Finding Sam (Featured)

Chapter 38 - Strands

Why wasn't Erik saying anything about the painting? Did Serena get to it?

"Where's the painting?" I asked as I stared at the blank wall behind the couch. Everyone else stopped in their tracks though Anna lost hold of Michael, who squirmed out of her arms and ran towards me. He wrapped his arms around my thighs, and as I bent down to pick him up, I realized it was close to impossible to do with only one good arm and a body full of painkillers.

"Why don't you sit down, Sam?" Erik said. He picked up Michael and as I sat down, placed him along my left side.

"Why won't you tell me what happened to my painting?" I asked. "It's the only thing I have left after..." I stopped then, aware that everyone was looking at me.

"Forget it," I mumbled, turning to kiss Michael. I remembered what Erik had said—that there were other things more important than that painting, and at this moment, he was right.

But as much as there was truth to what Erik said, there was one thing that he or anyone else didn't understand about that painting. Strands wasn't just a slice of the Southern California lifestyle, a view of the Strand that traversed down the beach cities. It didn't just feature random people I saw on the Strand during my walks there.

Strands were about my life.

Every person in that painting was someone who made a difference—good or bad—in my life, with the exception of one figure whose back was turned because he was yet unknown to me when I had painted it. Nothing but a dream, a hope. The painting had been over-sized because its subjects were painted life-sized, almost exactly the way they would have looked were the real subjects to stand next to it. It had covered my entire garage wall at one time, just before I moved it into a bigger rented garage down the street, only to be stolen by David, and reappear on Erik's wall later on.

There was Eunice, painted as a younger woman, full of life, walking with her head held high, ageless and beautiful. With her flaming red hair, Eunice was a force to be reckoned with when she was younger, just as she remained when I met her, even though she was already in her seventies, yet still sharp as a tack. She had been the only one strong enough to tame me, using art as a way to get my attention and my respect. Sometimes I wondered if she'd tamed me too much, made me too soft in order to see the world around me in a much more open light, not just seeing all its harsh edges, but also its softness—its goodness.

Rosie and Chuck were in there, too, of course, along with their children, Trevor and Linda depicted as babies carried in their arms. They were mostly idealized versions of themselves, for Rosie would have been horrified if I were to have painted her the way she looked a year before she died. In the painting, she was healthy, vibrant and full of life, just the way I remembered her when I first met her at school.

The woman pushing the stroller had never been meant to represent the dark-skinned nannies and caregivers one saw at the library during reading hour or at the park, caring for their fair-skinned charges, though it was the perfect way to conceal the part of my past that no one knew about. Even now, as I looked at Anna, I knew exactly who I had painted, making the woman's color darker to mask who I really wanted to remember. Maybe Anna had never pushed a stroller in her life, at least with me in it, but in my dreams, she'd been there for me, even though she had only been twelve years old when she had me.

To the casual observer, there were too many subjects for a simple painting, and making it seem that there was no focal point for the eye to look. But there was nothing simple about strands, originally titled with no caps to differentiate it from the place itself, the path where people traversed daily. I had wanted to paint the strands that made up my life, the way I wanted to remember it, the direction where most of the people were headed a spot of light on the right side of the canvas, a spot that bore the silhouette of a man. I had thought that he was waiting for me, or I, him.