*****
I kept it to myself pretty well until Amelia slashed at her arm in my living room almost four years later. Last Tuesday, in fact.
I dragged her to the kitchenette and stood her over the sink. "Don't move," I said.
She spurted more smoke at me. She still had her chin thrust out, but when she glanced at the wound she went pale around the lips.
I dug in one of the cupboards for some Tupperware, then put the smallest one into the sink, arranging it to catch the blood leaking from that livid gash. Clinical, clear plastic to subvert red chaos. The action was comforting, familiar, and calmed my heart a little. But I still felt dizzy and sick, feeling it on my skin, on my hand where I'd grabbed her.
"What the fuck?"
"You shouldn't waste it." I looked at her hard, hoping that would help explain. Now that the moment was here, I didn't know how to do it, exactly. How could I make her understand? If anyone would, it would be her. After all, "You love me, Amelia?"
She sputtered, took the cigarette out of her mouth with her free hand, the other arm still hanging obediently over the sink. "That's the point, asshole. Do you think I did this because—?"
"I think you did it because I don't know how to give you attention, and I'm the only family you have left."
She winced like I'd smacked her. I hadn't realised it might sound like a cut until that, but I wasn't thinking straight. Fat droplets landed in the Tupperware again and again. Pat. Pat.
"There's Donato," she bit off.
She said it to hurt me back, not realising that it couldn't. When I didn't answer, she shot a frantic look at her arm, drip, drip, dripping away her life story. "I should bandage this. What are you doing?"
I lowered my voice, though god knew why. It just felt too important to yell. "This is who you are. You shouldn't waste it. It's too important."
Her eyelashes fluttered. She went a little paler, bit at her lip, glanced at her arm, then back at me. "Tory…that's crazy."
Not even a little, but I'd explain soon.
I looked at the little dish in the sink. It made my heart pound in my throat. Not much there, but it might be enough to show her. To calm me down.
"I think I'm getting dizzy."
It must've been hurting by now. I felt a twinge of sympathy, even though I knew I shouldn't. Mom used to tell me it only encouraged her.
"I need to sit down. Do you have any gauze or…or something?" I heard the rising panic in her voice. She thought she'd killed herself; it would've been funny in other circumstances. Her bloody arm shook, and a fevered light kindled behind her eyes. "Tory—"
Another quick look at the sink. "Stay right here. I'll find you something. You have a lot more in you than that, so don't worry, okay?"
She nodded and looked down at her cigarette, like she couldn't remember how it got there.
*****
Mom started crying when she saw me covered in Connor's blood. She hugged me and even though it was mostly dry by then, some of it came off on her. I remember that it made me angry, but not angry enough to argue — I never was.
I escaped to the cabin in the middle of the night. I'd showered, but I still felt it all over me, on my hands, in my hair, like Lady fucking Macbeth — a thought Connor would've appreciated. I brought the shirt with me.
I tried to wash my hands for the hundredth time, and the water came out rusty and sputtering. I felt dizzy when it hit my hands, underground lukewarm. Some kind of bug skittered in the stainless steel sink, unused for god knew how long. I watched it slide away helpless in the orange tide. I thought of the new tube of ochre gouache I'd stashed in the side cupboard. I thought of the water running off me in the shower, washing all that sticky red off my skin and down the drain. Washing him off me. Wasting him.
That's when it came to me.
Shaking, excited, terrified, I found my supplies in the cupboard. My giant watercolour pad, paints and brushes, little dishes Mom had given me from the kitchen for water and mixing. I put one in the sink and got the shirt.
I wasted a lot of the blood at first, trying to figure out how to make the most of it. But he'd given up so much of himself, I had more than enough in the end. I even got the sky a decent shade of rusty-red with it, just like the sun sinking behind the cabin. I shouldn't have been able to; it should've turned brown after a day. But it never did, and it was the first really beautiful thing I'd ever made in my life. It was like casting a spell more than painting.
