I awake with a start, blinking in the still quiet darkness. I’m expecting the tsunami to crush me. It doesn’t. Instead of cold sand beneath me, there are warm sheets. I’m not lying on the beach in Santa Monica, six blocks from my parents’ house. I’m lying in one of the twin beds in the children’s room of my Uncle Theo’s farmhouse.
No, it’s now my farmhouse.* Or rather, our farmhouse. Theo left it to my older sister Sydney and me. Settling the pillows so I can sit comfortably, I scrub my hands over my face. My cell phone reads 5:45 a.m. Right on time. Since moving to Washington State to care for my great uncle two years ago, I’ve become an early-morning person.
Theo, I miss you, I tell his spirit mentally as I glance around the room in the gray morning light. It’s a kids’ room, still frozen in time of the early 70s. The walls are white, the bookcases bright yellow, and the twin beds pink and yellow handmade patch quilts on the twin beds lovingly made by my great grandmother. It’s exactly as it was for my mother, and then for my sister and I when we spent Augusts here as kids.
I talk to Theo in my head frequently. Wherever he is, I hope he can hear me. I can’t believe he’s been gone six months. Right now, it feels like six days. This is not how I, Shelby Alpinieri, a thirty-four-year-old graphic designer who never finished my illustration degree, wanted to become a homeowner.
The dream felt so real this time. My heart is still racing. I should be used to it by now. I’ve had iterations of this nightmare for years.
It’s always the same. I run the six blocks from my childhood home down in Santa Monica to the beach, watching in horror as a vast wave builds on the horizon. When I arrive at the shore, it’s full of people. I wave my arms about wildly, yelling and pointing to the towering wall of water silently rolling toward us, warning everyone that we have to flee to higher ground. No one pays any attention to me.
What sucks is that it’s a premonition. It’s cautioning that some kind of bad news is coming. Sometimes, I wish I hadn’t inherited this small slice of psychic talent from both my Italian and Norwegian great-grandmothers.
Occasionally, this strange gift lets me know something positive will happen, primarily for other people. More often, it acts as a red flag like this, warning me something bad is coming just for me. What a way to start a Monday.
I pick up my phone again and scroll through my emails. My eye snags on, “Can we talk today?” It’s from Dulari, my project manager at Trident*,* the active living publishing house, bringing out my Horse Girls coloring book this fall. My stomach twists as I read it. Their new VP of Marketing needs to see me become “more of an influencer on Instagram ASAP.” She wants an online meeting tomorrow and Dulari wants to prep me for it. Crap.
This could certainly be what the dream’s warning me about. What started as a fun, stress-reducing project during Covid has become an uphill grind. Initially, it was a way to focus on improving my visual storytelling skills and engage Uncle Theo in more enjoyable subjects than daily pain management and cajoling him to eat. He was such a supporter of my becoming more of an artist and less of a marketing hack.
Yes, working on Horse Girls has completely transformed my drawing skills. Yes, it is launching my longed-for career shift from graphic design to illustration. But boy, the path to getting published has been rough, especially lately.
Initially, I pitched the coloring book idea to Dulari when she worked for a small educational publisher in Portland, Oregon. That shockingly quick yes turned into one delay after another when Trident bought out that publisher.
I step into my slippers, pull my favorite fleece lined hoodie on against the chill, and head downstairs. I need tea before I call Dulari. I text that I’ll give her a call in about twenty minutes.
I let the young mini Goldendoodle Butterscotch out of her sleeping crate in the laundry room at the back of the house. She’s teddy bear adorable, all caramel blond curls. She gives happy yips and wiggles as I slip on my rain jacket against the late June drizzle. As soon as the back door opens, she shoots out, her nails scrambling on the spacious, wet wooden deck and down the stairs to the grass.
I’m dog-sitting for my neighbor Gunnar, or rather his fiancée Jenna. Butterscotch is a surprise gift for Gunnar’s tween daughter Lorelei from her soon-to-be step-mom. They’re moving up here full-time from Los Angeles in two weeks. Jenna brought the dog when she drove Gunnar’s truck up with a girlfriend in late May and so she could work on freshening up the old farmhouse. Of course, I said yes to the favor. Gunnar was always ready to lend a hand with Theo when he was around, and with my vegetable garden. This year, he promised to help me build a drip irrigation system for it.
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A chorus of layered birdsong greets my ears as I stand under the covered portion of the deck in the growing light. The drizzle isn’t enough to deter them from greeting the morning. Rain is too frequent a fact of life for birds in the Pacific Northwest. Occasionally I even hear the cry of an eagle.
While I wait for the dog to do her business, my eyes go first to the jagged silhouette of fir trees lining the back of the property. They’re about a football field away, across the field that used to grow crops. The deep, mysterious shades of green never fail to draw my artist’s eye.
