by KT Morrison
“Come on,” he said, “come on and show me.” He took down the painting that was on his easel, set it against the worktable, went around behind and took another brand-new canvas out of a package. He brought it and set it on the easel’s ledge. Now he went through pastels and pencils and presented one to her. A charcoal stick. He said, “Come on and show me again.”
“I can’t, Maceo,” she said.
“Janie, come on. You trust me, yes? You just said you feel it—you feel amazing, no?”
“I did,” she said, looking over her shoulder at the work she’d done. She felt confident about that, and chasing it down was what had made her feel amazing.
Now he touched her chest again, right in that spot where she could practically still feel where he pressed his fingertips before. He said, “Do it from here. Don’t do with your eyes, don’t do it with your mind. Let your heartbeat push the blood to your arm, let your arm work from your feelings.”
“You make it sound so easy,” she said, “but you can draw.”
“You can draw, Janie… Come on,” he said again, and now he went to the blank canvas, snatched up the pencil from the table, and she watched the way he loosely held it between thumb and finger, the pencil tip dancing across the canvas, and soon she could see the rough shape of a figure. He said, “There, the hard stuff is done...” He smiled.
“That’s not the hard stuff.”
“You think everything is hard.”
“What am I supposed to draw?”
“Draw me, Janie,” he said, “come on, here,” he stood, looking for a good place where light would fall on him, then he posed for her, nothing extravagant, nothing that would make her laugh or make her roll her eyes. Just blankly standing in a calm state of repose. His face was somber. He said, “How’s the light?”
“You look good,” she said.
“Then put it down on the canvas.”
She looked at the lines he’d made on the canvas showing the sense of where a figure would be; scale, how large the face would be and what it would take up on the blank space. She said, “How do I start?”
“Start with the eyes. That’s all that matters.”
“The eyes, huh?”
“Start with my eyes, Janie.”
She drew a straight line about halfway down from the top of the shape of the head that Maceo had drawn. Then she worked a line down the center, put the pencil where they intersected, moved to the left and drew a rough almond shape, then she took her thumb to measure the distance between where the bridge of the nose would separate the second eye. She said, “Is it one eye width apart?—is that right?”
“Janie, don’t worry about math. Don’t worry about proportion, it’s not the length of your thumb, it’s in your heart. Let your hand go.”
“Maceo, I told you. I just can’t,” and now that whine came back in her voice, and instead of being embarrassed by it this time, she felt emboldened. She had a reason to whine. This was ridiculous. She set the pencil down in the tray.
Maceo was on her instantly, and those warm hands wrapped each of her wrists now and he turned her to face him. He said, “Janie, you feel it now, you just had a victory with that painting, don’t let it get away from you. Do it from your heart. It’s there, I promise you, it’s there.”
“Nothing’s there, Maceo.”
He tugged on her forearms to get her attention. He said, “What do you have a problem with?”
“I can draw landscapes.”
“You can draw figures, too, Janie.”
“They’re too hard, they don’t look right…”
“You have shame, don’t you?”
“That’s why I can’t draw figures?” She frowned.
“You’re afraid to. You afraid you don’t see the human body the way others see it.”
“I see them just fine, Maceo.”
Now his eyes were steady on her and he said, “You saw mine the other night, how did you act?”
Exploration
Her mouth hung open; she couldn’t believe he would throw that up in her face. She was mad all at once, wanted to yank her hands away from him and end this, but instead she defended herself. “You were naked.”
“Exactly. And what’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing’s wrong with it, Maceo, I just wasn’t expecting it.”
“And how did you act?”
She stared at him for a long moment, searching for his meaning, and then decided to trust his line of questioning. He hadn’t steered her wrong. “Embarrassed,” she answered.
“You were. But why?”
“I told you: you were naked.”
“There is your barrier. You have shame.”
“You don’t have any,” she said.
It was a sarcastic quip, meant to make him laugh, but he shook his head as if he couldn’t believe she would stoop to such rudimentary diversion. “I have nothing to be ashamed of. You’re right. So put it down on the paper. Draw the figure,” he said. “Shape it out, don’t worry about the face and how far apart eyes are supposed to be,” he let her hands go and stepped back, resumed his standing pose.
She wanted to roll her eyes, could feel herself slumping, and then could picture the way her daughter did that and how angry it used to make her. Marissa, for crying out loud, you just pull and roll the teet downward, you’re milking a cow not building a bridge. Petulance was an aggravation, and now she was aggravating. He was a nice young man who was enormously talented, and he wanted to help her. She was being a ‘Marissa,’ standing in her pink rubber boots and crying because she didn’t know how to milk a cow. It was just so damn simple, Marissa, you just need to listen and then do it.
She took up the pencil again, and this time she didn’t worry about things you read in a book about the angle of the shoulders and how they related to the chest in line with the sternum. She just let her pencil move over the page, and she could hear Maceo saying, “Yes, that’s it, go,” and now she was, moving her hand around; it wasn’t coming out right, but she squinted and narrowed her eyes, stuck with it. She moved the lead point around in squiggly shapes that looked amateurish still but she was seeking something again and just like she chased down that picture that came out of her mind about a barn in a storm and a bewildering sky, she pushed until she found the shape of the figure.
