Blank Canvas

by Mere Joyce

  “Hello, Maddie,” Tim says, taking a sip from his Healing Expressions coffee cup. I’m glad he and Juliet call me Maddie instead of Madison, like Klara does. I’ve gone by Maddie since my days in preschool, and being called it here makes the office seem slightly less institutional.

  Of course, it doesn’t make this moment any less awful.

  “H-hi,” I stammer, my voice thin. My feet ache as I force them across the threshold. Tim prefers it if I close the door behind me, but I need to see my escape route. Shakily, I cross the room and sit on the bench along the wall of windows that look down over the parking lot. The cushions are soft, bright orange, and there are pink and green and blue throw pillows scattered along the seat. I grab the blue one, and hug it to my chest as I stare at the world on the free side of the glass panes.

  It’s a strange sensation, watching the world like this. In elementary school, at recess, I would sit by the fences backing the neighborhood houses. With my head tilted into the cool fall or warm spring breeze, I would close my eyes and picture the people in those houses: people not working, people working from home, people driving the streets or watering their lawns or relaxing in front of the TV, while I remained stuck at school for another several hours. I have the same thoughts now as I gaze over the parking lot, far out to the park, the townhouse complex, and the streets beyond. So many people sleeping, reading, shopping––all while I’m here, trapped behind a wall of glass.

  It helps to keep my back to the easel. Slowly, the panic of my arrival subsides, and I take full gulping breaths until I’ve settled into muted unease.

  “How are you feeling today, Maddie?” Tim asks. He remains seated. I get antsy if his six-foot-three inch body looms over me.

  “I’m fine,” I lie. I’m never fine. Not anymore. But declaring it is like stating the obvious.

  “How’s school?” I can hear a smile in his voice. I like Tim’s voice, with its deep, quietly enthusiastic tone. I’m fairly certain I like Tim, too. Or at least I would, if the circumstances were different. If he didn’t have the task of prying, of guiding me into frigid, infested waters every time we meet.

  “It’s fine,” I say, shrugging my shoulders.

  Tim’s chair scrapes across the floor as he stands. I keep my eyes fixed on the parking lot outside. I’ve found Wesley’s tiny van, and I watch it intently.

  Tim approaches, sits on the bench a ways off. “Did you read any papers this week?”

  “No.” The tension I nearly shed on the ride over here is creeping back again. I hate therapy. I don’t understand how digging into every unpleasant crevice of my subconscious is supposed to make my life easier.

  “How about the news? Did you watch any?” Tim asks, even though I’m already shaking my head.

  “Y-You know I didn’t,” I reply, and Tim breathes out, the resulting sound just short of a sigh.

  “How many times have you had to avoid his picture?” he asks, and I squeeze the pillow until my fingers are white.

  “S-Seventy … S-Seventy-two,” I choke out.

  It’s become a habit keeping track of the number of times I stop myself from seeing him. When I go to the drugstore and see the papers lined in a hideous row. When the news comes on, and reporters rehash what happened.

  In the beginning, it was far harder. There were articles all over, news stories, constant threats to my sanity. Five months on, most of my count comes from the personal attacks, the times I remember something, imagine something, and his face almost manages to push its way in.

  “Good. An improvement on last week,” Tim says, the pleasing smoothness of his voice giving the achievement a more respectable air than it deserves. Last week there were seventy-eight occurrences. Having six fewer episodes means nothing, except Tim is trying to be as positive as possible.

  Plus, there’s the phone call to consider. Last week might have been an improvement, but I’m certain my methods of diversion will fail to keep me from replaying the conversation I wasn’t supposed to hear this morning.

  I glance at Tim from the corner of my eye, wondering if I should tell him about the call. It’s funny, the difference between my therapists. Klara, structured and straightforward, is the only person I’ve told the details of my kidnapping to, aside from the account I gave the police. Whereas nurturing and hopeful Tim is the only one familiar with my obsessive habits and avoidances, and constant bouts of anxiety, and the only one who sees how much of a mess I truly am. I’m not pleased there are so many people involved in my recovery. But if I keep the pieces of my issues separated, I feel like I have a minute amount of control over it all.

