The Remains (7 page)

My face. Molly’s face. Just as chalky and
ghost-white as the day she died. While the water dripped off my
chin into the sink, I breathed careful inhales and exhales. Calm
enveloped me like a blanket. But it did nothing to end the fear I
still felt for Whalen even after all these years. It did nothing to
end the sadness I felt for Molly.

Pulling a handful of paper towels from the
wall-mounted dispenser, I thought about heading back to the
classroom when the wood door flung open.

Robyn.

She stood tall, narrow-hipped, cotton t-shirt
barely concealing a belly button pierced with a silver hoop. She
stuck both hands into the pockets of her low-waist Gap jeans.

“What’s the matter with you?” she demanded.
“Franny thinks you don’t like his painting. And might I remind you
that Franny’s mother has provided us with one huge annual
contribution to pretty much be professional art cheerleaders for
her gifted artist-in-residence.”

I inhaled again, nodded.

Robyn was
right.
What
was going on with me?
You just don’t walk out on a talent like that; on a sweet
human being like that.

“This isn’t one of those
words-in-the-painting things is it, Bec? Because if it is, I’m
calling Albany Psychiatric.”

“Phone book’s in the bottom desk drawer in
the front office,” I said, trying my best to work up a smile
through all the lightheadedness, the dizziness. “Unless of course
you want to just cut to the chase and call 9-1-1.”

How can she not make out the word ‘See’ in
the tall grass? How is it that I see it and she can’t unless I
spell it out for her?

Robyn pursed her lips, ran an open hand
through thick hair.

“You wanna tell me what you see this time?
You wanna talk about it?” Her voice became calmer, more
sympathetic.

Should I be honest with her? Reveal
precisely what I saw inside Franny’s canvas? The field and the dark
woods behind my parents’ house, the painting depicting them
precisely the way I see them in my dreams? The way I remember them
from that long ago October afternoon? Should I tell her that in the
dark and light shadowing of the tall grass blowing in the wind I
recognized the letters S-e-e? Should I tell her that Franny’s
paintings were somehow speaking to me?

Robyn was my friend and partner. Still,
intuition told me to shut up about this one. That yesterday’s
‘Listen’ episode had been enough weirdness for one week.

I shook my head. “It’s nothing. I’m just
feeling nauseous is all. It’ll pass.”

Reaching out with her dominant hand, Robyn
pressed her cold palm against my forehead.

“Cold and clammy,” she commented, then spoke
in the third person. “Is it alive or is it Memorex?”

I had to wonder.

“Maybe you should go home, go back to bed. I
can handle things here. It’s just Franny and those two rich old
ladies who can’t paint worth a crap. ‘Sides, we’re not running any
classes this afternoon or tonight.” She quickly lowered her head,
made like she was looking under the stall to make certain one of
those same rich old ladies didn’t occupy it.

“It’ll pass, whatever it is,” I repeated
while trying to get around her to the door. The former Catholic
school girl’s room had suddenly become too small for the both of
us.

“Wait a minute,” she barked. “You’re not
getting off that easy, Miss Underhill.”

I about-faced, my hand still clutching the
door opener. Somehow I sensed what was coming. I could tell by the
pensive look on her face.

“You’re not…” Instead of finishing the
question, she held an open hand out in front of her stomach as if
to indicate a growing belly.

“Not a chance,” I said. “You have to engage
in consensual sexual activity for that to happen.”

“Uh huh,” Robyn murmured with one of her sly
smiles and a wink of her right eye.

I could have slapped her. But at least she
made me smile again.

She cocked her head in the direction of the
door.

“Let’s get out of here before the old ladies
think we’re getting it on.” she giggled.

Together we exited the bathroom.

“Don’t you want to know?” Robyn said while we
were walking the corridor.

“Don’t I want to know what?”

We were standing outside the studio door.

“How my date went last night?”

I’d completely forgotten.

“How’d your date go last night, Rob?”

She threw me another wink of that right eye.
“I just hope I don’t start feeling nauseas.”

