Painted Memories

It's been a long time.

I stare at the decrepit house; shingles gone and more than one window screen either torn or missing all together. The brown foliage begs for water. I'm guessing Mr. Fothertan never bothered to turn on his sprinkler system.

The dipping sun beats down on the empty porch. My fingers twitch for a paint brush, wanting to capture the barren image. But it's been months since I touched a brush. Longer still since I thought I'd be a real artist–one that was paid–instead of just a cog in a customer service call center.

I take a breath, I've come this far, not going to chicken out at the last minute. Walking up the steps I haven't climbed since I was just a kid, a teen…an innocent, protected from the world and its horrors by the blinders put on me by my parents and teachers. Adulthood takes all of our innocences, one way or another. Sometimes later, sometimes faster, but the reality of the world comes for us all… eventually.

I knock on the door of the old house. A wave of memories flood through me, all the times I'd knocked on Mr. F's door before. The house isn't the only one that's changed. We've both seen better days.

I miss those days. I miss her.

As if the sky knows my heart's pain the sun dips even lower, taking away even more of the fading light.

“I'm coming!” I hear Mr. Fotherton's voice from within growl its way out. I can't help the smile that comes to my lips. He was always a surly man, but somehow never angry.

“What?” He asks, opening the door. “Oh.” He stops, his frown attempting to smooth into a neutral smile.

I smile back, it's been a while since I've seen him.

“John? John Clairmon?” he asks shocked, his eyes working hard to focus behind his thin-rimmed, circular glasses. His hair has greyed more, and there is no youth left in his face or his crumpled-over form gripping his cane.

“Yes, sir,” I tell him.

He continues to look confused, which I suppose is to be expected as I hadn’t told him I was coming. "May I come in?" I ask.

He blinks several times as he inches away from me a bit, though I wonder if it's the last of the sun he's inching away from. He never went outside much when he was my teacher, but maybe over time he's become even more of a hermit. Was he afraid of the sun?

“Or we could sit outside?” I offer, looking around for some porch furniture to gesture to, only to be reminded that there is none. Being locked away inside isn't healthy for anyone. He needed sunlight, fresh air.

“No,” he shakes his head. “You have something to say? You can just say it there. Want to spit in my face, fine. Do it, just do it.”

“What are you talking about?” I ask, completely thrown for a loop. “I don't—has someone done that to you? That's awful.”

His replying grunt meant someone had done that to him and more. “Just get on with it.” His voice defeated and hollow.

“I've come to ask for it back.”

His whole body tenses. “I don't have it.” His quick replies, revealing his lie.

“I know you do. It's my painting and I want it back. Please.”

“No." He goes to shut the door, but I jam my hand out first.

“Please,” I say again, dropping the professionalism and instead letting the need pour through the single word. “I need it back. “

He shakes his head.

“My wife died four months ago.”

His head stills. “I'm sorry to hear that.”

“You remember how I met her?”

He sighs and releases his feeble push on the door. He walks further into his home, not exactly inviting me in, but I take it as such.

I enter after him, and close the door behind. The foyer looks unchanged from my youth. I pause, looking at the small set up of a couch and two chairs. Space for parents, and their kids, to sit and wait for the current lesson to end. In order to either drop off or pick up their child.

Mr. F has headed away from it though, shuffling into the kitchen. “You met Sally Henson right there.” He says softly coming back with a filled glass in hand. “You'd been studying with me for four years, nearly a freshman in high school. Sally's family'd just moved here. It was the end of her session, and the start of yours. I'd never seen you blush so much.”

I smile at the memory of the young boy I'd been. “She was beautiful,” I say aloud. She had always been beautiful, through it all. Ragers in college, late-night study binges, waking up in the morning to take out the dog, sitting across the breakfast table, or beating my ass at Mario Kart, she was always beautiful. Even in the end, she may not have believed me, but it was true.

Her hair had begun thinning, she’d lost much of her muscle mass, and her eyes had sunk deep into her face. Cancer had taken her from me bit-by-bit, but through it all, I saw the strength of herself pour out of her eyes. She was beautiful, because she was Sally, my Sally. And now she was gone, and I need this one piece of her, of us, of our past back.

Mr. F opens the sliding doors into his living room. The easel set up in the same place, the collection of organized paints in a cubbied shelf along the far wall, and on the right, opposite the windows, a wall full of his students work. We both stop and look at the painting in question.

It was the painting I’d done that day, twenty-five years ago. After I’d met her for the first time, she’d inspired me so much.

The painting is of a ruby dragon, her tail curled around a massive tree trunk as she leans down to help a baby dragon drink from a mirrored pool of water. Both's reflections rippling in the lake. The sun beams with sharp accuracy on her face, hitting the beautiful scales in such an intense way, it makes me want to weep. Power and beauty and calm and peace and kindness. That was my Sally.