  I don’t say anything to Tim. Before I’ve fully made up my mind, he gets up again, walking to the tall cupboard against the far wall of his office and opening its doors. He switches on a small stereo, and soft music flows into the room. It’s a tranquil track, bamboo flute with a backdrop of trickling water. When I was ten, I went to a birthday party at a spa. We got manicures and pedicures, and similar music played in the lavender-walled room. It’s meant to be meditative, but it irritates me, at least until I’ve had a chance to sink into its rhythm and gradually discover its peaceful qualities.

  “Here, why don’t you take this,” Tim says once he’s arrived back at the bench by the windows. He gives me a pad of paper in exchange for my pillow, and for a while I doodle as he talks. He doesn’t talk about anything specific, or anything remarkably interesting. He tells me about a wilderness preservation center a few towns away he visited once, and about some of the wildlife known to inhabit the area. He mentions how the lake near his home has started seeing its share of weekend visitors now the weather is warm enough for picnicking. He talks mostly about nature in some form or other, and I scribble on the pad, my mind wandering between visions and thoughts as the one-sided conversation rambles on.

  I don’t pay much attention to my drawings. When Tim finishes talking, I’m unsurprised to see I’ve sketched several trees, an owl, two beach houses, and various flowers, swirls, and stars. Tim takes the pad back from me, not looking at what I’ve drawn. The exercise isn’t about associations. It’s a way for me to get comfortable with creating art again, and a way to make the act of forming pictures something natural. It works, at least while he’s talking, and it helps to further calm me. But after he takes the pad away, he stands back from the bench, and I can hear his steady breathing as he watches me from behind.

  “Maddie, would you like to approach the easel?” he asks at last. I shake my head immediately.

  “I can’t,” I tell him.

  “Maddie.”

  “Ican’t,” I repeat fiercely. “N-Not today.”

  Tim moves, his shoes clicking against the tiled floor. “I’m not asking you to paint a masterpiece,” he says calmly. “You don’t even have to use acrylics. I have watercolors here. Why don’t you paint something simple, like a flower?”

  “No,” I say, my eyes straining against the onslaught of tears. He thinks my fear stems from not being good anymore. That’s what I told him, after all. His familiarity with the details of my abduction extend only so far as things the newspapers have mentioned, and there’s been nothing written about the paintings. It will come out at the trial, I suppose. But for now, Tim only knows what I choose to tell him. And all I’ve mentioned of my former life has been that I liked painting portraits, and I liked using acrylic paints most of all. He thinks if he switches the medium, my fears should all go away.

  He doesn’t understand it makes no difference if I’m using a preschool paint set to complete a paint by numbers, or taking a professional’s set of oils and trying to copy something from Van Gogh or the Group of Seven. It’s all the same. I can’t paint anything.

  “Maddie, you’ll never be able to move on if you don’t break through this barrier and see the easel as a therapeutic tool,” Tim reasons. “You love art, you love to create, you love to express yourself through your work. That is a wonderful thing, Maddie. As I understand it, painting has been a significa
nt part of your life since early childhood. And I truly believe if you let yourself paint again, you’ll discover the key to beginning your path of healing.”

  Everyone is obsessed with my healing. Sometimes, I am, too. But in this instant, all I want is to avoid catastrophe.

  “I-I can’t do it, Tim. Not today,” I say again.

  And possibly, I think,not ever.

  Chapter Four

  No one guesses how unproductive my therapy sessions are. Not Wesley, and not my family. They believe the therapy is useful, and they’re invariably happy when I’ve returned from getting two hours of professional help. I appreciate their trust, but it also leaves me feeling like I’ve somehow betrayed them. Wesley drives me home when art therapy is at last finished, and I arrive to a dinner of beef dip and goat cheese salad. It’s delicious, but it feels like a reward I haven’t earned.

