Brushstrokes

She sat alone as she painted—long, thick, dark lines popped the once crisp white canvas. Though she was stiff in posture, a fierce intensity exuded from her eyes.
In the tautness of the room, only shadows were cast by the small bulb that rested just above the easel she used. The age of the bulb was shown by the way it flickered in the darkness. In that moment, she could hear nothing. She wanted music. She knew that if she played music, it might help to distract her. Instead she sat there in the silence. The easel, she thought, reminded her of her mother. For Christmas one year, they were both given easels and had agreed they were going to set up an art studio where they could paint together.
Her paint brush was the only one used in the basement studio she’d settled for.

Not knowing what she was going to paint when she’d started, she squeezed the colors on her pallet at random. Blue. Gray. Red. When she needed more, she just picked up the same bottle or whichever bottle was nearest in her box of paints. Turning them upside down and squeezing, they poured out like toothpaste. Quickly at first and then oozing out in little jolts as though the bottle were emptying. In order to go through so much paint so quickly, she was inevitably building up layers on the canvas. She didn’t think much about this. She didn’t think much about what she was painting at all.
She thought about that first Christmas when she’d learned that things were never going to be the same. Her mom’s voice was calm but she could remember the way she trembled. Suddenly a sense of fragility had taken over her. She knew immediately something had changed. She turned to her father for comfort and all she could see was the ghostlike trance that had wiped across his face. His lips seem to curl to one side as though he were trying to lift her up but failed. In realizing this, he looked away.
Question after question she asked. She wanted to know everything. She had to know everything. Was it impossible to know it all? She soon found out it was. She ripped the plastic seal off of a new bottle of white paint and squeezed it out on top of where other colors had dried on the pallet. With that, she took the same brush she’d been using that entire morning, and started in an attempt to wipe away everything else she’d painted. Without even realizing, the white—instead of giving her a fresh start—only succeeded in blending together all the colors that had yet to dry on the canvas. It was as though she were creating some sense of uniformity amongst the chaos.

People would ask later what it was. How did it happen? Can you give us details? How is your family? Are y’all doing okay? She remembered only answering in short, concise monotones. It was a surprise. I don’t know. We’re fine. Thank you.
After that, after everyone had left, after the flowers stopped coming, she thought to herself—where is everyone now? She could hear her father above her as the floorboards creaked. They were old, she knew. He paced as he worked and she sometimes found it comforting when she took the time to notice. He worked all the time now. It was different than it had been before. Once, when she was younger, he’d spent an entire year on the road traveling all over the country. After that, though, he’d settled into a sort of routine of 10 hour work days. Now he worked all the time, taking on new cases and working on them all through the night. Where once there were lasting signs of youth in his face, there were now undeniable dark circles beneath his eyes. While he used to wear his contacts every day, he’d begun to wear his glasses all the time, as though he didn’t want to take the time to look at himself in the mirror. She noticed that, but never said anything to him.

She interrupted her thoughts as she reached to the back of her paint box and picked out a light pink paint bottle. She stared at if for a minute before she turned it upside down. It was more than a minute, though. Time had just for a little while stood still as the paint seemed to change color and meaning in her hands. She started to remember everything. That Christmas, now only a few short years ago, sometimes seemed like yesterday. The look in their eyes. The words as they said them. Hospital. Sick. Surgery. Stage 3. Cancer.
They were just words to her. Empty words. She stood in silence for awhile. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know what to say. Her stare remained fixated on the floor. She wasn’t thinking about what they were saying. She wasn’t thinking of the future. She was thinking about nothing at all. Wouldn’t it be nice to have to worry about nothing at all?
She turned, almost impulsively, to her mother. Looking up at her, she noticed that her mom was staring at the floor too. A single tear had fallen on her mother’s cheek and she watched as it slowly dissolved into the skin right where the corner of her lip dipped. Instinctively, she reached out for her mom’s hand. As she grabbed it, she pulled them together, putting her arms around her. She held her tight. As tight as could be, she thought. She never wanted to let go, and she never would have.

After she learned from her parents what was going on, she tried to do some of her own research. She tried to look up and figure out how much time everything would take. She tried to research medications and to understand why they were being prescribed and why they cost what they did. It all meant nothing to her. As she did this, she thought about her father. She knew he was doing the exact same thing. Aside from his still 10 hour work days, she knew he stayed up at night on the internet. She knew he had done enough research that he knew everything possible for him to know. He never discussed this with anyone.
Sometimes, late at night, as she lie in bed unable to sleep, she could hear the television on downstairs. When she was younger, it would’ve kept her awake. Now, that wasn’t what kept her tossing and turning. Instead, she found the sound of stability and the troubles of others on screen were capable of easing her thoughts, if only for a moment. She found comfort in the consistency provided by the late night murmur of television, though she knew the set wasn’t being watched.

