by Lisa Henry
And then some movement had caught his eye, and he’d turned and seen John watching from the doorway. He was way too old for stupid games by then—Elliott was probably way too old as well—but there’d been such an expression of longing on his face that it had brought Elliott up short. And then John had walked away.
The game hadn’t been fun after that.
Elliott had excused himself, unable to feel happy about playing if John couldn’t. And, even if he didn’t properly understand it at that age, he knew one thing for certain: John couldn’t.
“John,” Henry had said on his deathbed. “John, promise me that you’ll look after your brother and your sisters.”
What a cruel thing that was to ask.
What a cruel thing love could be, when it was stripped back to its bones.
***
There was a painting on the bottom floor of the gallery that Elliott was drawn to. A lonely figure looking away. A green background that suggested chaos, a maelstrom. Struggle. Elliott’s chest tightened when he looked at it. He didn’t know who it represented to him. Himself maybe. Maybe his dad. Maybe nobody. Maybe everybody.
When he closed his eyes at night and tried to sleep, he thought of the figure in the painting standing there silently. Enduring.
He ached.
***
Abigail in Lamplight dominated the room. Her pose was provocative, but her smile was shy. Elliott had built up a lifetime of immunity to the painting, and he couldn’t help letting out a small laugh when Lucien gasped.
“Oh, wow. That’s, um, so that’s your mom, and that’s your mom’s . . .” He cleared his throat. “It’s so much bigger than I thought it would be.”
Elliott looked at him, eyebrows raised.
“The painting!” Lucien exclaimed, a flush climbing up his throat and staining his cheeks red. “The entirety of the painting, not . . .” He gestured vaguely. “Oh, Jesus. Kill me now, please.”
Elliott laughed again. “You should have seen the looks I got when I brought kids home for sleepovers and this was one of the first things they saw in the house. I had a friend from eighth grade who couldn’t speak to me again until about a week before we graduated senior year.”
“Eighth grade is a confusing time,” Lucien said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Nobody wants to think about what their friends’ parents have under their clothes in eighth grade.”
“Right,” Elliott said. “That’s more of a ninth-grade phenomenon.”
“Damn straight.” Lucien laughed. “My friend Jamon’s dad? Free-balled it under his sweatpants and was at least ninety-five percent responsible for the fact that I figured out I was gay. Total DILF.”
Elliott laughed too. “I don’t think I ever had a revelation. I think I always knew. I didn’t grow up in the sort of house where the assumption was that any of us were straight, you know? It was never the default. Mom and Dad had a lot of queer friends.”
Elliott’s otherness had nothing to do with his sexuality. He sometimes felt like he was the kid born in the circus who dreamed of running away to be an accountant.
“That’s very cool,” Lucien said, his smile softening.
Elliott stared at Abigail in Lamplight and then gazed around the gallery. His dad’s diaries were here now, on display under glass. His brushes were. Some family photographs. Some sketches. Pictures of Norland Park. Ephemera. Detritus. “How . . . how do I show them that? The people who are going to come here? How do I show them what sort of man my dad was, when sometimes I don’t even know myself?”
Lucien met his gaze.
“I mean, where are his meds? Where are the tubes and shit he had coming out of him in the hospital?” Elliott’s eyes stung and his throat felt suddenly raw. “Where are all those pills he had to swallow that none of us were allowed to touch because they were so fucking toxic?” He cleared his throat. “What about all those photographs of me and my sisters? He had them pinned up all around his studio, but there wasn’t a single one of John. So who was he? How could he be such a great dad for us, and just walk away from John like that?”
“I don’t know,” Lucien said quietly. “I don’t know that.”
“He wasn’t perfect,” Elliott rasped.
“Nobody is.”
“He left us with fucking nothing.” The words were out before Elliott could stop them. It felt as though they’d come from nowhere, but maybe they’d been building up for months. Years, possibly, because from the second he got his diagnosis, Henry could have done something. Should have done something. Shouldn’t have left them with no income and no home. Elliott pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. “Jesus fuck.”
“Hey.” Lucien pulled him into a hug. His aftershave smelled like citrus. “Hey.”
“Shit.” Elliott pulled away, keeping his gaze averted. “Sorry. I’m sorry.”
“For what?” Lucien asked gently. “You have nothing to apologize for.”
God. Poor Lucien didn’t know the half of it.
Elliott swallowed and scrubbed his face with his hands. “For being a mess all over you, I guess.”
“Elliott.” The fond smile was evident in Lucien’s tone. “I was messier last week when I thought I’d lost my metro card.”
“God.” Elliott sucked in a breath. “Sorry. I don’t even know where that came from. We’re fine, you know? Jesus.” He rolled his shoulders. “There’s a guy next to the deli who keeps all his worldly goods in a shopping cart, and I’m complaining about fucking what? Not living in a mansion anymore?”
“Elliott.”
Elliott took a moment to lift his gaze, half-afraid he’d see condemnation in Lucien’s eyes. He didn’t, though. He just saw that same warmth that was present in everything Lucien did.
“You know, my nonna always used to yell at me if I didn’t want my dinner. Didn’t I know there were children starving in Africa?” He shrugged. “Fat lot of good her meatballs would have done them though, right?”
