There's a saying that I've heard that a man doesn't begin to grow old until regrets take the place of dreams. I wonder if Church's brother has started to grow old. Maybe we'll find out.
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Crown Vic to a Parallel World: From Whence I Came The second installment of the ongoing adventures of Church Philips
26
The Dreams of My Brother and the Bills They Didn't Pay
Shawn offered the front seat of the Town Car to Joe, but he wouldn't accept. He sat in the back with his son. Andy had jumped in behind me and Joe took the passenger side rear seat. Shawn ran his barely functioning power seat forward to give Joe some leg room. On the way out of town, we made a surprisingly quick stop by the courthouse to file Mary's divorce and custody agreement, then continued our trip. Since Joe was with us, I tried to drive more conservatively. I didn't want my brother to worry about Andy's safety if he wanted to go out with me again.
We were on the city side of the Ben Franklin Bridge, idling along the residential blocks, when Joe started conversation. "Andy, what do you think of all this, everything that's happened since your Uncle Church came back? What do you think of the story they told us about their lives on the other world? Does it bother you, is it scary or confusing, is it exciting? Church commented this morning that you're a perceptive guy, and he's right. I know you've thought about it, just like I have. Will you tell me what you think?"
"I don't even know where to start." Andy admitted, then he went on like a house on fire. "I saw some of what Uncle Church can do, but it's crazy...and Shawn, he saved your life. He...saved...your...life." The boy said the words like each was its own sentence, like he was trying to convince himself the words were true.
"It's amazing...incredible." Andy went on with high excitement. "They said Bem is almost eighty, how is that possible? Uncle Church doesn't look as old as he is. He looks younger than you. They even got Aunt Mary to be nice. You have magic! I don't have to hide who I am anymore because they came. I guess I never really did, but I wouldn't know that without them. Besides all that, Bem is fun. I've been playing video games with an eighty-year-old guy, and he's starting to beat me!"
Andy ran out of things to say and peered out the open window for a second. My brain took issue with a couple of the things he'd said. The main one was about him not having to hide being gay from his father. The boy didn't know, like I knew, that Joe still wasn't OK with that. Things seemed to be moving in the right direction, but Joe wasn't there yet. I hoped Andy would never find that out.
"Dad, are we going with them so you can get better?" Andy asked his father. His question dragged me out of my thoughts and focused my attention. I wanted to know the answer to that question as much as Andy did. The boy seemed to sense his father's reluctance to talk about the topic and qualified his question with some modifiers. "I asked Shawn yesterday. He said you'd be as good as new if you went with them. We don't have to stay if you don't like it there, but I want you to be better."
I adjusted the rearview mirror so I could watch my brother as he answered his son. Joe's reflection showed it was his turn to do some silent window gazing. The answer he eventually came up with displeased me. "I don't know yet, son. I don't know if I can. We have some time to decide."
I used an angry hand to slap the mirror back toward where it belonged. I reached a more careful hand up to adjust it properly. I already figured Joe was going to make trouble. I resolved to work on some arguments to make him come, but I wondered how I was going to win an argument with a lawyer. Worse than that, I wondered how I could win an argument with a lawyer that was Joe.
I glanced in the rearview again and saw that Andy didn't like his father's answer any more than I did. I felt bad for the kid. He was on the cusp of being a man, and all around him, forces were at work that would change the entire course of his life. Like so many other people his age, he was powerless to influence those forces. He was stuck in the middle, like all kids, with thoughts and feelings and opinions that didn't matter a damn to the world at large, the world he had to live in.
Shawn came to the rescue. "What kind of games do you play with Bem, Andy?" He asked. I reached over and patted my husband's thigh to thank him for his timely intervention.
Andy seemed to brighten up immediately. "Mostly racing or strategy games. Bem won't play shooting games. He said it wouldn't be fair because he's a soldier on Solum. I don't see how it matters, but he won't change his mind."
I hadn't known that Bem refused to play shooting games with Andy. It made sense in light of what my friend had admitted to me early the previous morning. I didn't share what I'd learned. Instead, I went back to listening to the conversation.