Before she realized it, it came time for her to go back to school. She didn’t expect it and didn’t know exactly how to take it. Of her two older brothers, the eldest had decided to stay home for a few months rather than returning to school. She knew the company would help her father more than anything.
Those months she was away seemed to come back to her almost at once.
When she got back to campus, she immediately went to see her other brother who was already back in his dorm room. It’s funny the things you remember and the things you forget in life. She could remember, almost with exact clarity, the walk from her car to her brother’s door. Out onto the sidewalk, up the stairs, and into the building, she’d gone. While the ride up to school had not been relaxing, it was the first time she’d really been in any vicinity by herself since before Christmas. She’d allowed the music to be her distraction, as it often was. Now, as she walked, with only the cold air brushing against her cheeks, tears started to fall. Lightly, she brushed her cheek, not wanting anyone to see her like this. She wanted to stay strong. Her brother had been back at school an entire week before she’d gotten there. While he’d been home most of Christmas break, he hadn’t heard the latest test results. She was there to tell him what her parents hadn’t wanted to let him know over the phone. She was there to tell him that it was worse than they’d imagined.
As she allowed these memories to come back to her, anger seemed to sweep across her face. In all that time, after everything, she couldn’t remember feeling angry. She’d been sad and, mostly, scared. She’s been scared of the way things were changing. But mainly, she was scared of what she didn’t know. This fear of the unknown, she realized, was an anxiety she would never escape.

Without looking at her painting, she dipped her brush into the pink paint she’d poured onto her pallet. The brush she was using had bristles spread about a half an inch apart. Because of this, when she painted, the lines came out thick and solid. With the pink on her brush, she touched the canvas. Instinctively, she lifted the brush in an upward stroke. As if she were beginning to paint a figure eight, she looped over and crossed the other line in a downward motion. She then let her hand come to her knee. For a moment, she didn’t move; she just sat there with her eyes frozen in place. Slowly, she raised her head and looked up at the painting. Even though she was looking at it, she still couldn’t seem to see what she’d done. The colors, few they were, seemed almost to run together. And, in the midst of all that chaos, there stood apart the last strokes she’d painted. The paint, still wet from the motions, stared back at her.

The months after her mother had been diagnosed seemed to fly by. They flew by, at least, for her. Being at school and away from what was going on at home still haunted her. A flash of guilt engulfed her. Her father and brother had been there. When her mother needed something, they were there for her. There was nothing she could have done from school, she thought. They’d told her that every time she’d come home. She’d tried to help out with things, tried to clean up, offered to cook. But they didn’t need her there. People were cooking for them. The house was clean. Everything was taken care of. Nobody needed her.
She realized then, as she sat alone in the basement, that while the months went by quickly, the days did not. Some afternoons, as she tried to reach her father or her brother by telephone to find out how treatments went, the hours seemed endless. She felt left out. They, however, thought that they were protecting her.
Still staring at the canvas, she thought about those months. She took the brush she’d been using and dropped it into a cup of water she’d brought down to the basement that morning. Picking up a clean brush, she coated it with the thick green paint she’d poured earlier. Parts of it had dried and she had to break through the thick, rubbery surface. Once there, she found fresh paint. It was as though, beneath a surface that had aged in those hours she’d been sitting there, she found new life. And with that new paint brush, she decorated the canvas with a color of green that could be seen in her eyes. In those days when she’d felt so alone, when she should have been feeling hurt, she oftentimes found herself feeling jealous. She was jealous that she could not have been there. She was jealous that she wasn’t the person who was needed.

The green paint still dripped from her brush. Oblivious of the dangerous green color, she let it pour down her leg and onto the concrete floor. Wearing a long skirt, she didn’t notice as it dripped like blood running from an open wound. Her wound had, of course, been her heart.

Chemotherapy and radiation, she remembered, had been frightening words. She didn’t even know what they meant when they’d first been brought up to her. They’d been distant words caught from television shows she’d seen and books she’d read. They were never going to affect her. They were never going to be important to her. But now, they were everything to her.
Thinking again of the research she’d done, how she’d tried to understand, she knew she never would. She knew she never could quite be there, where her mother and father were. This distance brought back the anger she’d tried to push aside.
She remembered all of this. And as she relived it, it brought back all the pain. Pain is a funny thing. A person really can’t do anything about when it comes. They can’t stop it. Pain is inevitable. But often, if they’re lucky, they can forget about it, if only just for a little while. She’d let that happen to her. She’d let herself forget the pain. And just like that, at once, it was coming back to her. Time had passed since these events. That was time she’d never get back. All of it was time she never wanted back.

People, she knew, had wondered how they would survive. Her mom, she knew, was the glue that held the family together. Others saw this from the outside.
In the beginning, there had just been the five of them—her parents, her brothers, and she had stuck together. They’d promised to get through everything just by leaning on each other. They’d never before depended on anyone else. They’d never before required the help and the kindness of strangers. The very Christmas she remembered so vividly had been just the same. They celebrated like every other. They celebrated with just the five of them. For every holiday it had been just like that.
They had family. They even had family nearby. Her mother’s parents lived just five minutes from their house. She’d seen them last at her high school graduation. She hadn’t even wanted to invite them. Her mother, she remembered, had made her. Her grandparents hadn’t once been there for their family. She’d tried to make that argument but it was rebuffed. Aunts and uncles and cousins lived across the United States. They, however, had once all lived in the same city. They’d grown apart. There was a bitterness amongst them, between her mother and her mother’s siblings—a bitterness that distance only made worse.
Throughout everything, her mother had never heard from her parents or, for that matter, from anyone in her family. She knew, in addition to everything, this too occupied her mother’s thoughts. As much as she could see that her mother needed the comfort of a parent, just as she longed for that same love from her mother, she knew that her mother would never be so bold as to call her own parents and tell them what she was going through. Her mother expected, perhaps, that they might run into someone in a store and find out. She expected that someway, somehow, they would learn. And deep within, her mother hoped that things would change.

