Traveling Left of Center and Other Stories

by Nancy Christie

  “Something different this time,” he had murmured, and began to sketch a waterfall, diamond flashes glittering on the whiteness. “Take off your suit,” he added without turning, and Annabelle understood that he wanted to paint her, Annabelle, not her mother.

  How long she had dreamed of her father wanting to paint her!—and yet, now that the time had come, she resisted, fearing the moment when he would turn his life draining gaze on her, reducing her to a mix of colors and shapes on the canvas.

  But her father had to paint. Who was she to resist him?

  It never seemed to bother her mother to undress in the studio, even though the air swirling through the French windows was cool. Her father liked to work in fresh air. He claimed it made the pictures sharper in his mind, but all Annabelle could think was how hard it must have been for her mother to stand in that chilly room for hours at a time, sometimes with nothing on at all to protect her body from the coldness.

  This time, it was Annabelle whose flesh crawled with goose bumps, in spite of the flush of embarrassment that suffused her skin. She had never before been naked in front of her father, and now, with her woman’s body beginning to emerge from the childish curves of fat and flesh, she felt exposed. Unprotected. Unready for the close scrutiny her father gave her.

  Yet, hidden in the back corners of her mind was the spark of satisfaction that this time, it was her body her father wanted to paint—that it would be her face and eyes he would be capturing.

  The spark grew, fanned to a flame each time her father’s eyes raked over her. Gradually the chill left her body; she began to perspire, just lightly, a gentle moisture gathering under the hair lying on the back of her neck and beneath the soft curve of her barely formed breasts.

  And she stood there, relaxing under his regard like a cat satiated by the rays of the sun.

  “Turn a bit,” he had commanded, but then, too impatient to wait, he adjusted her body himself, his hand lightly grazing the side of her neck. Annabelle flamed at his touch, desire bringing color to her cheeks. Unconsciously, she pulled her abdomen in a bit more and arched her narrow child’s back to allow more light to stream across her chest.

  And the pose, at first so foreign and uncomfortable, became easier to maintain, as long as she looked into his eyes and saw herself as he did.

  “Beautiful,” she heard him say. For that alone she would have endured a thousand hours of the same pose. He picked up the brush and swirled the soft bristles in the oil before stroking it slowly on the canvas, and Annabelle imagined she could feel the silken tip caressing her skin.

  Her father worked in silence, pausing every now and then to look at Annabelle before returning his gaze to the canvas. And each time she met his eyes, there was an exchange of the fire that once had existed only between her parents.

  When he pulled her hair forward, his fingers brushed against her breasts, and the force of her feelings were almost more than she could bear. She wanted to move, just a little, toward him—but he had told her to stand still. Ever-obedient, she stood, though the fire threatened to consume her.

  That was how her mother found them, just the two of them, the artist and his model.

  “Anna? What are you thinking about, Anna?”

  Annabelle looked at Jules blankly, not seeing him, but automatically answering his question, the question she thought she heard.

  “It wasn’t my idea.” Was she answering Jules or defending herself against some unspoken accusation? “He said he needed a different model . . . someone pure and fresh and untouched . . .”

  Her voice trailed off into the darkness, one hand covering her face, as though to hide behind the thin, splayed fingers. And she could still see the picture her father was painting—a waterfall and half-hidden in the water, the figure of a young girl, with her long hair modestly covering her nakedness.

  The rest of the painting was unfinished, incomplete—like the young model posing for it. But in the eyes her father had captured some essence of forbidden knowledge that belied the child-like body, hinting at the woman waiting behind half-closed lids.

  “My mother just stood there and watched him for a time . . . it seemed like hours, forever . . .” Forever, before her father stilled his brush and looked absently at his wife, as though she wasn’t there, not really—as though all that mattered was Annabelle.

  The look caught her mother with the force of a blow, stripped the skin from her face and left the nerve ends quivering with the pain of rejection.

  “It wasn’t my idea,” she said again to Jules.

  And yet, Annabelle had gone into the studio when he was alone. She had stood there, in her thin bathing suit, willing him to see her.

  But not for the world would she have hurt her mother.

  “She was right for this picture,” her father said finally, looking at Annabelle critically before applying the faintest caress of soft brown to the undercurve of the belly of the painted Annabelle. “Young and tender . . . too young for you to model.”

  Annabelle still believed he never intended to be cruel, only honest.

  “I think,” he added, peering dispassionately at the canvas before gazing up at Annabelle’s mother, “this may be the beginning of a whole new series.”

  There was silence in the room after that, except for the gentle stroking of the brush against the canvas and the uneven breathing of Annabelle’s mother.

  And Annabelle, barely breathing, was still as a statue—cold now and ashamed, wanting only to hide her nakedness and return to the safety of a world where she could watch her parents twist and turn against their need for each other.

  Perhaps her mother had understood, and forgiven Annabelle the part she had played, all unknowing. She saw the painter engrossed in his work and the fresh child’s body capturing his attention, and silently left the room. After all, nothing should interrupt his work. That was all that mattered.

  The draft from the open windows raked across Annabelle’s unprotected back. She trembled uncontrollably until her father threw down his brush in disgust.

  “I can’t paint if you won’t stand still! Leave. We will finish it tomorrow,” he said angrily, before turning to stare moodily out the window.

  Annabelle ran from the studio to her room where she sat at her window and watched her mother swimming in the cold lake. With every stroke her mother took, with every wave that broke across her mother’s back, Annabelle shivered in sympathy.

  And the fire that had burned so unbearably within her was reduced to ashes.

