The Moment Before

Chapter Twenty-Seven

TWENTY-SEVEN

I walk through the next few weeks like a painting of myself. Something formed by someone else. I’m viewing this painting as an outsider, too. Watching myself going through the motions. Brushing, flossing, taking out the trash. In trig, I get my first A. My paper on Flannery O’Connor is a solid B, but Mrs. McConnell tells me I can do better. Where’s the passion? she writes on my paper all red inked and loopy.

            Passion? I’m done with that. I’ve joined the rosary prayer people. The pill-poppers. Like a Nike ad, I’m “just do it-ing” my way through life. Every time I think about Connor, how much I miss him, I flip a switch in my heart. Better to just move forward. Don’t feel. Don’t feel. Don’t feel.

            Dad is released. He’s on a strict no cholesterol, low salt, 1500-calorie diet. He has to go to meetings and talk about one day at a time. Mom has turned into his personal cheerleader. She follows his diet to the letter. She buys a kitchen scale and, no kidding, she’s weighing lettuce leaves. She dumps all the whiskey down the drain. She’s counting out raisins for his oatmeal. Dad can’t return to work for another month, so afternoons, it’s me and Dad on the couch, watching Wheel of Fortune and World Series of Poker. The occasional Mariner’s game.

            He’s always asking me if I’m happy. “You seem down, Little Bird,” he’ll say.

            “I’m not,” I argue. “I’m fine.”

            “I am really ashamed, Brady. So ashamed.” I know he’s thinking about when he slapped me, but when he tells he wants to make amends for everything, who I think about is Connor. The person who should be forgiven more than anyone. I want to tell Dad everything I know. About Connor, about Sabine. About Nick. But Dad’s so broken. So fragile.

            I pat his hand. On TV, a Versace-wearing poker player who reminds me of Nick slowly chews gum. I hope he loses all his money.

            Dad says, “Are you sure? Are you sure you’re fine?”

I nod. Fine. Stupid word. A word that’s empty of feeling. The perfect word for now.

Don’t feel, Brady. Just don’t.

And in the real world. The world that continues on, the ballot measure passes. Arts and electives are safe for another year. Bowerman and McConnell get to teach their classes again. Pink slips are tucked back into the district file cabinet. Everybody cheer.

A couple times a week, I head up to Mrs. Cupworth’s and work on some sketches, and even a few paintings. At first, after she fired Connor, I wanted to boycott the whole artist-in-residence thing. Let her know she’d drawn a line in the sand. Mom and I had it out about that.

“I’m sorry but I had to tell her,” Mom said. “I let her come to her own decision, but I had to give her the facts.”

“What facts, Mom? You don’t know the facts.”

In my new life as a robot, I decided to go back to Mrs. Cupworth’s studio. Pretend to still be an artist. Fake it ‘til I make it. I set up a still life with a St. Agatha statue and a bowl of plastic apples that I got from Michael’s. I printed out a version of da Vinci’s The Last Supper from Wikipedia, and blew it up at a copy store. It’s scary pixelated, and I set it behind the bowl of apples and the St. Agatha, so it really just looks like colorful embroidery. At least that’s what shows up on my canvas when I dab my brush into color after color. Art, reduced to upholstery. That’s sort of how I feel.