And that's how I know it was really him.
*****
The little bowl of Amelia waited in the sink, lid sealing it from harm for the moment. First, I needed to get the paintings.
Painting, singular, anyhow — I'd see how she took the old one first. My heart thudded loudly in my head, and I wasn't sure if it was the excitement of telling her, telling someone finally, or what she'd said and done to get me here.
She sat on the couch, forearm buried in strips of gauze like a kid dressed up for Halloween, a pretty little mummy. Her hands twitched like she missed her cigarette and she chewed on pale lips, but she was calmer now.
I didn't look at it when I pulled it out of the closet. I could never look at it at first. Monochromatic watercolours (nothing but a touch of black when it needed darkening, of course), a favourite exercise from my high school art teacher, but he'd never asked for anything like this. That brown-red wash to the sky — alizarin crimson had nothing on it for perfection. A lone figure looking up at the tree line, just the barest edge of the cabin visible. His broad shoulders, his lazy stance, his face — his face exactly.
How could it not be exact — it was part of him? It was perfect and realistic. It was powerfully abstracted. It was better than art; it was magic.
I held it up for her to see.
She looked at it long and hard, bit down harder, little white teeth marks in her fat lower lip. "It's amazing. Is that—?" she stopped mid-sentence, her mouth hanging open. A small gasp escaped her. Her eyes flicked to the sink and lit with understanding. "Tory. That's not really…"
"It's him."
"No, I mean—"
"Yes. His."
And I waited, my stomach vibrating supersonic.
Her mouth closed, then opened. She looked at the painting, took in the black mat around the white paper, then the painting again.
My knuckles went white where I clutched the backing.
She started to cry. No build up, no warning, she just started shaking and sobbing in an alien, soft, and sublimely disarming way. So many tears that the mascara trails finally disappeared.
When I thought she understood, I could've joined her. Or run and screamed until my heart stopped. But I just put the painting down, swallowed my heart and sat beside her. "I know. I couldn't believe it. It's like I didn't even do it myself."
She shook her head, grabbed my arm and looked like she wanted to say something, but another sob stopped her.
I didn't understand. "No?"
"No. Tory…oh my god …"
This time I let her hug me. I needed her to talk to me, and that meant I needed to calm her down. I put an arm around her and let her bury her face in my shoulder, get my shirt wet and smudged with makeup. I patted her arm and hoped I was doing it right.
I was afraid I'd hurt her, she felt so frail and tiny. I wondered if I felt like that to her too.
"I didn't know it was so bad," she said finally, sort of into my neck.
"What's bad?"
"You miss him. I—"
"No, that's not what it's about." I pulled back a little, looked her in the eyes, swollen and wet. Nothing too cliché about the sadness there now. "I mean, I do sometimes. But look, see how it made the painting real? Amelia, this is art. This is him."
She shook her head, "Oh god, poor Tory. Why didn't you tell me?"
"I didn't know how you'd react. I mean, I wanted to show someone—"
"Not about the painting." She touched my face, and I started. For some reason, that made her sob some mor
e. Her little fingers were warm and soft and not as uncomfortable as I'd expected. "About how fucked up you are over him, still. Oh my god, no wonder you're like this."
I swallowed hard, fishing for words that wouldn't come. "You — you don't see it? You don't think it's—it's—?"
She tucked a stray lock of hair behind my ears, and suddenly reminded me very much of Mom. "Everything you do is brilliant. But you don't really think it's because you used blood?"
I stood up quickly, head spinning.
"Wait, stop. It's a beautiful painting. Tory, it's beautiful."
I kept my back turned, thinking of the Tupperware bowl in the sink. Wondering what the fuck I thought I'd do with it.
Then, a hint of desperation in her soggy voice, she said, "Do you have more?"
I looked at her over my shoulder, saw her leaning forward with her elbows on her thighs, her hands held out to me.
"Some," I admitted.
"Connor?"
Hearing the name out loud made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
I shook my head. "I didn't have enough."
