Garden at Noon (30 day writing challenge Day 3)

The figures were lopsided and held at some unnatural angle with invisible string. Their longing for each other was evident in their eyes, their posture, and their open lips. The paint was deep and without err each stroke made with purpose and understanding. It was titled The Garden at Noon and held no apologies for its anonymous author, and missing era.

 It was a gem found by a curator in the estate of your normal, everyday middle management father of three. It was a heart attack that got him. The children had found the painting in a large holder kept in pristine condition, though they had never seen it. One child, now a young man, voiced that it looked old and maybe valuable. With little in savings, a poor 401k portfolio and laughable life insurance, selling off their fathers possessions was as much necessity as pleasure.   

The painting made waves in the art world; there were grand arguments over who must have painted such a poignant piece, such a valuable spectacle. The horror in that some average man would have such a beautiful piece and not even have the wherewithal to bring it out of the basement!  Not one of the children, now all adults, younger versions of their late father, could see what was so impressive about the couple with their awkward poses and forbidden love. So they continued their life. They went to work, home to their various families and occasionally met on the weekends for a barbeque dinner. Life was simple, it always had been.

It was on a dewy night, when the oldest daughter couldn’t keep her hair lying flat, the humidity plating her plain silk blouse to her damp skin, that she found herself thinking about Garden at Noon. This wasn’t the first time she had contemplated the strange event, though she didn’t speak of it. In a way, she felt her siblings were just as unease by the appearance of this piece in their father’s belongings that they’d rather pretend it was never there. It wasn’t that she could pretend to know that she understood art, only that she felt something when she looked at it. A lost longing in place inside her belly she didn’t previously realize existed. It was the way she imagined love would feel, though in her short experience it never did. On nights she contemplated the strange painting she couldn’t seem to control these memories of her childhood, her father’s hands paint stained and stiff. She’d remember a scene of him at the dinner table, eagerly running the thumb of his left hand through the palm and fingers of the right, like he was massaging away a day’s work. She was unsure if these memories were real or if her desire for a connection to her father, as desire for him to be something more, created these memories in her head.  He had never mentioned the arts of any sort. Her younger brother and sister were athletes, she wasn’t much of anything. Their mother was dead or gone or preoccupied with a life not burdened with three children and a husband with bowed knees and a potbelly. As far as any of them know, creative were not in their family tree.  Yet suddenly they had found themselves in possession of what some herald a masterpiece and this oldest daughter couldn’t let that pass quietly.

The more time that past, the more summer nights she thought, the idea of the paintings originator were consuming. She had begun having dreams of great visions and impossible feats, of colors in shades she didn’t know existed. She was chased by paintbrushes into the large, massaging hands of her father for safety. She found herself often at the museum standing soley in front of Garden at Noon not caring to look at any other piece on display. She would go back to the house of her father, which the painting had afforded them to keep, and search through basement and bedroom for any sign of an artist that had once lived there. She always came up empty and without satisfaction. She had determined there was something she had missed, meaning that there was something to find.

One day, fall was turning to a cold and harsh winter, she stumbled upon a post card. It was old, and dated, of a double decker bus in front of some European building she felt she ought to know. It was addressed to Ralph, it took her a moment to remember that was the name of her father, who had always been ‘pop’ to her.  The back held writing looping and sensuous, she could see her mother’s soft curves and skin in the way she wrote.  The daughter was not sure how she had not seen this postcard before as she read the goodbye in lofty handwriting. It was simple and to the point, taking no care for feelings.

I have given you three children, my youth, and my life. Yet, you still do not find me muse enough to paint and I do not find you either artist or man enough to love.

The letter struck the daughter as harsh, but she did not feel pain for the mother she scarcely remembers, only sadness for the father who forbids his art at the loss of a muse that did not know it. She would get back Garden at Noon and she would put it on the wall behind pop’s ashes. She decided she would take an art class at the local college. She would quell that longing in the new part of her belly. Years later, when she passes from cancer, her children will find a basement full of paintings, no which were secret, and they will cherish the pieces of their mother she left behind in water color and canvas.

