Chapter 10 - My Mother's Name on the Glass
Marian referred me to the Vermont Arts Council. The director was a man named Edmund Barlow, mid-sixties, bow ties, the kind of politeness that comes from actually caring about people instead of performing it. He needed a designer for the annual autumn gala. Invitations, programs, venue signage, social graphics, a full visual identity.
The contract was eight thousand dollars. More than I'd earned in any single month of my life. I pitched it like everything depended on it, because in some ways it did.
Edmund called two days later. "Miss Ellison." I'd started using my maiden name professionally. "We'd like to go with your concept. The committee was unanimous."
I hung up, put both palms flat on my desk, and waited for my hands to stop shaking.
That week I signed a lease on a real studio. A small storefront two blocks from Frannie's shop. Five hundred square feet, a plate-glass window, and a door that locked. I painted the walls warm white, hung my portfolio prints, and ordered a sign for the window.
*Ellison Creative.*
Frannie helped me put it up. She stepped back into the street, tilted her head, and read it out loud.
"Ellison Creative. That's got a ring to it."
"It's my mother's name," I said. "Felt right."
May you like
She handed me a bottle of cheap champagne with a plastic cork, and we drank it out of coffee mugs on the sidewalk while the sun dropped behind the mountains.
For the first time in longer than I could measure, I was standing in a place built around me instead of against me.
