The Stone Necklace

by Carla Damron

  SpongeBob ended and Tonya flicked off the TV. Byron came to her and crawled up in her lap. Out the window, the lawn lay small and brown as a slice of wheat toast. The dogwood tree had lost all its leaves; the camellia’s green branches held no blooms. John would be home soon. John would be home and she would tell him all of it. He could decide for himself if he was part of the plan.

  Byron pulled up, his knees on her thighs, his pink face inches from hers. “I love you, peanut,” she said.

  THE PLASTIC CRACKLED UNDER Lena’s feet. She unrolled the painter’s tape, securing the sheeting to the legs of the desk and the base of the bookcase. She placed the easel close to the window and switched on two lamps, leaving much of the room still in shadow. It would temper what she painted, but that was okay. In fact, it was important.

  She uncapped her oils and dotted her palette with primary colors for blending, adding other shades like coral, teal, and crimson, the hues that always pulled at her eyes. By the door she had stacked a jumble of canvases she’d grabbed from the garage. She selected a large one and clipped it to the easel. She glanced around Mitch’s office: the unscratched wood floors, the alphabetized books, the monster desk and cracked leather chair he’d gotten from his father—this room was Mitch. She could almost catch his scent, as though wood and leather had soaked him in. She closed her eyes to let the emotions have their way.

  The feeling passed as quickly as it had started. This mourning had so many edges to it, but she’d learned over the days that fighting it gave it strength. Better to surrender. Always surprising to come out on the other side.

  She lifted a brush, dabbed it in the crimson, and approached the canvas. How to start? There was always this hint of panic when beginning, self-doubt nudging her away from it, and she had to stand strong and not submit. She touched the brush to the canvas. Feather-like strokes, almost in a circle but not quite. Two larger splotches in the center, more defined. Between them, an amethyst curve like a mountain stream pouring between boulders.

  With the finer ox-bristle brush, she made delicate, precise strokes of black and umber. Symmetrical figures emerged around the edges of red. What were they? Almost numbers but not quite. Little faux Chinese characters, faint and small in the wide expanse of white.

  She blurred purple and blue, making a broad sweep at the bottom of the canvas. She loved the color. Indigo. She brought the brush upward, bursting through the little figures.

  Her hand began to quake. Why? What was it? She touched the color again, trying to recall something that was just out of her grasp. What did it remind her of? The azurite pin Mitch had given her last year.

  There had been that tall art student, in her flowing skirts and hand-beaded jewelry, who had commented on the azurite stone, some Wiccan-sounding nonsense about how indigo “turns one inward. It is for reflection and insight.” And inspiration, she had said. Great things come “out of the blue.”

  Lena played with the color, trying different shapes and textures. Muting it with white for a paler hue. A smidge of black. All these remarkable shades of blue.

  “Are you going to make this your studio?” Becca’s voice startled her.

  “Hey.” She lowered the brush and turned to face her youngest. “Maybe.”

  Becca climbed onto the desktop, gathering her legs against her chest. she wore a Gamecocks t-shirt with a hole over the “G.” Mitch caught it at a basketball game when Becca was ten.

  “Can’t sleep?” Lena asked.

  “Not much.” Becca studied the stack of real estate books beside her on the desk. “These are Dad’s books.”

  “Yep. I’ve been studying them.”

  “Why?”

  She moved closer to her daughter. “Because that’s going to be my job. I’m taking the realtor exam. I’ll apprentice under Phillip and take over your Dad’s office at the firm.” She’d read the manual a half-dozen times; the laws were complex but not impossible.

  Becca shook her head. “Hard to picture you selling strip malls and gas stations.”

  “Yeah, it’s hard for me too,” she confessed. “I’ve read about how important ‘staging’ a property is—making it look as good as it can, especially in the current market. Sometimes a coat of paint can make all the difference. Maybe my artistic eye will come in handy.” When Phillip drove her to the strip mall he’d purchased, Lena had insisted on entering every door. She was glad she had. She found interior walls of glass brick, hidden under layers of grime. Black and white tile and an art deco mural. She imagined a fifties-style restaurant, an espresso bar, and upscale consignment shop. It was a long shot, and the economy had to turn around, but maybe she could make it happen.

  Lena returned to the stack of canvases, sorting through them. Most were aborted efforts she should have tossed.

  “What’s that one?” Becca pointed at the half-done painting in Lena’s hand. That one. Lena brought it to the desk. “Remember the morning of the accident? I had decided to paint again.”

  Becca nodded.

  “This is what I was working on. An exercise. Just trying to get back into it.”

  Becca traced the outline of pink. “A flower?”

  “Foxglove. One in Mitch’s garden that kept right on blooming long past the time it should have died back. So it was my starting point, anyway. I didn’t get very far before the call came.” A claw gripped under her sternum as she remembered. Almost not answering the phone but its incessant ringing annoyed her. Not understanding the police officer telling her that Mitch was on his way to Mercy General Hospital. Throwing on clothes, tripping on her way to the car, thinking, “My fault, my fault, my fault” and not knowing why. She didn’t remember the drive or parking, but she soon found herself surrounded by white coats tossing a new vocabulary her way. “Myocardial infarction” and “anoxia” and “absent brain stem reflexes.” Thus began her descent.