“Please let me take it,” I tell him. I'd left it here that day. I’d given it to him. I wanted Sally to see it on her next visit, I wanted her to be impressed, to ask about the artist, to ask about me. And she had. That led to our first date. The only girl I’d ever needed to date, ever wanted to date. She was it for me, she was everything, and now she's gone.

“I don't have any students anymore,” he takes a drink of whatever he concocted for himself. It looks brown, but I hope it's prune juice and not something stronger. Then again, it's not my place to say anything.

“I come in here now and again,” he continues, “these are some of the best.” He gestures to the wall of work, “I taught painting for forty years in one way or another. Students always found their way to me. Whether it was here, or a school, or an after-school program. I taught them to paint. To create, to visualize in their minds and put it on the page.” He takes another drink. “They don't find me anymore. Maybe I'm too old, or my website's not good enough, or I can't do things fast or use all the stupid fads for paying. I'm eighty years old, I don't have time for that garbage,” he complains.

He turns and sits in his teacher chair, the one he sat in as he instructed me through learning about painting a horizon, how to do perspectives, how to make a skin tone feel rich and deep, how to make a forest thick and full or dying and thin.

I learned the basics here and built on them all through school. Back then I still had dreams of becoming a famous artist one day. He had been my first teacher, and though he was tough, he was a good one.

“You taught me a lot,” I tell him, wanting to share the emotion of the memories bubbling up.

He laughs, “thanks, John.” He looks at me with humor in his eyes, “I could have told you that.”

I smile, a bit of spark in the old man coming back.

“Why can't I have the painting?” I ask directly.

“I sit in this room too often, John. I sit and I look at all I've done," he gestures to the paintings again and then looks at me. "It's all I have, the memories. I don't teach any more, I think you've gathered that, or maybe I even told you." He shakes his head, "damn memory, it's a slippery bugger, I'll tell you that." He points his cane at me. “But every day I make a stupid egg-white breakfast. The damn doctors tell me I have too high of cholesterol and if I don't wanna die, I gotta eat like a darn rabbit!

“Anyway,” he brings himself down from getting riled up, “I sit here and I look and I remember. You're too young,” he looks at me. “Don't sit here and stare and look and remember, there's more for you out there. I'm done, I'm wasted, I've got nothing else left to give. So, I sit here and I stare and I stay lost in the memories of the past when I taught you and Sally and so many other kids how to use their imagination. I won't let you become me, John. So get out of my house and leave its memories for me to guard and go live your life.”

His sad speech froze me in place. I can feel his belief in it and I wonder if he's not wrong. I turn back to stare at the painting with him. My eyes follow the curve of the tail, see the trail of sap bubbling from the tree, the baby dragon's soft exhale of breath. I could spend forever here, thinking about Sally, about the future we wanted and never got. The baby dragon looks so happy in the picture I’d painted, her little claws seeming to dance as she encounters the water.

We wanted that, a baby, a future, a family. Tears mist in my eyes looking at her, at it. I turn to leave. Mr. F is right, I could easily get lost in the painting, in the memories of my Sally. I could forget the future I have. Bleak though it may seem, it's still a future, and it's still mine.

I stand in the open entryway that the sliding doors create, halfway between the front door and Mr. F sitting alone. Straddling the line between staying and leaving. “You don't have to guard our memories, you know,” I say softly.

“It's too late for all that," Mr. F says with a sad sigh, not moving from his chair.

“No, it's not. You're old, but you're not dead.”

“Might as well be—"

“–don't talk like that." I cut him off.

“Look, that's all really nice,” he attempts to wave away my goodwill, “but it's been a decade or so since you've even seen me. A lot's happened. I've changed, we both have.” He nods knowingly.

“That may be true,” I concede, “but you're still here.” I urge, taking a step back toward him. “There are still kids who want to learn to imagine like you taught me. And if you can't keep up with the times, fine, find someone to take care of that stuff for you.” A light bulb goes off in my head, and a knowing. “I'll help you," I say, rolling with the feeling of intuition in my gut.

“What?”

“Yeah, I'll help, I'll set up your website, I'll deal with all the payments, I'll handle the business side of things.”

“Why?” He looks at me cautiously.

I stare at the baby dragon, splashing happily in the lake. "Because maybe I want to help the next generation too, and maybe my way to do that is to help you do that."

It's silent for a long while, Mr. F looking me over. “Okay,” he says slowly, as if he's still slightly unsure. “Let's give it a try, John.”

“You won't regret this, Mr. F—”

“Stop,” he holds up a hand, and I pause in my excitement. “We're business partners now, call me Thomas.”

I smile. "You won't regret this, Thomas.”