Catching the Light

by Susan Sinnott

  Because she was going to take it into school. And it would be hung up in the gallery with the others. And she hoped it would be chosen to enter the national contest.

  ***

  On the Friday her final project was due, Hutch was gone all day and Cathy began gathering cardboard and bubble wrap and tape to protect the portrait when she took it into school. Had to search everywhere for scissors and found them in the kitchen. Hutch had been cutting into the plastic casing round some batteries—breaking them out, he said, and what did people think the poor batteries would do if they got loose?

  But she was sacrificing Hutch. He was going to be so upset, mad. He would think she’d let him down, or didn’t care. She might lose him. And what was one picture compared to being loved by Hutch? What use was a picture of him if he was gone? It was all about her again, not about Hutch’s feelings at all.

  She would not take it. She would not put art before Hutch.

  Cathy stood with the scissors in her hand and stared at a can of beans on the counter, through the can. Her eyes saw it but the message froze on one foot, not registering in her brain. But after a while Cathy noticed the counter digging into her hip and she moved and rubbed her hip and saw a can of beans on the counter and decided she was hungry and hadn’t eaten breakfast. So she put down the scissors and had beans on toast and coffee.

  But she might never get another opportunity to enter a competition like this. She’d been fifteen years working on her art and she had been with Hutch for less than one. Art deserved to be put first. If she didn’t put the picture in for judging she would regret it for the rest of her life. If she lost Hutch she would regret it for the rest of her life.

  She washed the dishes. She turned on the radio to give her brain a break and some chicky with a long-lashes-cute-blonde voice said it was three hours to the weekend.

  Deadline.

  Panic.

  ***

  Cathy spent almost an hour protecting and wrapping the picture and stringing it up so she could carry it then another age getting it up to the main floor. She could have used Hutch’s help with this. She had to lean against the outside door to stop it slamming in the wind and manoeuvre her package through and the taxi wasn’t there. So she stood, back to the wind, one side of the portrait against the wall and the end on top of her sneakers, until the taxi arrived. It was heavy on her toes after a while.

  She had thirty-five minutes to spare by the time she delivered her precious package. The prof ticked her off the list.

  “And the title?”

  Cathy had thought about that for weeks, all kinds of fancy names. But the one that seemed right was quite simple: A Man.

  She walked home with her stomach churning and chest tight, tried to rehearse what to say to Hutch. He would see the picture was gone from the easel and she wanted to be there to explain—she walked quickly. But what would she say? Maybe it would be better if he arrived first. She slowed down almost to a stop and someone tutted as they swung round her. Her thoughts leapfrogged over each other. She still hadn’t decided what to say when she reached her building and opened the door.

  And Hutch was walking up the corridor, wearing a backpack.

  “I’ll get the rest of my stuff tomorrow,” he said in his polite-stranger voice, face blank, cold. The pressure in the hallway was going to squash her flat—purple and black clouds with sizzle lines.

  “Where are you going?” Her voice wobbled and shredded as she forced it out.

  “Sean’s.”

  “When will you be back?” Stupid question. Dumb, dumb question.

  “I won’t.”

  All at Sea

  Three days went by after Hutch left and, oh, how slowly the time passed. Cathy liked old-fashioned clocks with second hands rather than guessing when digital numbers would jump to the next minute. Now. No, now. The minute was always too long.

  She started getting up at three or four in the morning, turning on the big soft-white light over her easel. She would pull on her old black sweatshirt and set up a piece of Masonite. It was not a project, just laying acrylics on a board. It was not the picture that mattered this time but the escaping. And that worried her—she wanted to be going to, not running from.

  People used to ask if it was lonely living in a lighthouse. She’d always said no. But you didn’t understand lonely until you’d been the opposite. If you grew up with no sunshine, drab was normal.

  Lonely: adjective: sad from being alone or without friends.

  Well, Cathy had never felt like that. Art had always been enough. She hadn’t needed a person. Before.

  She spread the paint without really seeing it, thoughts floating in a no man’s land between waking and dreaming. Her hands just did what they always did. Finally, when she saw what she’d painted, it was like nothing she’d ever done in her life. The colours were strange: pale grey-blue, grey-white, and pearl, like a bathroom mirror when the steam starts to turn into water and the glass is a big blur with the light all wrapped up in the steam so you can’t tell where it’s coming from.

  Cathy slept in, didn’t wake until her mother phoned and she must have sounded logy, sad maybe, because Mom said Cathy wouldn’t feel down anymore when she was home and started listing the reasons.

  “…and take a break from packing up and paint something, only paint something you want to do, Cathy, not something you have to do. You’ll feel better.” Mom surprised her sometimes.

  So Cathy told her about the weird picture and her mom got all interested, probably because Cathy said it was like a dream—Mom and Aunt Dot were big into interpreting dreams.

  “Sounds like one of those shiny days in the north,” said Mom. “Can’t tell what’s water and what’s sky. Mel says pilots hate that kind of day in the Arctic. No sun, no horizon, no edges—hard to know where you are. Dangerous.”

