Blend (A Short Story)

 

‘Hey,’ Catelyn chirped as Eddie entered the kitchen. ‘How’s the latest masterpiece?’

‘Drying. I know you jest, but I think it just might be.’

Eddie filled a tall glass with a gush of tap water. His hand shook as he gulped it down. It took all his control to hold back from spilling to her what he had done. He kept one hand, his painting hand, in his pocket.

‘Oh? When can I view it?’

‘Soon.’

Fumes from a slow-cooking concoction stirred bittersweet longing. He had missed her meals. Eddie absorbed Catelyn as she checked on the chunky victual. Tommy sniffed around her legs with canine expectation.

‘How are you feeling?’ Eddie asked.

She replaced the lid, settled the spoon on the edge of the sink.

‘Better. I keep trying to feel things changing inside.’

‘That’s good. I’ve missed you being well enough to cook.’

Catelyn let out one of her startling laughs. One more thing he had missed. Their home had long absorbed all echoes of prior levity.

‘Well, I can’t promise it’ll be any good,’ she said.  

‘It smells perfect.’

Catelyn looked radiant in the gilded light. Eddie wanted to reach out, to confirm she was whole, but that ember of their marriage remained unkindled. Cancer had been the other man for so long.

‘Do you really want to see?’ he asked.

‘Sure. Am I going to like it?’

#

‘It smells strange,’ Catelyn said on the stairs down to the converted basement. ‘I hope you had the fan on. I don’t want to come down here to find you collapsed from fumes.’

‘It’s the paint,’ Eddie lied. ‘Takes weeks to dry properly.’

As usual, he negotiated each step sideways. He had tried to fix his deformed foot, but it remained his only failure. The new method would not work on the creative instrument itself.

‘It smells like a butcher,’ Catelyn remarked.

Skittering claws announced Tommy, who brushed past and waited below with metronome tail. Two fluorescent tubes bathed the basement in bright white. Eddie preferred them to sunlight. The cool illumination tended to warm his colour choices.

Catelyn walked across the paint-flecked floor and ran her gaze over his recent collection. Gentle strokes vied with chaotic stipples and gestural splats. She turned to him; confusion splashed across her countenance.

‘Eddie, what are these? They aren’t your usual paintings.’

Tommy barked at an unseen ghost.

‘No,’ Eddie said. ‘I tried something different. Much more personal.’

Catelyn hugged herself.

‘What are they meant to be? Sorry, dear, I’m not sure what I’m looking at. I can’t recognise your style. They feel a bit… repulsive.’

He had expected her to react this way, being so close to them. He appreciated her honesty.

‘They say if your family likes your art, you’re doing it wrong.’

‘I suppose,’ Catelyn conceded. ‘I don’t mean to upset you. It’s just… they give me the heavy creeps. I feel like we’re being watched or listened to.’

Arf! Arf!

‘They’re quite a shift from my usual style,’ Eddie said. ‘This technique is purely personal.’

‘What are they meant to be?’

‘Different things. One is Tommy,’

Arf!

‘Yes, you boy. When you ran out in front of that car.’

Catelyn’s face scrunched in confusion.

‘Car? What car?’  

‘It happened when you weren’t here. He got out, so I thought I’d fix him. Took some doing, but it worked.’

‘What worked? Eddie, you’re worrying me. Let’s go back up. I think these paints are toxic. I can’t think straight.’

Arf, arf, arf!

‘Stop it, Tommy,’ Eddie said, reaching down to give the dog a reassuring pat. ‘It’s not the paints. I knew this wasn’t going to be easy. I probably should’ve prepared more.’

‘I’m going upstairs,’ Catelyn huffed.

Without thinking, and because it was closest to her, Eddie whipped his left hand out from his pocket and seized Catelyn’s wrist.

‘Just let me explain,’ he said. ‘I had to do this. There’s no other way. Let me show you.’

Catelyn craned at his grip.

‘This isn’t like you,’ she said.

When Eddie did not immediately release her, Catelyn looked down at the hand holding her. Something was wrong with it. As she absorbed what she was seeing, her face contorted in horror.

‘Ahh!’ she cried. ‘Your fingers! What happened?’

Arf, arf, arf!

Eddie’s ring finger and pinkie were no more, worn down to the palm at an angle as if his hand had been fed across a sanding belt. Flat skin where before there had been fingers. Like he had been born so.

‘The cost of you,’ Eddie said. ‘Gladly paid.’

Arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf!

‘Christ, Tommy!’ Eddie snapped. ‘I told you to stop it!’

With a mixture of aggression and playfulness, Tommy darted forward and chomped Eddie’s trouser leg, shaking his head with a muffled growl. Eddie flicked his leg out hard. The dog lost grip and skidded across the concrete, yelping as he collided with one of the easels. Catelyn gasped. The painting toppled in slow motion. Eddie cried out. The canvas whomped upon the floor. Delicate pigments smeared beneath. Tommy howled as his leg re-snapped. Catelyn ran to him and scooped him up.

‘Look what you did,’ she cried hoarsely. ‘You broke his leg. Jesus, Eddie! We need to get him to the vet. What is wrong with you?’