Shawn had asked Andy to explain the games, which he did in minute detail. Outwardly, Shawn was an eager student, and anyone without an emotional link to him, would have thought he was deeply interested. The fact that he only had a vague concept of how the games were played, and absolutely no interest in ever learning more, was another piece of knowledge I kept to myself. The truth hardly mattered as long as Andy's mood improved. The banter between Shawn and Andy lasted until we arrived in the alley behind the music store.
I went in and paid off for the CD collection. The proprietor, Shawn, Andy, and I hauled several thousand CDs in jackets out of the back of the store and into the trunk of the Town Car. The rear bumper settled noticeably under the weight. We piled back in, and I spun around as far as I could in the seat to face the rest of the group and figure out the next step. Since it was Joe's first pleasure outing in a while, I decided to make the trip about him. "Well Joe, my errand is complete. What do you want to do? We could walk around here, or drive somewhere, or whatever. Name it."
Joe thought for a second before he answered. "Head down to Kelly Drive. I want to see Boathouse Row and Fairmount Park."
I took the surface streets through the city and ended up on Kelly Drive. I started looking for a place to park when I saw the red lighthouse atop the grey cedar-shake-sided building that was the first boathouse of Boathouse Row. I pulled up to the curb and parked illegally. Joe mentioned it, but he didn't insist I find another spot. I was glad he didn't make a thing of it because I had no intention of moving the car.
The risk I took in parking illegally was calculated. I figured we wouldn't be parked for very long, and that it would take a cop a while to boot or tow the car. I also figured that any ticket they wrote me would go to my fake identity and I'd never have to pay it.
The four of us got out to look around. The intricate and colorful Victorian boathouses on the dammed section of the Schuylkill River had been a Philadelphia landmark since the mid-nineteenth century. Several of the long, delicate rowing sculls were on the river for team practice, and the rest were stored in racks under pavilion roofs.
Our group stayed together, to match our pace to Joe's and crossed the grass to the river's edge. We watched the smooth, coordinated movements of the athletes at their task and commented on how fast the thin craft could slip through the flat water.
I felt a little nostalgic as I looked around. I'd spent many years driving up and down the Schuylkill Expressway. That particular road was the inappropriately named, heavily trafficked route that followed the opposite side of the river into and out of the city of Philadelphia. From driving that road, I'd seen the boathouses at all times of the year. They were especially attractive around the winter holidays. "You remember how they look at Christmas time?" I asked Shawn.
He felt good at the memory and smiled as he enjoyed it. "Yes, the LED lights they installed a few years ago really make them pop. That one year when it snowed, they looked like a Christmas village."
"When did you spend Christmas here?" Joe demanded of Shawn, his tone suspicious, like he'd caught someone in a lie.
"Memories, Joe." I interrupted with an exasperated sigh I couldn't swallow. "Try to pay attention."
"That's so weird." Joe said, and he managed to sound like he was Andy's age as he said it. He looked to Shawn with a question. "What's that building?" Joe pointed to a massive Greek Revival at the top of a hill, downriver from where we stood.
"That's the Art Museum." Shawn answered instantly.
"Whose statue used to be at the top of the steps?"
"Rocky Balboa."
"And who is Rocky Balboa?" Joe asked.
Shawn screwed his face up in confusion. "I not sure Church remembers this correctly. I'll tell you what I know, and you tell me if it's true. Rocky is a fictional character from a film, a boxer from Philadelphia. He's played by Sylvester Stallone. In the movie he runs up the art museum steps as part of his training. He also loses the big fight the movie is all about."
Andy giggled with child-like enjoyment at Shawn's story and Joe shook his head, either in amazement at Shawn's accuracy, or at the oddity of the facts he related. "It's all true." Joe said.
Shawn remained confused. "This city paid for a statue to be erected at one of its institutions...a statue of a man who doesn't exist and who lost his big fight. Really?"
"The truth is stranger than fiction, Shawn." I chuckled. "If you think about it a little, about the culture here, you'll realize that Rocky statue embodies the spirit of Philadelphia more appropriately than if they put one up of a winner."
"I'll think about it. You'll probably have to explain it again, but I'll think about it."
