The remains

by Vincent Zandri

  “Hear me out, honey. The point I’m trying to make is that this is the work of an autistic genius who, it pains me to admit, is one-hundred times more successful at his art than you and me combined.”

  The ex was making sense. Beginning to make sense, that is.

  “Your point?”

  “It’s like one of those tests the shrinks gave me night and day down in Poughkeepsie. The Horseshack test. You know, flashcards with splotches of black ink on them. You’re supposed to offer up an immediate interpretation of them; find some meaning, assign some sense to the splotch.”

  “Rorschach Test,” I corrected.

  “Whatever. I just think that what we have here is the same or at least a similar situation.”

  I nodded, even though I wanted to tell him that there was nothing subjective about the word I saw in the center of Franny’s painting. But then maybe Michael had a point. Maybe the word I saw was a simple case of my interpretation and my interpretation alone. It wasn’t like I had been looking or searching for the word when my eyes first glimpsed the image. Franny hadn’t pointed out anything specific to me. I immediately saw the word and since then, I hadn’t been able to put it out of my mind. And what about the artist giving it the title of ‘Listen’? Was that just a coincidence or suggestive reasoning?

  I turned and went back to the couch.

  Michael set the painting back down, resting it gently back up against the bookcase.

  “Ten grand,” he said, a little under his breath-a little too under his breath.

  He brought his right hand up to his face, began dropping one finger after other, all the time whispering near silent calculations to himself.

  “What if we go on e-Bay-”

  “Michael,” I spat, cutting him off. “Don’t even think about it.”

  “Just a suggestion,” he smirked, eyes wide.

  “Here’s a suggestion,” I said, gripping the empty Pepsi can. “Get a job.”

  Chapter 5

  Michael faced me.

  “What’s this all about, Rebecca? What’s going on here?”

  I shook my head, ran my hand through my hair as if to say, Nothing . But I felt something snap inside my brain. I felt my heart begin to pound and Molly’s soft voice filled my head.

  “ Tell him the truth.”

  But I couldn’t do it. Like a screw that had rusted over time inside its solid metal bolt, the secret was too entrenched. Even if I tried to tell Michael, I feared that all I might possibly manage would be to open my mouth with no words coming out. So what did I do instead? I just stared at him, with a frowning, puppy dog face of my own.

  “You all right, Bec?” he asked after a beat. But we’d been married after all. We’d shared intimacy after intimacy. It was true, he loved me and despite my anger for what had happened during his binging crazy period, I still loved him too. With that clearly in mind and heart, I knew that he knew that I was holding something back. Something that once revealed might forever alter the way he perceived me. The way he perceived us. Or what had been us.

  I knew how much my silence must have been hurting him.

  Seeking a distraction I picked up his near empty Pepsi can, handed it to him, then made my way back into the kitchen to toss mine into the recycling bin. Outside the double-hung window over the sink the rain picked up in intensity. This storm was definitely going to be an all-nighter.

  “You hungry?” I offered, suddenly hoping that Michael would say yes; that maybe after a couple of hours and some hot food in me, I might loosen up that rusted screw, begin to spill the details of a three decade old secret.

  But instead, he entered the kitchen and tossed the empty can into the blue recycle bin next to the trash container. Having him next to me in the kitchen made me think about a time when the bin might have been filled with a dozen empty beer bottles and the mortgage was three months overdue.

  But then it also reminded me of something wonderful.

  Michael and I, during our first year together, sitting outside the Cafe Deux-Magots in Paris on a bright, cool, early spring afternoon. On one side the St. Germaine-des-Pres church and on the other the Seine, lovers and thinkers slowly walking the cobble walk that bordered its left bank. Both of us dressed in leather jackets and scarves, drinking cappuccinos and smoking cigarettes, our eyes never tired of looking into each other’s faces, our knees touching under the little round table and on occasion the tips of our fingers touching and that wonderful electric shock sensation that went through our bodies each time it happened. Michael was on his way to becoming a famous novelist and I was going to be a famous artist and together we were going to be the toast of Paris and New York.

