Work of Art

by Monica Alexander

  I knew he was piecing together the same things I had, and it made my blood run cold. We’d each received an email at the same time, and I was wondering, as I knew he was, if the email he’d gotten from me had been from an email address that looked so similar to mine that he never would have suspected it wasn’t legitimate. A letter or a symbol changed or omitted would go unnoticed unless you were looking for it, which of course you wouldn’t be when the message in the body of the email was so crushing.

  But then to think that when his family learned that I’d kept the baby, they had taken the information and not only kept it from him but had also manipulated it so he lost all rights to his own son. It was sick and twisted, and I knew it was the exact thing his mother was capable of, and at the time, she sure had a good enough reason. Thanks to my mother who couldn’t keep her legs together.

  I looked over at Ryan. He was visibly agitated, and with good reason, but he wasn’t going to be resolving anything tonight, so I needed to find something else to lift his spirits.

  “I’ll be right back,” I told him as I headed to my studio to grab something, hoping I knew what might help him.

  When I returned to the living room, he was leaning back against the couch with his feet propped up on my coffee table with his eyes closed and his thumb and forefinger massaging his temples.

  “Do you want something to drink?”

  His eyes snapped open and he looked up at me. He shook his head but patted the space next to him.

  “I’m fine. Come sit,” he said, and I clutched the box to my chest as I walked the five feet over to the couch.

  I tentatively sat next to him, and he pulled me into his arms. It felt natural, but at the same time it felt so strange.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said softly, as he rested his cheek against my forehead.

  “For what?”

  None of this was his fault, but I knew he was accepting blame for what his family had done. It was the only way he could remain in control, and I hate that he was apologizing for them.

  “For my family being so callous and heartless. I hate them, but more than that, I’m sorry that because of them, I wasn’t there for you. I’m sorry for not doing more to find you when you disappeared. I’m sorry for believing that you’d do something that was so out of character for you. I’m sorry for going to Yale and leaving you stranded when you needed me the most and for not returning your phone calls. For not being a father to our son, and for not being there when he got sick.” His voice broke suddenly. “I’m just sorry for all of it, and I sort of hate myself right now.”

  I pulled back and looked at him. “Ryan, don’t do that. You can’t blame yourself for something you didn’t control.”

  “No,” he said firmly. “You shouldered so much by yourself, and all that time you were thinking that I didn’t want anything to do with you or our child, but I did. I should have returned your calls that summer. I shouldn’t have given up on you, because I knew you, and I knew you wouldn’t do that to me. And I missed you so much for so long that it affected my life. I almost failed out of college. I didn’t have any friends for my first two years at Yale. I definitely didn’t date. All I did was exist, and I didn’t even do a great job of that, because the whole time I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach and left a gaping hole there that just couldn’t be filled. I fucking was miserable.”

  I reached out and took his hand, my heart breaking to hear how awful his life had been for so long. And had I been alone, I might have felt the same way, but I had Tyler and my dad, and because of them, I had no choice but to move on with my life. I’d initially been miserable too, and there were times when I’d cried about our break-up, even years later, but for the most part, I was happy. I had Tyler. I’d had a ray of sunshine in the rain. Ryan didn’t have anyone.

  “I hate that you were miserable, and I hate that I believed so readily that you’d leave me, that you’d leave us. You weren’t that guy, Ryan, and I knew that. I should have gone over to your house and demanded to talk to you. I wish I would have, but at the time, I just couldn’t. That email almost broke me, and I sort of hated you. I wasn’t thinking rationally at all.”

  “No,” he said. “Don’t put that on yourself. It’s not your fault. It’s my fucking family. They made sure that there was no way you’d want to reach out to me. They made sure of it. They’re evil, every last one of them, and I’m so sick of trying to please them and do what’s right in their eyes, because it’s making me miserable all over again. I don’t want this life, this job, this mar–”

  He stopped talking when he realized what he was saying, and he looked up at me in shock. I didn’t know what to say to him. Was he about to tell me he didn’t want his marriage? He was getting married in two days. It was a hell of a time to back out.

  I took the opportunity to change tactics, knowing I needed to. We didn’t know each other well enough anymore to be having a conversation about his relationship. It wasn’t appropriate.

  “Do you want to see more pictures of Tyler?”

  He looked up at me in surprise, and then his face softened. “Yes. Please. That would be amazing.”

  I smiled a small smile knowing I’d be smiling through my tears in mere minutes. Then I took a deep breath like I always did before I looked back on his short life and opened the lid of the box. And then I started to tell Ryan all about Tyler as he sifted through the pictures that were in chronological order.

  He stopped on the first few which were of me holding Tyler in the hospital, his thumb running over the image. I was sweaty and looked exhausted, but there was a smile on my face as I gazed down at my son for the first time.

  “I was in labor for fourteen hours,” I told him, and he looked up at me, but didn’t say anything, so I started talking about that day, and I didn’t stop talking until I’d shared every piece of Tyler’s life I could remember from the day he was born to the day he left the world, and soon enough both of us were in tears.