We walked around some more, but as picturesque as Boathouse Row is from a distance, there's not much to look at up-close. "What now?" I asked when the novelty had worn thin.
Joe stirred the dirt at his feet with his cane while he thought. "How about the art museum?"
"Fine with me." I agreed. Nods from Andy and Shawn confirmed the plan. We got the car, which hadn't been booted, ticketed, or towed, and rode the little way to the art museum parking lot. I paid for admission for everyone, or...I should say that Ars paid. Ars was even nice enough to make a substantial donation to the museum preservation fund. Once inside, Joe led us to the `Modern Art' section of the gallery. He was silent for a while as we looked at the paintings. The names on the little gold tags meant nothing to me, but Joe said each one with a brand of reverence I'd only heard him use on names from The Bible.
Joe murmured them as he paused by each of the greats, Kandinsky, Mondrian, Rothko, Kline. Joe halted and stood stock still with his hands in his pockets, and his cane resting at his right side in front of a Motherwell painting. I went to stand with him, to see if I could see what he did. Joe animated as I stopped next to him. He explained the painting to me like he was an expert. He waved his hands at the various features and commented on the color, technique, tone, and mood of the canvas. He even talked about the message of the piece. At first, I thought he was just vamping like I would have, but Joe didn't lie even in jest.
"How do you know all this?" I asked when he finished his oration.
"I love art, especially Modern Abstract Art." Joe informed me without tearing his eyes from the painting. "I wanted to be a painter...once. Before Beth, I really thought about traveling the country, maybe even going to Europe to visit museums and study. Obviously, I didn't. I made the responsible decision to go to school to make something of myself. Then I made the irresponsible decision to knock up my girlfriend."
I swiveled my head around to make sure Andy was out of earshot. Fortunately, he and Shawn had wandered off during Joe's art lecture. They were across the room, gesturing at a massive canvas with three bands of color, green, yellow, and blue, running horizontally across the surface. "That's a pretty fucked up thing to say in the same room as your son." I whispered.
Joe snapped back to reality and looked at me with a face full of shame. "I can't believe I said that. I don't mean it that way. I couldn't imagine life without Andy. I guess I just got lost in the moment, thoughts of what might have been."
"It's fine. He didn't hear you, but you have to be careful. If he ever heard you say something like that, no amount of explaining would stop him from being crushed."
Joe's eyes slid back to the painting. "I wouldn't trade my son for all the paintings in the world, but when I think about it in a vacuum, I think I could have done it. I don't know that I ever would have been great, or even if I could have made a living. I'm not the next Jackson Pollack, but it would have been nice to try. I've never had an adventure, not like you, Church."
"You can have one." I tried to remind him gently. Joe seemed almost ready to crack the door open to all the possibilities I'd offered him. I wanted my brother to know that absolutely anything was possible. "It's waiting for you to step over the threshold. I'm not pushing you. I wouldn't dare. I'm simply saying you have an opportunity to try and a thick cushion to catch you if you fail."
"I know." Joe acknowledged without his characteristic reluctance. "I've been giving it a great deal of thought. I'm just not sure I can. Give me some more time, please." Joe sounded thoughtful, like he was considering it in the moment.
I tried to court his practical nature at the same time I tantalized the dormant adventurous spirit he'd just exposed. "My car won't be done until next Thursday, so you have at least until then, but I know how responsible you are. If you decide to leave, you won't do it without putting your affairs in order. Do you think you can let me know by Sunday? That will give you almost a full week to make arrangements if you choose to come."
"I can make a decision by then." He promised.
I tried to add some more gentle persuasion. I didn't want to outright plead because that would make him shutdown, but I wanted Joe to know that there was love in my offer. "I know Shawn made the initial invitation, but you should know I want this to. It's not just so you can get your mobility back. I feel like we're starting to be real brothers, maybe like we never were before. We could be a family, not a Rockwell painting family, but a family all the same."
The sour look Joe's face took on told me that I'd pushed too far. Joe's manner changed, from thoughtful to curt. "I know. I've considered that. I'll let you know on Sunday." He said it sharply and moved away to another painting, closing the subject with physical distance instead of with words.