Her brow furrowed at first. Then her eyes went wide again. "Oh Jesus."
*****
Late afternoon two Sundays ago, I heard a wild crashing and banging from the house, followed by a lot of Dad swearing and shouting. I decided I'd better investigate. Not that he'd ever laid a hand on us beyond the occasional backseat ass-smackings of childhood. Just that Mom died a year ago, as meekly as she'd lived, and since then he hadn't had anyone to persecute. It made me nervous.
The warm, peeling-yellow-linoleum kitchen was wrecked, like someone had ransacked it looking for some ancient cookware artefact — the cupboard over the sink hung open, ominously revealing empty space. The tang of boiling water and the stovetop burner hung heavy in the air. Not only had Amelia been here recently, since Dad never cooked, but Dad had also been here, since Amelia never dipped into the sink cupboard. And from the state of the pots and pans, things had gotten ugly. Not hard to guess how or why.
I took a deep breath as I walked down the hall, and stopped in the doorway to the living room, my hands balled into unaccustomed fists. Wood panelling and a plaid recliner that were older than me, Dad sitting in the dark watching TV with the final contents of the sink cupboard in hand. A demolished bottle of Johnnie Walker.
"Where's Amelia?" I asked through my teeth.
"Work." This was a grunt more than a real reply.
I came in further, examined him in his jeans and black t-shirt, this lumpy figure of a once-fit man. The room smelled like the ashtray full of Winstons on the end table between us. Mom never would've let them get away with that.
"It's early."
He looked up at me. Dark eyes and drooping swollen lids. You'd think from all the lines around them that he was a big smiler. "Said she didn't want to be in this house with me anymore. Maybe she'll move down to that rat's nest with you."
"Wonder why she'd wanna do that." You miserable bastard.
He snorted and turned to face the TV. "Both think you're too damn good for this family."
Even if I'd been so inclined, it would've been hard to take him seriously with that drunken articulation in effect. "Is she okay?" Because if she's not…if she's not…
"What do you think, Salvatore?" Never just Tory, not once in my life.
I don't know why I said it. I don't even know where it came from. But out came, "I think if Donato still lived here, you'd have sicced him on her by now. So I'm just checking to make sure you didn't grow a pair and do it yourself."
He blinked slowly as the words filtered through his scotch-addled mind. "You trying to pick a fight with me, little boy?"
I got the feeling he didn't even remember what I'd said to piss him off in the first place. It didn't make me angry — it just sent this wave of something like revulsion through me. I shuddered with the sudden violence of it, and it combined with the choking cigarette smell to make my throat go tight.
"I can still break you in half, kid. Don't forget it."
I laughed around the tightness and leaned against the crappy panelling. His face was ruddy from the unaccustomed flush of alcohol, but I thought that in the eerie blue glow of the television he just might be getting even pinker. The sickness passed as quickly as it had come, and instead I just felt…sad. Pity for him. Sitting there with his empty bottle in his empty house, talking shit to his kids who didn't give two fucks for him. Even his boy, his Donnie, hadn't called in a month.
Rolling around in the filthy bed he'd made. "You're pathetic," I said. Not meanly, you understand. I just thought someone should tell him. I'd want someone to tell me.
He started to shake. "Come over here and say that. I dare you. I dare you or your sister to say that to my face. I'll break you both."
I knew he was all talk; he always had been. But Amelia never had figured it out, and I was tired of her having to hear it. After everything she'd done for me, it was the least I could do.
I don't want to give the wrong impression — my father had a lot of faults, but drinking wasn't a common one. He was a sober man who paid his bills, supported his family, and was at his most violent during Monday Night Football, yelling at the TV. That's why it fucked him up like that when he indulged, and he did it because in his decline he was a bored, lonely bully of a man.
I think I must've hated him when I was a kid, but as I grew up I came to understand him. He never had the guts to be the big, violent dick he wanted. That's why he made Donnie what he is. I don't hate my brother — I never did. How could I when I understood him so well?