  Fancy being in a place where you couldn’t trust your eyes.

  For class, Cathy always had to be careful with the way she painted. Technique. But she was so used to that now, it was almost automatic. It was like sports—if a hockey player had to think about what his feet were doing, he’d trip over them. Maybe that’s what art school did; got you to the point where you didn’t have to think about your feet.

  Anyway, she hadn’t thought about technique last night, although she’d changed from a knife to a brush part way through, for some reason. Never before had she painted something without Seeing it first.

  Analysis: noun: a detailed examination of the features or structure of something.

  That was Cathy’s whole notion of painting, even if you changed those features, distorted them, changed them into something else altogether. But this painting wasn’t seen. It was felt.

  Maybe that was what she’d done with Hutch’s portrait. The seeing and the technique were there for sure but there were feelings from deep inside too. All mixed together. Maybe that’s why it was her best picture ever. She’d always been the observer, an outsider recording what she saw and analyzing from a distance. With Hutch’s picture she was involved, part of, together with. Her emotions were in that picture as well as Hutch’s.

  She was afraid then. Afraid she’d never paint as well again.

  ***

  Cathy looked at last night’s picture with new eyes. She could add a touch of ice and cloud, turn it into a seascape, but this was a self-portrait—her mood in paint. So she started a second one, calling them both All at Sea. But that sounded muddled, like she wasn’t going anywhere. It was not how she wanted to be. So when she had finished the seascape she leaned the two paintings against the wall next to each other and studied them. It plays tricks with your eyes, with those silvery colours all running into each other and the light bouncing back. Mom had said that. So Cathy changed the name to Catching the Light.

  She phoned home to tell her mother and Mom said how she was dying to see the pictures and
they’d need a shoehorn to load everything into the truck, and in three days and six hours they’d be in Halifax. And for the first time Cathy started to feel a bit excited about the graduation ceremony and going home.

  She began emptying drawers, sorting and throwing: old term papers, a torn T-shirt she’d planned on mending and hadn’t, odd socks. She started packing. How much junk she’d collected in four years! There was a shirt of Hutch’s at the back of the closet. She stood with it pressed to her face and such a wave of regret rolled over her that the tears came and this time she let them flow. She wore the shirt to bed that night and cried all over again, then scolded herself: pull yourself together, girl. Get up at a sensible time and have a sensible breakfast and do things. Make plans.

  There was an exhibition to think about at that gallery in St. John’s where she’d sold two more paintings last fall, making four altogether. Four paintings before she’d even graduated. She had the dates and the amounts in a little notebook. She would need to sell a lot of pictures to make an exhibition worth the expense but she would risk that. She’d have to stay in town too, for maybe three weeks. Too long to stay with one person. She might crash for a few days with her cousin Annie, who was doing tourism in St. John’s now, but Cathy suspected Annie had all kinds of people, male people, staying at her place and Cathy was not sure she could face that.

  ***

  After that one emotional night Cathy returned to the packing with more efficiency, only moving when there was a purpose, only stopping a task when it was finished. She’d gone from a mom style to a dad style. No, that wasn’t fair. Mom was always organized, she just threw a lot of flap in the way so you couldn’t see it. Emotion. Dad kept his emotions buttoned down so you’d hardly know he had any. Cathy was going to have to do that.

  Sarah called, asked how Cathy was doing, enthusiastic as always.

  “I called to congratulate you,” she said. “Paul’s mother, Lena, told me you painted a wonderful portrait of Hutch—”

  “Oh, god.”

  “Oh. Shouldn’t I…? I didn’t mean to pry. Let’s change—”

  “No. No it’s not that. I’m sorry. That was rude. Sorry. It’s just…well, we were together for a while. Hutch and me. Then….” Silence, except for bursts of crackling on the line and a steady soft hum. “Now we’re not.”

  “Oh. Well, I’m sorry about that. If it’s made you sad, I mean.” More crackles. “It’s just that Paul said the portrait was amazing and everyone was saying how fantastic it was.”

  “It’s the best thing I ever did, Sarah, because…because I understand him. A bit anyway. But Hutch didn’t like it. Didn’t want it on display.” Better start buttoning down right now. “And I put it in anyway.” Her voice thinned out to a squeak and dried up.

  “Oh, Cathy. I’m so sorry. You’re upset. I’ll call back later.”

  “No. It won’t be any better later. Ever. Hutch is gone. And now there’s this big hole…every minute…and it’s all my fault.” The crackling was almost comfortable, stopped the silences being so silent.

  “Well…he might come round. Give him time. It can’t have been so very bad. The picture I mean.”

  “I painted his stump.” Big silence. “And…he didn’t like me painting that little smile he has—had—for just me. Said it was private.”

  “Oh. Yes. I see.” Even the crackling was holding its breath. “He’s a…a manly kind of person, isn’t he? Showing…maybe showing how he feels isn’t manly. To him.”

  “He looks wonderful. Everyone says so. But he doesn’t—he won’t—”

  Breathe for god’s sake. Don’t be such a wimp.

  “I can see that he mightn’t like his leg on display,” Sarah said.

