Blame Not the Father

Inside the Milan Dome

June 5th, 2122

8:02pm

Anselmo Bianchi was a tall man who stooped to fit inside the shadows of the powerful women in his life. He slipped into the dining room so silently that his appearance was as easily ignored as the servants slipping in and out with covered platters. Perhaps it was because the Bianchis of old had the sense to pivot from textiles to a clothing designer to an environsuit developer, but the family was matriarchal.

Maria Bianchi, despite her advanced years, was the one who sat at the head of the dinner table every night at precisely eight o’clock. Dinner was a family affair. A meeting of blood, conducted with as many straight spines as a business conference would.

Erik watched his father slink into his appointed chair with a measure of thinly veiled disgust. In reality, he felt pity for his father. But if his mother saw him with his layabout father, her mercurial moods would turn on him. His mother, Bianca, was already seated at the right-hand seat of Maria. His mother’s eyes slid over her husband with disapproval for being late.

Nonna Maria’s full attention was on Bianca, and she didn’t acknowledge her son as he sat down across from Erik. His father offered a small smile. Erik didn’t return it. Not while his mother was watching.

Erik was tired, but he didn’t let himself slouch. Nonna Maria would have his head if he were so careless at the dinner table. Conversation stayed between Nonna Maria and his mother as the soup of the evening was served by one of the kitchen staff in a neat white uniform.

“Erik,” his mother said, summoning his gaze up from the blood-red bowl of minestrone. “Have you heard back about the Space Colonization Committee administrative wing internship?”

He set his spoon back down. “Not yet, mother.”

“They’re certainly taking their time,” Nonna Maria sighed.

More wine was poured. Erik, still sixteen, didn’t partake unless it was a holiday. Nonna Maria would have let him get away with more in the name of practicing old ways, but he preferred a more modern approach of restraint.

After the soup came the pasta course. It was a fresh pesto sauce over perfect al dente conchiglie. Everything was cooked to perfection, but he had a hard time enjoying any of the food when eating it was a performance for the family. His father barely finished any of his courses.

When the meat course came, conversation turned toward preparing for that year’s family portrait. Erik’s opinion wasn’t consulted on this matter. His father’s silence wasn’t so appreciated.

“Anselmo,” his mother said scoldingly. “Are you even listening?”

His father blinked. “Of course. Red this year.”

“So do you have a suit already or not?” she asked, almost sounding a little disappointed

“Erik’s going to look dashing in red,” Nonna Maria said, swirling the wine in her glass. “Maybe we’ll be able to get some serious marriage prospects this year.”

His mother nodded. “Keep an eye out for the tailoring appointment, Erik.”

“Of course.”

“We should make it a maroon,” his mother went on. “It’ll go better with Erik’s pale complexion.”

“Lucky he takes after his mother that way,” Nonna Maria said.

“You’re too good to me, Mother,” his mother said, though Nonna Maria was her mother-in-law.

His father looked down at his broiled chicken. His expression was a true neutral. Implications of cruelty from his own blood family must’ve been happenstance for even longer than Erik could remember.

“It’s a good thing Erik doesn’t look like a Bianchi man,” Nonna Maria laughed. “Else he’ll never find a wife who wants him for more than his money.”

The adults, minus his father, laughed. Erik forced a performative smile. It would be worse if he didn’t play along with the cruel joke.

~

10:17pm

Franchesca, his favorite of the kitchen staff, snuck him his second double espresso as soon as he left the dining room. He nodded his thanks and hurried off to his studio. The Bianchis were a great textile family of Milan, but politics was how they protected their future. Art was unnecessary for a politician, so Erik painted at night.

This was the one place in the Bianchi Villa that really felt like his own. It wasn’t really, of course, and his mother always reminded him of that. “You only have this because they gave it to you. Because they let you.” It was a condition granted to him, and it could just as easily be revoked.

But his studio was on the first floor with massive windows overlooking the garden. He had a row of canvases sitting on easels around the windows. It was the perfect place to practice his still lifes. Tedious work, but essential.

He’d insisted the walls be painted a light cream to give him the best brightness.

He had a total of three different stools at different heights, all set up for the optimal experience of painting on a canvas of any size. He took his seat before his current piece. With all his obligations to the family done for the day, he could finally do as he pleased.

His mother should be thoroughly engaged in her evening routine by now. Wine with Nonna Maria while they received massages, body scrub, and then her meditation time. Erik had learned when he was four and was slapped across the face that his mother’s quiet time was never, ever to be disturbed.

~

June 6th, 2122

12:44am

There was a soft knock on the studio door. He scowled and nearly dropped his brush. No one usually bothered him in the late hours of the night, thinking him asleep. And as long as he scrounged up four or five hours of sleep, he’d be functional enough the next day that his mother and grandmother never needed to know how much more he cared about his art than his tutoring or their social obligations.

He glanced at the time then. There was only one person it could be.

“Come in,” Erik said.

His father poked his head inside and smiled. Erik almost wanted to ask if his mother had seen him coming. She would never do anything so bold as to prevent any time spent, but she also saw his father as a terrible layabout, and acted as if she didn’t want Erik to catch something from him.

“Evening,” his father said pleasantly. “How’s your work going tonight?”

“Fine.”

He strolled over toward where Erik sat. The canvas was facing away from the door.

“Mind if I take a look?”

