Restoration: A Novel (Contemporary / Women's Fiction) (23 page)

Tess found herself hiking up the staircase to the studio
apartment where Ben had encouraged her to paint.  She didn’t recall the walk
there, only that she’d left one place and arrived at another.  Leveraging the
box against her raised knee and the door, she unlocked the deadbolt, then
pushed open the door with the box.

Once inside, she shoved the door closed with her foot. 
She turned on the light switch with her elbow, then wandered to the easel
supporting her empty canvas and gazed at it.  It drew her into its stark white
surface.  Nothing existed beyond the colorless plane.  She blinked, regained
her focus and walked away from the canvas.

She carried the box into the kitchen, set it down next to
the sink, opened the lid and methodically began emptying the box and stacking
the papers in the sink.  Every few layers, she wadded up some of the artwork,
creating a layer of crumpled papers to stack the others on, as well as pockets
of oxygen within the stack.  These crumpled balls would serve their noblest
duty since their creation; maybe even redeem themselves in some way.  But who
besides her would notice or even care?

When the butchered drawings of her youth filled the height
of the sink, she crammed crumpled sheets along the sides, ensuring every single
corrupted piece of artwork rested entombed in the sink.  She retrieved Neil’s
Pulitzer Prize-winning series, rolled up the pages into a tight paper rod and
tucked it under her arm while she jammed her hand into her front pocket and
pulled out a matchbook.

A yellow flame jumped off the match head, and the smell of
sulfur invaded her nostrils.  She tilted the paper rod toward the flame and
watched while the fire slowly consumed the newspaper and created a torch now
burning with a bluish flame.

She dipped the torch into the sink.  Flames jumped off it
and onto the edges of some of the crumpled papers.  The fire began eating away
at the pages like termites.  After christening each corner, she jammed the
paper torch into the side of the sink.  The papers rustled then crackled as the
fire fed and energized itself on the unburned pages.  Pages curled, turning
from black to gray.  Hot orange rivers fringed the edges before they shriveled
into white ash.  Smoke billowed up from the sink. 

A siren screeched a warning.  Tess stared at the flames,
willing them to consume the pages faster.  She didn’t flinch at the banging on
the door, but when she heard it crash open she panicked, grabbed a wooden spoon
off the counter and jammed it into the flames, encouraging them to hurry up and
complete their task. 

Kenyon LeMere raced into the kitchen.  “What’s going on?”
he shouted and grabbed her by the arm, pulling her away from the fire.  He
stumbled as she shoved him backwards, not expecting her resistance.  She
stirred the flames again.

“Are you crazy?” he yelled, then paused to gaze at the
flames entrancing her.  

The fire quickly ate through the dry, aged papers.  Tess
didn’t resist when Kenyon used his body to push her aside.  A haze of gray
smoke filled the kitchen, and it made her feel like she was standing in a dream
watching him.  She cocked her head and squinted from the smoke now burning her
eyes.  The image of him fascinated her.

Kenyon reached his hand over the sink, attempted to turn
on the faucet and cursed when his fingers touched the hot metal knobs. 
Frantically, he unbuttoned his shirt, but in his panicked haste his fingers
were clumsy appendages, and he resorted to ripping it open, tearing away the
buttons from the material.  He wrapped the shirt around his hand and reached
again for the faucet.  The papers sizzled when the water splashed into the
sink.  Flumes of smoke raced up from the porcelain tomb. 

Kenyon grasped her shoulder and shook her.  “Are you mad? 
Do you want to burn the whole place down?  What are doing?” he shouted over the
shrieking smoke detector.

She stared at the black, sooty rivers running through the
white porcelain.  “Regaining control.”

“You’re out of control.”  He was panting in the wake of
his adrenaline rush. 

She pulled away from him and followed the haze that
drifted over to her empty canvas.  Standing in front of it, she gazed at it
again and searched its barren surface for clues, but all she saw was white. 
She didn’t even see snow-covered peaks or fields with freshly fallen snow. 
Just white.  No, not even white; white was a color and this was just empty,
blank.  There was nothing there.

While she stood transfixed, Kenyon found the wailing smoke
detector, removed its battery, opened the windows and closed the door he’d
burst through.  Finally, he walked up behind her.

