CLARITY “Why are you doing this?” asked David. David was a large man, who made big tears. Joe had seen them. Not many people had. It was a devastating sight. So it was, when he lifted the glass to his lips, and drank. Deeply. “Cuz I’m weird,” was all Joe could come up with. “Well, we all know that. It’s why we love you, Joe.” David looked around the room, more than a little amazed, less than a little disgusted, and more or less confused as to why a man would put himself through such a painful process. After the war, many of his friends found their own means to self destruct. Some found their way away from that desire. The rest either passed it on, or passed on. He was no stranger himself. Loathing had been his closest friend for many years. His wife would say, ‘God only gives you what you can handle’. Those words, echoed in his head in that moment, as he sat beside Joe. Lonely Joe. He‘d never in his life considered hitting a woman, but right then he wanted to smack her in the mouth. It was good she hadn’t come. He took another long swallow, and the glass had given all it could. Just like Joe. Because every room in the house was the same, covered in smiles, in every conceivable combination of color, from the block filled concrete in the basement to the ceiling of the upstairs master suite, David knew that Joe was all used up. “I don’t want to forget,” said Joe. David stood and walked into the kitchen. The house was supposed to be poised to sell. He poured the bourbon slowly into his glass and slid two wet ice cubes from the tray he’d left on the counter. He dropped them into the glass. Bombs away. There was no way the house was going to sell with the faces of his dead daughter and two dead grand kids painted on every square inch of every damn wall. Mary, and Jim and Tom. Over the goddamn tiled backsplash. On the goddamn refrigerator. The house was a perfect likeness. David rubbed his eyes and walked back into the living room to sit. Across from Joe. “None of us want to forget them,” said David, “that’s why we have pictures of them. So we can look at them whenever we want. So we can remember them anytime we want. You have pictures of them, don’t you? You can’t fit the fridge in your wallet, Joe.” Joe was in tears. It had been more than a month. His brush was dry, his paints gone. They had shown him his family. His wife and kids sledding in the bathroom. Carving pumpkins in Tom’s bedroom. Decorating the Christmas tree and setting out cookies for Santa on the wall behind Jim’s bed. And Mary. Mary all over where Joe slept. Mary painted on the ceiling. Mary holding their twin babies. David drank. All of it. He stood and walked to the eastern wall, where the sun still bathed his family in it’s warm, yellow light. It left his shadow over where Mary crouched, one arm around each of the boys necks. He traced a hair that fell in front of her face. Tried to push it behind her ear. David’s teeth clenched. His hand tightened around the top of his empty cup. Never in a million years would he have imagined an image of his family would cause him to boil over. But, it did. Because he wasn’t a soldier anymore. He was dad. He was Grandpa. He was. The glass hit the wall, careening over Joe’s head to shatter against Mary’s forehead across from him. He didn’t realize he threw it until the sound it made when it broke. “Why?” he whispered, “Why would you do this, Joe?” Joe just stared at him, blinking. “You touched her hair just then,” said Joe. David sobbed. His shoulders helped to shake her from him. “Why?” he cried. Joe stood and walked to David. He put his hand up on his shoulder. “I don’t want to see them perfectly in pictures. I want to see them perfectly in my brain. The more I paint them- “The more I paint them, the more I see them. The more I see things I never saw before. The closer I feel to them. The better I feel about all the times I wasn’t there with them. For them. “And I think…the house looks better this way.” David stopped sobbing. He looked Joe in the eye. Then his grandkids. Then his daughter. That week David took out a loan and paid the mortgage on his daughter’s house. The following week, Joe taught David how to paint.
Submitted July 18, 2015 at 12:51PM by Agoraprobe http://ift.tt/1HXXcWN KeepWriting
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