I just finished them, Jacob, she said. Four new ones.
Four?
I rocketed out of bed and sprinted to the space between the tables. It was empty.
Macon tried to look innocent, the beginnings of a grin at the corners of her mouth, and I thought for a short moment that she was pulling my leg. A red hot anger sprang up in me, searing with all the frustration of my disorienting week, until she pointed to the wall by the door (the only wall as yet untouched). She had hung them up for me.
I looked at them one at a time, lingeringly, forcing myself (and it wasn’t easy) not to rush it. They were all in the new style. Seeing this, my heart began to pound. She’d taken my idea and put it into action! Macon twisted the hem of her shirt around her fingers as she watched me taking it in. What I thought mattered to her, and I knew it.
The first was the most obvious and yet the most surprising—Night Playground. There it was, just as it had been the night in the park: the abandoned swing set, the sad empty sandbox, the teeter-totter, the blue metal merry-go-round. This was the one painting actually set at night, all grays and dark blues, haunting. Only as I stared at it did I notice that it wasn’t a straight reproduction of the scene. She’d added certain aspects; creeping rust at the foot of the slide, broken rungs on the monkey bars, an abandoned shoe. For some reason it reminded me strongly of the lake painting, as though this playground were sunk to the bottom of the sea. It was the colours that did it. It was as though she had painted loneliness into the strokes.
(A critic would describe this painting as the moment of Macon’s emergence into adolescence. “She shows herself as a young woman, no longer a child,” he would write. “The emotion of the piece denotes disillusionment, alienation. Her angst shows through.” All poppycock, of course. He had no idea that she’d painted the park when she was only ten, as it didn’t make it to gallery until she was nearly fourteen. After that summer Macon took a break from galleries and painting altogether.)
The second and third paintings may have been Macon’s best work to date. One was dominated at the left side by an enormous tree, its bark so lifelike you felt you could reach out and touch it. The other featured Handle hanging upside down from the branch of a weeping willow, and though his t-shirt partially obscured his face I recognized him instantly. She’d captured the mischievous crinkle of his eyes to a tee, and the colour of his hair illuminated in the sun. She’d even captured the movement of his hand as he reached for a branch.
They were brilliant paintings, breathtaking really—but that’s all I remember of them. I rushed through them, just as I’d sworn I wouldn’t, because out of the corner of my eye I’d caught a glimpse of the last painting, a boy sprawled out on a rock, and my ego pressed to examine it. (Oh, how vain I was then! How self-centered! And what a disappointment to Macon it must have been to realize—and she must have realized it then, she must have seen—that all I really wanted was to see myself in paint, that all that really mattered to me was me, and how good I thought the painting was related almost directly to how much of myself, and my advice to her, I could find in it. My love affair with Macon’s art was, in short, a love affair with myself. It had little to do with her at all.
And I wonder if, in a very small part, her realization of this contributed to the fact that the painting of the boy sprawled on a rock—which she called, diplomatically, Boy— was the last of her paintings for four long years. Though once again I suppose that’s my ego talking, to think I played such a big part when there were other, far bigger forces at play. In pitting cousin against brother in the battle for Macon’s broken heart, I know which boy wins.)
After seeing the last painting I couldn’t speak. The boy sprawled across the rock overlooking the water was unmistakable. As with the other two, she’d set the scene in the daytime while we’d been there at night, but otherwise it was just as I remembered it. He lay on his side, his legs bent at the knee, leaning on his elbow, palm at his ear. There was a shadow across his upper chest, from the branches hanging over, and he seemed to be looking back over his shoulder, the sun coming around his ear like a spark. Beyond, the water rippled. The trees in the background trashed in the wind.
I couldn’t see the expression on the boy’s face for one simple reason. Macon had left the face, startlingly, blank.
She’d said she’d been drawing my face. She had lied.
Don’t you like them?
It was Macon. I’d forgotten she was there, though she stood right at my elbow, waiting with barely contained excitement. Her eyes gazed up at me, hopeful.
