Blank Canvas

by Mere Joyce

  In the dark, the possible follies of my latest exercise flood me. It’s a dangerous slope, giving into art of any kind. Because creating the picture I did tonight makes me burn with the need to do more. I imagine the scene, and am convinced if I could only paint it, it would be better, so much better. I tuck the field and its dancers into creases of my mind, desperate to keep their forms in tact. I tell myself it’s for memory’s sake, but I’m not so ignorant of my own secret desires. I’m storing it so perhaps one day I’ll be able to paint it properly.

  The idea makes me quiver, but I can’t figure out whether the tremors in my limbs are from anticipation or fear.

  When I fall asleep, I dream of dancers in the night. They swirl and twist, brightly colored mist drifting behind their every move. I float, weightless, all my chains broken and my skin alight with sun shining from my pores. But then the mist darkens, thickens, snakes into hands pulling me down, until I’m locked in the old familiar room, my skin shuddering as a gruesome shadow coats my body with stroke after stroke of poisonous paint.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I start my week with no energy. Monday is therapy day, and so much has happened since my last sessions I’m exhausted even thinking about the questions Klara and Tim will ask. After the final school bell rings, Wesley is waiting for me by the portables behind the building. I knew he’d be there, but seeing him still lifts a weight from my chest.

  “Hi,” he says, so meekly I know he’s been dwelling on the events of last Tuesday night, too.

  “Hi,” I reply, just as timidly.

  “Thanks for the cookies,” he says, his hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans. “They were really good.”

  “Oh,” I say, surprised. The events of the weekend made me forget the small deed I did to thank Wesley for something he doesn’t even know about. “Y-You’re welcome. I’m g-glad you liked them.” I offer him a small smile, to prove I’m not hostile. He does the same, and then we head to his mini-van.

  I try not to look at him while we drive, but I can’t help it. The radio is set to a station playing classical, and the music, which I’m fairly sure is something by Schubert, doesn’t exactly distract me from my company. Wesley’s tapping his fingers against the steering wheel, in time to the performance––I don’t think he’s aware of his rhythmic drumming, but it’s entrancing.

  Those damned hands.

  Those damned, beautiful,perfect hands.

  I want to touch them. Not hold them, exactly. I want to do more than simply hold them. I want to feel their texture, the silky lengths of well-moisturized skin and the hard calluses of fingers toughened from work and play. I want to run my fingertips along the lines of his palms, and the smooth curves of his nails. I want his grip on me, his strength clutching against my flesh. I want soft caresses, and ferocious grabbing.

  And yes, I want to hold his hands, while we stare at one another, or up at the stars.

  “Th-thank you for driving me,” I say, and I hope it doesn’t sound like an automatic gesture.

  He glances at me, eyebrows raised. “Of course,” he says. And then, after a pause, “Always.”

  I’m desperate to say more, to tell him the things threatening to gush from my lips with or without permission from my mind. But before the confessions have time to escape, we arrive at Klara’s office. Wesley parks the car, and I resign myself to spending the next hour with my shrink.

  I think about Wesley as Klara greets me, bids me to sit in my usual chair. I’m still thinking about him when she begins our session, and he occupies my thoughts so completely when Klara asks me to tell her what happened the night I disappeared, I don’t hesitate.

  “I was walking alone,” I recite from memory, barely aware I’m doing it. “I was hit over the head. I woke up in a dank, windowless room, tied to the handles of the closet door. That’s basically where I stayed for about two and a half years. No sunlight, no television, no music. Just him and his painting. And then I escaped.”

  Klara’s stunned expression is what brings me back into focus. She only wears it for a short second before her features pool into a studious mask of indifference, but it’s enough for me to realize how easily, how casually, I’ve let the story spill from my lips.

  Klara weighs her options. I can see the workings in her brain, as she tries to choose between delving into why I spoke so readily when I usually protest the exercise, and pushing her luck with further questions about my captivity.

  She decides to push her luck.

  “Madison, can you tell me about your feet?” she asks, and I press my lips into a white line while I scramble for a response.