  Eight years later, I was standing inside the open refrigerator door of my north Albany apartment. I was looking at the food and thinking that now there was only one person to cook for instead of two.

  “What’s so important you can’t stay for dinner?” It was a question I posed against my better judgment. Not because I knew what he might say in response. But because I was afraid of what he might say.

  He pursed his lips.

  Here it comes.

  He inhaled. “I, uh, have a date,” he mumbled with a quick nervous bob of his head.

  So there it was: bang, pow, right smack in the kisser.

  I would have gladly cut off my right pinky finger not to look affected, even if I was feeling a lump of lead lodge itself in my sternum.

  “You okay, Bec?” he said yet again. This time with even more concern in his voice.

  What I wanted to say was this: whose home do you use for a studio? Who do you need to be close to in order to be creative?

  Instead I proceeded to plant the fakest smile you ever saw on my face.

  “I’m fine.”

  “You sure?” he asked. “Cause you’re acting more than a little weird. The ‘Listen’ stuff and all.”

  I shook my head, put back one of the two Pepsi cans and shut the fridge door… a little more forcefully than the actor in me would have preferred. I needed him to leave. But he just stood there, brown eyes beaming into me.

  “What are you going to do tonight?” he smiled.

  “Bed early,” I said through clenched teeth. “Big class tomorrow.”

  But if I had said, Nothing, I have no life, it would have sent the same exact message.

  Michael leaned into me, giving me a peck on the cheek. He shot out of the kitchen, grabbed his leather jacket and his beret and put them on.

  “By the way,” he said. “What does Franny call the painting?”

  “’Listen’.” I said, following him around the corner into the living room.

  “Come again?” he said. The question gave me pause until I realized Michael thought I had asked him to listen. As in, Listen up!

  “Meaning,” I clarified, “that’s what Franny calls the painting, ‘Listen’.”

  Michael laughed, as though suddenly understanding the punch-line to some silly joke.

  “No kidding,” he said. “Maybe there’s something to your vision after all.”

  I tossed him a smile. Yet another fake one.

  “I hope you don’t think me a jerk for dating,” Michael said, as he opened the back door and stepped out onto the stone terrace in the rain. “You’re free to date too you know. Test the waters a little. Who knows, maybe in the end, seeing other people will bring us back together.”

  I bit down on my bottom lip.

  “Isn’t it pretty to think so,” I said, closing the door behind him.

  Chapter 6

  Time to be alone with my old friend self-pity.

  For a moment I thought about taking a long, hot shower, then changing into some baggy sweats, popping a movie into the DVD player. Or maybe I would turn on the Food Channel, get a dose of Rachael Ray. Something pretty, peppy and mindless… anything to distract me from the events of the day.

  Then I thought of just drinking myself into a self-sedating oblivion. But then poisoning myself over Michael’s new f
ound love life didn’t sound very appetizing either. Of course there was always the cell phone and Robyn. But I couldn’t exactly call her while she was on a date.

  From across the room I stared at Franny’s painting. The word ‘Listen’ peered out at me from the center of the canvas like a laughing, heckling hyena.

  That’s when I got the most incredible cramp in my stomach. It felt as though some invisible creep had sucker-punched me in the gut. Now I definitely knew what I was going to do next.

  I sprinted for the bathroom.

  Moments later I was back on the couch, stomach cramps no longer an issue. But I felt drained. My forehead was pasty with sweat, my limbs were shaking, my mouth was dry. Turning my attention to the coffee table, I discovered that in all my sudden hurry to make it to the bathroom, I must have tipped over a glass of water because now I was left with a puddle of water that extended from the tabletop onto the hardwood floor below.