“If you like. It’s not done yet,” Erik warned.

Erik looked at his work in progress more harshly as his father approached. As a fellow artist–which was the real reason Erik had to hide some of his love of the trade–his father did usually have helpful critiques. That was his only skill, though. He wasn’t the socialite the Bianchi family needed. The one they needed Erik to be in his stead.

Despite his mother and Nonna’s disparaging comments, Erik could see himself reflected in his father. Granted, Erik didn’t have the slightly overlarge Bianchi nose. He had his mother’s pert nose. But he did have the Bianchi blue eyes. And his father’s black hair stuck up at nearly the same odd angles as Erik’s did after too many hours spent planted in front of the easel.

His father circled around to see and nodded approvingly. It was an abstract piece—the ruin of the larger Statue of Liberty that had once existed outside of New York City juxtaposed with the smaller one that still stood in Paris, protected by the city’s dome.

“Very interesting. Did you already finish the other one of old Lady Liberty?”

“Two nights ago. It was just a study for this one.”

“Wise move. Get to know your subject well before you start subverting it. It’s great,” he said, settling a hand on Erik’s shoulder. “Excellent foreshortening on the switchgrass.”

“Thank you,” he said out of obligation, though his father’s frequent praise would never mean as much as his mother’s rare words of kindness.

“I hope you’ll stick with it. Even if you get that internship.”

His father didn’t speak much of the future, but Erik nodded slowly.

“I’ll try.”

His father squeezed his shoulder. “Don’t stay up too late. It’s almost the solstice. Shortest night of the year tonight.”

“That so,” Erik said, feigning interest.

~

3:33am

Exhaustion and the familiar ache from gripping narrow brushes for too many hours plagued Erik’s hand when he finally called it a night. He wasn’t quite finished yet. He still had more shading to do, especially on the reflective glass of the dome. He washed his brushes, cleaned his palette, dumping his paint-stained water along the side of the sink.

His mother had once told him to pour the paint directly down the drain to not stain the walls of the sink. He responded by purposefully pouring paint over the side. The white, ultrastrong plastic of the sink’s basin was stained with a kaleidoscope of reds, purples, and blues. It was a rather beautiful piece of abstract art.

Once he was done, he found himself pausing in the hallway. His father might still be up. He worked on his art even later than Erik did. There was no questioning where Erik got his night owl ways—another trait deplorable to his early-rising mother and grandmother.

Perhaps it was the interruption in his father’s routine that prompted him to go toward his father’s rooms. Maybe it was because of the chance he’d still be up. Being a night owl, after all, was something Erik had inherited from his father. It wasn’t a trait his mother or nonna encouraged. But it didn’t matter as long as he hid it.

He knocked on the door to his father’s bedroom. He didn’t share quarters with his mother, so there was no fear of waking her.

But there was no response.

It was possible his father had gone to sleep early. Perhaps his mother’s nagging had gotten through.

But something intangible made him knock again. Still nothing.

Knowing his father wasn’t easy to anger like his mother or nonna, he twisted the doorknob.

A smell accosted his nose, but it wasn’t that of paint, of primer, or even turpentine. It was irony and it got into his nostrils so deeply that he could taste it.

There were no lights on. But he stepped and felt his shoe step in something wet. He stepped back, thinking it must be spilled paint. He fumbled for the touchpanel on the wall that would activate the lights. He groped blindly before finally finding it.

A gallon or more of red paint must’ve spilled all over the floor.

And his father was lying face down inside of it.

~

4:42am

It wasn’t paint.

He didn’t remember screaming. But he must’ve screamed, because suddenly his mother was there. Suddenly, his grandmother was there. His mother wrenched him away from his father’s body. He’d made foolhardy attempts at chest palpitations, which were utterly useless when a person shot a bullet directly into their brain.

Erik was tracking footsteps down the hall. Parademics came. Somehow, they didn’t track blood around.

Someone said he was in shock. Someone else took his blood pressure. How pointless that seemed, it wasn’t as if he’d done anything to himself on this endless night.

Did his father think it was a good idea to kill himself on the shortest night of the year? Some grand irony?

He would leave, he would leave. He would get away from this house.

He would leave. He would go farther than his nonna could reach him. He would make a name for himself. He would become someone.

~

5:45am

He was still awake. The night wouldn’t end, even though the sky was growing pale. The blasted birds were starting to chirp. He’d never stopped to wonder how many species of birds were preserved inside the dome.

“We need to set the date of the funeral quickly,” his mother said to Nonna Maria.

“Yes,” Nonna Maria sighed. “Otherwise the other key families won’t be able to make it.”

He didn’t know which reaction hurt worse. Nonna Maria not breaking down over the death of her own son. Or his mother… barely seeming to care. What was worse? A mother or a wife not caring?

Somehow, a wife not caring struck him as more sick and twisted. He knew he’d have to marry someday, but… he wouldn’t marry some airheaded woman or someone power-hungry like his mother. He would marry someone who would actually care, who would grieve him if he went first.

He couldn’t listen to them any longer. He went back to his studio.

He looked back at his footsteps and realized he wasn’t tracking blood anymore. It must’ve dried.

He wouldn’t clean these shoes. He’d make art of them, somehow. But as he stepped inside, looked at all the canvases his father had guided him in crafting, he didn’t know if he could ever pick up a paintbrush again.