  “They called me out of class,” Becca said in a whisper. “I was late getting to poetry so I thought I was in trouble. The principal was in the hall. He told me.”

  Lena wished that she had been the one to tell Becca, to gather her in her arms, to reassure her that they would survive this.

  “I didn’t believe he’d die. Not really. Not until—” Becca pulled her legs in closer, two garnet humps in the t-shirt.

  “I didn’t either. Not at first. After all we’d been through, it seemed absurd that he would leave us like that.”

  Becca tilted her head as though seeing the painting from another angle. “It’s nice. You should finish it.”

  “Not now. I can’t.” Lena placed the canvas on the floor.

  Becca rested her head on her knee and watched as Lena returned to her new project. Lena dabbed the brush in lavender paint and made an arc at the top of the painting. Too pale. She darkened the tint.

  “Does painting help you feel better?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Can you paint out your sadness?”

  If only she could. “No. But I can sort out how I feel, or it makes me feel things I’ve tried not to.” This was a strange thing to confide in her daughter, but something about the shadows and Becca’s unexpected presence made speaking it important. Lena crossed to the painting that hung across from Mitch’s desk. She had painted it when Becca was three: pigtails and a ruffly denim skirt and pudgy hands gripping a GI Joe doll. A crooked smile playing on her lips.

  “Like this one,” Lena said. “Mitch’s Kitten.”

  “Ugh,” Becca muttered.

  “This was an important piece for me. I hadn’t painted in a while. I was coming out of a dark place. After you were born, I had post-partum depression and it took me a long time to recover. I saw a therapist like Dr. Owens.” Lena could feel Becca’s stare, this last secret unfolding.

  “It was bad for a while, Becca. I couldn’t find a way to be happy. To connect with you or the boys or Mitch. It was like living in a cave without color or light.” The shame still weighed on her like an oversized coat. “You were sick,” Mitch would
say, “and that’s nothing to be ashamed about.” But she had seen the strain on her family, the unattended baseball games, the tiny arms lifted up that she couldn’t reach for.

  “But the therapy, and medication, helped,” Lena said. “One morning I woke up. I mean I really woke up. I went to your room and you were sitting up in your bed, holding that GI Joe. You smiled at me. I sat on your bed and you handed me your stuffed dog and we played together. You giggled so much you almost forgot to breathe and that had me laughing, too. The shadow lifted. I started this painting that day.”

  “You got depressed because you had me?” Becca asked.

  “Not at all,” she said firmly. “I got depressed because that gene runs in our family. The hormonal changes after the pregnancy triggered it.” She stepped closer, looking Becca in the eye to make sure she understood. “Seeing the therapist helped, but you are the one who pulled me out of it. You and that GI Joe.”

  “It’s in your family?”

  “I think Dad was depressed. That might explain why he drank so much. Mom definitely had it. I’ve had two bad episodes—and I’m lucky that’s all.”

  Becca’s gaze on her was like probing fingers. Lena moved to the window. The faintest swath of pink stretched through gauzy clouds, the beginning of sunrise.

  “When was the second time?” Becca asked.

  Lena swallowed. “Right before I went back to school. I felt like I was suffocating.”

  Becca’s legs slid out from under the shirt and she stood. She approached the painting on the wall. “How come nobody told me?”

  “Mitch wanted to protect you. He was always overprotective, but I was worse. I’m sorry that I let you down.”

  Becca didn’t say anything. Lena let the silence lie across the room as she returned to her project. She swirled the oxtail brush in crimson and smeared it into the white, trying to replicate the color out the window.

  “How long do I have to see Dr. Owens?” Becca asked.

  “I suppose that’s something the three of us will have to decide. Do you think therapy is helping?” she asked.

  “I guess. But sometimes I leave with more questions than answers.”

  “I think that’s how it works.”

  Silence descended again. Lena played with the paler colors on her canvas. “Elliott said a young man showed up to run with you Saturday.”

  “Elliott should mind his own damn business.”

  “Is he someone in your class?”

  Becca let out an exaggerated sigh. “Yes. His name is Dylan.”

  “Want to tell me about him?”

  “No.” Becca sounded like a slamming door. “Are we going to move?”

  The question surprised Lena. “Do you want to?”

  “No, but I know we’re having money problems. Maybe we can’t afford to live here.”

  “We are having money problems, but that’s for me to worry about. Not you. Besides, things aren’t so bad now. The insurance company finally reached a settlement with the woman who was in the accident with Mitch. And your Aunt Abby paid off the second mortgage. A very generous gift.” She still couldn’t believe it. “I’m not saying things are perfect. I’ve got to make a go of this real estate thing, but you don’t need to worry.”

  Fingers of light filtered through the window and brightened the canvas. The pink dots looked too pale. Lena dipped the brush in crimson, creating a sharper hue, like a recently healed wound.

  “I didn’t think Aunt Abby had money. I mean—she dresses like she doesn’t,” Becca said.