She stepped back, and he said, “Why are you stopping?
“That’s not terrible,” she said, looking at her work.
“It’s not terrible at all, Janie. You see it, you can see it coming?”
“It’s still so ugly. My pencil strokes, they don’t look like yours.” She set the pencil down again, stepped back to better look at her drawing. It wasn’t awful, but it was something any high school kid could do.
“You’re still trapped in your own mind.”
“Yeah, so what...? I’m trapped in my mind.”
“Don’t do that, you’re hurting yourself.”
“I’m not hurting anybody.”
“Janie, turn around.”
She did and this time she gave him a real good Marissa eye roll—and then interiorly she chastised herself. She stood straighter and looked at him.
He said, “Stop worrying about what it looks like on the paper. You getting caught there—put your hands on me.”
“No, come on, Maceo...”
“What? Touch me, feel me. That’s where I am, I’m real, I’m standing right here. See me, put your hands on me…”
“I can’t do that, Maceo.”
“More barriers, more shields.”
“Don’t try to piss me off. I don’t fall for that.”
“I’m not try to piss you off,” he said, reached forward and took her wrists again. “Here,” he said, and yanked her so she stepped forward. He planted both her palms on his broad chest. He said, “Janie, look at me. Feel me.”
She let her hands stay there, but she gave him a stern gaze. What was she afraid of? This was the barrier. She was getting mad at him because he was right.
She was a grown woman twice his age, and he was teaching her something about herself. Strong Janie, Janie who could do everything, Janie with her strong back and her lonely spirit... She didn’t like to be taught. She liked to learn, but she didn’t like to be taught.
She moved her hands around from the center of his chest up to his collar. She squeezed at those muscles at the base of his neck, moved her hands over his shoulders and stopped.
He said, “That’s it, feel me. Understand how I work. Understand how the shoulder connects to the chest. Not with numbers, not with theory, but with your heart. With your mind and your eyes, and not measurement done from textbooks. Really feel me...”
“I am feeling you,” she said. She moved her hands around again in the same pattern, starting in the center of his chest moving up his collar down to his shoulders. When she’d done it, she started over again.
“That’s it, and down lower, too, feel it...”
“I can’t do that...”
“You doing it. You doing good. Do it with your heart, stop letting whatever barrier in your mind is getting in the way...”
“There’s too much to know,” she said.
“You already know it. Look at your painting of the barn.”
“I’ve drawn many barns.”
“You’ve seen many barns, that is how you know...”
“Look at your figures, look at the way their hands go in their lap, that’s so hard, all the clothes, the folds... I have to stick to landscapes.” She brought her hands back.
Maceo looked at her, and their eyes connected for a long moment. He watched her with concern as if her words had troubled him. He folded his arms in front of him, paused, eyes still watching her intently. Then he pulled his shirt up and over his head tossed it to the floor. He stood there now with no shirt on, just his low-riding paint-splattered shorts. He said, “There, no clothes, no folds, no fabric. This is human, feel it.”
He didn’t make a move to grab her wrists and put her hands on him. Her heart was pounding, and her left eye twitched. She said, “What do you want me to do?”
“See me and then draw me.”
She watched him again for a long quiet while, the hugeness of the moment growing even larger. She put out her right hand, her painting hand, rested it on his bare chest. He was warm to the touch, his skin was smooth. There was a sparse swash of hair below his collar that ran down. She remembered him from Tuesday night when she’d been face-to-face with him naked. He was right, she could remember, see the familiarity of what she’d seen. She remembered his body. It had been a forbidden thing, and it had made her frightened. But why?
Now she put her left hand on his chest as well and moved them around in that same circuit, starting in the center of his chest and up to his collar and then feeling the firmness of his shoulders. She said nothing. Everything she’d said up to this point was throwing something up in his face, a diversionary tactic. He was right about the shields. She didn’t like to be taught, she didn’t like to be told what to do. She liked to learn…
So she learned, she touched him for real. She let her fingertips explore, went around in circles again, studied the hard masculine shape of his chest. Her thumbs ran circles around the hard brown quarters of his nipples. The ones she’d admired when she sat on the edge of the bed and watched him while he slept. She was really feeling him, and she’d wanted to. Now she was doing it and she was learning. She wasn’t being taught, she was learning. And she moved her hands lower, because she wanted to know.
* * *
Her hands worked over the ridges of his ribs, the serratus, according to textbooks, though she wasn’t supposed to concern herself with the namesakes used in lectures or in theory, and she closed her eyes and felt the warm dips and hard edges.
“Open your eyes,” he whispered, “feel how the light gives form to shape… and see it, too...”
She bit her lip, rotated her hands, fingers to the side, and slipped down his hard narrow waist and watching the thin bunched lines her hands pushed his young tight skin into. Both hands opened and out stretched like stars she felt his stomach now, the curls of his black hair drawing lines around his navel springing against her thumbs. She swooped up and back down again, low, then wide, her fingers resting on the rise of his hipbones.
