by AJ Rose
“Except Blanket Boy.”
“Ah,” he pointed and pulled me back to the painting in question. “But look at the pills closely. No label. Those could be vitamins. Maybe it’s headache medicine and he took two, only knocking over the bottle in his sleep, unaware of how it looks. The violence and danger is only as prevalent as the viewer of the paintings make it.”
I considered that, studying the pill bottle, how close the blanket was, that perhaps it could have spilled the bottle, and how peaceful the subject’s face seemed. It’s not like I hadn’t run across my fair share of patients in the three years of my surgical residency who truly found peace in death, whether it was an escape from an incurable illness or from a difficult disability that held them back in this life.
“So it’s sort of a Rorschach painting, where the buyer—well, hopefully the buyer, right?—sees only the amount of pain they choose to see?”
“Yeah, and how disturbed you are tells me you’re carrying around a tremendous amount of guilt. Because you immediately jumped to the conclusion I did this all because of you, and not because I had possibly gotten in an argument with my parents over them pushing me to move out of the city and closer to them when Dad retired and Mom had her treatment. Or how maybe I deserved to be put on a project as lead animator, and this douchebag who’s come along right out of art school has wooed the execs and is getting the projects I should be getting with virtually no experience running a team. I had other unpleasant things to deal with that weren’t related to the end of us. And that’s when it hit me.
“Dangers exist for everyone. There’s always the chance of being hit by a bus, or someone allergic to bees getting stung while walking through a flower garden and going into anaphylactic shock. But maybe they always carry an EpiPen. Maybe the dad makes sure he stays out of the range of his daughter’s swing or wears a helmet when he’s teaching her to play baseball.” He gestured to the individual paintings as he spoke of them. “Maybe the bartender knows the Heimlich maneuver and won’t let a customer choke on an ice cube even if her friend is helpless. The point changed from being about the lurking dangers to people living their lives despite them. They didn’t focus on the potential fear and pain. That dancing couple is happy. The kissers are into each other. The potential for heartbreak is worth it to them. So the seemingly perfect boyfriend having a breakdown and cheating on me didn’t have to mean the relationship was a waste, or that I was an idiot when I couldn’t immediately stop loving him.”
My palms went clammy, and I stared at his face, avidly searching for a hint that he’d never been able to stop loving me. Please, please, please, I begged. I’ll do anything to make up for this. But he wouldn’t meet my eyes, keeping his attention trained on the canvases as he spoke of each one’s purpose. Yeah, they were painful, but now that he’d explained it, I saw what he meant: vibrant colors, brightly lit scenes, and happy expressions despite the shadows and reflections. But the sleeping guy drew me in again. My dress shoes clacked on the wood floor, and the murmur of the other people in the room, who’d disappeared as Craig had spoken, returned to my awareness, punctuating his point. Our focus matters. If we see only the bad, if we only look for the danger, that’s what consumes us.
I’d known this from my sessions with Dr. Rodriguez, who’d taught me to recognize the difference between caution and obsession, but to see it starkly depicted in such a visual display was sort of an epiphany for me. It seemed Craig and I still shared a wavelength.
“But this one is different,” I said, stopping in front of the painting.
“It is,” he agreed, standing beside me, his shoulder brushing mine.
“Why?”
“You can choose to see it two ways. One is a tired man who took a couple headache pills and is so deeply asleep he didn’t notice when he knocked the bottle over. He’s finally resting. Finally peaceful. Deep-in-his-bones peaceful. Or you can see it as you first did, as a guy whose last move in this world was to cover up as he drifted into permanent sleep. Was he hiding? Was he cold? You tell me.”
I studied it more, moved closer to look at the detail and see the brush strokes, took several steps back to take in the entire image. Where did Craig’s brush press harder? Emphasize? Where were the bright colors most vivid? The sleeping man’s face? The bottle label? I couldn’t tell.