I was pretty sure I knew what Joe's answer would be, and I started to think about ways to kidnap him. He would be angry, but if we were going to live another two hundred years on Solum, eventually he'd start speaking to me again...maybe.
Joe led us around and lectured on Modern Art for a couple hours. In some of the rooms of the extended exhibit, he managed to attract an audience of other art lovers. Most of the time, I had no idea what he was talking about, but I was impressed by his enthusiasm and knowledge. Joe really got into his subject, to the point where he seemed ready to spend the remainder of his life in the gallery. As lunchtime came and went, Andy, and me, and even Shawn tried to get him to agree to leave within a set amount of time. Individually, we failed. Finally, we presented a united front of hungry people and dragged him out.
"When did you learn all that stuff?" I asked when we were back in the car and looking for a place to eat.
"A scheduling conflict forced me into an art elective my sophomore year of high school." Joe explained. "I really wasn't interested at all. The class was half lecture and half hands on. When we got to the section on Abstract Art, I was blown away. The teacher noticed my enthusiasm and encouraged it. I experimented with painting. I loved it and painted constantly. I read whatever I could get my hands on and visited as many galleries and museums as I could. I breathed this stuff for three years until I graduated. Then I went to college, and law school, and to work. There just wasn't room in my adult life for art." Joe heaved a resigned sigh.
"Do you still have any of the stuff you painted?" I asked.
"I kept a half dozen of my favorite pieces. Mom never let me hang anything, not even in my own room. I can still hear her saying, `I won't have that nonsense in my house. They're not even pictures, just a mess.'" Joe imitated my mother's shrill delivery with bitter perfection. "Anyway," he said with a verbal shrug that his shoulders didn't mimic, "those six paintings have been stacked in my bedroom closet since high school."
"Can we see them when we get home?" Andy asked his father.
Joe deprecated his talent but agreed to show us his work. "They're not much, nothing like we saw today, but I'll get them out if you're interested."
The little tour group that was me and Shawn and Andy and Joe ate in the city and drove around a little longer to look at this and that. I made a quick detour through the old city on the way to the bridge to show off the section of Philadelphia that founded the nation. The Solum natives were unimpressed by the age of Independence Hall or the Liberty Bell.
Their attitudes had me scratching my head until I remembered that the United States was fifty years younger than the maximum length of one Solum lifetime. I supposed the possibility of living three hundred years put history in a different perspective. Even the Ben Franklin Bridge, a structure that I considered ancient, was erected within the lifetime of Shawn's Uncle Ars. In fact, the structure was thirty-plus-years younger than the man.
I thought back on my original impressions of the buildings in Epistylium, and the idea I'd had that they were of great age. I wondered how old they really were, how old the city might be. I checked the Shawn reference book in my head. It told me that the rigidly planned capital city had been built to replace a much older, unplanned city that had outlived its usefulness. The beginning of construction dated back over one thousand years. The building Shawn owned was seven-hundred years old.
The reason that the buildings aged so well was that they were built as modern structures, complete with conveniences, and built from resilient materials. Nothing had to be retrofitted. When Michelangelo was painting the Sistine Chapel by candlelight, the people of Solum had already been enjoying electricity, television, climate control, and indoor plumbing for several centuries. Even the revolutionary structural glass that created buildings like The HALL and that was also at the heart of much of the modern communications technology was well over two-hundred years old.
It seems Solum's industrial revolution was sparked by King Pravus' reign and predated its counterpart on Earth by more than a millennium. As they used no fossil fuels and their social attitudes didn't stigmatize sex, Solum's revolution was cleaner than Earth's and didn't correspond to a population explosion. In fact, the total population of Solum had remained a fairly constant two-billion people for millennia. I pondered the implications of these interesting pieces of trivia as I piloted the car back to Joe's house in relative silence. I didn't arrive at any conclusions, though. There weren't any to reach.
No one was home when we arrived. Joe went upstairs to look for his paintings and I followed in case he needed help. From the hallway, I saw into Andy's room. He was sitting on the neatly made bed while he flipped through a fashion magazine that was in the mailbox when we got back. I tapped on the open door to get his attention. "Come in." He said without looking up.