I was furious. I folded my arms and wouldn’t look at her. I stared at the blank place where my face should have been. Why had she left it blank? Wasn’t my face good enough? She’s painted Handle in! Why not me? And in The Sickroom she’d left my face in shadow. What was she trying to say?
I turned to her, ready to let loose. How could she do this to me? After I’d stayed up all night with her! After I’d encouraged her in the new style, stood by her all these weeks. How could she ruin this, my moment, my unveiling?
(I cringe now. I weep. Oh, Macon, you deserved so much better.)
Macon blinked at me, her fingers beginning to twine again. She moved back a step. She lowered her chin.
I let out a breath, relenting, though only slightly. I pointed to Boy without looking at it. I said, my tone chilly, This one isn’t finished.
I caught myself narrowing my eyes at her and tried to widen them instead. I think it made me look a little half-cocked because she laughed, her face brightening.
She said, I wanted to ask you about it.
She stepped forward tentatively, as though I owned her paintings and she needed my permission to come close. She waved her fingers around the face. She said, I was thinking of taking your advice here.
This was satisfying. I waited for her to go on.
I was thinking of painting… Collin’s face.
I wandered back to my bed, wrapped myself in the blankets sour with sleep. Macon looked bewildered. She followed me slowly, keeping her distance. She was about five feet away when I started to cry.
I felt her put her arm around my shoulder. She murmured little words of comfort as her mother would have done. But there was no regret in it. She seemed almost glad. She thought I was sobbing over her brilliance. She thought I was overcome.
I didn’t correct her. I didn’t say a word.
It was the greatest kindness I did Macon that entire summer.
And so began the quest for Collin’s face. It was more of a challenge than it might seem. Macon refused to paint from photos, she felt they made her paintings come out flat and sad, but we couldn’t very well ask him to sit for her (though I did suggest it at first. He won’t, Macon answered flatly, cutting me short when I tried to argue that we should give it a try. The way she said it hinted at some past pain, some evil trick he’d played on her [I could imagine it. I didn’t need to ask]. I let it go). We tried sneak-attacks at the breakfast table or while he and Handle were playing checkers, but as soon as he saw the sketchbook he would throw a tantrum and pull the neck of his shirt up to his forehead. Macon even tried drawing him when he’d fallen asleep on the couch one afternoon, but just as she was getting settled one of his eyes flew open and his hand shot out, grabbing her arm.
Sometimes Collin was a lot like the Vietcong.
The plan we came up with in the end was simple in its brilliance, playing into all the traits Macon disliked most in Collin, and it worked so well, so quickly, that it was almost a letdown. The plan was small and perfect, a little gem we marveled over, a tainted treasure. The plan, the stupid stupid plan, would tear the family apart (tear Macon and I apart) and end her childhood of artistic genius.
The plan was entirely of my devising. And it hinged on me.
That first evening as I shrugged on my robe with Macon at my side; as I rehearsed with her exactly what I should say to him (Macon, though she had two brothers and I none, had some very exaggerated ideas a
bout how boys spoke to one another. She infused me with the fear that I would do one thing wrong—use a strange hand gesture or the wrong turn of phrase—and the jig would be up in an instant, Collin pointing me out from across the room, his hand curled like a gun, the truth out, my cover blown. She had it all wrong, but I couldn’t see it then. I knew just about as much as she did about how to be a regular boy); as she listened to my last-minute concerns, nodding, Oh okaying, nudging my reluctant body toward the stairs; as she put up her hand, fingers spread, Five minutes; as I turned my back on her and faced the dark stairwell—I knew something Macon did not.
I knew what I was doing would kill all that we’d nurtured and accomplished throughout the summer, all that we’d tried to make with each other, with the art. I knew the plan was the worst plan in the world for us. I knew it! But I went on, I didn’t tell her and I didn’t turn back. I went down to Collin’s room and I slipped in and closed the door and something ended then, something that could have been everything.
I was still angry with her and like a stupid, narcissistic boy I thought that mattered more.
