My Hand Mitten

by Austin Thacker

  “Mary was quite something,” Aaron gracefully confirmed in the dark, while curling his arms lower and eyebrows straighter. “She painted beautiful paintings.”

  “Shut up!” yelled Mark aggressively.

  “I was dazzled every time.”

  Mark aimed the nozzle and shot Aaron in the right shoulder. He gasped for air and fell on one knee, then screamed from the pain in a very loud shriek, quickly covering his wound. Two, he thought, while beginning to sweat from the pressure. The commissioner and two others rushed in, but Aaron looked back at them and yelled.

  “Get out, now!”

  The police officers fled two yards back, soaking the keen, white carpet in the dark living room with water, next to the two chairs. Some others outside had to cup their ears and broke out crying from the stress of their once close friend.

  “Mark, don’t pretend it never happened.”

  Mark took his third shot, aiming to graze Aaron’s left arm lightly. It was perfect, and Aaron began to bleed from his second arm, a chunk of meat scooped out of his flesh. He screamed a second time but quickly continued without covering the second wound.

  “The childhood friendship, teenage romance, and years of marriage! She fed you while you were sick!”

  “Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Mark quickly cuffed his ears, began to cry, and oppressively screamed. He shot two bullets in the air to block out the noise and fell to the ground. Water streamed from the roof as huge chunks of plaster lightly fell onto and around his body. Aaron fell on both knees and began to feel the loss of blood, noticing himself drenched in a dark red puddle. “That’s five.” He continued.

  “You guys sang together! Now that I think of it, where were you when she got sick? Where were you?”

  “I’m here!” Mark aimed the weapon at Aaron’s head with the final bullet. “I’m trying! I’m trying to be there, but I so wish for the pain that I can’t bear to watch her fight a disease I would gladly take! She is an angel. Mary knows many things that none of you can begin to imagine because of her heart! I can’t bear to watch her suffocate me. She suffocates me! Every time I think of her, I know it’s my fault—because of my C. diff, she stayed in the hospital. I was afraid to be admitted again so I waited, and she happened to catch it. Don’t touch her! Don’t take her!” Mark lowered the weapon down between his legs and centered his memory, crying viciously. He was out of reality and into the past, like a time machine. Aaron quickly turned to Francis Baker behind him and yelled.

  “Get the gun, commissioner. Now, or he’ll shoot us all!” Aaron screamed in pain once more. “With all my might, I will NOT let him through those doors!”

  October, November, and December of 1991, while the Soviet Union also began to crumble from within, was when Aaron knew where Mark was.

  ◆◆◆

  Mark was fond of the downtown police station, its location next to the public library, and the feeling of brotherhood that made paying the bills more playful. Next to both the police station and the library was a DMV, a very bland, white brick building with a constant stream of furious adults and excited teens streaming in and out.

  Through these difficult times, Mark and Mary lived very poorly. Medical bills piled high, and the cash left as quickly as it came. His police duties on the computer were surprisingly high, with many long hours spent at the station, mostly because no one cared to be a 911 responder; it was flat-out boring. Mark’s salary was about $30,000 a year. It was surprisingly good for that line of work. Then there were Mary’s portraits. She made around $35,000 annually. It began as a fun competition. Mark received a paycheck and placed it high on the fridge. Then Mary sold a portrait and placed that check higher on the fridge with a few stepstools. Mark did the math and said he could double her check in a week. She later punched in the numbers and told him she could whack him with a canvas. One snarky comment later and Mary began painting while Mark sat in a chair and patiently waited for Aaron to pick him up. Mark quickly waddled over to the automobile and rolled into the passenger seat. It was difficult for him to step in because of his weak muscles, but—while only having half his body inside—he hollered at Aaron to step on the pedal. He did so with immediate force, shocked by the aggression in Mark’s voice, to arrive at work as soon as he could. Mark held on while Aaron sped down the road, speechless, while Mark realized he had no strength to pull his feet out of the outstretched door, not realizing that the top of his bald head was also grazing the driver’s door as well as Aaron’s lap. His feet were only a few inches out of the car, along with one sandal, the other lost somewhere in his neighborhood’s concrete roads. Then Aaron abruptly halted at the stop sign, still speechless from Mark’s loud, unexpected screeching voice. For three awkward seconds they stood there listening to “Now That We Found Love” by Heavy D & the Boyz. Both Mark and Aaron felt as if they were smacked with a hard club full of complete and utter embarrassment, blushing wildly through three different shades of red.