I cast my eyes around the room, my old room. I expected to feel wave upon wave of anxiety from being in the spot where I spent a large portion of my miserable childhood, but I didn't feel much of anything. I guessed the room didn't bother me because it looked completely different than it had when I lived in it.
Andy kept it very neat, much neater than I ever did. Much of what I saw was typical teenager stuff, but a few items stood out. Side by side on a shelf in the middle of the inside wall was an old, silver-faced stereo receiver and a turntable that both looked very familiar. On the floor beneath the shelf was a pair of huge cabinet speakers that looked equally familiar.
Andy finished the article he was reading and set the magazine down. When he glanced up, I was caressing the receiver, running my scarred fingers over the blemishes of age and lack of delicate handling. I remembered where each one came from. "This was mine." I announced. "Your Dad must have saved it from the apartment."
"I know. I have all your albums to."
"My records!" I gasped and was instantly excited. "You have them, all of them? I can't believe he hauled them here. Where are they?"
Andy bounced up and opened the double bifold doors of his closet. Half of it was clothes and shoes, but the other half was floor-to-ceiling shelves, roughly built from two-by-four lumber and loaded with my record collection. Andy had them neatly alphabetized by artist with divider tabs for each letter.
"Do you play them?" I asked.
"I used to listen to them all the time. When Dad got sick, he didn't want to hear music anymore, so I stopped."
I remembered my brother's comment about Andy being the music expert and realized how he'd learned about good music. I voiced my realization to the boy. "This is how Joe knew about Delaney and Bonnie, isn't it?"
"Sure." Andy replied through a pleased grin. "'Delaney and Bonnie and Friends on Tour with Eric Clapton' is a great album. So is Dave Mason's `Alone Together.'"
I nodded my agreement as I felt the rows of colorful record jackets and lost myself in the memory of the long obsolete musical media. Each album was familiar and had its own story. I noticed the spine of one I particularly liked, a record that demanded volume. I slid the jacket from its place and extracted the sleeve. The sleeve came out ninety degrees to the jacket. I wondered if that meant that I was the last person to listen to the album, or if Andy had continued my habit of inserting the sleeves ninety degrees to the jackets to keep dust out.
Either way, the record was still clean and still correctly stored. I carefully slid the black disk from the sleeve and held it between my open palms. I offered it to the boy. "Put this on. Start with track three on side one and crank it up loud. I want to feel this tune."
Andy grinned from ear to ear when I handed over Stephen Stills Live.' Track three was a medley titled Jet Set (Sigh) / Rocky Mountain Way / Jet Set (Sigh)' and right after that was `Special Care.' Both tunes were hard-driving, electric rock-and-roll with plenty of impressive guitar work. Andy placed the record on the turntable and shoved the red power button in on the receiver. The green dial lit, and the massive mid-nineteen-seventies cabinet speakers crackled to life with a bassy hum, like the first low warning growl of a wary watchdog.
Andy cued the tune, made sure the direct-drive, quartz-lock turntable was running to speed, and turned the volume up to what he thought was loud. I reached past him and shoved it up another two notches. The grin that stretched Andy's face grew even wider. I nodded to him to indicate that he should drop the needle and get ready for an experience. Andy stepped back from the stereo set and bowed slightly. His action told me physically that the honor was mine.
My thumb and forefinger lowered the cue lever and eased the scratched and cigarette burned Lexan cover shut just as the needle touched down on the between-track dead spot. The speakers popped as the stylus tracked into the groove and my anticipation rose to a fever pitch. I felt ecstasy when the electric rock-and-roll guitar riff to `Jet Set' blasted from the ported cabinet speakers. The music sounded incredible. The bass was a muddy mess and the highs hardly existed at all, but the familiar experience was an aural orgasm.
I played air guitar and sang along. I probably looked very like a marionette with its strings tangled, but I was having too much fun to care. Andy was on air drums and keyboards. Joe came shouting protestation across the hall. He saw us being silly and leaned against the door jamb in defeat. After a minute, his seriousness cracked, and he smiled at our fun. Jet Set was followed by Rocky Mountain Way, and another Jet Set followed it. The medley drew to a jamming finish and the turntable needle tracked into another dead spot.
