Empire Falls

to magically transform mistakes. But what she’d most like to acquire is the whole attitude . Nothing in her experience suggests that mistakes rectify themselves in the fullness of time, and certainly not in an hour. Quite often, it seems to her, there’s good reason to be alarmed by them, the most indelible things on her canvas.
    For instance, she’s made the mistake of being Zack Minty’s friend again, an error in judgment based in part on his insistence that he’d changed, which he has—for the worse. Zack always had a frightening, smoldering quality, as if he might at any moment burst into flame, but lately he seems already on fire, someone to step back from, though Tick seems to be the only person to notice the difference. John Voss is another mistake, though befriending him was the principal’s idea, not hers. In some ways John is the exact opposite of Zack, a boy whose tiny flame is flickering for lack of oxygen. At first his job at the Empire Grill and their lunch arrangement seemed to be doing some good, but over the last few days he’s become even more suspicious and darkly silent than before. He shows so few signs of life that Tick half expects to look across the Blue table at him and find that he’s stopped breathing.
    Between these two and Candace, who as usual is driving her crazy, she doesn’t like to think what her life would be like if Donny hadn’t finally contacted her with his e-mail address, or if she hadn’t convinced Walt—who she’d have to start being nice to, eventually—to get hooked up to a server. She’ll actually see Donny in less than a week, and when she thinks about this her throat gets full and happiness comes over her so powerfully that she has all she can do to conceal it from her friends. Love is what this happiness feels like.
    What she suspects but would like to know for sure is whether Mrs. Roderigue’s in love with Bill Taylor. Tick has met Mrs. Roderigue’s husband, who is also named Bill, a man who resembles a human bowling ball. The reason their marriage has been so successful, Mrs. Roderigue tells anyone willing to listen, is their shared devotion to the Lord, but Tick imagines Mrs. R. has a secret devotion to Bill Taylor, who is tall and lean and somehow elegant with a full head of unruly hair. To Tick, he resembles one of his own paintbrushes, and she can’t help wondering whether Mrs. Roderigue regrets ending up with a bowling ball when there was a paintbrush not so very far away on the coast of Maine. If so, she’s made a mistake that has not rectified itself in the fullness of time.
    To Tick, Mrs. Roderigue’s love life is not that pleasant to contemplate, but neither is the possibility that there is no such thing as love for certain unfortunate people. She would like to think it’s a possibility, if only as a long shot, for everyone. Mrs. Roderigue certainly speaks of Bill Taylor as if she were in love with him. She says she wonders every year if there might be a budding Bill Taylor among her young apprentices, and yes, from time to time she sees potential, but then in some way or other all of her students seem to fall short. His style, she adds dreamily, may in the end be unique.
    Last week Mrs. Roderigue gave her students the Bill Taylor assignment of watching Painting for Relaxation in order to discuss the great man’s technique in class on Monday. To the teacher’s grave disappointment, Tick alone had watched, though she’d forgotten it was homework and saw the program only because she usually did. Bill Taylor’s show, despite its title, contained more genuine suspense than anything else on television. At times—say, with only ten minutes left—it didn’t seem possible he could finish the day’s painting, but you were always wrong to wager against a man who wielded a brush with such vigor. Sometimes he finished with only seconds to spare, without even enough time for a proper good-bye to his television audience, but somehow he always completed his painting. Tick isn’t sure how to feel about this. The fact that he always finishes adds to the suspense each week, but sometimes Tick finds herself hoping something will happen to prevent him, like a gust of wind tipping over his easel and scattering his brushes; but then she feels guilty for wishing failure on this poor man, which is sort of like going to an auto race hoping to see an accident. Tick would’ve been interested to know John Voss’s thoughts on Bill Taylor, but she doubts