  Cathy was nodding into the phone, wanting to say how much she loved him, how she never meant to hurt him, just to tell someone.

  “…wouldn’t want it pub-lic.” There’d been a little hitch on that last bit. “Cathy, I’m so sorry. I know you must find this difficult to talk about. Call me when you can. I want to know how you’re doing. I’ll be thinking of you.” And the phone went dead.

  Sarah had started to say published, like this was a case study. A visual, in-your-face case study. It was. Just like Sarah. Hutch had said that. You’ve done the same to me. And had Cathy forgiven Sarah?

  Proceed With Caution

  Sarah stood with the phone in her hand. She hoped Cathy hadn’t noticed her slip of the tongue. She knew that tearing feeling of trying to balance one’s own needs with those of others and having to choose. Poor Cathy—to finally be close to someone only to lose him. How amazing it was that Hutch and Cathy had been together at all. Athlete and artist, like opposite sides of the brain. And maybe she should have stayed on the phone longer. Cathy wanted to unload some of her troubles but Sarah had not felt up to carrying that load and really she was not the appropriate person—although who else did Cathy have? She drifted over to the portrait Cathy had given her and gazed at it.

  Sarah had hung Cathy’s farewell painting across from her Tunis picture in the living room because they were both so full of life. They balanced each other somehow. And now on the short wall by the door she hung the other picture, just with thumbtacks, unframed. Nothing permanent.

  She and Tim had been on the adoption list forever. Tim had agreed to it back in Mariners Cove because there was plenty of time to consider. Sarah would call each year to reaffirm. Yes, Mrs. Brooks, you’re on the list but there’s nothing yet. It will be at least seven years, six, five…do you still wish to proceed, proceed, proceed?

  Finally, a year ago, they met with the adoption people for long interviews, once together and once each separately. And then the Home Study. The adoption people asked about everything under the sun, and not just Sarah’s and Tim’s opinions on bringing up children but what their parents’ views had been on punishment and education and, and….

  “Forgot to ask how often I floss my teeth,” Sarah said, growled.

  “Thorough. Have to give ’em that.”

  It was an important hurdle out of the way and made Sarah more hopeful, but it sensitized her again to diaper commercials, to the boys shooting baskets up the street and the little pink bike with training wheels sprawled in next door’s driveway.

  Tim was more confident in the process after that—confident they would take just as much care with the baby selection. He was more committed to being on the list for a baby, although they’d still have to wait two years, maybe more. He even agreed to be on a second list for siblings, older kids, probably with adjustment problems. But in a far corner of Sarah’s mind, pushed back but never quite out of sight, was that little question of whether Tim would back out when the time came. It was a question she didn’t dare force, didn’t want to face, and it was never quite the right moment to ask. It had always been a decision for the future—the danger tree on the horizon.

  But now there were two little boys. She and Tim were taking their time, following the advice of the social worker—a visit every other week to a park or out for an ice cream and lately to their own house. The three year old was a delight but the older one could be difficult and Tim was being cautious. Could he handle stressful nights with these boys and still face a clinic full of complications every day? Could he love them enough? Sarah wanted both boys. Now. “We’d just need to work out how to approach each problem as it arose,” she said. “Like Cathy.”

  “You used to say you were glad Cathy had a mother to go home to and you didn’t have to have her all day.”

  The boys had gone through three sets of foster parents. One set had been open to adopt for a few months then backed out. Sarah could tell it worried Tim, that he was wondering why.

  “And what do the children want?” said Sarah.

  The social worker said, “They must be given time to decide. They must not be rushed.” Sarah asked how they would know and was told, “You will know.
It’s different for each child but you will know.”

  Every visit, the three year old asked if he could stay. It hurt Sarah to say just ’til after supper. But finally the older boy drew them a picture—the picture Sarah was hanging on the wall so hopefully: two stick adults and two stick children outside a square house. Us, he said.

  Storm Front

  Cathy put the phone down ages after the line had gone dead. After all the anger and hurt that case study had caused, how could she turn round and do the same to the person she loved most in the world? She needed a walk. She grabbed her jacket and keys, left her bag on the table, and charged down the street almost running. She slowed down when she hit the lunch crowd filling the sidewalks, wound through people without seeing them. They moved so slowly. She stepped on someone’s heel and stumbled, said sorry but kept going, leaving the girl hunched over, rubbing her heel and cursing. Cathy sped up, sidestepped onto the road, and there was a deafening blast in her ear and she felt something brush her elbow very lightly, felt a big whoosh of air.

  “Watch it, Miss,” someone said. “You nearly went under that truck.”

  The guy looked concerned and Cathy was shrugging it off until she saw the slice out of her jacket arm and turned to see a big garbage truck close in to the curb, flying through the lights, and realized she’d stepped off without looking, without thinking. Holy…better go home.

  Later she even managed a tiny smile—a garbage truck. Hutch would say she could’ve at least picked something with a bit of class like a Mercedes or a Jeep. But maybe he wouldn’t now—wouldn’t give a flying Ibrow.