  After dinner, I try to work on homework at the kitchen table, while in the adjacent living room the TV drones on with a trivia game show. But soon the show is over, and the news comes on instead. The anchor, a young reporter named Lora Kelstrom, rattles off the day’s top stories. When I hear my own name, I tense.

  “In the continuing story of the abduction of local teenager Madison Deacon,” the reporter says in her placid tone, “new findings at the home of Jared Anderson, the man accused of kidnapping and holding Madison Deacon in his house for over two years, may have significant weight in the on-going court proceedings. Police spokesman...”

  I tune out. I close my math textbook, stand from the table, and block the woman’s over-rehearsed voice from my ears. I start quickly from the kitchen, passing the entrance to the living room on my way.

  “Oh, Maddie,” Mom calls worriedly as she sees me rushing by. She’s crocheting, her fingers flying with mesmerizing comfort. “We can change the channel.”

  “N-No, d-don’t,” I say, glancing briefly into the room. The TV shows a video of him, old footage from his arrest. I turn my head so fast my hair whips across my eyes. I’m glad for the temporary curtain. “I-I’m just tired,” I stammer, letting my eyes slide back only far enough to see the pink yarn Mom’s shaping into a jacket for a co-worker’s new baby. “I-I’m going up to bed.”

  “Okay,” Mom says uneasily. She knows it’s too early for bed, but she doesn’t mention the true reason for my disappearing act. “Goodnight, then.”

  “Night,” I reply in a strangled voice, and I hurry away from the TV.

  I make my way up two flights of stairs, beyond the second floor and up to my attic bedroom. Despite my quick departure from the main floor, however, I take the last steps slowly, dreading the moment I’m inside my room and the door is shut, when I’m closed off from the rest of the house. I used to love the isolation of this room. Now, I never like to be alone, even though I keep up the pretense of enjoying my solitude. I wish we had a dog or a cat to keep me company. Even a gerbil would be something.

  Luckily, my seclusion doesn’t last long. Within minutes there’s a knock on my door, and my little sister, Autumn, comes in to keep me company. She understands my need to have someone close. She’s intuitive, and I love her for it.

  I invite her in, and soon she’s sitting on my bed, braiding my hair and talking. Autumn talks circles around me. She’s a natural wordsmith, or at least a natural chatterbox. She tells me about her day, her friends, even her enemies, prattling on endlessly. It’s a nice distraction.

  “I’m sure I failed my English exam,” she sighs after a while, lying back against my pillows and staring up at the ceiling. “I don’t get the point of reading stuff just to analyze it, you know? Why can’t we just read for the sake of, well, reading?”

  “People have a hard time just letting things be,” I say. I wonder what I would be like, if people just let me be. No therapy, no evaluations. If I had a normal life, where I wasn’t a case file in several different desk drawers.

  “People suck, don’t they?” Autumn says, and I smile, crossing my legs and pulling my braid over one shoulder. Wesley treats me like a normal person, and Autumn simply treats me like her sister. She is unconcerned with my therapy, my progress. Our parents call her behavior selfish, but I’m grateful for her attitude. When I’m alone with Autumn, I can almost imagine the last three years were nothing more than a terrible nightmare.

  “Did you thank Wesley for the drive today?” she asks after a brief silence. I roll my eyes, and give her a pointed look.

  “I thank him every time he drives me,” I say, ignoring the smirk on her lips. In the time I was gone, my sister miraculously changed from a child of ten to a girl of thirteen. She’s obsessed with romance, specifically my romance. I’ve tried to explain how Wesley and I are nearly strangers now, no matter how well we knew each other before, but she refuses to agree.

  “You two should go out on a date,” she says. “Have dinner or something. Or you should hear him play!”

  “I doubt he’d want me at one of his sets,” I reply, inwardly wincing at the truth of the statement. Wesley’s been playing the cello since he was five. As kids, he’d practice while I drew, and sometimes we would tell a story, his music and my art coming together in a tale only the two of us understood. Last year, Wesley joined a folk-rock band, and he plays his cello with them twice a month at a coffee house downtown.