THE REST OF MY day passed in a haze of
strange and for the most part, terrible art. Students came,
students went. I encouraged them all, answered all questions,
calmed their anxieties about failure and inadequacy.

Franny stayed the entire day, busily touching
up his latest painting. His ability to paint so fast, so
magnificently was beyond my understanding. But it certainly had
everything to do with those things an autistic savant possessed and
what ‘normal people’ lacked.

But all talent aside, I couldn’t help but
sense that something else was going on here; something that lie far
beneath the surface of the paint and the canvas. Franny might have
been unable to communicate in the everyday sense of the word. But
in my soul I felt that he was trying to communicate with me. The
fact that the painting resembled the setting of a recurring dream
of mine could not have been entirely coincidental. There had to be
an explanation for it—an explanation that, at the moment anyway,
seemed too elusive. If language and the emotional tools that went
with it were closed off to him, then painting had become more than
just an art or a vivid method of expression.

It had become his language of choice.

As Tuesday afternoon went from afternoon to
dusk, Franny still occupied his stool in the far corner of the
studio. I’d made the conscious decision to avoid him. Rather, avoid
the new painting. Having assisted and critiqued her last student,
Robyn had her jacket on, leather bag strapped around her shoulder.
Standing near the exit, she raised her right hand high, pointed it
at the exterior door. Sign language for ‘Mind if I split?’

I didn’t mind. Robyn had a life beyond the
art center. Still, I couldn’t stop my curiosity from getting the
best of me.

“Stockbroker.” I said like a question.

She smiled.

Once
again the pit in my stomach made its bulky presence known.
Was it envy that
plagued my insides, or just a simple gastro-reaction to my
lunchtime half-picked at rubbery grilled cheese?

“Details,” I said, in place of a good night.
“I want all the juicy details tomorrow.”

Rob had her hand on the metal and wire-glass
door.

She said, “You want me to see if the
stockbroker has a friend?”

“He’ll just reject me in the end,” I joked.
But I immediately regretted having opened my big fat mouth.

“Sister Mary Rebecca,” Robyn said, as she
opened the door. “That’s what I’m going to start calling you.”

That’s when I did something completely unlike
me. I stuck out my tongue and closed my eyes like a ten year
old.

She burst out in laughter.

I quickly pulled it back in before Franny got
wind of the gesture. Not that he’d have any clue what it meant.

“Don’t make me scream,” Robyn said.

“Now there’s a challenge,” I said, as she
bolted through the exit.

She was hardly out the now open door when
Franny’s ride pulled up, those familiar round headlights
spotlighting Robyn’s voluptuous frame as she tossed a wave at
Franny’s mom.

“Time to pack it in, Fran,” I announced,
turning to him.

But he’d already beat me to the punch. In the
short time it took me to bid farewell to Rob, Franny managed to
seal his paint canisters and jars of turpentine. He also packed up
everything that needed packing. Except his new painting, that
is.

I swallowed something sour.

“Fran, don’t forget your piece.”

“Painted this for you,” he mumbled, big brown
eyes peeled to the paint-stained VCT. What disturbed me more than
his gifting me yet another painting was how his voice took on that
same odd tone that had first revealed itself last night. The tone
that revealed the man locked inside the perpetual boy. His face
also took on the look of a man who knew something I did not. That
voice, that face; they were enough to fill my spine with ice
water.

A horn blared.

I nearly jumped through the concrete block
wall.

The horn blared again.

Franny’s
mom was growing impatient. It occurred to me that I should follow
him out to the Scaramuzzi pickup truck, pose a few questions to his
mother.
Were
you aware that he’s given me two of his paintings? Did you know
that I’m seeing words in the paintings that no one else seems to
see? That is, if I don’t point them out first? Did you know that
today’s painting very much resembles the setting of a recurring
dream I’ve had? That it matches the place where my twin sister and
I were attacked by a monster who lived in the woods thirty years
ago almost to the day?