  That spill became the perfect metaphor for my day. You’d think I might attend to it right away. But Franny’s painting was doing its magic. It’s black magic. It was calling me again. Not only the image of the grass field and dark woods beyond it-a landscape that now was very much mimicking the one of my youth; the field and the woods that Molly and I accessed from outside the back door of our farmhouse-but also the crazy, colorful abstract lines that were hastily painted over the scene.

  To some people, these lines, circles and squiggles might seem an annoyance or, at the very least, a kind of self-indulgence on the part of the artist. But to me they represented something more. I’d been having more than my fair share of dreams lately. Dreams that involved Molly and me; that involved our walking through the field to the dark woods, despite our father strictly forbidding us to do so. Those abstract lines made me feel like I was entering into the dream once more, only not in the sleep state. They made me feel like I was dreaming while I was awake. For an added third dimension, the word ‘Listen’ was buried in the painting’s center. A word not everyone saw. Not without my tracing it for them.

  Questions flooded me.

  Why would Franny decide to give me a painting at all? Especially when the payday for one of his pieces pretty much equaled what I might make in three months working at the Albany Art Center.

  Under the circumstances of Franny’s autism, he might not have cared the least bit about giving up the money. But then he had never before gifted me one of his paintings. Did Franny’s mother know that he’d slipped me a ten-thousand dollar present? And why did he call it ‘Listen’ when I was the only person who clearly recognized the word in the first place? Or so it seemed. That is, judging by the argument waged that afternoon by Robyn and myself inside the center studio. With the word ‘Listen’ being flung all over the place, had Franny made the spontaneous decision to use the ‘L’ word as the title of his masterpiece? Or, what was almost too freaky to contemplate, had ‘Listen’ been the title all along?

  Seated on the couch in the silence of the old apartment, I once more pictured Franny’s face. Pictured it go from round, rosy and animated to pale and serious, as if for a few seconds, the boy-like autism stepped aside to reveal the hidden man.

  I ran my hands over my face. It surprised me to know that I was crying. Exactly why was I shedding tears in the solitude of my apartment?

  In a way, I’m not sure I wanted to know. But then the thirty year anniversary that would arrive on Friday and all the memories and dreams it conjured up, might have been reason enough for tears. And now this painting from Franny-a painting that was playing with my head and heart.

  A tingle erupted in my stomach, along with a dull ache in the center of my brain. I stood up, felt the dizziness that accompanied the suddenly downshifting blood. Slowly making my way into the kitchen, I retrieved a wad of paper-towels from off the cabinet-mounted roller above the sink. Back in the living room, I got to work cleaning up the spilled water.

  While I cleaned, I thought about Michael and his date. I wondered how it was going. I thought about Robyn and her date. I thought about Franny, if he was up inside his attic studio painting the rainy evening away. I wondered if he would paint anything else just for me. I prayed to God he would not.

  Outside my apartment the rain fell steady and never ending. What to do with the rest of my night? Maybe head to the gym for a weight training workout? Maybe head outside for my usual five mile run?

  I just didn’t have the energy or the will. Besides, it was still raining.

  I went to bed without dinner.

  Alone.

  Chapter 7

  That night I dreamt.

  Molly and I come to the edge of the field of tall grass behind our house, the thick, second-growth forest standing like a dark impenetrable wall only a dozen feet away from us. There is something forbidden and ominous about these woods. So much so that I have difficulty even looking directly into them, as if they have the ability to look directly back at me. I try and focus my attention on Molly’s narrow back, her blonde hair that sways from shoulder to shoulder, until she turns to me with that mischievous smile of hers, shouting “Come on, Bec. Let’s do it.”

  My stomach is tied up in double-knots.

  Molly has no fear. Not of the woods, not of what we might find inside them, not of our father who has forbade us to ever enter them. But then I harbor enough fear for the both of us.

  Molly turns, shoots me a smile. She begins to step across the invisible barrier between field and woods.

  “ Don’t!”