  “I’m going to the Art Showcase,” I blurt after a minute. I didn’t intend to discuss the showcase with Klara, but it offers a dramatic subject change to free me from her current line of questioning.

  Klara looks surprised again. “You are?” she asks, and I let out a huff of nervous breath.

  “Yeah,” I nod. “M-My sister’s in it. She’s doing a dance performance. She’s in Grade Eight, so it’s her f-first year.” Autumn told me about her entry Saturday night, on our way home from the soccer field. I understand why she held off telling me for so long, but I’m sad she felt she had to. She informed me of her performance because she wants me to see her dance. If she’d kept it a secret only a few days longer, I would have missed my opportunity to do so.

  I don’t add that Wesley’s in the Showcase as well. My sister’s presence is enough of an excuse for my attendance, in Klara’s eyes.

  “And you want to support her?” If Klara carried a notepad, I’m sure this is the moment she’d be scribbling notes so frantically the pen would rip a hole in the paper.

  “Yeah, I do,” I say. Because it’s true––I do. And I don’t want Mom or Dad to miss Autumn’s performance, either. There’s no way they’d let me stay home alone, so if I don’t go, one of them will insist on staying with me. They both missed my first Art Showcase. They were working, Mom at the hotel, Dad at the office. They weren’t around to support me, and their absence changed everything.

  I don’t blame my parents for my disappearance. But they do. They think if they had been there, then none of this would have happened. At least, all things considered, my parents are more involved with me and Autumn now. The silver lining, I guess. A little good, from a lot of bad.

  “How do you feel, knowing you’ll be in a similar situation again?” Klara asks, but it’s the wrong question, asked with the wrong intent. I’m not afraid of being taken again. It’s being around the displays I fear. Seeing an alternate version of my future play out as colleges and universities hunt for potential pupils, and the students in the showcase beam with the hope they’ll be singled out.

  I used to love planning for the future. Even in captivity, I’d plan for my eventual escape. But over the last five months, I haven’t even planned what to wear to school. My life has come to a standstill.

  And I’m sick of it.

  I want a plan I can work towards, one to give me a life worth planning for. I just don’t know how to begin. Without art, I don’t know what to strive for, what other path I could possibly take.

  But art’s not an option anymore, at least not the kind of art I’ve always created. Any doubts I had of this resolution were stripped from me when I saw those eyes at the gallery, when my subconscious reminded me not to get carried away with fantasies by giving me a heavy dose of nightmares after Saturday night.

  I can barely manage to look at portraits without imagining The Painter, without feeling his demonic grip squeezing away my sanity. Creating pieces for a living, or even as a hobby, is unthinkable. What little reality still grounds me would surely crumble if I jumped back into a painter’s world.

  Going to the Showcase might again tempt me to reconsider. But how many times can I bash my head against the wall before my skull cracks in two? The real danger is in forgetting the truth I have to learn to accept.

  Painting’s not a possibility. And I can’t live
until I’m free of it.

  Free ofhim.

  “I feel fine,” I lie in response to Klara’s question. I don’t feel fine. I feel lost and scared, without identity and unsure where to look for one. I feel like a nobody, trapped inside a girl who used to be a somebody.

  Both of us are miserable.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  I don’t want to be a nobody. And I’m tired of being miserable. I didn’t escape just to exist like this, afraid and depressed, living in a world devoid of peace or comfort.

  The rest of my hour with Klara is spent in alternating silences, first her, then me, the occasional pointed question and vague response volleying back and forth between us. She wants more information about the Art Showcase, but I don’t give her many details. When we meet next week, the whole thing will be over. If I have any new emotional scars from the big event, we can dissect them then.

  On the drive from Klara to Tim, from psychiatrist to art therapist, I sink into my misery. And I stare at Wesley. He’s hypnotic, and he must be aware of my constant gaze. He keeps his eyes trained steadily ahead of him, though, a perfect driver, seemingly oblivious to my creepy pastime.