I wanted to ask her these things and more.
But Franny would overhear our conversation. Franny went for the
door, the ratty, old, cuffed dungarees dragging along the
floor.

Out the corner of my eye, I spotted the new
painting resting on the easel.

“What do you call it?” I called out.

He turned, slow, awkward, the open glass door
pressed up against his stocky shoulder.

“The title,” he mumbled. “The title. The
title.”

“See.” I swallowed.

“Goodnight, Rebecca.”

“Goodnight, Franny.”

And then the artist was gone.

THE DARK EVENING HAD become shrouded in a
thick, foggy mist. Broadway was empty of motor vehicles, its
sidewalks empty of people.

I climbed the parking garage ramp to the
second level where I’d parked the Cabriolet. The concrete garage
was brightly lit with sodium lamplight. It was also damp, cold,
lonely. I walked with my knapsack hanging off my right shoulder,
Franny’s ‘See’ painting tucked under my left arm.

My footsteps echoed inside the cavernous
garage.

I was all alone.

I didn’t like being that alone; the
vulnerability that went with it. My body was a live wire, my senses
picking up every nuance of sound, movement and smell. It wasn’t as
though I were being watched. It was more like being totally naked
and exposed.

The Cabriolet could not have been more than
seventy or eighty feet away from me. But it might as well have been
a mile. That car was my safety zone—four walls and a retractable
roof.

I walked, boot heels click-clacking along the
concrete floor.

Then I saw a shadow.

Just up ahead of me, the shadow projected
itself onto the concrete floor, as though coming from a man
concealing himself behind a concrete column.

I stopped.

I opened my mouth to speak. But no words
would come.

The shadow moved.

It moved backwards, forwards, the person
behind the column shifting position.

That’s when I found my voice.

“Who is it?”

It came out as a shout. So loud and adrenalin
charged, I startled myself.

“Who’s there?” I shouted again, voice echoing
inside the concrete garage.

I felt the blood leave my head, sink down my
neck, pour down the insides of my body. I felt the blood spill out
the bottoms of my feet. Fear blinded me like a black hood pulled
over my head. I stumbled, my balance shifting from one side to the
other. I’m not sure how long I stood there exposed, eyes closed,
body swaying, breathing hard and fast.

I closed my eyes.

But when I opened them, the shadow was
gone.

I could only guess that whoever had been
behind the column was gone now. That is, if there had been someone
there in the first place.

Had I imagined the shadow?

Was my imagination running away with
itself?

God, get me out of here.

I made a mad dash for the car, at the same
time pulling the keys from my knapsack. I dropped Franny’s painting
as I thumbed the unlock button on the key-face. The car came to
life, door-locks unlocking, headlights flashing.

Bending at the knees, I picked the painting
back up, ran for the Cabriolet. I threw open the driver’s side
door, tossed in the bag, tossed in the painting. Jumping in behind
the wheel, I fumbled with the ignition key until I managed to slip
it into the lock. Pumping the gas I turned the engine over until it
started with a resounding roar. To the immediate right of me was
the concrete column that had hid the figure of a person. A person
who’d been watching me. A man. Or so I imagined.

I pulled out of the spot, the tires squealing
against the smooth concrete floor. I made for the area designated
EXIT. For a quick moment I thought about looking into the
rearview.

But I resisted the urge.

Better not to see what was behind me; what
might have been stalking me.

I DIDN’T ENTER MY apartment so much as I
burst through the back door.

The sudden intrusion was enough to make
Michael jump out of his chair.

“You scared the crap out me, Bec!”

I dropped the art bag to the floor, leaned
today’s ‘See’ painting up against yesterday’s ‘Listen’ painting,
then made a beeline for the kitchen. I made it back into the living
room along with two open bottles of Corona, set one of them down
besides Michael’s laptop.

“Work’s over.”

“Yes ma’am.” He grabbed hold of the bottle.
“Nail officially bitten.”

I took a long pull of the beer and felt the
cool carbonation against the back of my throat, the magic of the
alcohol calming me.