  Annabelle had fallen asleep at the window, her forehead resting on the glass. It wasn’t until the next morning that she understood the full extent of her mother’s love for her father.

  “She left him that quickly,” Annabelle said now to Jules, “because of me, and then I left him too. I was afraid.

  “But I thought that, when I was older, when I saw him again . . . I didn’t want to let him down. My mother wouldn’t have . . . she was strong. I would be strong, too.”

  “Anna, it’s over now. It was wrong of your father to paint you, wrong of your mother to take her own life. . . .”

  But Annabelle stopped Jules, throwing up her hands as though to ward off the words, the accusations, the implication. “How can you say that? All that mattered was my father’s art! My mother died for him!”

  And Annabelle was caught between the two of them, ripped apart. Bleeding. Dying.

  “Anna,” Jules started, but she was lost to him, to the unbearable present. She caught up her coat and vanished through the office door, wanting only to reach her apartment, to find her past, to make her peace.

  “I never meant to hurt you, Mother.” The words echoed in the empty rooms, although she couldn’t remember walking home or unlocking the door.

  “I just wanted him to look at me for once. I just wanted someone to want me,” and she shook her head slowly as she saw herself reflected in the window.

  How could she have ever thought she was as beautiful as her mother?
She was ugly, and tearing off her clothes, she saw the shriveled skin across her chest, the dull hair hanging limply about her head, the eyes, large and staring and devoid of life.

  “If my father saw me now, he wouldn’t want to paint me,” and there was relief in the thought. If they were all together again in the house by the lake, nothing could go wrong. Her father would paint only her mother, and Annabelle could stay safely in the background.

  “Mother?” Her voice was uncertain in the darkness. Where had her mother gone? Why had she left her now just when Annabelle needed her most? She was just a child after all—a good child—an obedient child who was only doing what she had been told.

  “It was all a mistake,” she said loudly, hoping her mother would hear her, out where she was swimming in the lake.

  Annabelle stepped closer to the window, wanting to catch her mother’s eye. But perhaps she was too high up—on the third floor of the apartment building—the second story of the house by the lake, watching her mother swim with strong sure strokes through the sparkling water.

  She undid the latch, and the cold winter wind gusted in, but Annabelle didn’t shiver. Why should she? It was June and the sun was shining and there was her mother, far out on the lake, and her father, carrying his easel down to the shore.

  He was going to paint her mother as she floated on the water, and Annabelle could watch from the safety of her bedroom window.

  “Annabelle! Annabelle!”

  Her mother’s voice called to her, warm and loving and full of forgiveness. And her upraised arm glittered with drops of water in the sunlight.

  “I don’t want to be alone up here,” Annabelle said aloud, slipping her hand through her hair, feeling with the fingers of memory each golden curling strand. And then, with one final movement, she shook her long hair across her shoulders before running to them.

  END

  Please support this author by telling your friends about Traveling Left of Center and Other Stories and reviewing it on your favorite book website(s).

  Free Study Guide

  Book club coordinators, teachers, librarians and other group discussion leaders may download a free Study Guide for this book.

  Addenda

  Author’s Notes

  The stories in this collection were not methodically planned out but rather, came unbidden and when least expected.

  Something would trigger the idea—an overheard bit of conversation, an interaction between two strangers, an item left behind when no longer wanted or needed—and my writer’s mind would seize on it, layering words around it the way an oyster secretes nacre around a bit of grit.

  In the oyster’s case, that coating serves to protect the mollusk’s soft inside from any further discomfort. In my case, words serve the same purpose. The story trigger is the irritant, and I have learned that I have to do something with it or continue to be aggravated by it.

  Not being a patient, long-suffering person, I chose to write, hoping to produce pearls, or at least, something better than the grit that started it all.

  About Nancy Christie

  Nancy Christie has a passion for fiction, and has been making up stories since she was a child, engaging in “what if” and “let’s pretend” activities that took her far beyond her northeastern Ohio home.

  Her short stories have appeared in literary magazines and on websites, including Hypertext, Full of Crow, Fiction365, Red Fez, Wanderings, The Chaffin Journal and Xtreme, with two available in e-book format from PHP Shorts: Annabelle and Alice in Wonderland.

  She writes fiction because “I love the world of make-believe. I love learning about my characters, following them as they live their lives, rejoicing with them when things go well and commiserating with them when life becomes painful and events are almost unendurable. Crazy? Maybe. But you have to be a little crazy to spend your days and nights with people only you can see and hear.”

  For more information about Nancy Christie and her work, visit her website at www.nancychristie.com, read her writing blogs (One on One, The Writer’s Place and Finding Fran) or follow her on Twitter at @NChristie_OH.

  About Pixel Hall Press

  Pixel Hall Press is a relatively new, old-fashioned small publishing house that focuses on discovering literary gems and great stories that might have otherwise been overlooked. Our mission is “To publish books that energize the imagination and intrigue the mind, and to be a conduit between readers and provocative, stimulating, talented authors.”

  Please go to the For Readers & Book Clubs section of the Pixel Hall Press website, to find out about various programs we offer readers, including free Study Guides for book discussion leaders, volume discounts on books, our Beta Reader program which offers access to free pre-publication eBooks, and the Author Connect Program which includes helping to set up book discussions with our authors for reading groups.

  Join in on the discussion about books and publishing on Pixel Hall Press’s Facebook page and on Twitter: @PixelHallPress.

  If you wish to receive information about Pixel Hall Press books and authors, as well as opportunities for free excerpts and even free books, please use the Contact Form on our Website.