The remains

Chapter 6

Time to be alone with my old friend self-pity.

For a moment I thought about taking a long, hot shower, then changing into some baggy sweats, popping a movie into the DVD player. Or maybe I would turn on the Food Channel, get a dose of Rachael Ray. Something pretty, peppy and mindless… anything to distract me from the events of the day.

Then I thought of just drinking myself into a self-sedating oblivion. But then poisoning myself over Michael’s new found love life didn’t sound very appetizing either. Of course there was always the cell phone and Robyn. But I couldn’t exactly call her while she was on a date.

From across the room I stared at Franny’s painting. The word ‘Listen’ peered out at me from the center of the canvas like a laughing, heckling hyena.

That’s when I got the most incredible cramp in my stomach. It felt as though some invisible creep had sucker-punched me in the gut. Now I definitely knew what I was going to do next.

I sprinted for the bathroom.

Moments later I was back on the couch, stomach cramps no longer an issue. But I felt drained. My forehead was pasty with sweat, my limbs were shaking, my mouth was dry. Turning my attention to the coffee table, I discovered that in all my sudden hurry to make it to the bathroom, I must have tipped over a glass of water because now I was left with a puddle of water that extended from the tabletop onto the hardwood floor below.

That spill became the perfect metaphor for my day. You’d think I might attend to it right away. But Franny’s painting was doing its magic. It’s black magic. It was calling me again. Not only the image of the grass field and dark woods beyond it-a landscape that now was very much mimicking the one of my youth; the field and the woods that Molly and I accessed from outside the back door of our farmhouse-but also the crazy, colorful abstract lines that were hastily painted over the scene.

To some people, these lines, circles and squiggles might seem an annoyance or, at the very least, a kind of self-indulgence on the part of the artist. But to me they represented something more. I’d been having more than my fair share of dreams lately. Dreams that involved Molly and me; that involved our walking through the field to the dark woods, despite our father strictly forbidding us to do so. Those abstract lines made me feel like I was entering into the dream once more, only not in the sleep state. They made me feel like I was dreaming while I was awake. For an added third dimension, the word ‘Listen’ was buried in the painting’s center. A word not everyone saw. Not without my tracing it for them.

Questions flooded me.

Why would Franny decide to give me a painting at all? Especially when the payday for one of his pieces pretty much equaled what I might make in three months working at the Albany Art Center.

Under the circumstances of Franny’s autism, he might not have cared the least bit about giving up the money. But then he had never before gifted me one of his paintings. Did Franny’s mother know that he’d slipped me a ten-thousand dollar present? And why did he call it ‘Listen’ when I was the only person who clearly recognized the word in the first place? Or so it seemed. That is, judging by the argument waged that afternoon by Robyn and myself inside the center studio. With the word ‘Listen’ being flung all over the place, had Franny made the spontaneous decision to use the ‘L’ word as the title of his masterpiece? Or, what was almost too freaky to contemplate, had ‘Listen’ been the title all along?

Seated on the couch in the silence of the old apartment, I once more pictured Franny’s face. Pictured it go from round, rosy and animated to pale and serious, as if for a few seconds, the boy-like autism stepped aside to reveal the hidden man.

I ran my hands over my face. It surprised me to know that I was crying. Exactly why was I shedding tears in the solitude of my apartment?

In a way, I’m not sure I wanted to know. But then the thirty year anniversary that would arrive on Friday and all the memories and dreams it conjured up, might have been reason enough for tears. And now this painting from Franny-a painting that was playing with my head and heart.

A tingle erupted in my stomach, along with a dull ache in the center of my brain. I stood up, felt the dizziness that accompanied the suddenly downshifting blood. Slowly making my way into the kitchen, I retrieved a wad of paper-towels from off the cabinet-mounted roller above the sink. Back in the living room, I got to work cleaning up the spilled water.

While I cleaned, I thought about Michael and his date. I wondered how it was going. I thought about Robyn and her date. I thought about Franny, if he was up inside his attic studio painting the rainy evening away. I wondered if he would paint anything else just for me. I prayed to God he would not.

Outside my apartment the rain fell steady and never ending. What to do with the rest of my night? Maybe head to the gym for a weight training workout? Maybe head outside for my usual five mile run?

I just didn’t have the energy or the will. Besides, it was still raining.

I went to bed without dinner.

Alone.