“I see a third interpretation. Maybe he was tired and cold, and wrapped in a blanket while he thought about stuff. Maybe he meant to take all the pills because, goddammit, life shouldn’t be so hard.” I swallowed, talking low, but not holding back on the words, not putting much inflection to them but not hiding or minimizing them. Raw. Personal. Something I only wanted Craig to hear. “Parents shouldn’t hate their children. People shouldn’t have to take restraining orders out on their fathers. Maybe he stared at that bottle for a long time and thought, ‘I can’t do this anymore. I’m a pariah. Everything and everyone I touch turns to pain and failure. It’s not worth it, being with me, because eventually I drag everyone down.’ Maybe he thought long and hard about the potential oblivion, the freedom of giving up, and how he couldn’t allow the people who still loved him to pick up his pieces once he was gone.
“So he cut everyone out of his life. He pretended to do what the doctors told him for a while. And he planned. Maybe he was only going through the motions until he could be alone with that bottle, that potential way out. Maybe though, when the time came to tip the pills into his hand and swallow them down with his pain, he couldn’t bring them to his mouth. Maybe he could hear words echoing in his head, words pounded into him his entire life. ‘You’re worthless, nothing, and you’ll always be nothing.’”
I felt Craig’s eyes on me, and he slid his hand inside my elbow, then down my arm to tangle our fingers and squeeze tightly. He didn’t speak. He let me get it out, this poison, this fact that could color so much.
“Maybe he believed that voice, though he’d fought against it his whole life, trying to make the words untrue. Perhaps he came to the realization that if he swallowed that handful of drugs, he wouldn’t be ending his misery. He’d be fulfilling the prophecy of those hateful words. He’d become nothing.
“Maybe he dropped the bottle, let the pills skitter to the floor, and he lay back, covering up to shut out the world and the pain and the loneliness, and he closed his eyes. Maybe when he did, he saw that his worth to others shouldn’t define him. Maybe his last thought before that days-long sleep of the exhausted and wrung out was that his worth should come from within. After all, his dad was out of his life. He’d destroyed everything else to the very foundations, his relationships and career obliterated. He was a blank slate. And when he woke up, maybe he cleaned up those pills, threw them away, and called his best friend to whom he hadn’t spoken in weeks to tell her, sobbing and breathing in stuttering gasps, that he wanted to live. Maybe when he woke up, he got help.”
I turned to face Craig, face what I’d done. Two tear tracks shone in the strategic gallery lighting. His nose was red and he’d pressed his lips together so tightly they disappeared, leaving a whitened slash in his beautiful, expressive face.
“I wish I’d known.”
“I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want you to be tainted by me.” I reached up with the hand he didn’t have in a death grip, stroking my knuckles across his cheekbone. “I was fucked up, ready to quit, and I didn’t want you to see me like that. I didn’t want you… to find my body.”
He sucked in a hiss, and I knew he was picturing it right then, coming into our apartment and finding me dead. He’d always been so visual. I didn’t tell him what the glassy stare of mortality looked like, or how cold the skin became, how quickly the stiffness of rigor set in. It was bad enough, the anguish on his features as he closed his eyes and dropped his chin to his chest, making me glad I could no longer see his expression.
“It didn’t happen,” I said, leaning forward to press my lips to the crown of his head, breathing in his shampoo and the smell of his hair, which tickled
my face. “I didn’t do it. I lived. But maybe a part of me died anyway.” I didn’t want to be so morose, not only because this was a date, but because we were in public. “My ignorance of how bad it could get died in those deep pits of depression and self-loathing. The good news is, better things were born: determination. Self-respect.” He lifted his head and looked at me through shiny eyes. “Forgiveness,” I finished softly, squeezing his hand.
Looking away from me toward the painting, he sniffed and nodded, letting out a pent-up breath. After several minutes, he spoke.
