See What I See (7 page)

T
he next morning I picture my art school classmates heading to their first class. In the life class they'll have a new live model to sketch. In our lit class they'll be reading Shakespeare's
Hamlet
. We were not only supposed to read the play but apply some aspect of our art to it. Lila was doing costumes. I was sketching out the sets—all those gloomy castle scenes with black skeletonlike trees disappearing in the fog. There was going to be a band playing after school, and I had a sort of date to see them with Nick, who does amazing sculptures from junk he picks up on the streets or finds in trash barrels. But I won't be there. I'll be right here taking care of Dad.

I can hear Mom whispering in my ear,
I told you it was all about him
. I almost bolt out the door, but I don't.

Dad comes down for breakfast and looks around, as if he isn't sure where he is or who I am. I remember what Thomas said about Dad being disoriented. He holds his toast in one hand and his knife in the other like he has no idea what to do with either of them. I begin to feel confused myself. Where is this going? I hand him the butter, and after a minute he seems fine, finishing breakfast and taking his coffee into the studio with him. There is no word about my not returning to school, no thanks, and no apology. He just accepts the fact that he comes first. That's the way it is in his world and I'd better get used to it.

I hurry through the dishes, swishing them in the hot, soapy water, rinsing them and leaving them in the rack to dry. When I open the back door to take out the trash, the gray-and-white feral cat I've seen prowling around the neighborhood runs off. It doesn't have a home, but I don't feel sorry for it because the cat can do just as it likes. A waft of fresh air makes me want to go for a long walk, all the way to northern Michigan. Instead I head for my own little studio to get to work. Driving home from the hospital the day before, I began thinking about the challenge of painting trees in the darkness, and I'm anxious to solve the problem.

As I pass Dad's studio, I hear something that sounds like crying. Every sensible impulse tells me to just hurry up the stairs, but my feet are stuck. The next thing I know, I'm knocking on the studio door. No response. Is he okay? What if Dad's too sick to come to the door? When I look in, I find him crumpled in a chair, his shoulders shaking. I have never seen a man cry. Men are supposed to handle everything. That's what they're there for. I put a hand on his shoulder.

He shakes it off. “Just leave me alone.” He blows his nose with incredible force. “You can call Morgan and tell him the show is off.”

“What do you mean?” I look around the studio. There are a half dozen canvases stacked against the walls. Several obviously need work. One stands on an easel. I try to think of something encouraging. “You said you've already sent some work to the gallery, and when you finish these, you'll have more than enough work for a show.”

I go from painting to painting, telling Dad how great each one is. And they are. It's true there's a lot of ugliness, but they're strong and shout for your attention.

As I explain his own work to him, Dad stares at me as if I'm translating a foreign language. He grunts. “You don't know what you're talking about. Make me some more coffee. I suppose you can manage that?”

I go out to the kitchen to make him coffee, and when I get back he's working. I think about going upstairs to my own work, but I've lost the urgency. I've given Dad my enthusiasm and now I don't have any left. Shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't the father be the one in charge? Shouldn't he be the one to encourage me? But I know this isn't going to change. It'll be a race for Dad to finish his work while he's still able to paint, and I'll have to be cheerleader as well as housekeeper and nurse.

In the late afternoon the doorbell rings. A large woman stands there, solid as stone. With her dark suit and black bag she looks forbidding, but I notice she is wearing fanciful earrings that are a dangle of little hearts. She asks, “Is this Dalton Quinn's house? I'm Erlita Parker, the visiting nurse.”

“I'm Mr. Quinn's daughter, Kate. Come on in. Let me talk with my dad.”

I go into Dad's studio. He gives me a furious look. “What do you want?”

“The visiting nurse is here.”

“Get rid of her.”

“I'm afraid he won't see you,” I tell Erlita.

“Honey, you looked wiped out. Better let me in to see for myself.”

“Is she gone?” Dad shouts.

Erlita motions in the direction of the studio. “He's in there?”

I nod.

“Sounds cranky.” She walks past me and into the studio.

Dad stares at Erlita. “Who are you and what the devil do you think you're doing here?” He turns to me. “I told you to get that woman out of here.”

Erlita introduces herself.

“The last thing I need is some officious nurse telling me what to do. I didn't ask for you and I don't want you.”

Erlita looks around. “My, you must be an artist. Why don't you paint something pretty? I wouldn't have one of those on my walls.”

Dad goes through a string of curses, some of which are new to me, but Erlita stands her ground. She says, “Those bad words are like vipers issuing out of your mouth. Don't you know what the Bible has to say about such language? And in front of your girl. You ought to be ashamed. Now I'm here to check your lungs and that's what I'm going to do. I guess you want to get back to your painting, but unless you let me do my job, you aren't going to have many painting days left, and if I were you, with a mouth like that, I wouldn't be too anxious to meet my maker.”

Dad spits out, “If you think you're getting any money from me, I can tell you that even if I had it, I wouldn't pay you a cent. So you can just clear out.”

“That's not a problem. The hospital made arrangements for these visits. Believe me, they don't want to see you back there anytime soon. Now if you'll just be quiet.” Erlita gets out a blood-pressure cuff and a stethoscope. I hold my breath.

Erlita looks over at me. “Honey, why don't you get me a nice cold glass of water? I've been running all morning.”

I return to find Dad is lying down. When she's finished, I accompany Erlita to the door. “How did you get him to agree to the examination?”

