Before buying art supplies, Liang Min made a spreadsheet.
Paint, paper, brushes, tuition: four columns totaled the price of the microwave she had not dared replace. She switched to cheaper paper, then back. After three changes to the basket, two kinds arrived.
“Opening a stationery shop?” her husband asked, unpacking.
“Yes. Specializing in duplicate purchases.”
Wednesday's class was pears. Three sat on white cloth. Observe first, the teacher said. After eight minutes she considered her observation sufficient: three pears, cloth, a dark spot on the left one.
Her first pear resembled a light bulb. The second, a fat aubergine. The third had no room, squeezed into a gap.
The younger woman beside her was already applying color. Liang slid her paper left to conceal it, then found the teacher standing on her right.
“Look here again.” A finger indicated the space between pears.
She reached for the eraser. Before the teacher could say not everything needed removing, half the drawing was gone. The rubbed paper grew fuzzy. Under the lamp, the unborn pears looked more obvious than before.
At the end she packed it face down. Past students' paintings hung in white frames near the door. On the way home she searched how long adults take to learn watercolor. The train arrived before any reassuring number.
The next week she worked late.
Month-end accounts would not balance. She typed the studio a message—“Might not make it”—without sending, then looked at her painting bag.
A colleague asked what she was waiting for.
“A class I've already paid for.”
Go, the colleague said. The accounts would remain tomorrow. Liang recorded the problem and missing document in the handover. Closing the computer still felt like concealing today's obligation inside tomorrow.
Twelve minutes late, she arrived to cups. The teacher simply dragged out a chair. Its creak made everyone look when she sat.
“More nervous than I am.”
The younger woman laughed and shifted her paints to make room.
Liang's cup had a crooked rim and sloping base. She could patiently inspect accounts until dawn. A crooked cup took ten minutes to make her pronounce it hopeless.
The teacher asked her to hold it farther away before changing it. She saw no improvement, only a handle like an overenthusiastic ear.
She and her neighbor laughed. She left the eraser alone.
Week three: forgotten brush. Week four: spilled water on her trousers. Week five: her husband mistook an orange for a tomato.
“Where's the stalk?”
“Not authorized to grow yet.”
He put the picture in the kitchen. When she tried taking it away, he said it covered an unremovable grease mark. She inspected the spot. It fitted, so she left it.
After the fifth class came renewal forms. Twelve Wednesdays meant twelve dinners arranged early, twelve shifts of other work, another fee. More than a month in, resemblance remained difficult to claim.
At home she opened the budget. The microwave and its price were still there. She did not delete them or suddenly decide art mattered more than everything. She allowed a fee she could afford and moved the purchase two months later.
Over the weekend she asked her husband to cook on Wednesdays.
“Sure. Tomato and eggs.”
She looked at the orange on the wall.
“Real ones,” he added. “From the market.”
Next Wednesday she was seven minutes early. In the empty room, she took out the first three pears.
The rubbed patch resembled mist. Only half of the cramped pear remained. She remembered her impatience, almost deciding within ten minutes never to paint again.
The teacher offered fresh paper.
“Wait. Let me finish looking.”
Between the pears was a small curved patch of white cloth. She had been so busy making pears that she had not seen it.
She did not add the white. Another erasure would tear the paper.
She put the old drawing away and took a new sheet. Today a blue bowl stood on the table, a chip in its rim. She mixed some color and decided to begin there.
Author's note: Original fiction. This Reddit discussion supplied the broad topic of beginning a hobby as an adult. All characters, dialogue, and events are independently created.