Sorry for Your Loss

by Jessie Ann Foley

  Dedication

  For my daughters: Roisin, Sheila, and Aine

  The Flanagan Family

  Epigraph

  As we descend into the deep, the pressure increases relentlessly, and the light from above all but disappears. Yet, incredibly, there is life.

  —DAVID ATTENBOROUGH, Blue Planet II

  The basic elements of art are as follows: shape, line, space, form, texture, value, and color. In order to succeed in this course, you will need to understand these elements and apply them to your own work.

  —Studio Art I syllabus, Mr. Van P. Hughes, Abraham Lincoln High School

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  The Flanagan Family

  Epigraph

  Shape

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Line

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Space

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Form

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Texture

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Value

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Color

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books by Jessie Ann Foley

  Back Ad

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Shape:

  a flat, enclosed area of two dimensions

  1

  LATE ONE FRIDAY NIGHT AT the beginning of May, Pup Flanagan sat slouched in one corner of the couch in Izzy Douglass’s basement, staring with great concentration at the cracked screen of his phone and trying to ignore the slurpy tongue-on-tongue sounds coming from underneath the striped blanket in the other corner.

  Pup wanted to leave, obviously. But he couldn’t. After watching a piece on the Today show about teenage sexuality, Mr. and Mrs. Douglass had announced to Izzy that she and her horrible boyfriend, Brody, were no longer allowed to be in the basement alone together. A third party—someone who was honest, trustworthy, and had nothing better to do on a Friday night—must be present at all times. Pup fit all three of these descriptions; plus, Izzy had the kind of power over him that made him incapable of refusing her a favor, even one he dreaded.

  “But how will your parents know we’re not having a threesome down here?” Pup had asked. “I mean, I’m also a hormonal, sex-crazed teen, aren’t I?”

  “They’re not going to worry about us having a threesome.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because, Pup,” Izzy had said. “I mean—no offense—but it’s you.”

  Which stung. Though she had a point.

  Born when his mom was forty-nine and his dad fifty-five, he was Pup the Surprise if you asked his mother, Pup the Accident if you asked his seven older siblings. He was almost seventeen and had finally, his pediatrician thought, stopped growing. He stood six feet three inches tall and weighed 142 pounds, even in a sweat suit and Nikes with a Taco Bell Triple Double Crunchwrap sitting in his stomach. This height-to-weight ratio made him look less like a human being and more like a redheaded, buck-toothed praying mantis; in other words, not the kind of boy you had to worry could tempt your daughter into having a threesome.

  A hand had wormed its way out of the blanket and was now feeling around the couch for something to grab; it landed on Pup’s outstretched leg and began gently caressing the knuckly bones of his ankle.

  “Hey!” Pup gave a kick, and Brody’s hand slithered back inside. “Sorry, dude,” came the muffled apology. “Wrong leg.”

  Pup pressed himself into as small a package as he could manage, folding his limbs beneath him like he was disassembling a tent, and squinted more intently at his phone. A trill of giggles broke his concentration, followed by a soft moan. Pup sighed loudly, as a pink-and-red-checked bra was tossed from beneath the squirming mound of blanket and landed at his feet.

  “Okay,” he said, kicking the bra away from where its strap had looped around the toe of his Nike. “I’m leaving.”

  “Wait!”

  Izzy’s flushed face, framed by a pile of tousled hair, emerged. Her naked shoulders were dusted in a constellation of pale freckles.

  “Just give us ten more minutes. Please?”

  “No.” Pup shook his head, averting his eyes from her bare shoulders. “This is gross, and anyway, I should already be in bed by now. I have to be up super early tomorrow.”

  Brody’s head emerged now, also flushed and tousled.

  “With those artsy chicks, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You trying to hit any of that? That girl Maya Ulrich was in my French class last year. She’s hot, bro.”

  “Hey.” Izzy smacked his arm, but not nearly hard enough, in Pup’s opinion.

  “What?” Brody said innocently. “I didn’t mean she was as hot as you, Iz.” He leaned over to start kissing her again.

  “Anyway,” Pup interrupted. “I’m not trying to hit anything. I’m just taking some pictures with them so I don’t fail art.”

  “You’re getting your ass out of bed at five a.m. to watch the sun rise with a bunch of girls, and you’re telling me you’re not even working any angles? Sunrise is when the magic happens, baby. The romance.”

  “I think that’s actually sunset,” Pup pointed out.

  “Sunrise, sunset, what difference does it make?” Brody shook his head sadly and worked up a loud belch from his diaphragm. “The problem is that you have no game.”

  “What can I say, Brody? I guess I just don’t have your charisma.”

  “Can’t you stay just a little bit longer, Pup?” Izzy had gathered the blanket around her shoulders and was watching him hopefully.

  “No.” Pup avoided her gaze. “School’s out in a couple weeks and I need this grade.” He stuck his phone in his pocket, stood up, and hurried up the basement stairs without turning around and risking becoming ensnared in those green-flecked eyes that could make him do anything. He slipped past Izzy’s parents, who were sitting across the kitchen table from one another, typing away furiously in the glow of their separate laptops. Pup wondered whether the Douglasses had seen any specials on the Today show about the negative effect of workaholic parents on their teenage children, but thought it best not to ask.

