The White Elephant of Panschin

Veronica and the family get ready for the art show.

     "Veronica!" Shelby called through the open window. "The paths look awful! I thought you said you would rake them again."

     "Shelby," Veronica replied, "it is on the list." She looked up at her sister from her own seat at the kitchen table. She had been examining the household's bank statement. The balance was worrisomely low. "I will get to it. Right now, though, I have to sweep out the ballroom. You remember? The huge room you didn't sweep? The one where all the paintings will go? Where the Collective tracked in all that dirt when the crates were delivered?"

     "I was busy! Can't Florence or Lulu do it?"

     "No, they can't. They've got studying to do."

     "But they're supposed to clean in exchange for living with us," Shelby said sulkily. "I've got studying to do too."

     "They already do plenty and how do you study to draw pictures of mud? I would think herbal tinctures and the diseases they go with are a lot harder to learn."

     "Girls!" Auntie Neza walked into the kitchen, thumping her cane hard on the tile floor for emphasis. "Squabbling will not get any work done."

     "But Neza, we've running out of time," Shelby moaned.

     "All the more reason to find your tempers," Neza replied coolly. "I will help you sweep out the ballroom."

     Shelby, peering through the open window into the dim kitchen, thought of her great-aunt's crippled hands clutching a broom and felt ashamed. "No, no, no," she said. "I'll do it next. I'm sorry. I'm just so worried about the show."

     "We'll be fine," Veronica said soothingly. "We've hosted plenty of shows by now for the PanU Artists' Collective and they've all gone well. We might even sell a painting or three. It could happen."

     Shelby's face lit up. "Do you really think so?"

     "Yes, absolutely," Veronica lied stoutly.

     Neza said, "I agree. The show will be wonderful and we'll sell more paintings than ever. You'll see."

     Shelby laughed and clapped her hands, her mood swinging back to joy from apprehension. "I get the ballroom walls and windows started right away. That way I'll be done when everyone gets here to sweep down the walls of the house."

     As soon as she disappeared from view and her footsteps could be heard crunching down the gravel path to the front door, Veronica turned to her aunt, her eyebrows meeting her hairline.

     "Do you really believe that? We'll sell more paintings than ever?"

     "Not a chance." Neza snorted with wry amusement. "Those ugly things? But Shelby's sweeping the ballroom and it needed to be done."

     "True." Veronica laughed, a lilting trill of amusement.

     It gladdened Neza's heart that she'd been able to get her niece to laugh.

     "And maybe those lazy artists will sweep down the walls without my standing over them." Veronica chuckled again. "And set up the easels and hang the paintings when they come over to prep for the show."

     Neza snickered. "We can dream, I suppose. That at least is free. I will be glad to get all those crates of stands unpacked. Ballroom's full of them. Maybe we should offer to store them in the lower basement level so we don't have to deal with delivery again."

     "No, then we'd have to get the Collective to haul the crates up and down two flights of stairs every time we hosted a showing. And we'd be responsible for their upkeep and maintenance. Let the Collective pay for warehousing someplace else," Veronica replied. "We shouldn't do it for free and that's what they'd expect."