Teacher, We Want to Paint!

Chapter 2: A Table with Three Names

I took the flyers off the table and placed them in a folder instead of throwing them away.

That was the first practical decision I made. The second was to call Owen back and ask for a meeting, not to pitch him a mural, but to explain what I could and couldn't offer. I didn't want Tessa's mistake to become a reason to punish her, and I didn't want my discomfort to turn into a convenient excuse for claiming everything we'd made in my studio.

Owen agreed to meet at the café after lunch.

Before I left, I found June in the small office, measuring the wall beside my filing cabinet. A roll of brown paper lay across her forearms.

"What are you doing?"

"Trying to figure out how wide a test panel would need to be." She indicated the blank strip of wall. "If we want to apply for the Alden Street community grant, the sketch needs to show how the colors work on a wall, not just on a screen."

I'd mentioned the grant two weeks earlier. It funded a public mural near the old ferry terminal, and the application deadline was in three weeks. I had planned to enter a proposal myself. I had not planned to bring students into it.

"Do you want to apply?" I asked.

"I want to help make the painting." She set down the paper. "I don't need my name on every part of it."

It sounded generous. It also sounded like the sort of thing people said when they'd learned their wishes were inconvenient.

"What if you did need your name on it?" I asked.

June stared at the floor for a moment. "Then I'd want to know how you'd decide what counts as mine."

That stayed with me on the walk to Harborlight.

Owen had a stack of lunch plates beside the register and a menu board he kept revising in chalk. He listened without interrupting while I explained that the drawing in Tessa's flyer had started as a shared studio exercise. I told him the birds were hers, the moon was June's, and the marsh had grown out of a demonstration I'd prepared for class. I also told him I had no written agreement defining ownership.

"So nobody can give me a clear license?" he said.

"Not for that version."

He rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I like the image. I'm not interested in being in the middle of a dispute, especially if the person I hire tells me one thing and I find out another later."

"Then don't hire me on the basis of that sketch. I can bring you a new design."

"Would Tessa be part of it?"

"I haven't decided."

He leaned back. "Mara, I don't need a lecture on fair credit. I need a wall done correctly. I also can't pay three people if I'm hiring one."

There it was: not cruelty, exactly, but the ordinary arithmetic that could flatten a complicated truth into a line item.

"I'm not asking you to pay three people for one job," I said. "I'm asking you not to use the old image. If you want to hire Tessa, you can talk to her directly about a new design. If you want to hire me, I'll make one."

"And if you bring her in as a collaborator?"

"Then we agree on the scope and the credit before the paint goes up."

Owen studied me. "That's a lot of paperwork for a mural on a café."

"It's less paperwork than a lawsuit."

He laughed once, without much warmth. "Send me a proposal by Friday. It needs to fit my budget and my wall. Don't promise me a team unless you know who's on it."

When I returned to the studio, Tessa was sitting on the floor, repainting a small board propped against her knees. The image was different from the flyer: no moon, no marsh. A red door stood open onto a black field.

"You went to Harborlight," she said.

"I did."

"Did you get the job?"

"I asked him not to use the shared sketch. He's considering a new proposal."

Her brush paused. "And did you tell him I'm a liar?"

"I told him what happened."

"That's not the same thing."

"No," I said. "It isn't."

Tessa set the brush down. "You can't build a career by asking permission for every mark."

"I'm not asking you to ask permission for every mark. I'm asking you to be clear about whose marks you're selling."

She stood, wiped her hands on her jeans, and looked at the red door. "I don't want to be one of those artists who waits for someone important to say they're ready."

"Then don't wait. Make new work."

Her expression softened, though she didn't smile. "You make it sound simple."

"It isn't."

June came in carrying a sheet of brown paper. Tessa stepped aside to let her pass. Neither of them spoke.

I pinned the paper to the wall between the half-painted heron and the filing cabinet.

"Let's make a proposal," I said. "For the ferry terminal. But first we decide what belongs to whom."

Tessa gave me a thin smile. "And if I don't like the answer?"

"Then you walk away."

She picked up her brush again. "I'll hear you out."