“What’s this all about?”

“Painting.”

“Funny, I saw you making a fire.  Is that a new type of
painting I haven’t heard of yet?”

“The muse,” she muttered.

“What muse?”  Frustration formed his words.

“I was freeing her.”

“If I hadn’t met you before, I’d think I was talking to a
crazy person.”

“What had been before those ashes,” she looked over her
shoulder at him.  “I thought they were stopping me from painting.”

He squinted through the haze that filled the apartment. 
“They chained your muse?”

“I thought so.  But now, I don’t know.  I still don’t see
anything.”

He glanced toward the kitchen and then to her, his stern
features softening.  “Use it.”

“Use what?”  There was pain in her voice.

“If you were freeing her with fire, use it.  She’s there.”

Tess closed her eyes, shook her head and turned away.  “Now
you’re the one not making any sense.”

Kenyon hurried to the kitchen.  He opened cabinet doors
over the sink and searched them.  Dishes and glasses clattered as he pushed
them aside, searching furiously.  He reached into the cabinet, his arm
disappearing up to his shoulder. 

As he withdrew it, a large yellow serving bowl followed. 
He set the bowl in the blackened sink filled with grotesque clumps of wet
ashes, then reached into the sink, scooped up a handful and dropped it into the
bowl.  He repeated this until the mound of ashes filled the serving bowl.

He carried the bowl to Tess and offered it to her.  Wet
ash caked his blackened hands.  “Here.”

She stared, first at the bowl and then at him.  He
groaned, shook his head and set the bowl on the table.  He noticed his black
hands and wiped them off on the front of his faded jeans, then rifled through
Tess’s neatly arranged art supplies on the table.

He picked up two brushes, deliberated over their readiness
and tossed the rejected brush back among the scattered supplies.  He stirred
the brush into the ash, then thrust it at her.

“Use it,” he said. 

She gaped at the brush, afraid to touch it. 

“Go on,” he urged firmly.  “Take it.  Use it.”

Her quivering hand accepted the brush.  She turned and
confronted the stark canvas, then pressed the ash-smudged brush against the
surface and held it there.  Her heart raced and her mind swirled until she
thought she’d pass out.  With a violent sweep of the brush across the surface,
she exiled her dizziness.

A black comet streaked across the canvas in the wake of
her stroke.  She cocked her head and gazed at the canvas that seemed injured by
the black gash.  As she stared at it, she envisioned the gash ripping open
further until the gaping hole formed a portal leading beyond the empty canvas
and into an image that continued unfolding in front of her.

Abruptly, she dipped her brush back into the black soot
and spread it over the canvas.  Her mind raced faster than she could express
with her brush.  She hurried to the table, tossed the brush on it and fumbled
through tubes of paint, searching for the right colors.  Her fingers forced the
paint out of the tubes and onto two palettes.  The same array of colors filled
each of them. 

She picked up the soot-filled bowl, used a clean brush to
spoon out small portions of soot and deposited a dollop next to each of the
colors on one of the palettes.  One by one, she mixed the soot into each color,
transforming the vibrant colors into a darker shadow of them. 

She seized a handful of clean brushes, fanned them out on
the table, selected one and returned to the canvas.  Alternating between
brushes, colors and palettes, she worked furiously filling the blank canvas, releasing
the image she knew lived beyond the surface but had been unable to envision.

As she worked, she saw two separate worlds on each of the
palettes, one that was dark and one that was virtuous.  The canvas began
reflecting this theme, with the left side drawing the eye into a foreboding
landscape.  Bleeding out of the left side, struggling to dominate the right
side of the canvas, were bright, hopeful colors.

Time was irrelevant in the place in her soul from which
she painted.  The concept of day or night didn’t exist as she worked her brush
against the canvas, and hours slipped by unnoticed.  She felt like a sprinter
on a marathon course, driving and pushing to reach the finish line.  Her
shoulders sagged as her energy waned and the brushes became weights in her
hands. 

Tess stepped away from the canvas and stared at her
creation before dragging herself to the table, where she set down her palette
and brush.

“It’s fantastic,” a male voice said.