  “Aaron,” Mark wailed. “I am so sorry.”

  “We’re pulling over,” Aaron shouted as he accelerated and jammed into the unusually crowded double-lane road. He accelerated to the right and cut off a new 1991 Chevrolet Caprice, not realizing upon action that the car they cut off was in fact a police car. The Caprice instantly flicked on its siren and lights the second Aaron’s tires grazed the black concrete of the right lane and, almost as promptly as his last turn, pulled onto the dirt on the side of the road. The police officer walked promptly over, all smiles, to the driver’s window as Aaron slowly cranked it down.

  “Hey, Aaron, seems you have a human sticking out of the window. I’d like to inform you that’s not legal.” the officer said, grinning wildly.

  “Hey, Stewart!” yelled Mark in a voice of uncertainty.

  “Oh, you didn’t tell me it was Mark. How’re you doin’, Mark?”

  “Oh, I’ve had better.”

  “You know that’s not how you sit.”

  “I know. I was trying to get to work faster, you see. I made a bet with my wife that I can make more money than her because my check on the fridge was better than hers, and she couldn’t handle it. Then one snarky comment later she was painting, and I was chilling on Aaron’s lap.”

  “And how did this happen?” Stewart asked, with chirping birds and “Now That We Found Love” filling the short silence, watching Stewart’s smile disappear as a thought rose in his head.

  “You guys aren’t…are you?” Stewart said, his mouth half open.

  “Oh gosh, no, that’s not what this was!” Mark hollered as he tried again to push himself off Aaron, who fell into a frantic shuffle to turn off the radio, skipping from station to station. “I jumped in, but my arms were too weak to push me up!” Mark continued to confess. “Aaron was going to pull over anyways.”

  “I was, I swear on my life,” Aaron interrupted, waving his hands like a madman, still trying to turn off his sticking radio. “There are no feelings like that, I swear.”

  “Oh really,” Stewart said, barely holding in his laughter. “Then how do you explain Heavy D?”

  “Let’s not talk about Heavy D!” Mark screamed as Aaron pushed him into a wobbly, upright position.

  Stewart began to laugh so hard he bent over in a fit of hilarity, cramping from his borderline diabetic stomach.

  One $320 fine later and they were back on the road with Mark, more angry at the radio than anything else, with him arms crossed and light, provoking words appropriate for children’s cartoons. “Raga smaga baga,” he jabbered like a madman. Later, Mark took his check off the refrigerator, cashed it in, and paid for the ticket, continuously bickering even with the teller. Mark was upset when he did; once he came home, it was pitiful depression. The tired 911 respondent’s feet dragged, his lip hung, and he couldn’t even place his coat on the hanger. It lay on the square tiles next to the front door. Mary came out of her office from continuously painting
morning to evening; she was in a classic white painting apron with a few wet paintbrushes in its front pocket and wet paint strokes on the front, while older strokes were faded underneath. Her brunette hair was in a tight ponytail, which also bore fresh paint strokes from continuous, dedicated work. But after all the painting, she was still very energetic, both hands clenched tight around her mouth.

  “Mark, how was your day?”

  “I got a ticket.”

  “But you work for the police department. Explain how this happened.” Mark looked up and saw her smile behind her two clenched hands, shaking in order to contain herself from bursting out into a loud, joyful roar. Mark quietly laughed to himself, stretching his tired face with his left hand, knowing exactly where her amusement arose from.