“I do forgive you. I don’t know how, and I’m not sure doing it this fast is wise, but I can’t hear about your childhood and your dad and what you went through and still punish you. I intended to. I was going to be affectionate and let you think my guard was down, that you and I had a chance. I was all set to get your hopes up, then shut you down by pointing out the pain and anger in each painting and lay blame for it all at your feet.” I gaped at him, shocked he thought himself capable of playing such games. The Craig I’d known would have considered that beneath him, but I supposed anger and betrayal could pollute and corrupt even the shiniest soul. He went on. “But the truth is, these aches in my heart make the smiles and the laughter that much sweeter. Life is richer for having endured real emotional agony. I may be more jaded than when you knew me, but I’m not cruel, so I forgive you, Dane.”
A part of my heart did a somersault in sheer exaltation, filling my chest with the heady awareness of possibility, but I tempered it when he extracted his hand and crossed his arms over his chest, still talking to his painting. The loss of his warmth made me ache, but I understood the need to protect himself. I’d just laid myself bare at the walls he’d erected around his heart. If he’d come here expecting to exact some kind of satisfying rejection scenario and ended up veering into territory he’d never wanted, I could understand him wanting space, just as much as my starved nerves wanted to touch him, be held by him.
“The painting’s name is even more fitting now,” he said, chuckling.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Soul Sleep.” He turned, and a smile angled the corner of his mouth. “Figured I’d let people draw their own conclusions. It sounded happier to me, though.”
I couldn’t help return his smile. “Soul Sleep. I like it. Sounds… restorative.”
“I thought so,” he agreed, then fell quiet.
The space between us stretched thin, unsaid things pulling at our edges and making us droop. We weren’t easy with each other as we once were. Silence was not comfortable or companionable, and the admissions on both our parts made for questions. We each thought we’d known the other inside and out, but I was wrong that he was always sunshine and light, and he was wrong about me being well adjusted and unflappable. It was awkward and jagged, the lack of communication loud and judging, as though every second not filled with words had the potential to crush a fragile tendril of hope.
At that moment, one of the gallery staff interrupted to ask Craig if there was anything he needed. She wore a look of concern, and he cringed. If I knew him at all anymore, chances were he was cursing his slip in professionalism. Fun-loving and buoyant were fine at a work gig, but despair and anger not so much. I tried to be inconspicuous while he gathered himself together to answer her.
“In truth, if I’ve done my duty to woo the buyers, I’d really appreciate being able to leave. I’m not feeling well, and if it won’t hurt the show or my apparent interest in it, quietly slipping out sounds really tempting.”
“Of course, Mr. Dahl. Let me check with the manager to see if we can’t offer you a covering distraction so no one notices your absence.” She hurried off, and he gestured for me to precede him toward the doors. I didn’t move.
“Are you okay?” I asked, concerned.
“Not really, but it’s nothing a cup of coffee, a pair of sweats, and maybe some takeout wouldn’t cure. I haven’t eaten dinner. Are you hungry?”
Acquiescing to his urging toward the exit, I considered it. “I could eat.”
When the gallery staffer cleared her throat and announced the opportunity to purchase the artist’s paintings would begin in fifteen minutes, drawing everyone’s attention, Craig and I nipped outside, unnoticed. He turned toward what was presumably the rendezvous point with the driver, and I fell into step beside him, wanting nothing more than to hold his hand. Would he let me or shake me off? I decided we were both too shredded for me to try.
Once in the car, he stared out the window, and I’d just about made up my mind to bail when we got back to the loft, looking forward to the comfort of my room, my books. Anxiety aside, I’d had more hopes for this night, especially since he’d been the one to invite me out, but if I had to rate it, I’d say it was more like a productive therapy session, not exactly a love song.
Craig had other ideas.
“Is Chinese okay with you, or would you rather have Indian food?”
I studied him, but he was unreadable. “Either is fine. You know what I like for both.”
“I want egg rolls.”
“Okay,” I agreed.