“I don’t think it’s the same thing.”
“It’s absolutely the same thing,” Lucien said. “Don’t argue with me.”
Elliott smiled despite himself.
“Also, we should get meatballs. And beer. Mostly beer.”
“Mostly beer,” Elliott agreed.
“And we’re going to drink it all,” Lucien said, “and get as messy as we want, and you can yell at your dad all you like. Get it out of your system before you have to smile and play nice for the buyers.”
“I don’t really . . .” Except there was no good way to say, I don’t want to be your friend, Lucien, was there? And not for anything that Lucien had done, but because of Elliott’s own guilt. He forced a smile instead. “Actually, that sounds really good.”
Lucien slung an arm around Elliott’s shoulders. “Let’s do this thing.”
***
Marianne found them a few hours later, sprawled together on the floor of the gallery in front of Abigail in Lamplight, Lucien listening avidly while Elliott recounted the time his dad marched down to his school to complain when Elliott failed art class in sixth grade.
“And not because he thought I had to follow in his footsteps or anything, or that the son of Henry Dashwood might actually suck at art,” Elliott said. “I was terrible. We all knew I was terrible. But because he didn’t think anyone should fail art. He didn’t think it was possible, because art is about expression, and there’s no wrong way to express yourself.”
“I remember that.”
Elliott squinted toward the doorway, and smiled when he saw Marianne standing there.
“That is so incredible.” Lucien shuffled aside to make room for Marianne to sit down between them. “You should tell that story. To the art people.”
“I’m so bad at art,” Elliott said with a sigh.
Marianne reached for Elliott’s beer and took a sip. “How much have you boys had to drink?”
“Just enough,” Lucien said, beaming at her.
“Just enough,” Elliott agreed
, and slung an arm around her shoulders.
They sat there a while longer, until Marianne, breathless with excitement, dashed outside for some privacy to take a call from Jack. Lucien passed Elliott another beer, and they sat and drank some more, surrounded by Henry’s art.
The day of the opening of the Henry Dashwood Retrospective dawned clear and cool. Elliott lay in bed as long as he could, dozing as Marianne showered and dressed and then sat cross-legged on the couch and spent a while scrolling through something on her phone. She stopped sometimes, her teeth digging into her bottom lip, and then smiled.
Elliott was looking forward to the opening, while at the same time the thought of it made him nervous. He wanted it to go well. He thought he and Marianne had done the best they could—Odette certainly seemed happy with them—but from now on it was out of their hands. Hopefully there would be a decent crowd. Hopefully his dad’s paintings would sell. It wasn’t just paint on canvas. It wasn’t even windows into Henry’s vision. It was more solid than that. It was a college fund for Marianne and Greta. It was health insurance. It was maybe getting a place with more room.
This was Henry’s last paycheck, and while a part of Elliott hated to think of it in such a cold way, fuck art, right? It was money they needed, and money everyone was here for. Most of the people at the gallery tonight wouldn’t be looking at the paintings and trying to understand the mind of the man behind them. Most of them would be calculating what those swathes of color were worth now that the man who’d put them there was dead.
Marianne set her phone on the arm of the couch and then stood up. She crossed over to the small refrigerator and rattled around in it for a moment. Then she walked to the bed, pushed Elliott’s feet out of the way, and sat down and began to pick through the remains of last night’s falafel salad.
Elliott yawned and stretched.
“You need to get out of bed at some point,” Marianne told him.
“Mmm.”
“Lucien wants to make sure we have clothes for tonight. Like, I think he’s going to vet our outfits.”
Elliott had packed the single pair of dress pants he wore as a waiter, and a button-down shirt. He had the feeling those would not pass muster with Lucien, who always managed to look like he’d stepped off a billboard or fallen out of the glossy pages of a fashion magazine.
“Ugh.” Elliott sat up and shuffled closer to Marianne. He picked an olive out of the salad.
It would be over tomorrow, and then they could pack up their dad’s things that weren’t being used for the display, and sort out getting them shipped to California. He would miss New York. He would miss being unnoticed here. He would miss feeling like a tiny part of something larger. He wouldn’t miss digging through his dad’s past, though, and his own. The wound still felt too fresh to go picking at the scab. He thought it might feel like that for years yet.
He’d miss New York, but he wanted to see his mom and Greta again. It had barely been three weeks, but Greta’s text messages were increasingly hostile, and he was worried she was lonely: Barton Lake was boring. Greta’s new school was so ugly it made her want to stab her eyes out with a pen. A bird was building a nest in a tree in their narrow backyard, and it was loud, Elliott, loud.
Greta just needed to vent to someone who would let her complain the glass was half-empty, and that person was never going to be Abby.
Abby’s texts had been much more optimistic. She’d finished her first lot of bead bracelets and sold two of them in the shop already. At fifteen dollars each! As though all their money troubles were now behind them, and she was on track to becoming some sort of bead bracelet entrepreneur.
Yeah. It was time to go back to Barton Lake.
Marianne’s predictions about Lucien were proved correct when Lucien knocked on their door just after ten. He came bearing bags full of clothes.
