Arlene the Artist's Arc

Chapter 5 of 5

On Monday morning Arlene sat at her kitchen table and counted supplies. Six pencils. Four erasers. Two half-used pads of newsprint. She had seven students last Saturday and the teenager she visited had promised to come back. If one more person showed up, someone would sit with nothing to draw on. She could not afford to buy paper for a growing class out of her own pocket. The community center paid her to teach, not to stock the room. She walked to the community center and found Claire in the hallway, arms full of folding easels. Claire wore her yellow coat with the paint spots and her big round glasses had slid down her nose. She pushed them up with her wrist. "I need paper," Arlene said. "A lot of it. By Saturday." Claire set the easels down. "The center's supply budget is spent for the quarter. I already checked when you called about sketchbooks." "Then I have four days and no paper." Claire tilted her head. "Try the newspaper office. Ask for Mrs. Smith. She runs the front desk and she knows every roll in that building." Arlene walked over that afternoon. The newspaper office smelled of ink and old coffee. Mrs. Smith stood behind the counter in a floral dress and a tan trench coat, sorting a stack of returned copies. Her gray hair was pinned back. She looked over her glasses when Arlene came in. "You're the painter," Mrs. Smith said. "Claire's teacher friend." "I need paper for my class. Newsprint, if you have any to spare." Mrs. Smith set down the stack. "How much is a lot?" "Enough for twelve students for six weeks." Mrs. Smith walked to a door behind the counter and opened it. Inside stood a rack of end rolls, each one taller than Arlene's knee. Some were half full. Some were nearly whole. "Misprints and short ends," Mrs. Smith said. "We can't sell them and I hate to throw them out. Take what you can carry. Come back for the rest." Arlene looked at the rolls. There were nine of them. "All of them?" "All of them. On one condition." Mrs. Smith folded her arms. "Put my name on a little sign in your classroom. I like to see my name in print." Arlene laughed. She had not expected to laugh. "I can do that." She carried two rolls home that afternoon and came back with a borrowed wagon for the rest. By evening the rolls stood along her studio wall, next to the paintings she still kept facing inward. She cut sheets at the kitchen table until her hands ached. She stacked them in twelves. At the bottom of her notebook she crossed out bring extra sketchbooks and wrote: enough paper for anyone who walks in. Then she stopped. She had not thought, before, about strangers walking in. She wrote it again, underlined, and left the pencil on the page.