  I’d love to hear Wesley play. I’ve missed his music. But I can’t imagine he’d want me at his performances, sitting gloomily in a corner while the other members of the audience shared whispering glances about my identity, wondering if I was that girl from the news.

  “He would definitely want you there,” Autumn says as she raises her head, turning her gaze to me and grinning with so much self-assurance it’s hard not to take her words as fact.

  I shake my head but offer no further response. I can’t dwell on ‘what ifs’. Maybe someday I’ll have a chance at falling for Wesley again. It wouldn’t take much to push me back over the edge. But I can hardly declare my love for the boy when I only see him about once a week, and even then, after months of our standing appointment, neither of us has yet managed to move beyond the stage of inane small talk.

  Living in limbo is infuriating. I never realized, in all my days of hunger and nights of insomnia in The Painter’s house, how damned difficult being free would be. Back then, I imagined if I could just escape, everything would be good again––the world would seem like paradise. I didn’t plan on the nightmares, the paranoia, or the exhaustion. Being alone frightens me, but being with other people tires me out in an unbelievable way. The effort to walk, to speak, to attend therapy sessions and go to school and eat dinner at the family table––I don’t know how to paint, don’t know how to flirt, don’t even know how to tell anyone the whole story of my abduction. It’s hard . . . far harder than I ever expected it to be.

  Sometimes I’m so overwhelmed I want to stop mid-stride and break down in tears. In the first few weeks of being home, I did. Since then, I’ve tried to better keep the turmoil within me, although I’m not sure how convincing my weary act has been.

  Autumn and I settle into silence. My sister closes her eyes and eventually I think she’s fallen asleep, which is okay because at least it means I’ll have someone close to me all night. She startles me when she opens her eyes several minutes later, licking her lips like she’s trying to decide if she wants to say something.

  Eventually, she does.

  “Your room is so boring,” she says, throwing the words out like they are nothing but fluff. My back stiffens, and I slowly let my eyes wander across my white, sloped walls. As a child, I wanted my room to be like an art gallery, a conceited shrine to my own work. I kept the blonde-wood floors bare and the walls blank, had my favorite of my own paintings framed, and hung them around my room. I loved to stare at them before bed, waking up in the mornings, and when I got home from school.

  After my escape, I couldn’t look at the paintings anymore. They were taken down, and now the room is blank. Just like me.

  “Y
eah, I’ll have to d-decorate one of these days,” I say vaguely. Autumn shrugs, glancing carefully at me before closing her eyes again.

  “I miss the paintings,” she says. I wonder if she’s aware how much the paintings scare me, and if she knows how much I miss them, too.

  “Y-You should probably go to bed,” I mumble, even though I’d like her to stay. Honestly, I wish we lived in a house small enough to necessitate us sharing a room.

  But with a small nod, Autumn gets up. She walks around the bed, and pauses long enough to bend over and wrap her arms around me. I want to cling to her and keep her by my side, but I only say goodnight and watch her leave.

  Chapter Five

  When Autumn is gone, I lay back on my bed and make a futile attempt to fall asleep. I stare at the ceiling, at the window, at the closet door. I think about my sister, about how much of a woman she is now, compared to when I left. Her hair has darkened into a blonde more golden than my hair has ever been. She’s starting to get hit with acne, but still her skin looks healthy, her cheeks pink and her complexion fair, not white and transparent like mine. Even her eyes, formerly the exact green-blue hue of my own, are deeper now, more blue than green and lovely to view.

  I wish I had seen the changes take place, and I wonder how the continuing presence of the sun would have changed my appearance, how I would look today if I hadn’t been kept indoors for two and a half years. I escaped the house during the daylight hours, and my whole plan nearly failed because the sun was so bright I couldn’t see or move through the pain in my eyes. If it hadn’t been for Ethan––the man driving the transport truck who saw me crouched on the side of the road––I never would have made it past the property line before my captor returned home.