Blue motions erupted on the canvas. Once again, she hadn’t been paying attention to what she was doing. With the corner of her eye, she could still see glimpses of the green she’d last painted. The blue, however, seemed to overpower nearly every other color she’d used. Slowly, as she stroked the image, the green and black and red started to disappear. What remained, unbeknownst to her, was the pink she’d painted in the center. The pink she’d drawn which now, she realized, was shaped just like a ribbon. The ribbon, she watched, remained strong and radiant despite the drying paint.

While people talked about them and prayed for them, many people also came by to visit. They showered them with flowers and dinners and cards. An entire language of encouragement was born that only they were capable of understanding. Not being the type of family to easily receive help easily, it showed them the strength of friendships.
Throughout treatments, people had come and gone. When they were visiting, there eased over her a temporary feeling of comfort. A feeling that, in fact, all normalcy was not lost. Amongst all the emptiness, the presence of others livened up her mother. It livened up everyone in the house. But once the people were gone and the house was emptied, the realities resurfaced.
While at school, she spoke to her father most evenings and got to hear what dinners he and her brother had eaten. Each night they ate a dinner cooked by someone different. She remembered how she’d felt then—this merely reinforced their words that they didn’t need her help. Nevertheless, she knew the company was good for them—an escape from work and from life. She wanted that for them.

But, like all things, the people soon went. After the first couple of months, attention to their situation had lessened. Friends who’d been there in the beginning had returned to going about their daily lives, not even bothering with a telephone call to check up on them.
For most, she thought, family would have been the redeeming love a person could depend on. For most, she thought, but not for them. Throughout everything, awaiting diagnoses, chemotherapy and hair loss, and radiation, nobody had shown up for her mother. The image of her mom, alone and distant, haunted her in her dreams. It chilled her to know that she could have been the one to offer comfort and wasn’t there.

Sitting on her stool, she remembered where she was. She could hear her dad’s footsteps still. Unlike the sounds she so often reflected upon in her memories, she could hear that they weren’t alone. She could tell, from the sound of the floorboards and the murmurs that echoed from above, that company had arrived. As she listened, she painted yellows and oranges around her painting. She painted different designs—whatever she wanted. No longer were the lines and motions that had become so repetitious.
Putting her last paint brush in the cup of water, she decided it was time to head upstairs. She took with her the dirty water to empty out into the sink. Heading up towards the voices, she hesitated at first. This time, though, was only for a second. She continued to ascend. Opening the door to the rest of the world, she was greeted by smiles, hugs, and kisses from every direction. For once, she didn’t fear the time when they would leave. This time, she knew that they were there to stay. Her grandmother reached out for her, taking her in her arms and kissing her on the cheek. As she hugged her, she did so as though she never wanted to let go. The last time she’d seen her was just the day before. The sense of comfort she’d for so long sought out was found, surprisingly, in the midst of her family. She knew she’d had her parents to thank for this.
Never before this time had she felt the enduring love of an extended family. She learned to trust in them and depend in them. With her parents and brothers, they’d speculated on how her grandparents had found out about her mother. In all their guesses, she noticed how her father remained quiet. She knew then that, with all of the hours her father spent billing clients and researching medical texts, he’d found the time to do one more thing. Her father had found the time to give her mother the greatest gift of all.

Walking down the hall, away from all of the voices, she no longer thought of the past. There was a future still, she knew. There was a future that looked promising to her. She reached the door of the master bedroom and waited. She waited for nothing at all. She waited because, for once, she felt, she could. She pushed open the door which had been left cracked open. Looking up, she saw the bed which took up most of the room. Medicine bottles lines the dresser and the bedside table. These bottles, which used to make her tremble because of what they represented, had come to provide her with a sense of comfort. Now, she knew, there was something to hope for—a hope, she thought, would never exist. She saw the covers pushed back and the empty space they outlined.
“Hey, sweetheart,” her mother’s voice came from a chair in the corner. The chair faced a window which allowed her to see out across the yard and the lake out back. It was a beautiful view and her mother loved to look out across her gardens. Since the last of her treatments, she’d come to love gardening and it always endured as the first thing she would show any visitors who came to their house for the first time.
As she walked towards her mom, she could see that her mother’s arm was moving back and forth in rapid brushstrokes, capturing the view she could see from the window. Set up on the floor just in front of her, her mother had the easel she’d been given for Christmas.