  I love how he doesn’t call me out on it. He could easily talk to me, or flat out tell me to stop staring. But he doesn’t. He lets me watch him, and I doubt it even bothers him much. I love his patience, his complacency. I love a lot of things about him.

  I wish I could tell him so. I don’t want to constantly question whether he likes me, or just feels a duty to help, thinks I’m a good deed. I want to be alive enough, whole enough, to accept his friendship as honest, to reasonably hope when my heart skips a beat as we lock eyes, his might be doing the same.

  I need to have a life again. And in order to attain a worthwhile life, I need a plan.

  Bringing art back into my life isn’t working. So as we make the drive from one office to the other, I make the decision to try the opposite tactic. I’m going to cut out art altogether. But in order to achieve such a feat, I need to get out of art therapy.

  And that means I have no choice. I’m going to have to paint a stupid picture.

  We arrive at the complex, and I stare up at the windows of Tim’s office with determination. Mumbling a quick goodbye to Wesley, I get out of the mini-van and nearly run into the building. I’m jittery as I ride the elevator up, and when the doors slide open, I march down the hall, through the waiting room, throw open the door of Tim’s office, and step directly up to the easel.

  “Maddie, hi!” Tim calls, his gaze lifted from his desk as he watches my swift approach.

  “G-Give me s-something to p-paint,” I say quickly, as I open a tube of brown paint and squeeze a bit onto the palette to mix with white. I feel queasy and my temples are beginning to throb, but I force myself to keep moving.

  “Something to paint?” Tim repeats, not understanding. He’s probably shocked at my behavior. I don’t think I’ve ever come here in a rush, and I’ve certainly never walked eagerly into his office while the easel’s been set up.

  I don’t look up from what I’m doing. Just the sight of the paint, the slightly unpleasant smell of whatever brand of cheap watercolors the office has purchased, is enough to make my head swim. I can’t focus on anything else without losing my balance.

  “D-Do you want m-me to d-do a flower, a b-bird, an airplane?” I ask, breathing through my mouth to get as full a breath as possible. “I n-need d-direction. Just t-tell me what to d-draw.” My hands shake like mad as I hold the brush and palette.

  Tim is quiet while I mix colors, probably biding his time before he tells me I need to sit down. Or, if he doesn’t want to discourage my zest for inner confrontation, he might suggest I decide on the object of the painting myself. But after a moment I hear him rise from his seat and step out from behind his desk. He walks past me, and comes around to stand at the back of the easel.

  “Why don’t you draw a tree?” he says slowly, considering my trembling figure. “You’ve already got the brown started.”

  “A t-tree,” I breathe, nodding. A tree. Easy. I’ve drawn loads of them here, and I’ve painted plenty of them in the past. Simple. No problem.

  I get the right amount of paint on my brush, and hold it up in the air. It wobbles in my fingers as if it’s battery-powered and set to vibrate.

  So far, I’ve looked at the brush, and the paints. Now, I drag my eyes up to the paper clipped to the easel in front of me. It’s just a piece of paper, a white piece of paper. It’s just a brush, and some paint, and a tree.

  My feet tingle and burn. They ache.

  I bite my lip, my knees weak. I want to sit down. I need to sit down. But I can’t. I need to paint the stupid tree so I can stop painting for good.

  I bring the brush up to the paper.

  It’s just a piece of paper. Just a piece of paper. Just a brush, just some paper.

  Just do it. Just paint.

  His face flashes before me, and I take a wild step backwards.

  “Maddie, are you okay?” Tim asks. I can feel the tears coming, and I don’t have the strength to keep them away.

  I look at the paper again, and there is his face, The Painter’s evil outline like a series of bright spots blinding me with every blink. He, who I’ve been so careful not to see––not to think about, not even to picture. Suddenly, I can’t shake the image, and the queasiness bucks against my stomach, hurling itself up my throat.

  “I c-can’t do this,” I manage weakly, dropping the brush and the palette. I stagger away from the easel, over to the open door leading to my escape. But before I can make it out of Tim’s office, I have to stop at the trash bin by the door to vomit. My shoulders heave, and I cough between violent bursts as food and bile empty themselves into the bin. Tim is behind me, saying something, but I can’t make sense of his words.