As I stand still, taking in the trees, I slow my breathing. Box breathing is one of the exercises I learned online to help me deal with my grief over Theo’s slow downhill slide. Four counts in, hold for four counts, exhale for four, and then hold for four again. I feel my heart rate slow and calm.
Dulari’s email might not be as bad as it sounds. Instead of ruminating on possible disasters, I try another valuable exercise to help calm anxiety. I focus on the freshness in the air. I love that marvelous crisp, rich fragrance of the trees and grass and the general greenness that the rain stirs up.
I let my eyes drift over the lush, verdant landscape. The several acres of field in front of me on our property include a small apple, plum, and pear orchard. The two plum trees are promising ripe fruit soon, which I’m looking forward to. I love making plum cobbler.
On Gunnar’s side, the field is broken into fenced-off pastures. They all held horses when I was a child, a few of whom I had the privilege of riding. This was back when Gunnar’s grandmother Nan owned the house, and his great-aunt Sally trained and boarded horses there.
This was my idea of heaven as a child. Gunnar and his cousin Rune (my former summertime bestie) spent the whole summer here. Rune and I were inseparable all August, and Gunnar and Syd were the same.
Bleh. Thinking about Rune now is almost as bad as my nightmare and Dulari’s email. It’s embarrassing to still be mad at someone ten years later, but there it is. We had a falling out when we met again at the Sundance Film Festival a decade ago and haven’t talked since.
Butterscotch runs up the back steps and follows me back inside, eager for breakfast. After I feed her, I eat the small bowl of perfectly ripe strawberries I picked yesterday while I brew a mug of organic Earl Grey tea. The deep red fruit is so sweet and delicious. Nothing at a grocery store compares. I wish I could just focus on this fantastic flavor instead of ruminating on Rune. Why think of him now? He’s never visited during the summers since I’ve lived here, though he and Gunnar, and especially Lorelei, are close.
What stings and still mystifies is how Rune seemed the same the first night we met up at the film festival. Oh sure, he was more handsome than ever. By then, our friendship had devolved into one of text messages and postcards; we never could quite get it together to meet, but we were definitely still good friends. The next night, however, he ended up being an arrogant jerk. Maybe my mom’s right. Maybe actors are just bad news.
**
“Shelby! I can’t believe you’re up this early; how’s summer on the gorgeous Kitsap Peninsula?” Dulari greets my call.
“Cool and misting this morning, but my vegetable garden loves it,” I tell her as I sit in one of the two big old-fashioned wooden swivel chairs in the office and turn on my wide desktop monitor. “Break it to me, Dulari. Tell me about this new hoop I need to jump through.”
“Oof. Yes. Shelby, things have been especially crazy around here,” Dular admits. Thank God she’s always candid with me. “Honestly, I’m still wondering exactly what this new VP wants, but here’s what I know. She’s unhappy that our lead illustrator on Horse Girls isn’t nearly as popular on Instagram as the other two.”
“Yes, well, they’re extroverted socially active twenty-somethings who excel at posing for attractive selfies with their gorgeous horses. I’m introverted and like to focus on promoting my art,” I try not to sound too whiny, but even to my ears, I sound rather pathetic.
“I understand, Shelby, I do,” Dulari says kindly, “but Cheryl is rather a dragon lady about it. Anything you can do for tomorrow’s meeting would be a good idea. When are you bringing out your next fanart coloring page? Those are always popular. My daughter and I love them.”
“I haven’t had time to think about it with all of the other changes we’ve had to make to Horse Girls recently,” I admit, “It’s been a huge lift reimagining the whole coloring book into something Trident felt is more marketable. Figuring out how to blend my style with these other two other illustrators of yours to make it all work on the timeline has been quite a feat.”
“Yes. And you’ve been a champion, and it looks fantastic,” Dulari assures me, “But just between us, I still love your original concept based on real women and horses. Unfortunately, it was just too expensive to get permission from anyone who was still alive or their legacy too famous.”
“I understand,” I sigh because I do.
“So put something together for tomorrow that shows how you’ll pivot into promotion mode now that you’ve turned in all of the final artwork,” Dulari encourages.
“Okay,” I agree, “But first, I’ve got to go get ready for an early breakfast meeting. Thanks for the heads up. I’ll see you online tomorrow.”
“My pleasure. Come up with a new coloring page idea!” Dulari reminds me as she signs off, “Post about that to get people excited.”
She’s referring to the fact that another one of my Covid projects was to reimagine the covers of my favorite fantasy books as free coloring pages for my social media followers.
I’ve been so swamped with last-minute details on Horse Girls I haven’t created a coloring page in a few months. She’s right. It is a good idea to come up with one. I’ll look through my bookshelves later and see if inspiration strikes.
As I’m walking up the stairs to get dressed my phone buzzes. My heart lifts. It’s my almost-boyfriend Jack calling.
“Hey,” I say, happy to be distracted, “how was your hike this weekend?”