Page 20 of Down Shift (Driven 8)
I fan black around the edges. Darkness. Sadness. Loss. All mixed together in an endless cycle.
The dark of night: my car packed with clothes and mementos of the woman I don’t really remember but have the invisible scars to prove I used to be.
The bank manager: I’m sorry but all withdrawals need to be signed for by both parties on the account. And it seems to me that your debit card has been canceled as well. Hmm. How very odd.
The pawnshop. My jewelry lining the countertop. Diamonds and emeralds and platinum and rubies. Trinkets of a life I was a part of but really didn’t participate in now turned into a means to help me get something of my own.
The phone call to Darcy out of the blue. Biting back my pride. Asking for help from my mother’s oldest friend, to whom I hadn’t spoken in forever. Her offer to stay in a house they had just bought to fix up and resell. On an island off Washington. Was that far enough? The bickering over her refusing to take rent. Her promise of secrecy to keep my whereabouts from everyone. Her admission she’d always hated my father.
Driving off the ferry. Stepping foot onto the island. A breath of fresh air. Feeling hope for the first time in as long as I could remember.
A deep breath. Yellow on the brush. A splash of color. A ray of light in this bleak storm. The sun trying to break through the darkness.
I set the brush down, unsure if the picture is done but knowing I am for now, worn out from the gamut of emotions that sitting with Zander on the bench last night unexpectedly stirred up. I’ve been here for months. Yes, I’ve had a few moments of sadness and some nights where the tears didn’t stop, but at the same time I know I’m in a better place now. I can acknowledge that I’m slowly crawling out from under that veil of criticism that weighed so heavily I actually believed it.
How weak of a person could I have been to put up with it? Year after year. Criticism after criticism. Apology after apology. To not have walked away? To still believe his words hold some merit?
The tears slide silently down my cheeks. Fat odes to a past I’ll never go back to. To a place I’ll never allow my self-esteem to accept again. To a life of pretenses where people judge a book by its cover and believe a wife’s continued apologies and excuses for things that were never her fault to begin with.
The music continues in my earbuds, a melancholy song about lost love, and a part of me wishes I could experience that grief. A deep sadness over leaving the person you know is your soul mate, the other half to make you whole. Because I had none of that, felt none of that. I was nothing to Ethan but a voodoo doll to manipulate as he saw fit. I was nothing to my father but a pawn in his business maneuvers—a means to keep his acquisitions in good standing.
Time has given me that clarity. Distance has allowed me to realize that the only love I lost was for myself.
And yet it’s still a battle to move forward, to forget, and to find worth in myself.
A movement out of the corner of my eye scares the shit out of me. When I startle, my knee hits the tray in front of me and causes supplies to fall to the ground with a clatter.
“Jesus!” I bark out as I rip the earbuds from my ears. My pulse spikes erratically and my heart pounds as if it’s been jump-started in my chest.
Zander holds his hands up in an I’m sorry motion as he moves into the room. “I knocked,” he s
ays, motioning to my earbuds and then back to the door, “but you didn’t answer.”
“And you invited yourself in?” I move out of the alcove and into the bedroom. My voice comes out less than friendly, which I won’t apologize for, since he’s the one invading my personal space. My gaze instantly flickers to the myriad of things around the room that are mine and private: the prescription for sleeping pills on the nightstand, my bra hanging haphazardly over the back of the chair, a mess of clothes still inside out near the vicinity of the hamper, the stack of designer clothes the local consignment shop has listed on eBay to sell for me to help make ends meet, the canvases stacked one upon another leaning against the wall.
Oh God. My paintings.
Before the thought even really computes, Zander is moving toward them with the strangest look on his face.
“No,” I gasp. The thought of him seeing my work has paralyzed me. Caused panic to tickle the back of my neck and bring a tsunami of insecurities and fears of criticism.
Silence settles as he moves from painting to painting. Then the rumble of thunder from outside. My mind wills my feet to move, to protect my most intimate feelings that are splashed across a canvas, but I’m frozen. Ethan and my father may have criticized my scribbles in charcoal, chastised me for an occasional mention of how I’d like to paint too, but no one has ever seen what I’ve started in this new medium.
“Getty.” His voice is soft, full of something I can’t quite place, and all I know is the lump in my throat feels like it’s the size of a baseball, because I’m having trouble swallowing over it. “These are . . .”
“No. Please . . . just . . . Zander . . .”
“Incredible.”
It’s awe. The sound in his voice is awe.
I watch him in my disbelief. The chance to sit back and let someone finally see my art proves stronger than my innate need for privacy.
He rifles through the paintings stacked five and six deep against the walls. His fingers skim over my feelings. Streaks of blue and gray and black and blends of shading and different textures. Anger. Insecurity. Sadness. Loneliness. Longing. It’s as if his fingertips touching each one are acknowledging the validity of the emotions I’ve expressed on canvas. Telling me they are okay to feel when for so long I’ve been told I was being dramatic, that I needed to bite my tongue and do what a good little wife does.
He goes one by one through the artwork. Head down, concentration etched in the lines of his face, eyes focused. And then he moves to today’s painting still on the easel; the one I’m still not sure is completed.
The emotions are still fresh in my mind, still tacky to the touch on the canvas. I feel exposed although I’m the only one who knows what has gone into the picture, the meaning behind it, the years of distress leading up to it. The hope created when I escaped from it. Zander stares at it for a moment, the pelt of rain on the window the only backdrop noise.