  But it’s too late. She is already entering into a place from which there is no return…

  I awoke to the sound of my cell phone vibrating atop the nightstand. At the same time, I heard a voice. The cell phone and the voice pulled me out of my dream, away from the open field, away from the danger that lurked there.

  “Rebecca.” A whispered voice.

  In my half-awake, half-asleep state, I heard the deep, raspy, guttural voice. The voice of a heavy smoker. In the darkness of the bedroom I found myself lying flat on my back, eyes open wide, gazing onto a black ceiling. Although my heart pounded, my body was paralyzed. I could not move my arms or legs. I could not breathe.

  The windows were closed to the rain and the wind. The voice had to have come from inside my head. How could it possibly have come from anywhere else?

  But it sounded so real, so close. As real as the cell phone. Real enough to make me awake. But then not awake at all. More like caught up in a state somewhere in between conscious and out cold.

  I lay in bed unable to swallow, unable to move, unable to speak. I felt the urge to pee. But the down comforter had become my protective steel cage. No way I could attempt to get out from under the covers.

  Directly behind me, the rain came down ever steady outside the window. If only I could have reached out for the nightstand, grabbed hold of the cell, opened it, and heard the voice of Robyn or Michael. The voices might have snapped me out of my trance, saved me from a nightmare too vivid for words. There was nothing I could do.

  No choice but to lie on my back and listen.

  Chapter 8

  I woke up earlier than usual. The rain had stopped but the sun hadn’t fully risen over the Berkshire Mountains to the east. Before crawling out of bed, I reached out for my cell, checking to see who had called in the middle of the night.

  I scrolled down to Missed Calls.

  The last call was from one of my Art Center students-a nineteen year old college freshman and aspiring Picasso by the name of Craig. He’d called me at three-fifteen that afternoon to tell me he’d have to cancel his tutoring appointment for later that day. In all likelihood, I’d missed his call since Robyn and I were so consumed with arguing over Franny’s painting and its inclusion, or lack thereof, of the word ‘Listen’. After that, I hadn’t missed any calls. The odd ‘Unknown Caller’ text I’d received a couple of hours later hadn’t constituted a missed call since I’d quite obviously received it.

  Remember

  So then,
how did I go about explaining last night’s experience of hearing my cell phone ring and at the same time, hearing a man’s voice? No question about it. I had been dreaming. Dreaming in that half awake, half asleep state where dreams can be their most vivid and most frightening.

  Dragging myself out of bed, I decided to put the whole night and its nightmare drama out of my mind, greet the brand new day like I was entering a new life. It’s exactly what Molly would suggest I do.

  In the kitchen I made the coffee, poured a glass of orange juice, popped a One-A-Day, and ate a small bowl of shredded wheat and skim milk. Taking refuge in my morning routine would help me forget about the immediate past. About paintings that spoke to me. About ambiguous texts. About voices that came to me in my dreams.

  As the new sun shined bright inside the kitchen window, the grass in the common glistened from the rain water that still clung to the blades. For a quick second or two I gave serious thought to heading into the spare bedroom I’d converted into a painting studio. If I could paint, I could forget about life.

  But it had been a while since I’d painted anything. Aside from the occasional ten minutes here, ten minutes there, it had been almost ten years since I’d produced any art of consequence. That is to say, anything I considered finished and ready to go to market.

  So why the hesitation?

  While painting could indeed help me forget about things for a while, it could also have the reverse effect. It could actually provoke too much thought. There had been a time when the act of painting or drawing was my sole refuge. My art began for me almost immediately after Molly and I were ambushed in the woods all those years ago. Since we’d been sworn to secrecy, I had to do something to express the torment I physically felt inside my body, the same way Molly must have felt her cancer years later. Although each and every bit of wall space in my Brunswick Hills bedroom was covered with landscape watercolors and hand-study sketches, I couldn’t very well produce a large canvas with Whalen’s gaunt face plastered on it. My mother and father would surely take notice. What would they say? How would they react to such an awful, ugly face rendered with such bitter anger with every brush stroke?