THE PICASSO PROJECT
Page 23
"I'm so glad," Georgia says. "I mean, I still feel so bad about all that crap that went down. I totally should have warned her." Georgia raises a hand and starts chewing on a fingernail. "I should have told her about Mark."
Eddie sets a box of apples down on the ground and touches Georgia's arm lightly. "We were all just trying to get through, Georgia. We were all just doing our best."
"Do you really believe that?" Her eyes are wet, and it makes them look even greyer than usual.
"Yeah," Eddie says. "I really do."
Georgia pays for her groceries and loads the bags into the back of a little red Toyota hatchback. She waves at Eddie as she pulls out of the parking lot. There's a bumper sticker on the back of her car that reads: Alaska or Bust.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
When Eddie gets home, there's a note on the kitchen table:
Maya and I went out for KFC. We'll be home a little later.
Hope your first day of work was good rock star.
Love you, Jazz xox
He grabs a glass of milk from the fridge, kicks off his shoes and collapses onto the old brown couch. Outside, a siren screams down the road, headed for the centre of town. Its pulsing light shotguns across the walls of the room and then disappears.
Across the road, a dog howls.
Eddie looks up and smiles at the empty wall of the living room. It's bare, and it really could use a coat of paint. There are a few dings in the drywall as well, down near the floor. That'll be the first thing they do-paint the whole place. Their landlord said he would spring for the paint if they did the work. Maya can pick some girly colour for her room, Eddie thinks. Probably purple. Then he remembers.
He gets up, walks to the closet in the hallway and digs through a box until he finds it. He hasn't unrolled the Picasso print since the day the Buick was trashed, but he's kept it inside an empty aluminum foil tube and carted it around ever since.
He takes the print into the living room and smooths it out on the coffee table, switching a light on so he can see it more clearly. It's creased in places and the upper edge is torn.
But it hasn't changed. The Weeping Woman stares back at him the same way she always has, unblinking, her empty eyes flat and filled with sorrow.
And the old memories come back in a rush: his mom; so fearful and powerless; his father's drunken binges; Maya hiding behind her dresser, her hands over her ears, nails bitten to the quick.
Eddie isn't sure how much time passes. An hour? Maybe two. He looks at the print until there are no more memories left to mine. Then he rolls it up, puts it back in the tube and shuts it away in the closet again.
The rest is easy.
He finds the hammer on the kitchen counter and carefully pulls out a nail from the wall near the door.
It only takes a second to hang the painting-the one that's been leaning against the couch since Thursday, the day they moved in. Eddie holds it out in front of him and studies the loons on the lake. It's good; the water is like glass. There are no ripples. No waves. It's a quiet, gentle painting. He likes that best of all.
He bangs the nail in just over the TV and hangs the painting.
Yes, Eddie thinks. Perfect.
He drains his glass and retrieves his sketchbook-his old one-from the corner of the coffee table. He's been making more entries again, working in it almost every day. He likes the way it flows now, the way the entries have changed. It's proof that anything can happen; that when life throws you curve balls, you don't have to let them knock you down. Sometimes, you can get back up and throw them back.
He turns to the previous day's page and reads what he wrote...reads the quote, another one of Pablo's:
"Every now and then one paints a picture that seems to have opened a door and serves as a stepping stone to other things."
He closes the sketchbook, leans back against the cushions and gives a thumbs up to the loons on the wall.
It's the best quote yet.
END
EPILOGUE
"What might be taken for a precocious genius is the genius of childhood. When the child grows up, it disappears without a trace. It may happen that this boy will become a real painter some day or even a great painter. But then he will have to begin everything again, from zero."
- Pablo Picasso