‘I didn’t.’ Eddie grunted. ‘This is what I was working up to show you. Now it’s all messed up. His leg was broken weeks ago. It didn’t heal right, and he was getting worse. I fixed it. Just let me show you. Give me a chance, please.’

He lifted the painting from the floor. Only surface damage, a few traces on the concrete.

‘Look, look. He will feel better in a few. Trust me. I can paint it right.’

Catelyn hovered between leaving and staying. Decades of knowing him won. She remained. In her arms, Tommy whimpered at the edge of human audibility.

Eddie sprang into preparation for the repair process.

‘What’s this got to do with fixing Tommy?’ Catelyn said. ‘What are you doing?’

Her foot hovered on a backwards step.

‘Fixing. Just watch. I’ll fix him. It’s something that can only be shown. You won’t believe until you do.’

Eddie unscrewed dented paint tubes and squeezed generous portions upon a glass palette. The studio echoed with the click-clack of his painting knife as he mixed primaries to form mid-tones. Eddie considered the painting. The damage need not be repaired, only replaced.

Ultramarine blue and cadmium red for an interesting dark; always lemon over white, otherwise it left no tonal room; burnt umber to mix for a range of tanned marks; beloved brush to blend; bristles raking disparate streams.

The dog, leg, fur, muscle, nerves.  

Finger upon the surface, pushing, merging, mixing, blending. His version of blood red, skin tone, bone white. Carcass smell.

The dog, bone, marrow, sinew: whole.

Catelyn watched as Eddie’s flesh sank a little into the painting, dissolving as if in acid. Tommy yelped. His leg began to crunch and grind as it slowly straightened.

‘Why is Tommy’s leg making noises?’ Catelyn said with a shaky voice. ‘Are you doing this?’

Eddie could not turn from the work. As his own flesh rendered it, Tommy was drawn back together, fully saturated.

‘Eddie, are you fixing him with your painting? With your finger melting into it? How can this be? Tell me I’m dreaming.’

With an artist’s flourish, Eddie turned from the repaired painting.

‘Not dreaming. This is how I fixed our world. When Tommy knocked his painting, it disturbed his truth. I corrected it.’

Tommy wriggled in Catelyn’s arms, clearly healed. She put him down and clapped her hands over her mouth as he skittered about excitedly.

‘How did you do this?’

Eddie wiped the paint off his hand with a rag and hugged her.

‘You made it possible.’

She looked up at him.

‘I did?’

‘You were gone. I had to find a new method. They say an artist can put too much of himself into his work. Well, I discovered how to do just that.’

‘You painted me? But why? I-’

Her eyes widened. Realisation floated inside hazel orbs. Eddie held her tighter.

‘No,’ she gasped. ‘It came back. I… died?’

His welled eyes provided the answer.

‘How long?’

‘Three months. I fell into painting and then one day I tried using my finger and it just happened.’ Eddie could not stop now. It all rushed out of him. ‘I started small to test it out. To sell the paintings no one would buy. More money in the accounts. Tommy’s leg. For Terry to contact me after all these years. You were gone. The price was worth it. I would have paid anything. A finger, a hand, doesn’t matter. Most of it comes up from inside, anyway. My hand is just the brush. All of me for you.’

‘It’s hard to believe,’ Catelyn said.

‘I can’t lie to you.’

‘I know. But… when did I return?’

‘Today.’

‘I remember yesterday. We went for our walk. Said hello to Sam and Penny.’

Eddie gestured to the predominant masterpiece.

‘All in there. It happened for you. As real as right now. I took away the bad stuff. The pain. All of it.’

‘But it’s in you.’

‘I can bear it.’

Eddie held her weight as she melted against him.

‘What if I can’t?’

‘We have time,’ Eddie whispered. ‘To do all the things we dreamed. To make everything we could not.’

‘If something happens to that painting, my painting.’

Eddie took her hand in his and raised his spent flesh between them. She winced to see the cost he had paid.

‘We can protect them,’ Eddie said. ‘Seal them away for a lifetime. Then we can work together. I’ll teach you how.’

‘Oh, Eddie.’

‘I know. I know.’

He held her as she sobbed into his chest for some time.

‘I don’t remember going,’ Catelyn said. ‘Tell me this is real.’

‘I almost can’t believe it either, but it is.’

‘Why this rush to tell me? Couldn’t you have waited a few days? My head is spinning.’

‘It’s a lot. I’m sorry,’ Eddie said. ‘There is some urgency. The process has cost me more than just a few fingers. There’s something missing inside of me, and I can feel my own time spiralling. But don’t worry, I think I can fix it, with your help. This was only meant to ease you into the paintings, but then Tommy’s leg happened. And now, well, I might as well show you everything.’

Eddie led her by the hand to where he kept blank canvases.

‘I’ve been saving two large canvases for a diptych,’ he said. ‘The future is waiting for us to layer them. Our perfect composition. I’ll show you how to lift me from the underpainting. We should be able to equalise the damage between us. And then we can create one final painting together. Become a family.’

Catelyn was shaking.

‘A family?’ she said. ‘Truly?’

Eddie reached up and cupped her face in in the remains of his hands. He smiled with a confidence that anchored her.

‘Of course, a family. It’s the least we deserve. And the price will be so meagre against the gains. What do you say, my love? Shall we pour ourselves into our work?’

#