The Rainbow (Frerard) [underwater_sky]

May - Gold (Part Five)

            The next morning when I went downstairs to get breakfast for Gerard and myself, I met up with Jasmine. She was still wearing her white dress, but over different pants. I teased her about it, asking if she wanted to keep the wedding party going, and she smiled. It was a relief to see that expression on her face, and when I moved towards her, I kept eye contact. She looked up and met my gaze and we looked at one another unflinchingly. She turned her back on the scrambled tofu she was preparing after turning it low, and leaned her back against the other side of the stove. I moved in front of her, bridging the gap between our bodies. I touched her hair, curling it slightly over her ear, and then I just held her. I put my hands over her stomach, and we kissed for several minutes more before we resumed our days. She went back to her tofu, and informed me that, "Although it would be nice to keep things going, I'm wearing this again because it's the only thing of mine that fits me. Everything else is Hilda's."

            Eventually, as I got together toast, I mentioned the promise that I had made to Gerard last night. If I was going to keep him out of a home, Jasmine needed to know too. But she nodded without flinching, and then confessed that was what they had been discussing the night before.

            "What else did he tell you?" I asked her, wanting to know if the conversation between us last night had been genuine, or if it was like we were rehearsing lines to one another. It hurt, not being able to grant his promise first. I wanted to be that person again, the one with the ideas, or the one who would at least hear about them before anyone else.

            Jasmine looked away and became evasive with the topic of the rest of their conversation. Her body language told me it wasn't important, and to drop the issue. I knew from the way she was scraping off the rest of the tofu from the frying pan with stunted movements, and how she bit her lip, that whatever they were talking about was personal. Jasmine's personal, as opposed to Gerard's issues and the promises that arose out of it. I watched her stomach, her ridiculously large stomach to me now, and I realized that it was Saturday morning. She wasn't going to be going to work, and if I was so concerned about being the first with the ideas, then we really should be having our own extended wedding party. One without all the people from before - that had been too many for Gerard to handle. It would just be the three of us, total and complete, and we would make sure that he never forgot what he feared the most. I nodded to myself, assured of my plan now.

            We were going to recreate the rainbow between us all.

            I told my idea to Jasmine, with a bit of explanation about Kandinsky, and her eyes lit up. She called up Hilda right away and cancelled their plans together for later that afternoon, and over our toast and tofu scrambled eggs, we began to organize. We grabbed some extra paper, pens, and paintbrushes first, and then realizing we needed a wedding feast, I descended to the kitchen to do some more work. Only an hour or two after our embrace in the kitchen, we were on the same wavelength again. We walked up to Gerard's room carrying plates full of French toast (Le Pain Perdu, I informed her) and our supplies, and then began to get to work.

            I had never painted with Gerard and Jasmine before. Apparently the two of them had done some work together, but it was nothing in comparison to the catalogue of art history that Gerard had between us. They had painted flowers on her stomach one morning when they were together, and then painted flowers on canvas together the next. He had drawn her nude like Degas, and she had humored him a little when he wanted her to do some Pollock type designs over her stomach and chest. She was not as big of a fan of abstract as Gerard and I both were. She found that she could never just let a painting be in all of its chaotic mess; she had to find images hidden within or she had to interpret them to mean something in a distinct way. Gerard had teased her mercifully for it, claiming that she, "had to realize that ontology is as much of a story of the self as anything," and though I had no idea what that meant, it had made Jasmine more willing to humor his artistic whims. Then he humored her, and grew to like what they ended up creating. The biggest piece they had done was one of a garden, of course. It was spread out over two canvases that each one had and painted for themselves, so that when complete, they could hang them together outside Jasmine's bedroom door, hers on the left side and his on the other. Their garden together added to the many that surrounded us, like the mural on my wall was, and the one that had been planted outside.