And Macon, sweet, loyal Macon, trusting me completely, let me go ahead and tear her life apart.
Collin’s room was every young boy’s fantasy. I’d been inside it only a few times before, most memorably on the very first day of my stay, when they’d laid me on his bed to recover after my fainting spell. I remembered the model airplanes swaying in the breeze, and how they’d made me feel nauseous just looking at them. I remembered the striped wallpaper and how everything matched—all dark colours and manly woods—how everything screamed boy, even the musky smell of earth and varnish. Only as I stepped into the room for the second time was I able to pin down that it was that very thing, the boyishness of it, that made me so uncomfortable.
They all looked over as I walked in: Collin, Handle and Remmy. (As we’d learned at the mall that fateful day, Collin didn’t have any friends his own age. He only ever played with boys who were younger than he was, little soldiers he could order around and dominate. It wasn’t so obvious then, as Handle was his brother, and there weren’t a lot of kids to choose from. But when he hit his teens and still hung around the elementary school, then it became very clear, but by then it was already far too late.) They were on their knees in the corner, hunched over something. I clicked the door shut behind me, retying the belt of my robe, and Collin raised his chin at me in greeting. Then they all turned away. Macon never had any idea how easy it was. Collin expected this, expected that I would want to be near him, that I would come eventually. My presence hardly made a ripple in his clean male world.
I was in.
I never got around to finding out what they were doing. It was something about a cave in the woods behind the dog park, something about digging a tunnel. They had a diagram out on the floor and they were pointing and circling things and arguing. Handle kept saying, About five feet deep, I’d say, and brandishing the tape measure.
I sat gingerly on the edge of the bed and tried not to look too out of place. I didn’t really care what they were talking about, and yet I was so glad to be there, much more glad than the situation warranted, then the plan warranted. It wasn’t as though I’d had to jump any hurdles to make it there. It hadn’t been much of a challenge. Yet, even in my extremely uncomfortable state, I was just so glad that I could still make it in, I could still be accepted. They were younger than I was, Collin just on the cusp of puberty. They didn’t see that thing in me that others did (older kids at school, teachers, girls), that thing that even I couldn’t quite get a hold of. I was still just a kid to them, just a regular old boy, and as much as this assumption had seemed a burden at the beginning of the summer, now it brought me nothing but comfort.
I could hide here in a way I couldn’t with Macon (who knew what she knew, who knew me inside out).
Until that moment I hadn’t realized how much I’d wanted to.
Collin was ever the willing enabler. Just as soon as he realized I was really staying in the room, that I hadn’t just come in to borrow a pencil (as I’d done the night before, to scout out the territory), he turned his shoulder to include me in the group and the other boys shifted over.
See, Jacob? he said. It’s great, isn’t it? See here?
Right away Handle and Remmy were scrambling to bring me in too. There was a tangle of arms and calls of, Let me show him! and Collin had to work to get them in order. He reprimanded them for overwhelming me, slinging a protective arm around my shoulder. He shooed them back. I was fragile. I’d been sick. They shouldn’t crowd me. What were they thinking?
Handle snickered and got a smack upside the head. Remmy laughed. Collin wanted me all to himself, a new little soldier (though I was technically older), a new body to boss.
Jacob knows all about this stuff anyway, Collin said. He reads all those books and things. He’s already got it figured, don’t you?
I nodded a little cockily. I would have agreed to anything.
Remmy regarded me with wide eyes. He said, You think you could help us finish it?
I let them hang for a second. Handle leaned far forward, his mouth hanging open in anticipation. Come on, Jake, he whined.
Sure I will, I answered, and they all grinned. Collin slapped me on the back.
We hunched over the drawing, the four of us.
It was grand.
Though I didn’t even notice, at some point Macon crept in and sketched Collin’s face. She got him from five different angles. The plan was a success. Together, later, we celebrated with a stack of toffee crunches Aunt Vera had baked the day before, five each. She told me she would start painting the next morning, and the way she said it, so eager, made my insides ache.