“You understand?” he whispered.
“Yeah,” she answered just as softly.
Maceo touched her now, tracing the backs of his fingers up the cotton of her shoulders, then down her chest barely touching her. She leaned forward, swooning, gripping the hardwood with her bare toes before she would fall. His hands took the hem of her T-shirt and lifted it—she raised her arms and he tossed it aside. The silk of her new haircut fell around her bare shoulders.
Now she stood before her handsome houseguest in just jeans and a bra, and he was shirtless, her mouth hung open and his eyes burned with intent.
“Are you going… to paint me?” she whispered.
“Would you sit for me?”
“I want to.”
But her hands returned to his beautiful body, pale wintry upstate hands moving over his supple Mediterranean flesh, feeling the young hard muscle below. His arms circled behind her and her face came so close to touching his chest he must feel her breath against his skin. Those long fingers of his worked the clasp of her bra and she closed her eyes. Don’t close them, Janie, open your eyes and see the light, see how it gives form to shape…
He stepped back, and she held the cups of her bra in place and looked in his eyes, watched his face as she let the fabric fall and showed him her bare breasts. Her nipples ached, and the warm air of the room prickled against them. Her breaths came shaky from her open mouth.
“The light loves your body, Janie,” he said, eyes working over her admiringly, “it loves to show me your beauty…”
“Oh, God,” she sighed with a shaky voice.
With confidence, he stepped closer again, hands coming to her waist and working at the top button of her jeans. His strong warm hands touched her bared stomach, and it lit up like a field of butterflies aroused by sunlight; she tilted her chin up and looked in his eyes again. He unzipped her old faded Levi’s and her breath chugged in whispers as she let him push them down her hips as though he had authority; like she allowed a doctor to examine her, so would she allow this incredible artist to put his talented eyes on her.
Eyes still on his, she took the waistband and pushed her jeans down to her knees, stepped her legs out of them, stood before him in only her panties. And without having to ask her, she was moving again, pushing the panties down and stepping out of them as well, her hands coming together between her legs to hide her ample tangle of pubic hair. She watched his eyes as they moved over her bared body, watched his hands guide her arms apart and uncover for him that tangled womanly part of her. She grew faint as his eyes stroked over her naked body and her mind turned to static and floated high and light where there was little oxygen.
“So beautiful,” he said. Instead of reaching for a paintbrush, he unbuttoned his own shorts.
* * *
Frozen in place, she stood and watched those good-looking hands work the button out and then draw down his zipper. What was behind his fly had swelled and humped out the cotton where it hadn’t before. She could see the shape of his large penis pressing against the fabric. Unbuttoned and unzipped, he only had to let his hold on the shorts go and they fell to the floor around his ankles. He wore no underwear.
The big thing that dangled between his legs was longer and fuller than she’d seen in her son’s bedroom doorway. It bobbed side to side in stiff wags; one low hanging testicle rose higher while she watched. The intent was not to draw her. She tilted her face up and her eyes were slow to follow, still engaged by the size and arousal of his manhood.
When she met his gaze, he said, “Study me, Janie, look at me and touch me, and I will study you…” He stepped closer and she flinched at the weight of his hands on her shoulders. She rested her trembling palms on
the hardness of his stomach again, let her eyes slowly travel from his, down his young and incredible body, down between his legs. A vein had swelled along the top side of his penis looking as thick as a pencil, it began inside his body, traveled the center of the shaft until it veered sharply sideways midway down; the bobbing of his huge organ grew pronounced, an upright jerking lifting it outward with each beat of his heart, the thing growing even longer, even thicker, lightly tapping against her thigh and stomach, rustling her full, womanly bush. Her hands fell lower until her thumb disappeared in the dense black bramble above the base of his organ. Her mouth was open, but she didn’t breathe, her heart hammered and her vision paled.
His hands moved like silk over her skin until they cupped her breasts and he hefted them, coddled them, studied them. She moved her painting hand down the inside of his thigh and slowly closed her fingers around his hanging manhood. It was warm and gummy, surprisingly soft and pliable despite its size. Life pulsed through it and it continued to grow in her grip. She studied it in her hand, saw the pale stripe of her thumb across its dark width; she squeezed it gently, milked it downward just as she’d encouraged Marissa to milk the cows’ teats.
Now Maceo stooped over her, hands still caressing her breasts, eyes gathering her gaze, lips parting to take her kiss.
“Oh, God, no,” she sighed a desperate sound and let his penis go and stepped back from him.
He was striking, his eyes burning on her as snow beyond the window slashed sideways behind him; firelight from the wood stove flickered on the glistening edges of his twenty-year-old body; his penis continued to grow, a truly gargantuan arm extending out now to greet her, level with the floor, eager for her touch, eager to feel her insides. “Oh, Maceo, no,” she said, squatted and gathered her things up and collected them against her front, trying to cover her nakedness. This wasn’t art, this wasn’t painting…
