t know he had a girlfriend or you didn’t know he was bringing her home?”

“I didn’t know about her at all. He changes girlfriends as often as I change my underwear…and I do that at least every week.” Carrie laughed. “He doesn’t usually bring anyone home with him.” She thought about it for a second. “In fact, I think this is the first one. He would bring girls around when he was in high school, but hasn’t brought one home from college before.”

“So, was that okay with you?”

“It was fine. She seems like a really nice girl. I like her. I wouldn’t mind him hanging onto this one for a while.” Hope helped herself to another cheese puff. “Derrick has a really off beat sense of humor and she seems like she can keep up with him just fine.”

“Oh, I wonder where he gets that from,” Carrie said with a grin. “That’s good. Humor is important.”
    

The two new friends talked without so much as a lull in the conversation until the timer went off on the stove thirty minutes later.
    

*****

“This is delicious,” Hope said after taking a bite of lasagna. Is this your grandmother’s recipe, too?” She cut into her food and watched a piece of cheese oozed out onto her plate.
    

“No, I got this recipe online.” Carrie sipped her wine and dabbed at her mouth with her napkin. “My grandmother is…was…is…more of a baker than a cook.” She hesitated. “It sounds stupid to talk about her in the past tense when she is still around.”

“How is she doing?”

“The same.
It really doesn’t look like she is ever going to wake up. But, there’s a piece of me that is still holding out hope. You know what I mean?”

“I know exactly what you mean,” Hope nodded as she spoke. She continued to enjoy the food as they talked.

“I know it’s dumb. I know what the reality of the situation is. But I can’t seem to help it. My mother acts like Gram could wake up any minute. She refuses to face this.” Carrie poured a little more wine into her glass.

“That must be very hard on your mom. It’s her mother, right?” Hope took another slice of fresh Italian bread from the basket in the center of the wooden table. She buttered it with homemade herb butter from a small glass bowl.

“Uh-huh,” Carrie said. “They were never very close and I think my mother is feeling really guilty about that now.”

“You have a brother, right?” Hope used her piece of bread to soak up some tomato sauce from her plate.

“Actually, I have two brothers. My brother Todd is in the Marines, he’s stationed in Okinawa right now. My brother Sammy lives with his wife and kids in North Carolina. They came to see my grandmother when this first happened, but they couldn’t stay long because of their jobs and the kids’ school.”

“And what about your dad?”
Hope asked.

“My dad left when I was ten. The last I heard, he was remarried and living somewhere out West. I don’t hear from him much and that’s okay with me. He wasn’t much of a father when he was around.” Carrie finished her glass of wine and refilled the glass with filtered water from the pitcher on the table. “So what about you, do you just have the one sister?”

“Yes, Marcy is my only sister. She is ten years older than me, so at times she acts more like my mother. Well, at least she thinks she has the right to act like she’s my mother. She tends to be very opinionated and bossy. I know she means well but sometimes she drives me crazy.”

“My brothers are both younger than me, so I get to boss them around. Those are the rules. The first-born gets to be the boss. I believe it’s on my birth certificate.”

“That explains my sister’s behavior then.” Hope nodded her head and smiled.

“Are you from around here originally?”

“Born and raised. My parents still live in Penfield. That’s where I grew up. Of course it was mostly farmland when I was young. We lived right next door to a horse farm. It is so built up now. There is a bank or drug store on every corner.”

“Do you see them often?” Carrie asked. She ate another bite of her bread.

“I see them every couple of weeks or so. My dad comes over and helps me with things around the
house,
yard work, small repairs and things like that. He was so much help to me when Tom was sick. I’m not sure I could have gotten through it without my dad.” She smiled at the thought of her father. “My mother drives me a little crazy. She has a tendency to treat me like I’m still a little kid.”

“That can’t be easy,” Carrie said.

“It’s not, but I do my best to ignore her constant “suggestions
”
, as she calls them.” Hope finished up the last of the food on her plate and wiped a spot of tomato sauce from her mouth with her napkin.
         

“Would you like more lasagna or bread?” Carrie asked.

“No, thank you. I’m stuffed. That was delicious. You’ll have to give me your secret online recipe.”

Carrie laughed. “I’ll give you the copy I printed. But I have to warn you that I got a few drops of sauce on it while I was making this.”

The women carried on a comfortable conversation while they cleared the table and loaded the dirty dishes into the dishwasher. Carrie took a couple of Tupperware containers from her cupboard and made up a take-home package of leftovers for Hope to take with her. “
I’m trusting
you with my good Tupperware. That means I get to see you again when you return it.”

“
Or it means you’ll lose some good containers,” Hope said with a chuckle.

