Page 150 of Ruthless Sin
A date.
Three years ago.
He stays at the door.
He doesn’t come into the room with me.
Voice low.
“Eto byla ona.”This was her.
He walks to the easel.
His back to me for the time it takes him to put his hand on the corner of the canvas and turn it around.
He steps back.
Stays by the door.
The painting is Yelena.
I haven’t seen my sister’s face in years.
I’ve been imagining her face for years.
The face I’ve been imagining is a face I built from a child’s memory. Yelena before. The older sister in a yellow dress in our mother’s kitchen.
The face on the canvas is Yelena at the end.
The face I didn’t get to imagine.
She’s sitting at a small table. Bottle of bad wine in front of her. Hair down. The wooden cross at her throat. Her mouth is open in the shape of a sung note. She’s drunk.
She’s singing. Nico has painted her singing.
The bow of her upper lip. Her jaw, sharper than mine. Gray-green eyes like mine but with the smile in them mine hasn’t had. The hand that has been resting on the bottle is half-lifted. Yelena’s gesture, before she said something serious.
The painting isn’t a memorial.
The painting is alive. She’s alive on this canvas. Like she was in our mother’s kitchen singing Tonkaya Ryabina to me when I was small.
I don’t cry.
My hand goes to my collarbone. Through the fabric of my shirt. My fingers spread. The same spread under green wool in front of Marguerite’s mirror.
I can’t breathe right.
The hand drops.
I take one step toward the canvas.
I stop.
I look at it for a long time.
Nico doesn’t speak or approach.
Nico stays in the doorway. Hand on the doorframe. Weight on his back foot. Three years. Nobody else has stood in this room.