“Okay, Dashwoods,” he announced. “Let’s make you beautiful! I have a bunch of my clothes for you to try, Elliott, and I borrowed some dresses off my friend’s sister for Marianne.”
Elliott eyed the pair of pants that Lucien hauled out of one of the bags. They were so skinny they looked more like leggings. “I don’t think those will fit me.”
“Oh, please. Of course they will. We’re the same build.”
Lucien’s optimism proved misplaced ten minutes later when Elliott was struggling to pull the zip up on the pants. Lucien stood behind him, gripping the waistband of the pants and trying to hitch him into them while Marianne sat on the bed, red faced with laughter.
“Stop!” Elliott exclaimed. “They don’t fit! Even if we get them up, I’ll crush my balls if I try to walk!”
“Just try and breathe in,” Lucien instructed.
“Stop trying to castrate my brother with pants!” Marianne said, gasping for breath and reaching for her phone.
Elliott grabbed for her arm. “Do not film this!”
“Okay,” Lucien said. “Okay, take them off. I’ve got another pair that will work. I had to buy them last year after some asshole opened a bakery next door to my building. They sell cronuts, for fuck’s sake. I’m not made of steel.” He grimaced. “Not anymore, at least.”
Elliott peeled the pants off with some difficulty. The next pair Lucien handed him went on a little more easily, and Elliott could actually do the fly up. They were definitely tighter than anything he usually wore though.
“Nice!” Lucien exclaimed. “Those pants do incredible things to your ass. Seriously, if I wasn’t already taken . . .” He winked.
Elliott forced a smile and didn’t look at Marianne. He was terrified she’d ask about Lucien’s boyfriend. “So what shirt goes with it?”
“Oh, I have shirts and jackets,” Lucien said. “And you’re going to look amazing. FYI, I also brought hair gel, because those scruffy locks of yours are just crying out for help. I mean, you can get away with a little bit of a Bohemian vibe given that you’re the son of an artist, but I have to draw the line somewhere.”
It took another half an hour before Lucien was satisfied with Elliott’s wardrobe, and then he turned his attention to Marianne. Marianne chose a green floor-length dress with a beaded halter neck that made her look effortlessly beautiful.
“It’s vintage,” Lucien said approvingly. “Heather has this knack for finding incredible clothes at rummage sales and Goodwill. It’s like her superpower. You look amazing in that.”
Marianne spun in a circle, and the dress billowed out. Elliott was immediately jealous that she hadn’t been zipped into something constrictive.
“You could both so easily get laid tonight,” Lucien said. “Seriously. I mean, I’d do it, but . . .”
“You’re taken,” Marianne said with a smile.
“Also totally gay. But you’re giving me some serious vibes in the pants area, Marianne.”
She laughed. “That is the sweetest and also strangest compliment I’ve ever gotten.”
“Now, I need you both to get out of those clothes and keep them unwrinkled until tonight. In the meantime, let’s go and get some cronuts. They’re incredible, seriously. Life-changing. You’ll see Jesus.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Elliott said, although anything that got him out of the pants sounded pretty damn sweet. The cronuts were just an added bonus.
***
Elliott felt like an imposter as he moved around the gallery, a flute of champagne in his hand and a smile fixed on his face. Marianne, her arm looped through his, was a natural at stuff like this. Marianne was the sun. Wherever she moved, everything else fell into orbit around her. She was perfectly at ease talking with strangers, unafraid of saying the wrong thing or of being unable to speak at all. She smiled brightly at strangers and fell easily into conversation, talking animatedly about Henry Dashwood her father, Henry Dashwood the artist, and Henry Dashwood the man.
The gallery was full, but Elliott didn’t know if that meant anyone was buying or not. Odette worked the room with flawless precision, with Lucien at her side. Elliott caugh
t Lucien’s eye once, and Lucien’s mouth quirked in a smile and he winked, and in that moment Elliott didn’t feel so out of his depth. It was all a charade, wasn’t it? The art, the people, life itself. It made him feel a little more certain of himself.
“What can you tell me about this painting?” a gruff man asked at one point, and Elliott realized he’d somehow detached himself from Marianne.
He looked at the painting. Three abstract figures painted in shades of brown and yellow, silhouetted against a stark red background. It wasn’t his dad’s usual style. It was . . . If Elliott had to pick a word, he’d say it was uglier.
“I remember when he painted it,” Elliott said. “He started it the day after he was told the treatment wasn’t working.” He swallowed. “I never saw him angry. I think he put his anger into this piece.”
The man’s expression softened.
“I think he was very angry that he wouldn’t get to see how we turned out. He always hated to leave things unfinished.”
Three figures, though. Not four. John wasn’t one of Henry’s unfinished pieces. Elliott wondered at what point his dad had made that decision. He wondered, if Henry had lived long enough, if he would have done it for all of them at some point. Decided they were complete. It was impossible to know.
Elliott left the man gazing thoughtfully at the painting and stepped away. He didn’t know if he’d made a sale or not. He didn’t know if that was even the point anymore. It seemed like more of an accomplishment just to make it through a simple exchange without crumbling, in all honesty. Elliott would take his victories where he could find them.