“I treated him just like I do my five-year-old—let him get it all out of his system and then close in for the kill. What you've got to realize is that your dad is scared. He knows he doesn't have a lot of time left. Now what about you? You making some time for yourself, honey?” She puts her arm around me and that's too much. It's like my mom being there, and I haven't realized how much I miss Mom and how much I need her. I lose it, and the next thing I know, I'm crying into Erlita's shoulder and she's patting me on the back.

“Anytime you want to slip out, he'll be fine for a couple of hours on his own. I'll tell you what I'll do,” she says. “We don't live too far from here. I'll send my little girl by to give you a night off. You don't have to pay her a cent. She belongs to our church's Good Deed Girls, and she needs the credit. Her name is Ruth after the lady in the Bible. She's a little thing, not big like me, but I taught her not to be afraid of anything and she isn't. I'll be back at the end of the week, and you can call me anytime.” She thrusts a card with her phone number in my hand and she's gone.

I hurry up to my studio, clutching Erlita's card. An hour ago I had never heard of her. Now she's the most important person in my life. All it took was a few words. Dad will hang on to me and I'll hang on to Erlita and maybe neither of us will drown.

*  *  *

When I'm painting, there's no time or place. It's nearly suppertime, and except for a quick lunch I've been at it all day. When my cell rings, it pulls me out of a trance and for a minute I don't know where I am. It's Mom. “So are you all right?” she asks.

“Yes,” I say. And I am. I always am when I'm painting. Wonderful as it is to hear Mom's voice, I'm almost sorry to have to put down my brush. A quick and awful thought shoots through my head. Maybe I'm more like my dad than I want to be: painting before people.

“How's school?” Mom asks.

I think fast. If I tell Mom the truth, she'll have a fit. She'll say Dad ruined her life and now he's ruining mine and I have to come home right away. She won't really care what happens to Dad, only to me.

“The school is great,” I say. Not a complete lie.

“And what about him?”

“He's fine,” I say.

I tell her about Lila, and she says it's nice I have a friend. She tells me there's a big scandal at the resort where she works in the restaurant. The restaurant manager ran off with the owner's wife. Except that turns out to be good news, because they gave Mom the manager's job. “Only temporary,” she says, but I hear hope and pride in her voice.

She wants to know if I have the right clothes and if the neighborhood is safe and if I'm getting enough sleep.

“Love you,” she says.

“Love you,” I answer. We sign off. I don't like lying to Mom, but I can't desert Dad. Things are getting so complicated. I wish I had someone to talk it all over with. I think about Thomas and wonder when I'll see him again.

I heat up soup and make Dad sandwiches with leftover chicken, cutting off the crusts like you're supposed to do for invalids. I slice the sandwiches into small triangles so they look appetizing and take them into the studio, because he won't come out. He barely notices me, waving the plate away. I leave it on a table and back away like I'm trying to entice a wild animal. I pause for a minute to look at what Dad's working on. It's a man and a woman standing in a darkened room. They're facing away from each other, the man looking out one window, the woman out the other. They are together in separate worlds. It's night in the painting, and from the windows you see trees, their leafy crowns huddled together as if they need to be protected from the darkness around them. I say this to Dad.

He turns away from the canvas and looks at me like he's seeing me for the first time. “Protected from the darkness. That's rather good. Actually it's how you see trees at night, as masses because you can't see the daylight coming through the interstices.”

“Interstices?”

“The spaces between something, like the spaces between the branches. At night there are no visible spaces.”

How to paint trees at night is the very problem I've been thinking about. I realize my painting and Dad's have come together, and it gives me a little shiver of pleasure. I'd like to tell him, but he grabs a triangle of chicken sandwich and turns back to his painting. I'm dismissed, but I don't care. We have just had our first intelligent conversation. And it was about painting. I go upstairs and look at my night trees again. I pick up my brush.

At midnight I'm awakened by a call from Justin. He's been up late studying for a test. He tells me he's in an advanced math class and has met two students there who have an old hunting cabin outside of town in the woods. He's up there for the weekend. Porcupines gnaw on their cabin, deer graze on nearby fields, and yesterday they saw an eagle. On quiet nights they can hear the foghorn warning ships on Lake Superior. It's like Justin and I are living in different countries. After I hang up, I decide I'll get some cat food for the feral cat. I need something wild near me.

T
wo weeks go by before I feel it's safe to leave Dad for a couple of hours. It's been like house arrest. I wish I could walk out the door into my beloved woods instead of into the city, but truthfully any change of scenery is welcome at this point. Stepping outside, I see the cat has rejected the food I set out. Why would it want to belong to someone when it can go its own way? I don't blame it. In the mild October afternoon I wander in the direction of the convenience store. In front of the store I spot Thomas getting out of a car.

“How's your dad?”

I give him all the news and tell him about Erlita.

“So what are you doing?”

“I'm out for a walk. Erlita says it's all right to leave Dad for a couple of hours. I'm hungry for a little country, but I guess I'll never find it here.”

“My head's full of comparative anatomy and I could use a breather myself. Hop in—I'll show you countryside.”

He opens the car door, shoving aside a bird's nest of books, newspapers, and empty coffee cups. The car coughs and hesitates and then does what it's told. As we drive away, I see Emmanuel peering out the store window. And he's frowning.

“Your dad doesn't look too pleased. Were you supposed to be doing something?”

“No. Nothing to worry about.”

“Maybe he doesn't approve of me.”

“He likes you . . . but he doesn't like the combination of you and me. He thinks that I should be studying and that you're not one of us.”