The Painted Room

by Tina Mikals

Chapter 34

  Painted

  May and Sheila woke, dressed and stomped downstairs to announce their arrival.

  In the kitchen, bread was rising under a towel on the sideboard near the stove and there was another pie in the oven—the other having been devoured by Carlisle the day before.

  On the table, a new plate of freshly baked scones was set out for breakfast. A swirl of hot steam curled its way out of the spout of the little teapot next to it.

  Mrs. Carlisle greeted them, but Carlisle was nowhere in sight.

  "You slept well, I hope," Cora said cheerfully, going to the table and putting down several teacups in her hand. She took up the teapot and poured them some tea.

  They both thanked her and took a seat.

  Through the window, Carlisle could be seen coming up the path with Rufus running circles around him.

  "It's a beautiful day, isn't it?" said Mrs. Carlisle.

  "Yes, ma'am," said May, reaching for a scone.

  "Take one of those," said Mrs. Carlisle, pointing to several on a smaller plate. "They don't have any nuts, dear."

  "Oh, you didn't have to go to the trouble."

  "Not a bit of trouble at all, dear."

  "You're finally up," said Carlisle loudly, poking his head into the kitchen. "I'll be right back. I just need to put my pipe away."

  By the looks of him, May thought his fever had returned.

  "Is he alright?" Sheila asked after he'd left.

  "In a manner of speaking," said Mrs. Carlisle, looking disgruntled. She sat down and took up her teacup. "He always looks like that when he's been working."

  "Has he even gone to bed?" asked May. Carlisle was wearing the same rumpled brown linen suit from the day before.

  "No," said his wife, sounding annoyed. "And it's completely useless to make him try. It used to worry me silly when he got like this. I'd make him stop workin' and insist he go to bed. But then he'd just stay awake all night and the next night be at it again. Finally, I decided, better one night without sleep than two—or more." She shrugged. "After he gets whatever he needs to out of him, I feed him and put him to bed. He sleeps like a babe, and usually he's not too much the worse for wear after everythin's said and done. I just wish this time it didn't have to come so close on the heels of that fever."

  Carlisle joined them with apologies. His eyes were bright and glassy.

  May ate half her scone and found herself wishing it had nuts in it.

  Sheila and Mrs. Carlisle chatted about rose gardening, Sheila's mother having never had a rose bush last more than one season.

  Carlisle was agitated and fidgety from lack of sleep. He ate three scones and downed three cups of tea in restless silence. He said finally, "I've set the painting up in the back garden. I don't know if it'll work."

  "We can only try, right?" said Sheila. Turning to May, she said, "Home, May."

  May, who had long since forbidden herself to even think of home, experienced an inward tug at the word, and a sadness, too.

  Sheila asked Carlisle. "What will you do now?"

  "I don't know," he answered, as if that thought hadn't yet occurred to him. "Stay here for a bit, I guess. I have a little work to do on the house. Then, maybe in a couple of years we'll take a trip upstream." He looked over his shoulder at his wife who had gone to the stove. He leaned across the table and whispered, "It's good to get Mrs. Carlisle out now and then. She can get a little set in her ways."

  "I heard that," said Cora, returning to the table, but not sitting down. "Mr. Carlisle," she said, putting a hand on his shoulder, "I think it must be time to get these dear lasses back to their homes, don't you?"

  He nodded once.

  Cora sent May and Sheila a look. They caught her meaning and stood up. When Carlisle noticed all the women in the room standing, he came out of his thoughts and got to his feet.

  As they walked through the parlor and into the studio, he said, "I know the last time you went through, it was a little rough, so I was hoping to make things less bumpy for you this time. I was aiming for something like a ... " he shrugged and made an expansive gesture with his hands, " ... a 'waltz', I guess you could say."

  As they came through the door and entered the back garden, May spotted a large painted canvas propped against the trunk of a tree. Like the photo, the painting showed her and Sheila sitting on the flowered sofa in Bonnie Hazelton's living room. She clamped her eyes on the herring-bone patterned brick of the courtyard.

  "It's not as bad as all that, is it?" said Carlisle with a grimace. "I was hoping you would like it."