  When I finished talking an hour later, we were both exhausted, and it was late, but a part of me felt cleansed for the first time in years. I’d gotten so much off of my chest that I hadn’t realized had been sitting there, and I finally had someone who I could talk to who understood my pain. That didn’t happen often. My dad hated to talk about anything emotional, especially Tyler. We shared a bond because we’d gone through everything together, but I couldn’t talk to him.

  Kelly, Julian and Devin knew the story, but none of them had ever met Tyler. We’d become friends a year and a half after he’d died. I hadn’t really been looking to make any friends, but I never realized how much I needed them in my life until they were embedded there.

  After Tyler died I was depressed to the point that my dad started to get concerned that I wasn’t ever going to snap out of it. Then one day, he sat down next to me and showed me a picture I’d taken of Tyler when he’d been painting on the back porch. Tears had sprung to my eyes, but I was no stranger to tears. I cried all the time. But he told me that my son would be so disappointed to know that I’d given up my gift of making the world a prettier place because of him.

  I’d started painting again the very next day. I threw everything I had into my art and photography and even talked to Mario about coming back to the tattoo parlor, but he’d sold the shop two months earlier and was moving back to Hawaii where he’d grown up. So I decided to branch out on my own. I sold my art, saved my money, and six months later I opened up Art Studio, an art gallery and tattoo parlor in one. And I met Julian on the second day I was open.

  “Do you want a beer?” I asked Ryan, as I got up from the couch.

  I needed something to take the edge off, and I had a feeling he did too. He was still flipping through the pictures again, marveling at Tyler’s sweet smile and his bright blue eyes.

  “Please,” he said, glancing up at me for a few seconds before his eyes went back to one of the pictures. “I can’t believe how much he looked like me.”

  I handed
him his beer. “Well, he was half you.”

  “He looks so much like you too,” he said, taking a long swig from his bottle and gazing up at me. “He had your nose, and your smile.”

  “I know,” I said, smiling down at the picture. “But he had your dimples.”

  I sat down next to Ryan with my leg tucked under me so I was facing him. He set the pictures down after a few minutes and turned to me. In that moment, I think we both decided without saying it that we needed a break from being sad. The pain never left you, but if you didn’t force yourself not to feel it, it could cripple you. And I think Ryan was realizing that.

  He watched me for a few moments, as he rested his elbow on the back of the couch and his head on his hand. I didn’t like how he was making me feel. It was scary and dangerous and unfamiliar since I’d closed myself off to men – at least emotionally – long ago.

  “Tell me everything about you,” he finally said. “What have I missed in the past decade? Tell me about your art and your shop and the men you’ve dated and your friends. Tell me everything.”

  He’d caught me off-guard with that request, but he was looking at me so expectantly that I just started talking, telling him the story of how I’d gotten started in the tattoo business, how I’d been an apprentice, how I’d painted on the side and started selling my art to galleries. I told him about my dad and Kelly and Julian and Devin and the people I worked with, because he was listening to my every word with such attention that I felt I needed to be open and honest, and I usually wasn’t open with people. But Ryan was the guy who’d opened my heart in the first place, so it was only fitting that I let him back in.

  “What about boyfriends?”

  I shook my head. “There haven’t been many. I didn’t date when I had Tyler, and even for a few years afterward. Julian or Kelly will set me up every now and then, but I haven’t met anyone worth spending my time with just yet.”

  “What’s up with you and Brandon?”

  “Nothing,” I answered automatically. “We’re just friends.”

  “He’s a good guy. And you seem to get along really well.”

  “I know, but he’s just a friend.”

  Ryan looked at my arm for a few beats and then reached out to finger one of my tattoos. I had five butterflies on each arm, all different colors and styles, and he examined each of them.

  “Twenty-six. But only thirteen are visible if I’m wearing clothes. The others are on my back and stomach.”

  I think he caught a glimpse of the tattoo on the underside of my left wrist since he grabbed my hand and flipped it over. Then he squinted, as if trying to figure out what it was.

  “It looks like a bullet with butterfly wings,” he said, looking up at me for confirmation.

  “That’s exactly what it is. And it was one of the first tattoos I got because it reminded me of how I felt growing up. I was trapped in a life that didn’t make sense to me and I hated it, but I couldn’t break free. I read somewhere that’s sort of how Billy Corgan felt about his fame when Smashing Pumpkins made it big, and it resonated with me.”

  Ryan grinned. “You always did have a soft spot for Smashing Pumpkins.”

  I returned his smile. “I did. And you were always a freak about Green Day.”

  “Still am,” he said, smiling wider. “So, which one of your tattoos is your favorite?”

  I pointed to the stars on my neck, and he reached out and fingered the trail extending from the back of ear and down my neck. It wasn’t my favorite, but it was a close second. I had a tattoo on my hip of a T with the dates of Tyler’s life around it and a rosary entwined throughout that ran halfway down my thigh. It was my favorite, but I wasn’t ready to show it to Ryan.

  “What do the stars symbolize?”

  “I get one every time I tattoo a celebrity,” I said, and his eyes got wide. “I’m kidding. They symbolize goodness and truth and also light in the darkness.”