She didn’t know that I hardly cared, that I’d found a faster, better game to play. She didn’t know yet—as she filled her bulging cheeks with sweets, high with sugar and triumph—that I’d already left her behind.
Part 3
In the brilliant late summer days that followed I lead a double life. Aunt Vera had accepted that my full week of sleep had essentially cured me (which, surprisingly, it had, though with all the plotting I’d hardly noticed) and so long as I “took it easy” and napped in the afternoons, allowed me to venture outside.
With my house arrest lifted, Macon and I abandoned any pretense that we weren’t friends. Freedom of movement became, to us, freedom in everything, and we wouldn’t be constrained by sneaking, by whispers. From that day on we were inseparable. It was Macon and I at our prime. Any rules Aunt Vera tried to impose, bellowed after us as we zipped through the yard (no father than the corner store, no swimming, no running), were thwarted the moment we were out of sight of the house with little or no remorse. It was summer, after all, and we were kids and delirious from months of being cooped up. We took off on our bicycles after breakfast and did as we pleased until dinner. We gorged ourselves on wild strawberries in the fields behind the house; we played games, built forts, played shark in the community pool; we linked arms and ran about the house shrieking, louder sometimes than the boys. We ran wild.
There wasn’t much painting going on. Macon finished Boy (which she’d done, strangely, in her own room, away from me—maybe she’d finally sensed the tension surrounding the piece, or maybe she’d feared Collin coming across it by accident. I didn’t know. She showed it to me only once. It was perfect. She stowed it under my bed and we didn’t speak of it again) and from then on she seemed more interested in sketching, looking for new inspiration.
On “artistic days”, and to be honest there weren’t many, we took to doing out of the ordinary things like climbing to the roof of an abandoned building at the edge of town and having a picnic of bananas and barbecue chips, or searching for the blackened firepits left behind by the teenagers who got high in the woods. Macon would settle down to draw and I would sit placidly beside her, but her art wasn’t the focus anymore, and as the days wore on I paid less and less attention to what she was drawing, falling
instead into heavy daydreams and awakening startled, disoriented. Once, still fuzzy from a undisguised snooze, I couldn’t focus my eyes to see what she’d sketched and asked her repeatedly what it was (a rabbit, she insisted, though no matter how long I stared at the pad I could only make out a dragon, its jaw drawn open, readying to take its first awful bite).
I don’t know how Macon felt or what she thought during this end of summer time. To me, Macon seemed entirely happy. Sure, she wasn’t making as much art, but she had a great alternative—a real live friend—and she seemed glad to trade up for a while, to be out in the world instead of holed up in the attic with a paintbrush in her hand. She became, all of a sudden, quite the talker, and we would discuss everything that popped into our heads (what would Handle be like when he got older? [She said more serious, I said obscene.] Did we like the city or the country better? [The city, both of us, though Macon had never even been.] Had Aunt Vera and Uncle Charlie ever been drunk? [We agreed, never.] Who was the best painter in the world? [She said Remrbandt, I said Macon Wheeler. She beamed, but I think she could tell I’d felt obligated to say so.] How did the internet really work? [We had absolutely no idea.]).
Once or twice she tried to broach more personal subjects. She wanted to know about my friends at home and what my school was like. She asked if I had any crushes. I didn’t tell her that liking someone in that way made me feel like my ribs were caving in. I didn’t tell her that love was something I didn’t think I was capable of feeling, not completely, not as it was described in books. I told her I’d never had a crush (a lie) and she said, blushing, that she liked a boy in her class named Timothy, but had never told him (and for a long afternoon I was silently furious with her, for having such a simple, solvable problem. For being, in at least this one way, so predictably normal).
She never went any further than that. She never tried to go there. Once she said I was the best friend she’d ever had, better than any girl, and I reacted so violently that she backed off. The closest she came to broaching the subject was her never-ending cheerfulness, as though she was trying to keep my mind off it. The end of the summer was coming fast and I would have to go back to all that mess. That was something we both knew for sure.
The Sickroom: A Novella Page 5
