He brushed the Waldorf salad, the apple chunks and chopped walnuts, out of her hair, and he said, “Como?”
What you don’t understand you can make mean anything.
Even then, the kitchen door was propped open and the floor there was clean and dry.
Misty said, “How did I fall?”
And Raymon shrugged and said, “On your culo .”
All the kitchen guys standing around, they laughed.
Now, up in her room, her leg cocooned in a heavy white pinata, Grace and Dr. Touchet lift Misty under each arm and steer her over to the bed. Tabbi gets her green algae pills out of her purse and sets them on the bedside table. Grace unplugs the telephone and loops the cord, saying, “You need peace and quiet.” Grace says, “There’s nothing wrong with you that a little art therapy won’t cure,” and she starts taking things out of the shopping bags, tubes of paint and brushes, and setting them in piles on the dresser.
Out of his briefcase, the doctor takes a syringe. He wipes Misty’s arm with cold alcohol. Better her arm than her nipple.
Can you feel this?
The doctor fills the syringe from a bottle and sticks the needle in her arm. He pulls it out and gives her a wad of cotton to stop any blood. “It’s to help you sleep,” he says.
Tabbi sits on the edge of the bed and says, “Does it hurt?”
No, not a bit. Her leg feels fine. The shot hurt more.
The ring on Tabbi’s finger, the sparkling green peridot, it catches light from the window. The rug edges along the bottom of the window, and under the rug’s where Misty’s hidden her tip money. Their ticket home to Tecumseh Lake.
Grace puts the phone into an empty shopping bag and holds her hand out to Tabbi. She says, “Come. Let’s give your mother a rest.”
Dr. Touchet stands in the open door and says, “Grace? If I could talk to you, in private?”
Tabbi gets off the bed, and Grace leans down to whisper in her ear. Then Tabbi nods her head, fast. She’s wearing the heavy pink necklace of shimmering rhinestones. It’s so wide it must feel as heavy around her neck as the cast does around her mother’s leg. A sparkling millstone. A junk jewelry ball and chain. Tabbi undoes the clasp and brings it to the bed, saying, “Hold up your head.”
She reaches a hand past each of Misty’s shoulders and snaps the necklace around her mother’s neck.
Just for the record, Misty’s not an idiot. Poor Misty Marie Kleinman knew the blood on her panties was Peter’s. But right now, at this moment, she’s so glad she didn’t abort her child.
Your blood.
Why Misty said yes to marrying you—she doesn’t know. Why does anyone do anything? Already she’s melting into the bed. Every breath is slower than the last. Her levator palpebrae muscles have to work hard to keep her eyes open.
Tabbi goes to the easel and takes down a tablet of drawing paper. She brings the paper and a charcoal pencil and puts them on the blankets beside her mother, saying, “For in case you get inspiration.”
And Misty gives her a slow-motion kiss on the forehead.
Between the cast and the necklace, Misty feels pinned to the bed. Staked out. A sacrifice. An anchoress.
Then Grace takes Tabbi’s hand and they go out to Dr. Touchet in the hallway. The door closes. It’s so quiet, Misty’s not sure if she hears right. But there’s an extra little click.
And Misty calls, “Grace?” Misty calls, “Tabbi?” In slow motion, Misty says, “Hey there? Hello?” Just for the record, they’ve locked her in.
July 30
THE FIRST TIME Misty wakes up after her accident, her pubic hair’s gone and a catheter is inside her, snaking down her good leg to a clear plastic bag hooked to the bedpost. Bands of white surgical tape strap the tube to her leg skin.
Dear sweet Peter, nobody has to tell you how that feels.
Dr. Touchet’s been at work again.
Just for the record, waking up on drugs with your pubic hair shaved and something plastic stuck in your vagina doesn’t necessarily make you a real artist.
If it did, Misty would be painting the Sistine Chapel. Instead she’s wadding up another wet sheet of 140-pound watercolor paper. Outside her little dormer window, the sun’s baking the sand on the beach. The waves hiss and burst. Seagulls tremble, hanging in the wind, hovering white kites, while kids make sand castles and splash in the rising tide.
It would be one thing to trade all her sunny days for a masterpiece, but this ... her day’s been just one shitty smeared mistake after another. Even with her full-leg cast and her little bag of piss, Misty wants to be outside. As an artist, you organize your life so you get a chance to paint, a window of time, but that’s no guarantee you’ll create anything worth all your effort. You’re always haunted by the idea you’re wasting your life.
The truth is, if Misty were on the beach, she’d be looking up at this window, dreaming of being a painter.
The truth is, wherever you choose to be, it’s the wrong place.
Misty’s half standing at her easel, balanced on a tall stool, looking out the window toward Waytansea Point, Tabbi’s sitting in the patch of sunlight at her feet, coloring her cast with felt-tipped pens. That’s what hurts. It’s bad enough Misty spent most of her childhood hiding indoors, coloring in books, dreaming of being an artist. Now she’s modeling this bad behavior for her kid. All the mud pies Misty missed baking, now Tabbi’s going to miss. Whatever it is teenagers do. All the kites Misty didn’t fly, the games of tag Misty skipped, all the dandelions Misty didn’t pick, Tabbi is making her same mistake.
The only flowers Tabbi’s seen, she found with her grandmother, painted around the rim of a teacup.
School starts in a few weeks, and Tabbi’s still so pale from staying inside.
Misty’s brush making another mess on the page in front of her, Misty says, “Tabbi honey?”
Tabbi sits, rubbing a red pen on the cast. The resin and cloth is so thick, Misty can’t feel a thing.
Misty’s smock is one of Peter’s old blue work shirts with a rusted fur clip of fake rubies on the front pocket. Fake rubies and glass diamonds. Tabbi’s brought the box of dress-up jewelry, all the junk brooches and bracelets and single earrings that Peter gave Misty in school.
That you gave your wife.
Misty’s wearing your shirt, and she tells Tabbi, “Why don’t you run outside for a few hours?”
Tabbi switches the red pen for a yellow one, and she says, “Granmy Wilmot said for me not to.” Coloring, Tabbi says, “She told me to stay with you as long as you’re awake.”
This morning, Angel Delaporte’s brown sports car pulled into the hotel’s gravel parking lot. Wearing a wide straw beach hat, Angel got out and walked up to the front porch. Misty kept expecting Paulette to come up from the front desk and say she had a visitor, but no. A half hour later, Angel came out the hotel’s front doors and walked down the porch steps. With one hand, he held his hat in place as he tilted his head back and scanned the hotel windows, the clutter of signs and logos. Corporate graffiti. Competing immortalities. Then Angel put on his sunglasses, slipped into his sports car, and drove away.
In front of her is another painted mess. Her perspective is all wrong.
Tabbi says, “Granmy told me to help you get inspired.”
Instead of painting, Misty should be teaching her child some skill—bookkeeping or cost analysis or television repair. Some realistic way she can pay her bills.
Sometime after Angel Delaporte drove away, Detective Stilton drove up in a plain beige county government car. He walked into the hotel, then went back to his car a few minutes later. He stood in the parking lot, shading his eyes with one hand, staring up at the hotel, looking from window to window, but not seeing her. Then he drove away.
The mess in front of her, the colors are running and smudged. The trees could be microwave relay towers. The ocean could be volcano lava or cold chocolate pudding or just six bucks’ worth of gouache watercolors, wasted. Misty tears off the sheet and wads it into a ball. Her hands are almost black with wadding up her failures all day. Her head aches. Misty closes her eyes and presses a hand to her forehead, where she feels it stick with wet paint.