  Lena smiled. “She’s a federal employee and she’s squirreled away most of her earnings. She’s actually ready to retire and live on her pension. At least, that’s her plan if she’s able to adopt Esteban.”

  She looked around the heavy room. There was so much house here. Lena and Becca would take up a fraction of it. Would the absence of Mitch fill the rest? This wasn’t what she wanted, nor would Mitch.

  Becca picked at a toenail she had painted navy blue. Abby was so good with her. She had a rare confidence that cut through Becca’s defenses. Lena was working harder at her relationship with Becca, but for Abby, it came naturally.

  Lena set down her brush. “What if . . .” she eyed her daughter. “What if Abby and Esteban came here to live? We have plenty of space. Abby has no real home except Columbia, and we could help her with him. He could go to school here and learn English.” As she spoke the words, they took shape. A little boy running around the back yard. A new swing set and sand box. Elliott’s room painted blue, with soccer balls (didn’t they love “futbol” in South America?) along the chair rail.

  Becca’s head shot up. “Here?”

  “Why not?” They’d use a shelf in the den to hold Legos and Lincoln logs, another supporting a library of children’s books. She stepped closer to her daughter to get a better handle on her reaction. “This would have to be a decision we make together. Your vote is just as important as mine. It’s a big step. You may have to help with Esteban when I’m at work.”

  She approached her daughter. “I’m hitting you with a lot all at once. Give this Abby/Esteban idea some thought. We don’t have to decide until we know for sure if she’s getting him.”

  Becca stood and crossed to the window. Lena joined her. Dawn had brightened the yard, sunrays falling on the tangle of vinca vines around the patio, the pink drooping blossoms on the sasanqua, the bright red berries on the nandina. Mitch had made sure the garden had color year round.

  “Might be fun to have a little boy around,” Becca said.

  CHAPTER 28

  The river roared. Rain from the past few weeks had made it swell, turned it forceful and fast, like a thundering serpent. White froth boiled up as the rapids shot between rocks that protruded like smooth gray teeth. Tree limbs that had fallen into the water and ridden the current made a murky pile of sodden debris, but the water moved too fast for beavers to claim it.

  Sandy pulled out the Ziploc baggie, opened it, and studied the pills awaiting her. She’d survived three days, unable to let them go. She had held them, sniffed them, come so close—but she had not taken a single one. Yet.

  As she stood at the familiar overlook, tiny drops of spray chilled her skin. She lifted the collar of her jacket, yet she relished the cold, the way the trees quivered and swayed, the way her flesh felt raw. The way this place reminded her of Jesse.

  How many times had she met him here? Jesse liked to take walks. Actually, Jesse liked to take hikes but Sandy would have none of that so they settled for a mile or two on this much-traveled trail. She checked her phone to see if he’d replied to her text, knowing he wouldn’t. After the debacle at her house, he probably wanted to stay as far away from her as he could get. Hell, she wanted to stay away from herself, if that were possible.

  She had met Jesse a year and a half ago at a pharmacy rep event: heavy hors d’oeuvres, robust cabernet generously poured, and a hive of doctors bragging about golf scores and investment portfolios. Jesse had positioned himself by the fruit tray and when he reached for a strawberry, his eyeglasses tumbled into the caramel dip.

  He pinched the nose bridge to lift them from the golden goo. “That was smooth,” he said, licking the rimless frames. “Kind of tasty.”

  She laughed. “You’re not a doctor.”

  Dimples dented his cocoa skin. “Why do you say that? Don’t I look smug enough? I can do smug. Just get me talking about my action figure collection.”

  Caught mid-sip, Sandy laughed out wine.

  “Ah. So we’re both too classy for this party. I’m Jesse Riniere, by the way.” He extended a hand, long, tapered fingers enfolding hers.

  “Sandy Albright.” The wine on top of the valium she’d taken had her buzzing and flirtatious. They left the party and walked a few blocks to a jazz club where the owner welcomed Jesse by name. They drank more wine, followed by coffee and a meandering stroll back to their cars. She gave Jesse her number.

  She’d given up on him calling back when he p
honed over a week later. “I’ve been out of town,” he said, and asked her out to dinner. She almost didn’t agree because it worried her how much she wanted to. When he picked her up, he suggested a walk before dinner and brought her here, to the riverfront trail. They talked, then they didn’t, their silence punctuated by footfall on leaves and chattering squirrels. When they reached this overlook, he kissed her. It had filled her with a strange mix of fear and hope.

  This was the rhythm of their relationship. Their sex was raw and fast, two bodies diving into each other then parting. And Jesse would disappear. A week, two, an occasional phone call. She didn’t question him about it. She settled for what they had, finding safety in not expecting more. There could be no betrayal where there was no commitment.

  And what did she have now? No Jesse. She’d texted him, but he hadn’t answered. Why would he? What did she have to offer him? She had no job. She lived a miserable, pathetic life. In her hand lay the pills her body screamed for. The solution to her desolation: pale blue circles of bliss. She just needed to swallow them. So easy.