He reached between us and tugged on my sleeve, unclasping my hands in my lap. “Thank you for your candor.” He stroked my knuckles, and a shiver shot up my spine. “I’m hearing you, okay? You just….” He looked out the window again but didn’t stop stroking. “I need time to process all this. You’re dropping big bombs, and it helps. I see now what happened.”
No you don’t. You can’t, because I haven’t told you everything. But there never seemed to be a good way to do this, to get to the last little bit he needed to know. And now was no good either. It would be too much again. He must’ve seen my skepticism, because he went on.
“I do see it, Dane. I just need a minute to wrap my head around it.” His eyes pleaded for understanding, and I swallowed, dipping my head in acquiescence. I couldn’t deny him anything. Not now.
He surprised me by pressing a soft kiss to my lips, chaste and earnest. It was friendly more than anything. He really did forgive me. After that, the mood lightened considerably, with us ordering takeout and going back to the loft where he made good on his promise to get into sweats and be lazy. To my surprise, he tossed me a pair of track pants I’d apparently left behind, and I joined him in the living room. Over Mongolian beef and lemon chicken, he introduced me to the show Dexter. After food, I stretched out on his couch, and sometime after Dex discovered the bloodless pieces of the Ice Truck Killer’s latest victim in the bottom of an emptied hotel swimming pool, I fell asleep.
And dreamed of my brother.
September 2009
Sabrina leaned back with her elbows on the tall counter of the nurse’s station beside where I was studying the chart of Mr. Richards, a man with a tumor on his liver, who would be going under the knife when his tests were complete. She faced the bustling hallway and thrust her breasts in my general direction. I smiled at her but ignored the overt flirting. That was just her MO. She was pretty and she knew it, and I’d learned she didn’t discriminate. She even came on to Carrie from time to time, but I suspected that was more to push Carrie’s buttons and not out of any genuine interest. Regardless, it never bothered me.
“Are we going for drinks tonight?” she asked.
“Yeah, I think we’re still on.” I checked my watch. Our shift ended in three hours, and I was nervous as hell. After much soul searching and encouragement from Craig, I’d decided they should meet, that I could come clean to one person with whom I worked. Craig said even having one person to confide in on the job would relieve a lot of pressure. He understood my reluctance to be out at work when I was just a grunt to the residents and attending physicians, and I couldn’t guarantee my training would be as extensive as it was now if people knew. I hadn’t seen any overt discrimination, but that didn’t mean there was none.
I was also convinced Craig would love Sabrina’s striking features for his art, as well as her sharp wit and sense of humor. Considering
in the two months since that first day as interns, she had become one of the few people around whom I was comfortable, I chose her to be my one person I could be open with.
“And I get to meet her, right?” Sabrina brought me out of my thoughts. “Cee? Do I finally get to ask her if that’s really her name?”
My stomach rolled like a hungover frat boy falling off the couch, and I lost my normally pleasant expression. “I already told you Cee isn’t a real name.”
She pursed her dark red lips and squinted at me knowingly. “You are a cagey bastard, you know that? I’ve never met someone so guarded. Your circus must have really done a number on you to make you run so far.”
It was a common thread between us, her cooking up ridiculous scenarios about my life, my past, and where I’d come from. At first, I’d damn near stopped talking to her over her nosiness, but she’d made it into a game, coming up with more and more outlandish reasons for my secrecy. If she got too close for comfort, I diverted her with a wild story that couldn’t possibly be true. She, in turn, guessed I was in witness protection, had gotten involved with the mob, and my eye color had been a gifted opthalmologist’s experiment. I had been a ballet dancer but had quit in a huff when I hadn’t been given the lead role in the Broadway production of Swan Lake. I’d shot that down by pointing out my thighs weren’t the size of tree trunks. She usually guessed me as a runaway of some sort, and each plight from which I’d fled was more peculiar than the last.
“I disapproved of the way they treated the elephants, so I released them all and rode one off into the night. They’re in Montana, grazing in fields and playing in streams.”