Carrie was sure she would see Hope and the containers again. She smiled at the thought. She put the Tupperware in a plastic grocery bag and put it on the counter.

When the last of the food was packaged and put away Carrie asked, “Would you like to see my art room and the drawings I was telling you about?”

“That would be great. Lead the way.” Hope followed Carrie down a small hallway to the room on the end. A slight smell of oil paints and turpentine greeted them as Carrie opened the door.

“Here they are,” Carrie said as she led Hope over to the pile of drawings that she had sorted through earlier. She spread them out on the small table so that Hope could get a better look at each one.

“These are great,” Hope said. “May I?” she asked before picking one up.

“Oh sure, go ahead.”

“Carrie, I am really impressed. Did you use a model for these or are they out of your head?”

“These are just rough sketches out of my head. They are just to get an idea of how I want the poses to be. But if you decide you want to pose for me, this is basically what I would want you to do. See how I drew in the material here.” She pointed to a drawing on the table. “The material covers up the breasts. There isn’t any actual nudity. Not that I’m against nudity,” Carrie laughed. “I just want these to be really sensual without being sexual. Does that make sense?”

“Yes, and I would love to pose for you.” She smiled at Carrie.

Carrie couldn’t help but smile back.
“Really?
Oh that would be so great. I am so excited about this.”

“Well, you haven’t seen me with my clothes off yet so you may change your mind when you do,” Hope teased.

“Oh, stop it.” Carrie playfully slapped at her arm. “I think you are going to be perfect for this. It will be great.” Carrie’s enthusiasm bubbled to the surface and spread across her face in a big grin.

Hope finished looking through the drawings and glanced around the room. “Can I look at what you are working on?” She pointed at the painting on the easel.

“Feel free to look at whatever you want.” Carrie stepped back to give Hope more room to move around. Hope spent a moment looking at Carrie before walking to the easel. She bent over to get a better look at the painting.

Carrie found herself looking directly at Hope’s butt. She forced her eyes away and shook her head. But her eyes found their way back to the sight.
I’m just checking out the model from an artistic angle,
she reasoned.
Okay, now stop it. What would she think if she saw you ogling her? And why are you ogling her anyway? You don’t ogle. You especially don’t ogle women.

“
You are an amazing artist,” Hope said straightening back up and turning to Carrie. Carrie brought her eyes up quickly. “How come you don’t do this full time?”

“Because I like to do things like pay my bills and buy groceries,” Carrie laughed. “It is really hard to make a living just doing art. So I have a day job, but my art is how I keep my sanity.”

“Sanity is highly overrated,” Hope grinned. “I gave up on it years ago.”

“You are so funny,” Carrie said. She enjoyed Hope’s humor as well as her company.

Hope continued looking with great interest at each piece of art in the room. “Very nice,” she said when she had examined the last of it. She brought her eyes from the art and looked at Carrie. Carrie blushed when she realized she had been studying Hope the whole time Hope had been studying her art.

“Um, should we have dessert? I made red velvet cake. We can have it in the living room.” Carrie busied herself stacking the loose drawings on the table as she talked, glancing up once again at Hope.

“I love red velvet cake. Keep feeding me like this and you’ll have one chubby woman as your model.”

“I doubt that. Why don’t you make yourself comfortable in the living room and I will go get it ready for us. Would like some coffee, too? I have decaf.” Carrie shut the lights and the door as they left the room.

“Decaf would be good. Let me help you.” She followed Carrie back into the kitchen.
    
“What would you like me to do?” Hope asked as Carrie measured the coffee into the coffee maker.

Carrie pointed to the cupboard to the left of the sink. “There are small plates in there and the cake is on the counter in the corner. There is a cake knife right next to it. You can cut us both a piece of cake.” She continued making the coffee.

Five minutes later the two women walked into the living room, each carrying a piece of cake and cup of coffee. They sat across from each other, enjoying their dessert and each other’s company. The conversation ran the gambit from Carrie’s art to Hope’s son to Carrie’s favorite hand lotion.

“I am going to try that lotion,” Hope said. “I am constantly washing my hands, seeing I have my fingers in people’s mouths all day long.”

“Does that have something to do with what you do for a living or is putting your fingers in people’s mouths just a hobby?” Carrie asked with a straight face, but a smile in her voice.

“Yeah, I just do it for fun,” Hope grinned. “I’m a dental hygienist, so it kind of comes with the territory. I went back to school when my son started kindergarten. I wanted to do something that wouldn’t take forever to get my degree and would bring money into the house. It definitely isn’t my passion.”

“What is your passion?” Carrie asked.

“I guess that would be writing?”