Even as I propped his unconscious bulk up in the bathroom with one arm hanging into the tub, I couldn't hate my dad either. Slashing open the pasty underbelly of his forearm felt almost exactly like gutting a fucking fish, nothing more or less. It wasn't malicious; it was an act of mercy for all of us.
I think the paintings I got out of him showed that. They were much better than the one of Connor, but I'm a much more skilled painter at twenty-one than I was at seventeen. The spell might be the same, but when the caster's better at his craft, sometimes the results are that much more perfect.
*****
"I'm not sorry he's dead, even if I miss him sometimes." Amelia slipped her hand into mine as she led me up to the house in the twilight. The crickets had started already. Summer would be here soon. "I know I should be. It's my fault."
I wondered if that was why she carried the straight razor with her. But I wasn't sure I wanted to know, so I didn't ask. She'd left it on my floor, but her little bag still bounced at her hip.
"It's not," I said instead. I still thought it wouldn't be fair to tell her, but I didn't want her to think it was her fault. "It's mine. I fucked him off after you left, that night." And I told her what I'd said about Donnie.
She laughed out loud and squeezed my hand. "He never hurt me like he hurt you, though."
"He didn't hurt me much." I didn't expect her to believe me, so it wasn't really a lie.
She let my hand go and wrapped her arms around one of mine, careless of her bandages. Her cheek came to rest against my shoulder, and we walked more slowly.
I didn't mind so much, even if I couldn't stop twitching, wanting to look over my shoulder. The swish of long neglected grass around our ankles, the smell of fresh air and nearby farms. It was almost peaceful here in my dead parents' yard, for the first time in a long time.
"Promise me you'll stop doing it," she said quietly. "It's not good for you. It'll make you crazy."
I winced, but didn't tell her no. This time she didn't want me to break her and let her bleed all over me — metaphorically speaking. I knew the difference.
"I'll take care of you. You won't need it any more, I promise. Just you and me, okay?"
I nodded. "I don't think I can move back to the house, though."
"You have to. You have to come live with me. Your little crap shack is full of ghosts. We'll fix up the house and make it nice again. We'
ll start over."
I stopped walking and gave in to the impulse to look back at the lonely sagging cabin — dark windows and an unspectacular sunset dying overhead.
I wouldn't be able to give it up. Not the place, and not the blood. It made me queasy, thinking of the Tupperware still sitting in the sink. It would be no good by the time I got back to it. What a waste.
She looked up at me and narrowed her eyes. It was obvious that she knew.
"You should burn it down," she said.
I blinked at her.
"You talk about painting that sunset. You're a genius, Tory — you can do better than that." She smiled and tugged my arm, pulling me toward the house.
I followed, but hesitantly. "I don't understand."
"Ever see what the sky looks like when something's on fire?"
The Blind Man
Carole Johnstone
The boys barely looked his way at all as they sorted the herring and hung out the nets. Donald noticed perhaps as many as a dozen new holes, and big ones at that. Towards one end of the drift even the tarred warp rope had snapped, buckling the train. Breaking its back. They wouldn't be going out again that night. Maybe not even the night after.
The boys knew that well enough; they were likely torn between frustration at their enduring misfortune, and relief that they would not soon be suffering another cold and stormy pitch black of night aboard their skipper's decrepit clinker. The catch was meagre, and boys they were — on land and the water. Donald's own faithful were all long gone: to the Moray Firth or the shipyards of the capital, though Donald held too healthy a terror for the Poor House to follow in their footsteps.
None of their callow replacements had the wit to realise that Donald had saved them from a slow death in the pits, or a slave wage on the saltpans. There were too many people now starving in the old villages all along the northeast coast. People whose families had fished and crofted there for generations. And the coastline had become studded with clay thatched huts, packed to the rafters with feckless Highlanders, who starved all the quicker and spread their diseases.
Scenes From the Second Storey Page 3