Joe treated the brief silence as time for discussion. "Would one of you..." was all he got out before a tortured electric organ, more guitar, and frantic drumbeats heralded the beginning of `Special Care.' I ran the volume up as high as it would go without completing the destruction of the aged and oft abused speakers. Joe fled, Andy's fingers danced across the air keys, and I played the best air guitar solo of my air band career.
When the tune was over, I lifted the tone arm from the record and turned the volume to a still-loud but more reasonable level. "You know none of this music is supposed to sound like it does on this system, right?" I asked Andy.
"I know. I've heard some of it on the radio or on the internet. This seems right, though. Know what I mean?"
"Yes, I do. You're an interesting guy, Andy." I said while I cued up the acoustic side of the album. "I'm looking forward to meeting the adult you grow into."
When I looked back to the boy, the long face he wore was one of the saddest things I'd ever seen. "I hope you get to." He said, suddenly forlorn. "The way Dad's been talking, I don't know."
I tried to prop him up, and me at the same time. "Don't worry too much. Your Dad is the smartest guy I know. He'll make the right decision. Would you keep some music on for a while? I haven't heard the warm sound of analogue in a long time, and I miss it. Play whatever you want. Last night proved your taste in music is as perfect as your taste in clothes."
Andy seemed to puff up a little at my praise and set about ransacking the shelves for selections. I went across the hall to Joe's room, singing 'Change Partners as I went,' which was the first tune on side two. Joe was sitting on the floor in front of his open closet door. "Help me up." He demanded as he held his hand out to me. I lifted him with magic and set him on his feet. "Show off." He accused.
I had to laugh at my brother's indignance. "Tell me, Joe, tell me if you had this power, you wouldn't show off. If you tell me that, it will be the first lie I ever heard you tell. Now, where are the works of the young genius?"
Joe pointed into his closet, at several flat packages wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine. I gathered them up and carried them toward the stairs. Joe baited me as I went. "What's the matter, show-off, can't handle six packages as easily as one brother?"
I reached the head of the stairs and threw the wrapped paintings into the air one at a time like big square frisbees. I caught each with my magic and rotated them around the living room's vaulted ceiling like ponies on an invisible merry-go-round. To add the last insult to Joe's injured smugness, as the packages rotated, I carefully untied and unwrapped each one without tearing the paper. I set the paintings around the living room floor, propped against various pieces of furniture with the wrappings piled in a corner.
"Show off." Shawn accused from the kitchen.
"See!" Joe exclaimed, vindicated by Shawn's accusation. "Even your husband knows you're a shameless exhibitionist."
I pushed my tongue out of the corner of my mouth and flashed Joe with an obscene leer. "Better watch your terms, Joe. That one has a connotation."
Joe shook his head and went to see what twenty years in a closet had done to his work. Shawn and I looked with him. The paintings had survived surprisingly well. Some of them had crazed cracks in the paint, but the canvas remained tight, and the frames hadn't warped. "These are good." I said after I'd looked at each of them. "Has Andy seen them?"
"They haven't been out of that closet since I brought them home from school."
I called Andy down to check out his father's work with us. He hollered that he'd be right down. His words were followed by the rising, high tension note of an instrument that I have never been able to identify. It sounded like a piano chord, recorded and played backwards. More backwards chords and the picking of a string instrument, perhaps a harp, flowed around Andy as he came down the stairs. The tune was `Roundabout' by the band YES. I smiled to myself at the appropriateness of listening to progressive rock while we inspected abstract art.
"Fragile?" I asked in reference to the album title, as Andy joined the group.
"Yeah." He agreed as he looked at the paintings for the first time. "I couldn't make up my mind to play this or The Yes Album.' I really like Yours is No Disgrace' and `Your Move' but I think this is a better album."
I disagreed with my nephew. "I don't know about that. I like Rick Wakeman's keyboard work but Tony Kaye's organ on `The Yes Album' is epic." I said as a counterpoint to Andy's opinion, then refocused my attention on Joe's work.