  “Did you record it?”

  “All the way until the stop sign.”

  “I was struggling to get in.”

  “I met the neighbors. They thought it was funny, too.”

  “You showed it to our neighbors?” Mark began to laugh slightly bent over like Stewart earlier that day, believing he should cry instead.

  “They wouldn’t stop watching it, until the battery died on the camcorder.”

  “That’s fantastic. I’m very glad.”

  “So I went to the store and bought a replacement. The store clerk’s favorite part is when Aaron stopped at the stop sign.”

  In total, Mary had shown the video to thirteen people. Mark was on the ground laughing at the end.

  “Well, I guess I win,” Mary stated with complete confidence, after helping Mark up with one hand in his and the other on the ledge of a recliner.

  “If you win, I’ll eat my shorts.”

  “Then you better find a good cook, because I’m not going to cook for you ever again,” Mary half teased while flicking her chin into the sky. She then turned around and, with her arms crossed, walked over to their room.

  “That’s quite all right. I’m a better cook, anyways,” Mark joyfully claimed with half certainty, knowing with confidence that without her, his diet would only consist of Honey Nut Cheerios, milk, Kraft macaroni and cheese, microwaved popcorn cooked in brown paper bags, and burnt eggs.

  “Then it won’t be any trouble.”

  “I can cook circles around you.”

  “I’ll make it easy for you Mr. Wegman, and take a well-deserved nap.” Her voice echoed from the hallways as she walked farther into the house.

  “You don’t want dinner?” Mark asked, unaware that his voice cracked and goose bumps rose when he spoke, as he also tried to remember a time when Mary was not there. He could not, while silence began to overrun the house.

  “Are you going to wear a hairnet?” Mary asked, which made Mark smile with increasing joy, and he rubbed his newly growing peach hair with one hand. Hair, no matter what length, was hair, and after months without it, the feeling, the texture of it, overwhelmed him with excitement.

  “I love you!” Mark yelled happily.

  “I love you too, my amazing and handsome husband!”

  Later in the night, Mark made eggs for himself and quietly prayed for the meal. Thanking God for his life and God’s grace and mercy. Then, after throwing out the eggs for having too many eggshells, all hiding like Waldo, he went to bed. These were the second happiest days of Mark’s life, with him and Mary in the face of hope, living humbly in a small, rented dwelling. Yet when he spent time away from Mary, Aaron was around, driving Mark places while also working in the same station, which they both enjoyed a lot because of their lengthy friendship and strong, brother-like respect for one another. Aaron continued to have more and more awkward moments, drifting away from a time in his life where his heart carried billions of opinions, hundreds of keenly prepared rants, and witty, vulgar responses—now, when in the situation, never knowing what to say. It began when Mark got ill, yet skyrocketed once Aaron became a police officer. His confidence and sense of protection increased tremendously, the control freak finally believing he was the captain to his own future.

  At the station, it was easy to point out that Mark was loved for his strength and witty comments, yet at the same time balanced on the brink of ruin, hidden deep in his soul like the eggshells that hid so well in his scrambled eggs. March 11, 1991, was the date when Mark began to run through life like a man walking on a tightrope the width of some surgical stitches. He ran without a back heel, without a net to catch him if he fell. Ever since the breaking point, Mark had been balancing on one thing: Mary.

