When I was finished, I stepped back and dropped my hands. My shirt and jeans were splattered with paint, my shoulders impossibly tight, and my hands aching. When I turned, Eli looked on, staring at the brushstrokes that, one by one, created life. Still life, but life all the same. It had to be enough. It had always been enough before.
But when Eli looked back at me, his brow was furrowed and his countenance troubled. And he shook his head slowly.
He showed me the soft light of a lamp that looked like a cowboy boot, the way it tossed light on the wall. His eyes were trained on the wall and I could see a woman’s shadow outlined in the light, and I watched as her shadow leaned in and kissed the child goodnight.
“Goodnight, Stewy Stinker!” she said, nuzzling the curve between his shoulder and his neck.
“Goodnight, Buzzard Bates!” he responded gleefully.
“Goodnight Skunk Skeeter!” she immediately shot back.
“Goodnight, Butch Bones!” Eli chortled.
I didn’t understand the nicknames, but they made me smile. The affection dripped from the memory like water spilling from a downspout. But I still pushed it back, slamming the black doors down on the touching display.
“No, Eli. No. I can’t give you that. I know you want your mother. But I can’t give you that. I can’t give her that. But I can give her this. You help me find her, and I’ll give her this.” I pointed at the drying picture I’d created for the persistent child. “I can give her your picture. You helped me make this. This is from you. I can give her this. You can give her this.”
Eli stared at my offering for several long heartbeats. And without warning, he was gone.
Moses
“IT’S BEAUTIFUL.” Tag lifted his chin toward the canvas on my easel. “Different from what you usually do.”
“Yeah. That’s because it didn’t come from his head. It came from mine.”
“The kid?”
“Yeah.” I rubbed my hands over the stubble on my head, anxious, and not sure why. Eli hadn’t come back. Maybe painting had worked after all.
Tag had wandered up, unannounced, uninvited, just like in the early days, and I was grateful for the intrusion. He would come up when he needed a sparring partner or something from my fridge or a piece of art to temporarily place in a prominent position to impress whichever female he had over for the evening.
But he’d already worked out, apparently, and I wouldn’t be taking any pent-up frustration out on him today. His hair was wet around the edges, curling and clinging to his neck and forehead, and sweat from his workout had soaked through his shirt and made it stick to his chest. Tag cleaned up well enough, slicking back his hair and donning an expensive suit when he was doing business, but he’d always been a little shaggy and rough-looking with a nose that had been broken a few too many times and hair that was always too long. I don’t know how he could stand the heat of having hair on his head. I never could, it suffocated me. Maybe it was the fact that every encounter with the dead scorched my neck and made my head swim, and my body burned energy like a furnace.
Tag pulled off his shirt and mopped at his face while helping himself to a bowl of my cereal and a huge glass of my orange juice. He sat down at my kitchen table like we were an old married couple and dug in without further comment on the picture I’d spent half the night creating.
Tag was better at friendship than I was. I rarely went downstairs to his place. I never ate his food or threw my sweaty clothes on his floor. But I was grateful that he did. I was grateful he came to me, and I never complained about the missing food or paintings or the random dirty sock that wasn’t mine. If it wasn’t for Tag making himself at home in my life, we wouldn’t be friends. I just didn’t know how, and he seemed to understand.
I finished my own bowl of cereal and pushed it away, my gaze wandering back to the easel.
“Why is she blonde?” Tag asked.
I felt my brow furrow and I shrugged at Tag. “Why not?”
“Well, the boy . . . he’s dark. I just wondered why you made her blonde,” Tag said reasonably, shoving another huge spoonful into his mouth.
“I’m dark . . . and my mother was blonde,” I responded matter-of-factly.
Tag stopped, his spoon paused in mid-air. I watched as a Cheerio made a desperate dive for freedom, plopping back in the bowl, safe for another few seconds.
“You never told me that.”
“I didn’t?”
“No. I know your mom left you in the laundromat. I know your life was shit growing up. I know you went and lived with your grandma before she died. I know her death messed you up pretty good, which is where I come in.” He winked. “I know you’ve always been able to see stuff other people can’t. And I know you can paint.”
My life in a nutshell.
Tag continued. “But I didn’t know your mom was blonde. Not that it matters. But you’re so dark, so I just assumed . . .”
“Yeah.”
“So . . . is the picture of you and your mom? Wasn’t she a small-town girl?”
“No. I mean . . . yeah. She was a small-town girl. A small-town white girl.” I emphasized white this time, just so we were clear. “But no. The picture is of Eli and his mother. But I don’t think it’s what he wanted.”
“The hills. The sunset. It kind of reminds me of Sanpete. Sanpete was beautiful when I wasn’t hung-over.”
“Levan too.”
I stared at the painting, the child and his mother on a horse named Calico, the woman tall and lean in the saddle, her blonde hair just a pale suggestion against the more vivid pinks and reds of the setting sun.