  He smiled. “I like that. Which one did you get last?”

  I felt like we were playing twenty questions, but I lifted up my shirt to show him the song lyric I’d added just a month before that flowed around my bellybutton in script.

  “We are all misfits living in a world on fire?” he read.

  I blushed. “It’s a lyric from a Kelly Clarkson song. My best friend Julian is slightly obsessed with her, so he makes me listen to her albums whenever we’re in the car, and this song was off of her last album. It resonated with me.”

  Ryan sighed. “I feel like a misfit sometimes.”

  I laughed and dropped my t-shirt back down. “Who you? Mr. ‘button-down shirt, khaki pants wearing, golf playing, Porsche driving, banker’? No way.”

  “I just told you an hour ago that I hate my job and my life. I don’t fit into it, and I never have, and I’m sick of trying. Besides, I’d much rather have your car than mine.”

  I smiled. “You’re not touching my Shelby.”

  I had a vintage 1966 Shelby Mustang that my dad has restored for me a few years earlier. I loved it, and I never let anyone else drive it.

  “But I can admire it from afar and hope to have one of my own one day.”

  “That you can do,” I said before subtly circling back to the topic he’d now brought up twice, so I sort of figure he wanted to talk about it. He said in a joking way that he hated his life, but I knew how serious he was about what he was saying. “If that’s what makes you happy.”

  I paused, giving him the opportunity to tell me more if he wanted.

  “I honestly don’t do a lot of things that make me happy,” he said, taking the opportunity.

  “Why not?”

  He shrugged. “Because I have obligations, but I’m not so sure I want them anymore.”

  “So what do you want, Ryan?” I asked, really hoping he wasn’t going to start talking about his relationship.

  If he told me he wanted to call off his wedding, I wasn’t even sure how to navigate through that. I’d be a good friend and talk to him, but it would be uncomfortable territory for me.

  “I want to quit my job. I want to teach,” he said automatically.

  “So why don’t you do it?”

  “Familial pressure.”

  “Screw them. It’s what I did, and I’m fortunate that I got out alive.”

  I was also twenty-five thousand dollars poorer as of late, but it was a good trade-off for rarely having to interact with my mother for the past ten years.

  He looked up at me, his blue eyes on fire as he appraised me carefully. “You seem happy, Harper.”

  I nodded once. “I am happy, Ryan. Very happy.”

  Or as happy as I can be given what I’d lost.

  I knew I’d never be one hundred percent whole again, but losing a child will do that to you. I could only hope to get most of the way there.

  “I’m glad,” he said, and he looked like he wanted to say something else, but something about the look on his face made me nervous.

  So I finished my beer and stretched my arms over my head. “It’s after one, and I’m exhausted. I think I’m going to go to bed. I have to pick Brandon up at the airport at like noon.”

  Ryan laughed as he set his beer on the coffee table and stood up. “How is that I’ve known the guy for seven years, and you’ve knowing him for a month, and you’re the one picking him up at the airport?”

  I shrugged. “He likes me better.”

  “It’s because you’re a hot chick,” he said, and I laughed.

  Then he stood up and started to walk toward the front door.

  “Ryan?” I called after him.

  “Hmm?” he asked, his hand on the doorknob.

  I didn’t know what it was, but I suddenly didn’t want him to go. Maybe it was guilt over telling him about Tyler and knowing that he’d be alone in his apartment with his fiancé out of town or maybe it was because he’d told me how unhappy he was. Or maybe, and I really didn’t want this to be the reason, but since I now knew he hadn’t left me all those years ago
, the feelings I’d forced myself to ignore over the past few weeks had started to resurface, and I was afraid to let him walk out that door, knowing that the next time I saw him, everything would be different. He’d be with his fiancé, and he’d be getting married. And we’d never be in the place we were in – wherever that was – again.

  “It’s late. Do you just want to crash here?”

  I shouldn’t have asked. I should have just let him leave.

  “Ugh,” he groaned, as he ran his hand back through his hair, the exhaustion I knew he felt overtaking him. “That is so tempting, because I’m tired as hell, but I probably shouldn’t.”

  “Okay,” I said, my heart sinking just enough to let me know I was in big trouble. “I just figured I’d offer.”

  I knew what he was thinking – ex-girlfriend who wasn’t currently dating anyone inviting him to stay at her apartment seemed suspicious, but regardless of what I was feeling, I’d never try anything. I wasn’t about to ruin his relationship. I just wasn’t ready to say goodbye.

  He gazed at me for a few seconds, as if contemplating my invite. “Are you sure it’s okay?”

  “Absolutely, if you don’t mind the couch. I don’t have a guest room, but I’ll get you a sheet and a blanket and towels in case you want to take a shower in the morning, and if you’re here when I get up, I’ll make you breakfast.”

  “The couch is perfect,” he said, nodding once. “Thank you, Harper. This was a very unexpected night, and I’m glad you were here to talk me through it all. Just, thank you.”

  He still seemed a little stunned which I guess was to be expected.