  One week later and they both placed their checks on the fridge, surprisingly close in value. Mark earned an amount of $650 by working forty-eight hours—eight hours of soul-crushing overtime, compared to last month’s $590. Mary sold a painting, for $600, of a woman praying on her knees on the front steps of a funeral service, families crying with deep, overwhelming grief. Their faces were all different shades of dense, dark blue, in clothes blacker than coal. Yet the woman on the ground carried a shade of blue darker than them all, her hands clenched so painfully hard in the form of prayer that the intersection of her two firmly pressed hands was shooting off silvery red sparks, like two metal plates at an extreme speed, clashing together with welding force. In the coffin was the woman who bowed on her knees. It was obvious that she was deceased, with the stiff, lifeless body she once called home lying dormant in a box of finely chosen, elegantly bright brown wood, and her newly replicated, slightly transparent, dark blue body and wings only inches from the body. The angel smiled with tears streaming through her clenched eye sockets. Her miserable, overly dramatic tears originated from the grief she felt for departing from the only world she knew, leaving the ones who couldn’t see her, the ones who grieved with their own different levels of self-fear, the ones who didn’t expect such a thing.

  Yet the smile, the beaming smile that seemed as if it were ripped off a much different, sweeter portrait, was filled with bright, welcoming colors. There were shades of her eloquent brown skin around her rosy-red, vibrant lip-gloss, and coconut-white teeth. They were colors you could only imagine in a cartoon nature book for toddlers. The bright colors took up only a slither of space on the painting yet represented the flicker of light many feel once death has been knocking for some time. The colorful grin was the acceptance of death, the overpowering joy of her fast-approaching life in the world of clouds. The portrait was called And Then There Was Light, as it represented the woman’s first epiphany of her departure from Earth-bound pain, loneliness, and the fear of unworthiness in God’s judgmental eyes. The first realization that she was going to spend an eternity in constant, never-ending bliss occurred instantaneously, so quick that only her smile could react fast enough. Now many would say that this was one of Mary’s weird portraits, because the woman bowed down to two objects at once—there was the cross over the coffin and, well, the coffin. Although many simple-minded observers might have missed this symbolism, the idea was simple. She just wasn’t ready to let go.

  Mark saw the painting before a very old man purchased it. An old man that had something completely wrong with him, wickedly wrong, yet Mark could not figure out what it was. Mary had soon begun to advertise her art in many newspapers as well as pitch up periodical tents in art fairs with a tiny yet growing list of numbers from art collectors, whom she would call first, once her most recent painting was complete or her tent was up in the fairs. Mary called these people “Wet Paint Enthusiasts,” as they always seemed to chase, and sometimes compete, for her artwork, many times still drying, moist on its wooden easel. They always told her that it was the symbolic meanings she slipped into the cracks that made them so lovely, “are what art should be.” One seventy-eight-year-old, feather-voiced German woman told her, “it should make you think.” Yet she’d been having thoughts that this, this weird old man with such a darkening aroma, never had a single care for the art or the symbolic meanings. That this specific Wet Paint Enthusiast only cared for her.
Mary felt that her shudder from his call was just the beginning stage of a cold, just the sun setting in the mountains, pushing her off track from the glare into her eyes. It rang after she lifted the fine-point gel pen from the bottom right corner of the painting, signing her name. He called her from the phone number listed in her newspaper ad and asked to buy her most recent work of art.

  “I enjoy my art fresh,” the man stated in his very smooth yet very imperiling voice. “It’s a habit of mine, an itch that I must scratch for satisfaction.”

  He then stated that their meeting must be soon, as soon as they can, so an hour later, Mark and Mary both waited for this man to arrive, the paint so unbelievably wet that she had to hold the painting by its inward wooden frame. She held her painting with a tight fist, and Mark was aware, watching the tension in her eyes constantly burn, waiting for the perfect time to burst. She wasn’t only concerned with the man; there was always an emotion that was concealed from the outside, something else within Mary.

  “Are you alright?” Mark asked with a gentle, troubled smile. Mary continued to stare at the front door, unmoved.

  “Yeah, why do you ask?”

  “Well the painting you created is beautiful, although it’s very concerning. Is something wrong?”

  Mary began to stare into his eyes, both knowing that once she explained why, March 11 and the black swan would all seem like the same day. She burst out in uncontrollable, hysterical tears once again.