  On the short walk back to his house, Pup took his phone from his pocket and called his sister Annemarie. It was almost midnight, but he knew she’d pick up. Annemarie always answered Pup’s calls, even if she was at work, even if she was out with Sal, even if she was in bed and half asleep. In big families like the Flanagans, everyone pretends like they all love each other equally, but of course that isn’t true. Pup loved Annemarie the best, and he liked to think that she felt the same way.

  “How bad was it?” she said, picking up on the second ring. Pup could hear papers being shuffled around in the background.

  “Are you still at work?”

  “I’m always at work these days,” she said. “Do you have any
idea how much flower arrangements cost?”

  Annemarie was getting married in the fall, and Pup, after having been a ring bearer about eight thousand times, was finally moving up in the world: he’d been promoted to groomsman. Sal, Annemarie’s fiancée, was cool and all, but Pup still worried that after they got married, things would change between him and his sister. Then what? Each of the eight siblings in the Flanagan family had his or her role, and each role had its complementary partner: Patrick was the saint and Luke the sinner; Mary the practical-minded, no-nonsense paramedic and Jeanine the highlighted, manicured former sorority girl; and Elizabeth and Noreen, who were both too good-looking to understand the struggles of normal people. Though there were thirteen years between them, Pup and Annemarie were the two Flanagan children who no one really knew what to do with; Pup was the quiet afterthought of a sibling, seven years younger than the next-youngest child, and even though Annemarie was a successful corporate lawyer, she was also covered in tattoos and had renounced organized religion before she’d even graduated high school. She and Pup were the two outcasts of the family, and outcasts needed to stick together.

  “So how bad was it?” Annemarie repeated now.

  “Well, you called it.”

  “They hooked up right in front of you?”

  “Under a blanket. I couldn’t see anything. But I could hear stuff. And I could imagine.”

  “Oh, Pup.”

  He sighed. “I just don’t get it.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t get it either.”

  When Izzy and Brody Krueger had first started dating, Annemarie had predicted it would last a month, two, tops. She was usually right about stuff like this, but Brody and Izzy were now going on month seven of their relationship, with no sign of it letting up anytime soon. Pup still couldn’t believe Izzy could like a guy like Brody. Sure, he played the drums, so he had that going for him, but his grades were even worse than Pup’s, he always had Dorito breath, and he talked with a fake California accent. He used words like “gnarly” and “rad,” and pronounced “taco” like “taw-go.” Not only that, he had long, dirty fingernails, evidence that he was a secret slob, like that guy from The Catcher in the Rye, one of the few English-class books that Pup had actually read (almost) all the way through.

  But there was no point attempting to explain all of this to Izzy. Her attraction to Brody was an enigma wrapped in a puzzle, wrapped in one of those shrink-wrapped plastic covers they put around video games that are practically impossible to open without using your teeth.

  “Pup,” Annemarie began gently, “you’re not going to like what I’m about to say.”

  “Please don’t tell me to move on.” He turned up the path to his house.

  “It’s just, how much longer are you going to wait? She knows you, Pup. And if someone knows you and still doesn’t want you . . .”

  “Wow. Harsh.”

  “Look, I’m sorry, kid.” On the other end of the line, Pup could hear more papers moving around. He pictured Annemarie in her big-shot office on the twenty-third floor of the Aon building, stockinged feet kicked up on the desk, pinstriped blazer covering the tattoos that snaked up both of her arms. Flowers. Mermaids. Sal’s name around one wrist, Patrick’s name around the other. The Flanagan family tree, twenty-eight names and counting, blooming across the entirety of her back. She liked to joke it was a good thing she was on the chubby side, otherwise she’d already have run out of space. “I’m just tired. Listen. I love you, okay? So it’s just hard for me to comprehend how somebody else doesn’t.”

  “Doesn’t yet.”

  “Right. Yet. Good night, Pup Squeak.”

  “Don’t call me that. Good night.”

  He turned the key in the lock and tiptoed into the front room. As usual, his parents had dozed off on the couch in front of their favorite program, Antiques Roadshow. As images of a Chinese enamel porcelain vase—valued at $4,000!—flickered over their faces, Pup unfolded the worn green quilt that hung over the radiator and placed it gently across their knees. He picked up the empty teacup that was balanced precariously next to his mom’s elbow on the rounded arm of the couch, then crossed the room to switch off the television. In the kitchen, he rinsed the cup in the sink, wiped away the grease from his mother’s ChapStick, and put it away in the cabinet. Before heading upstairs to bed, Pup opened the fridge, chugged some milk from the gallon, and stood for a moment in the quiet stillness of the house. White light from the full moon poured through the window above the sink, illuminating the faded yellow tiles of the floor. Pup sometimes felt, in moments like these, that late-night silences held secrets, and that if he only listened hard enough the secrets would reveal themselves. He stood in the middle of the kitchen, listening, the milk handle cold in his hand. But then, from the front room, his dad let out a loud, burbling snore, and the mysterious stillness was shattered. He put the milk away and headed to bed.

