Page 104 of All That We Never Were

“You know her?”

“She’s a friend.”

He started the car, and we went home. I looked at the door of the art gallery we were leaving behind in the rearview mirror, and we didn’t talk about it again for the rest of the day. We made dinner together. We put on a record. We made love in his bed and embraced afterward in the silence of the night.

I couldn’t fall asleep. The tips of my toes were burning, and I knew that sensation very, very well, but it was three in the morning, I didn’t want to wake him. I got up when I couldn’t take it anymore. I walked barefoot on tiptoe through the living room, leaving the door to the bedroom cracked. I turned on a lamp on the table, which gave off a faint orange light, and went for my art materials. I unrolled a sheet of paper on the floor and knelt on the warm wood. I took a deep breath, feeling the solitude of the moment, holding on to it before opening the paint box and sliding my fingers over the tubes, caressing them, remembering them…

I grabbed a yellow. Then a carmine red.

Then a petroleum blue, a mauve, a purple, a salmon pink, a chocolate brown, turquoise, dark amber, apricot, mint green…

I mixed them all. Felt them all. Found myself in all of them.

88

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Axel

Douglas showed up at my house with a bag of prepared food and two beers in his hands. He didn’t say a word before going to the kitchen and taking everything out. I was a little angry as I watched him. Not at him. Maybe at me. I don’t know. I put the cigarette I was about to light before he arrived behind my ear.

“Bad day, no? Lots of those lately.”

“You don’t say?” I hissed. “Why are you here?”

“Some host you are…”

“It’s not you, it’s just… Don’t worry about it.”

I opened a beer and took a sip. Douglas looked around at the disorder in the house. I hadn’t picked up in days. The floor was full of unfinished paintings, sketches, spots of paint I hadn’t bothered to clean.

All I could feel was frustration. “I just can’t do it. I can’t.”

“That’s not true, Axel. Come on, look at me.”

“You’re right, it’s worse. I don’t want to do it.”

He twisted his beer around in his hand while he looked at me. I saw disappointment in his eyes. I had to hold back from crying like a fucking boy in front of him about all I’d ever wanted to be and would never achieve.

“If you tell me, I’ll understand.”

I got up and ran a hand through my hair. “It’s everything. It’s…this house, this place. The idea I had about what it would be but isn’t. I’m suffocating. It’s like having a noose around my neck the whole damn day.” I walked back and forth, stepping on my paintings, but I didn’t care. “I don’t even know why I wanted to do this. Paint. I’ve forgotten. How can you forget something that was supposedly your dream, Douglas?”

“Tell me just one thing: what is it that comes between you and your canvas?”

“Me, damn it. Me. I don’t feel anything. I don’t have anything to capture, anything I want to record. I don’t want to make just anything. If that’s how it’s going to be, I’d rather never touch a fucking brush again. And the harder I try to find something that’s important enough to me to give it my all, the worse it is; the more frustrated I get. I can’t. I’ve tried for months, and…I can’t. Supposedly this is what I studied for, and I promised you I would do it and I would show my work in a gallery and…”

I brought a hand to my chest, and Douglas got up and hugged me. I held him tight. I needed it; I needed to know that even if I hadn’t done it, even if I hadn’t scratched that goal off the list, he would still be there with me, because painting was one of the strongest things that had brought us together since I was a boy, and I was afraid if I let it go he would pull away from me or something would change.

“That’s enough, son. That’s enough.” He patted me on the back. “You don’t have to do it anymore, hear me? No one’s forcing you. You’ve started a war and you’re only fighting against yourself, and you’re never going to win. Fuck painting. Fuck everything, you hear me? The first thing is to be happy, feel relaxed when you get up every morning.”

I wanted to cry from relief.

I took a deep breath. I breathed, I breathed, I breathed…

Douglas squeezed my shoulder and the disappointment on his face turned to pride. I didn’t know why, but I didn’t ask either, because seeing it was enough. He made the tension disappear, grabbing our dinner and taking the two boxes of noodles out to the porch. We ate our meal in silence, each lost in his own thoughts. I was about to go get some tea when he stopped me with a smile.

“Wait, I’ve got something better.”

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