I had the inspiration to recreate the gallery experience as much as possible. I used my telekinesis to raise the six paintings into rows of three and set them facing each other at eye level and about five feet apart. I waited for a reaction from Joe or Andy but got none. I was glad to see that my magic didn't seem to amaze them anymore. I figured that was another small step to persuading Joe to agree to come to Solum with us. I turned my attention to the art, like the rest of the group did. We admired the paintings at our own pace, taking as long as we wanted with each. "What are the titles?" I asked.
"Some of these are emotions." Joe explained with a vague wave around the room. He was engrossed in a painting of black and white geometric shapes, seemingly at war with each other on a red and blue checked background. "I did a series of paintings for a school project where each was to illustrate a feeling."
"What's this one?" I asked to force Joe to focus. I hoped to avoid another art lesson but didn't think that was going to be possible. The painting I pointed to, was a square canvas painted black with a coarse brush that had been heavily loaded with paint. The work was done in long strokes vertically across the canvas to leave thick streaks and deep texture. The streaks weren't perfectly vertical. They all slanted slightly left to right. In the center, near the bottom, was a single white dot.
"That's `Loneliness.'" Joe answered with a glance over his shoulder.
Shawn hugged himself as he admired the work. "It feels lonely just looking at it." He agreed quietly. "That poor little dot looks like he's standing in the rain. I want to bring him an umbrella and a hug."
Shawn's comment appeared to have struck a nerve. Joe dragged himself away from the painting that he'd been absorbed in and joined us in front of the depressing canvas to explain. "You understand completely. That's exactly what I was trying to convey. Complete isolation while drowning in negativity."
"I know how he feels." Shawn muttered.
"What's this one?" Andy asked. He hadn't heard Shawn. I think I was the only one who did. I assumed Shawn was referring to his childhood before he went to live with his Uncle Ars. He'd told me a bit about that time of his life, and I'd explored some of his memories, but much of that time was a mystery to me. I started to wonder if I should explore more of that time in Shawn's life, or if that would be some kind of invasion of his privacy.
I was quickly distracted from that line of thought by the art conversation. "Is this an emotion?" Andy nodded at a rectangular canvas, wider than it was tall. Andy's hands were in his pants pockets and his shoulders were up like he'd started a shrug but couldn't bring himself to finish it. He seemed both drawn to and unsettled by his father's work.
The painting that Andy referred to had a center that was a swirling mass of orange and yellow, like a ball stretched horizontally in an exaggerated eye shape. Above that was a sweeping but much narrower band of mauve, then light blue, and finally black at the top of the canvas. Below the orange was lush green and brown at the bottom.
"It's not an emotion. What does it look like to you?" Joe challenged. He moved to stand behind his son and look with him.
Andy looked from every angle. His face bunched up with intense thought. "Is it the sunrise?"
"That's exactly what it is." Joe agreed, obviously proud of both his work and son's correct interpretation of it. "I called it `Sunrise: Cross Section.' That one was fun to paint. They're not all fun. Some of these were very difficult to create...emotionally difficult. These six, the only six I saved, represent six instances I felt very strongly about the work. The ones I gave away or abandoned at school weren't as important. It still hurt to leave them, knowing the custodian would trash them during the summer clean up. I couldn't bear to carry them to the dumpster myself."
"The art teacher always raved about my work, but I know he was just being kind. They're OK, but no more than that. I would need to work in a much larger format to even attempt to be better. It's difficult to make a statement on tiny canvasses like these. I read about an artist, when I was in the middle of doing these, he painted on four-foot by eight-foot sheets of plywood. He would reinforce them with a two by four frame, coat them with heavy primer, then paint boldly. Sometimes he would nail two or three panels together. That's the way to really say something. The only thing that would be better, the side of a building or a billboard. I'd love to do a mural." Joe got visibly excited as he spoke of large formats and bold statements.
"Anyway," Joe shrugged as he crashed back to reality, "when I was painting, I had nowhere to hang them and could barely afford to buy decent paints." He leaned close to the `Sunrise' painting to scrutinize the surface. "That's why these are cracked...cheap materials. It wasn't a very practical hobby."
I set a caring hand on my brother's shoulder. "It was fun though, wasn't it?" I asked. "You loved doing this."