Noise (30 min a day writing challenge, day 1)

The noise was like TV static slipping through every open space in the city. It hung low and alert, alive and aware. The footsteps of heel clad and painted feet, of sneaker wearing athlete and flip- flopped youth gave the city its cadence and demure. He waited. It hadn’t been the perfect funeral. It had been stuffy and thick. The quieted sobs of hysterical women and the shuffle of uncomfortable men caused it to never be truly silent. Yet, now here he waited. He stood at an outside patio of a corner bakery and coffee shop. He watched the men, women, and children go about their lives, death a fleeting thought, a nightmare that left one in cold sweats but was a faint memory by morning. He smiled at the naiveté of the citizens, their complex of immortality, the chosen ignorance of the condition of man. “have you waited long?” The voice came from behind, placing a strong hand on his shoulder, forcing his body to turn. “I’m not sure.” He replied honestly. Time had gotten away from him in the days that followed the death. He’s not sure he would have even know to make the funeral if his house had not been crawling with strangers paying condolences, distant relatives cooking and cleaning and prodding in the corners of his life, reminding him at each turn of his loss, of his next step, of how he should grieve. The woman he faced as he turned was a neutral woman. She seemed grey and lacking distinction. Her face lacked line and shape, her matte brown hair lacked shimmer or style. Her eyes were patient and sad as she led him to a small table away from the pedestrian traffic. “Are you sure we should be doing this?” she asked, as she set a folder, bulging from its contents on the metal work patio table. “It feels like an invasion, like in here are written things we weren’t supposed to know.” He ignored the woman’s concern and began to pull out the loose pages, bound notebooks, napkins and clippings that were held together in the file. The deep, looping handwriting sprawled along the pages in margins, sometimes with form, others just streams of thought with no explanation. He imagined her writing, her long fingers wrapped graciously around a black ink pen. Her teeth biting into her lower lip softly as the squinting in her eyes and the curve of her face showed obvious concentration. He had watched her like this many times, careful not to disturb, afraid to even cause the wood flooring in their home to creak under his weight. In memory, he could hear the hum of the air conditioner, the dripping or the coffee pot, brewing its second pot. He could her slow steady, sleep like breaths of her attentiveness to her stories. He had never read even one. He respected that she chose to keep the worlds she created to herself, though he had no secrets. From the moment that their love first began he had the fault of telling her everything. Her open face, bright eyes, and kind smile made him trust her instantly, instinctively. She was the brightest color he had ever seen. She had spent too much time listening, he realized now. At some point he must have become just background sound to her inner thoughts. She was not so easily swayed to him, he remembered. He worked hard to learn the tiniest things about her. She hid well behind sarcasm and feigned aloofness. She wore a tough exterior. One might blame and absent father, or a bullied past, but really he believed she just like most to keep the pieces of herself to herself. She once told him that only she could properly care for the parts of her that mattered most, so she did not feel required to give those parts to anyone else. This had felt unfair at the time, the rush of anger had filled his body, his muscles tense and he felt almost tantrum like. He had given her everything, but she constantly left him in want. He felt a pang of guilt in his thoughts. She had been right he could see that clearly now, as in just ten days after her death he found himself about to immerse himself in the things she held dearest. He was exposing what she had longed to keep private, raping those very precious parts of herself that only she could keep safe. His hands fell limp to his lamp and the neutral woman stared blankly at his face, as if waiting for the next step. He began to put the scrapes of paper and decorated notebooks back into the file folder. The city seemed to have gone quite as each story, each memory and thought that she possessed was filed neatly back where it belonged. Handing the folder back, “I knew her how she wanted me to.” He offered, without bitterness, without anger, without love. Just as a fact. He slowly rose from the table and walked out into the street letting the noises of the city overtake his thoughts.