  "Oh, Uncle Frank, it's beautiful," said Sheila. "Don't you think so, May?"

  She nodded.

  "You don't like it," Carlisle said.

  "No, it's very nice. It's just—well, my eyes aren't exactly that color," she said. "My eyes are brown."

  "Brown?" he said. "May, my eyes are brown." He put a finger under her chin and waited until she looked at him. She tried not to laugh as he inspected her eyes carefully, looking cross-eyed down his crooked nose at her.

  "They're amber! Just as I thought. A truly unusual color—like the eyes of a cat. I've never seen the match to them. They're one of your nicest features."

  "They are?"

  "Yes."

  "But then there's—you kind of made me too ... " she gestured again at the painting, not even daring to glance at it this time.

  "Too what?" he said. "It's your nose, isn't it? I made it too long. I was worried about that."

  "No. It's not that. It's just that you made me too—" With a look, she appealed to Mrs. Carlisle for help.

  Cora said to her, "Indeed, it's no use arguing with him about it, dear. It doesn't make a bit of a difference, and it only just gets him into a fine royal temper." The woman rolled her eyes skyward. "And believe me, I am one that knows."

  May gave up. She said, "Never mind. It's beautiful. I love it."

  Carlisle turned to her with a wide smile. "You do?"

  "Really, I do."

  "Hey," said Sheila. "I think I just saw myself wink. There I go again."

  "Why yes, I believe I saw it too," said Carlisle. "Did you see that, Cora?"

  "Indeed I did, dear."

  Sheila's elation turned to sadness. "I guess that means it's time to go."

  May grabbed Mrs. Carlisle's hand and pumped it. "Thank you, ma'am, for everything."

  "Nonsense," said Cora. She pulled May toward her and kissed her on the cheek. "Thank you, dear, and God bless you."

  "You, too, ma'am."

  Sheila rushed from the painting to Carlisle, jumped up and threw her arms around his neck. "Oh, Uncle Frank," she sobbed.

  Carlisle regained his balance, leaned over and put her feet gently back on the ground.

  "Oh, Uncle Frank," she sobbed out again, still hugging him. "I am going to miss you so much."

  He was silent for a long moment. Finally, he said, "Me too, dear."

  Sheila lingered a moment, then released him and hugged her aunt. "Oh, Aunt Cora. I wish I could have known you longer."

  "I do, too, dear," said Cora, hugging her and sniffling.

  May looked up at Carlisle. He was white and rigid. He eyed her nervously.

  "Don't worry, I won't cry," she said to him with a smile she didn't feel.

  Looking relieved, he cleared his throat. "I wanted to give you this," he said, picking up a glass jar of dark red paint from a tree stump next to him. "It's to replace the one I threw away. I had Cora write down the ingredients on the label; her handwriting's better than mine."

  May took the jar from him. "It was all dried up anyway, but thank you."

  "Remember to close the lid tight."

  "I promise."

  The breeze started to pick up in swirls. Fallen rose petals stirred then whisked around the courtyard, carried aloft by the wind. Rufus chased and snapped at them.

  May and Carlisle shook hands. She said to him, "I was wrong about something, Uncle Frank. You really are a gentleman."
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  He leaned down and kissed her on the cheek. He was frowzy and his beard hurt. He smelled of sunshine and pipe tobacco. She whispered in his ear, "Congratulations. You're going to make a wonderful father."

  Sheila left off hugging Aunt Cora. She hugged Carlisle again and then joined May in front of the painting.

  Carlisle put his arm around his wife as Cora took her kerchief from her sleeve.

  Sheila wiped her eyes on the back of her hand. "May, are you sure he's alright? He looks kind of pale. He's not sick again, is he?"

  "He'll be fine."

  The warm, perfumed air circled around the garden courtyard, lifting their hair into buoyant halos around their heads. May watched the hair of her painted self do the same.

  Sheila grabbed her hand. "Well, here goes!"

  "A waltz, huh?" shouted May above the rising noise of the wind, bracing herself.

  "That's right," Carlisle shouted back, "Either that or—" He said something to his wife that she couldn't hear.

  "Or what?" she shouted as Sheila stepped into the painting, pulling May through behind her.