  When I finally stop vomiting, I wipe my mouth and crawl to a standing position. Then I run out of the door, stumbling, hitting the wall in the hallway, pushing myself back up and continuing on. Tim is calling my name, but I don’t stop. I just keep running, picking up speed, until I’m out of the office, down the hall, past the elevators, and taking the stairs two at a time to the first floor. I run out of the complex, across the parking lot, and collapse against the side of Wesley’s van.

  “Maddie, what’s wrong?” Wesley saw me coming, and he’s already by my side as I slide to the ground, sobbing hysterically.

  “I c-can’t do it!” I yell through a cry. I feel his hand on my shoulder as he sits beside me.

  “Can’t do what?” he asks, and his voice is so gentle it calms me enough to look up at him through eyes blurry with tears.

  “I can’t paint,” I say, wiping my cheeks and nose with the sleeve of my shirt. “Everyone keeps t-telling me to paint, and I can’t do it.I h-have to s-stop painting. I have to g-get away from it, I have to get away from him.How can I ever get away from him if everyone wants to push me back to w-where it all s-started?”

  “Maddie.” Wesley pulls me into his arms, holds me. I cry for a while, and when the tears finally subside, Wesley speaks again. “Maddie, we don’t want to push you back. We just want you to get better. All we want is for you to be okay. All I want is for you to be okay.”

  I raise my eyes to him. I must look disgusting, but he stares back at me unflinchingly, his gaze serious and pleading.

  “Y-You wrote a song about me,” I say quietly, and he nods.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  His brows draw in as he studies my face.

  “Because I missed you,” he says, like it’s obvious. And maybe it is. I think it probably is.

  “I missed you, too,” I say, and suddenly I want very badly to kiss Wesley. I want to grab his face in my hands and pull him to me. I want to feel his lips against mine, taste his breath, to fill myself with his scent and his warmth.

  I really wish I hadn’t just vomited.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “I need to tell you something,”
I say to Wesley instead. I feel like I should be more nervous about this than I am, more ashamed, more sickened. But I’ve already purged the sickness. It’s congealing, three stories up, in Tim’s wastebasket.

  “What?” Wesley asks, and in one exhausted movement, I pull myself up. I motion to the van, and we crawl onto the back bench. Once seated, the inexplicably comforting smell of fast food and old smoke helping to settle my stomach, Wesley grabs my hands. I smile.

  “I’m going to tell you about my feet,” I say, my voice breaking at the last word. Wesley is clearly confused, but he doesn’t interrupt. I’m glad. I haven’t told anyone about this yet, not even the police. I want to tell him, but if he were to start asking questions, my determination would surely fail.

  I clear my throat, and brace myself to talk. I take my time, sounding the words slowly and steadily. I don’t want to stammer any of this.

  “The Painter did not just paint the walls of my room,” I tell him. Wesley stiffens as he realizes how serious this conversation is becoming. He holds my hands tightly, and I lean forward so he can have a better grip. “He also painted . . . me,” I continue quietly.

  “He didn’t,” Wesley whispers, and I give his hands a squeeze.

  “He said my body was his favorite canvas,” I admit, remembering the day, about a year into my captivity, when I grew angry enough to demand an explanation for his insane behavior. I recall it vividly, the smell of dirt and sweat and paint, the strangled timbre of his voice as he spat out his response. I see the brush held over my quivering stomach, badly mixed paint dripping cold globs off the tip into my belly button. I almost picture his face as well, but I push the image away before it has time to fully form.

  The memory makes me uncomfortable, but not uncomfortable enough to stop talking. Not now that I’ve finally started.

  “He didn’t do anything to me,” I sigh, “…nothing sexual, I mean. But he liked to paint me. He’d start on one body part, and move to another, until my skin was covered with his random, senseless designs. Then, about once a week, he’d fill this old wash basin and I’d have a bath to remove all the paint, so he could start again.”