  2

  THERE WERE EIGHT STEPS UP to the Boys’ Room, that big, smelly, attic loft with its row of three twin beds, outdated concert posters, and carpet faded in places all the way through to the linoleum. On the wall above each step hung a framed middle-school graduation photo of each Flanagan child, in order from oldest to youngest. Each Flanagan child, that is, except for Patrick, whose photo had been replaced with one of those old-fashioned paintings of an angel. For almost three years now, Pup had grown to hate that fat, pink-cheeked, blond-haired, dead-eyed cherub on the seventh step. He hated its dimply legs, its pinprick nipples, its dumb harp, its golden, feathery wings, and every time he passed it on the way up to bed, he gave it the finger. It was fine, he guessed, if his parents wanted to think of Patrick as an angel in heaven now, but even if Patrick was an angel, he certainly didn’t look like that. Patrick’s hair had been jet-black, for one thing, and for another, he’d never touched a harp in his life.

  Pup reached the top of the stairs, flicked on the bedroom light, and was about to throw himself onto his bed, when he noticed that the crescent window on the other side of the room was shoved open as wide as it would go, held in place with the handle of an old toilet plunger. Outside, he could hear the tinkling of music coming from the tar ledge that jutted out from the roof of the first floor. He went over to the window, peered out, and saw his brother Luke out on the ledge, lying on his back in sweatpants and a hoodie, arms folded behind his head, phone on chest, staring up at the sky and its faint spread of city stars. On his right was a twelve-pack of beer, and on his left, a pint glass filled with a cloudy-looking brownish liquid.

  “Hey.” Pup leaned over the sill and stuck his head into the night air. “You’re home?”

  “Yeah,” Luke said, not looking away from the sky.

  “On a Friday night?”

  “On a Friday night.” Luke’s words were just on the edge of slurring. Pup could see the twelve-pack was mostly finished, and he knew that his brother wouldn’t call it a night until every one was empty.

  “You want a beer?”

  “Sure.” Pup didn’t drink, but if he accepted the bottle, that meant one fewer for Luke. He would nurse the beer, as he always did in these situations, then dump it off the side of the roof when Luke went inside to pee. He stuck one stork-like leg through the window, scraping his knee on the sash with a soft curse, and folded himself through. Luke uncapped a beer and handed it over. Pup took it and sat down with his back against the sun-warmed bricks of the house and followed his brother’s gaze to the crisscrossing patchwork of roofs and power lines, the hazy skyline of the city in the southern distance.

  “Carrie working tonight?” he asked.

  “How should I know?” Luke glanced at his younger brother, his face curling into a strange smile. “She dumped me.”

  “What?”

  “Yup.” Luke finished his beer and upended the empty bottle in the cardboard carrier. “You heard it here first.”

  Pup was speechless. Luke and Carrie were, like, LukeandCarrie. They’d been together for eight years, eve
r since they’d gone to senior prom together back when Pup was still in fourth grade. Luke was graduating from law school in a month; he’d been planning on proposing once he passed the bar. And, even more than that, Luke Flanagan was Luke Flanagan, which meant that he was everything Pup wasn’t: good-looking. Built. Confident. Super smart. Sure, he had a reputation for drinking too much sometimes—a reputation that had gotten worse over the last couple years, if Pup was being honest about it—but that hadn’t stopped him from killing it at DePaul Law with his 3.8 GPA and his clerkship with a prominent circuit court judge. If Annemarie was Pup’s favorite sibling, Luke was the one whose respect he most desired. Sometimes Luke would dole out little bursts of affection, which felt to Pup like suddenly stepping into a warm current in the freezing waters of Lake Michigan on a summer day, but then, just as quick, Luke would suddenly snatch it away with a sharply observed but devastating comment, always delivered offhand, which was exactly like realizing that the warm current you were just enjoying was actually someone else’s urine.

  “When did this happen?”

  “Last week.” Luke reached for another beer. “She said she’s tired.”

  “Tired?”

  “Oh, yes. Poor Carrie is exhausted. Because I’m ‘inaccessible.’” He jabbed his fingers into air quotes. “And I’m ‘immature.’ And I’m ‘just so negative.’”

  Silently, Pup agreed with all those things. Not that he was siding with Carrie or anything.

  “I’m sorry, man. Are you okay?”

  “Of course I’m okay. But thanks for asking, Dr. Phil.” Luke opened his beer and flicked the cap off the side of the ledge. It clattered faintly on the sidewalk below. “Not the worst thing to ever happen to me, you know?”

  Which, when he put it that way, was true.

  Pup pointed at the brownish glass of liquid.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “Oh, this?” Luke scooted to a sitting position and picked up the glass. “You’ll never guess. I was going through the back of the closet, trying to find this weed I hid a while back when mom was cleaning our room. Never found the weed, but I did find this.”