She gasped as her heart leapt to her throat.  She’d forgotten
about Kenyon.  He stood there bare-chested, beholding her with a look of
fascination.  She remembered he’d taken his shirt off and used it to protect
his hand from the hot faucet when he’d doused the fire.  His sculpted torso and
arms could’ve been art themselves.  She’d seen enough chiseled marble that
resembled him.

As her eyes followed the black streaks staining his jeans
where he’d wiped his hands from his knees up his thighs, she remembered he’d
done much more than put out the fire.

His eyes shifted away from her and she followed his gaze,
turning her head toward the canvas.  Yes, it was fantastic.  She stared at the
montage of color bleeding over the canvas, disbelieving she’d created it. 
Vivid color sprang out of the dismal, soot-tainted colors like the Phoenix
rising from the ashes.

It had been so long.  She’d thought this part of her was
dead rather than dormant.  She’d worked at not missing it.  What would be the
use?  More pain and suffering?  There was enough of that in her life.  But it
hadn’t abandoned her.  She’d abandoned it, and as her eyes traveled over the
powerful scene that was her life, she blinked back tears, at last reunited with
the one thing she knew she’d always loved. 

Tess looked at Kenyon again.  “You unchained my muse,” she
whispered.  “Thank you.”

“You freed her,” he whispered back.  “I merely put her
hand in yours, but you took it and pulled her back into your life.”

He seemed more genuine to her tonight, today, whatever it
was, she had no concept of time, only that it had passed while she painted. 
She wondered if she was seeing him through her own exhaustion, a
light-headedness that made everything a bit hazy and more benevolent.

Tess strolled up to her painting and, with her right hand
hovering over the surface, slowly waved her hand back and forth, mesmerized.

“I did this.”

“Brilliantly.”

“If you hadn’t shown up, this might not have been.”  Her
hand retracted into a fist.  She glanced over her shoulder at Kenyon with
grateful eyes.  “That thought terrifies me.”

“But our paths did cross, and you did create that.  That’s
what matters.”

She took halting steps toward him and extended her hand. 
He held his out for her and she took hold of it, pulling him toward her
painting while she walked backwards.  As she came upon the canvas, she used his
hand like a rudder and pulled him around so that his back was to the canvas,
reversing their positions.

He watched her, obeying her silent commands.  She raised
his hand until it was parallel with his ear, then she placed her smaller hand
against his, palm to palm.  Even her long, tapered fingers seemed small in the
shadow of his hand.

“Thank you for what you did here for me tonight.”  She
slipped her fingers between his and pressed the back of his hand into the wet
painting along with her fingertips, stamping them into the painting. 

“Maybe I’m your muse,” he said.

She laughed quietly.  “You have the long hair but not the
breasts, I’m afraid.”

“She takes many forms.  Today, she’s me.”  He gazed at
her, his hand imprisoned in hers.  “Be mine.”

She eased up on the pressure she’d used to pin his hand
against the canvas.  Her fingers slipped away from his and as they did, he bent
his fingers, grasping at her retreating hand.  He wrapped his finger over the
back of her hand and she responded until their hands were clasped together.  

“I should go,” she said.

“Why?”

She turned her head aside, afraid that he might kiss her
but unwilling to let go of his hand.  “I could easily be your lover, your
muse.” 

“If it’s easy, why do you struggle not to be?”

“Because I’m trying to be different.”

“Be who you are.”

“If I could just figure that out, I would.”

“How do you know this isn’t it?”  He squeezed her hand
tighter, leaned into her ear and whispered, “You accused us of being the same. 
Join me.  Stop fighting it.”

His breathy words in her ear sent a shiver through her. 
She could slip so effortlessly into being with him, and yet she struggled with
every aspect of her relationship with Ben.  Ben brought her to emotional places
she didn’t want to visit, peeled back layers of her life she’d painted over and
forced her to look at the things best kept concealed.

She’d thought she wanted to be with Ben and wondered why
she was forcing herself to be someone who eventually would fail them both.

She turned her head to Kenyon’s lips that still lingered
over her ear and opened her mouth to greet his.  His warm, wet mouth caressed
hers and the exhausted passion she’d put into her painting awoke to him.  Her
free hand roamed his back, while her other hand still clasped his.  His body
was firm but smooth, and she could feel his strength in his embrace.