"I did. That was a long time ago and I was a different person." Intense sadness invaded Joe's voice. I could only guess that it was the sadness of unfulfilled dreams marching in review. "It's fun to see them again, but I think my creative days are over."
"Why?" I asked.
Joe tensed and exploded like a dropped vial of nitroglycerin. "BECAUSE DREAMS DON'T PAY THE BILLS!" He immediately realized he overreacted and tried to smooth over his outburst. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get upset. Seeing these again has dredged up some stuff I thought I'd gotten over."
Joe cast forlorn eyes around the room and eventually turned to face the back of the house, his gaze hidden from both us and the paintings. "I'm going out back for a few minutes. When you're finished looking, wrap them up and put them away." He waved a dismissive hand at his floating artwork and walked away slowly, weighed down by the past. He passed through the dining room and sunroom, through the sliding glass door, and he shut it behind.
"What just happened?" Shawn asked as soon as the door closed. Shawn and Andy looked to me for an answer.
I took a deep breath and blew it out. My left hand went for my left pocket and the watch it contained. Shawn's eyes tracked the movement. I diverted the hand and let my right hand fidget with my bracelet. "He's damaged like I'm damaged, that's what happened. You remember how I blew up when I didn't want to go to mass? I think these paintings are Joe's `mass.'"
I paused to see if what I said made sense to my audience. I saw that it didn't and tried again. "I'm guessing that Joe discovered his passion on these canvases. I can also guess that, instead of reinforcing and supporting him, our parents belittled and discouraged him. Joe was always the more dutiful son. I would have rebelled, but not Joe. He would have marched on like a good soldier, abandoned his passion, and became a lawyer instead of an artist."
"Why did they do that to him?" Andy asked. The boy was clearly shocked that any parent could do something so vile to their own child.
"Your grandparents were not good people." I explained from my own experience. "They were petty, small people who disapproved of anything they didn't understand. I don't blame them for all my problems, but because of the upbringing the three of us suffered in this house, I feel valueless, Mary retreated from reality into religious fanaticism, and your father is a passionless and defeated man. The only good thing that came out of that experience was Joe and Mary learned what not to do when raising kids. It's obvious your father never treated you the way I just described because you asked how anyone could do it. I hate to disillusion you, Andy, but it happens all the time."
"Can I help him?" Andy asked. The poor boy looked like he was ready to burst into tears over the evil his father had endured as a child.
I gave Andy the only answer I knew. "Just be there for him. Tell him he's important to you, show him. Give him a hug for no reason, or reinforce his successes, even the small ones. If he makes a great meal, tell him. Don't lie and don't patronize. He's too smart for that. Gently remind him you care. You can't ever fix it, but you can make it easier to live with."
As I gave Andy that advice, I wished I could give it to Joe in parallel. I wished I could somehow force father and son to care about each other and reinforce each other and validate each other like they both so badly needed. I knew I couldn't do that. All I could do was hope and intervene if I thought I had to. I hoped I wouldn't have to, but I assumed that I would.
I tried to shove those thoughts aside to deal with them later, but it was difficult. I took out my phone and snapped a picture of each painting. When I had a digital representation of each one, I recommended we put them away before Joe came back in. "It'll be better if he doesn't have to see them again."
We packaged the paintings in their brown paper wrappers and put them safely away in the closet. When they were away and all the traces of their presence removed from the living room, Andy went to get his father from the yard. I ducked into Andy's room to swap Fragile' for a jazz record I knew Joe loved. My brother wasn't much of a music lover, but he had a few albums that he enjoyed listening to. Blue Note 4003' by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, was one of those albums.
It had always surprised me that Joe liked jazz, because it seemed to run counter to his precise nature. I realized with that thought, that I'd just discovered he liked abstract art as well. With that knowledge added, Joe's love of jazz fit a little better into my image of my brother. I waited with the turntable's cue lever between my fingers until I heard the sliding door and two sets of footsteps. I lowered the tone arm on `Moanin' and hurried downstairs.
Joe was seated at the head of the dining room table with his head in his hands. The tinkling piano and brazen sax of `Moanin' brought him up so suddenly, I worried he'd given himself whiplash. A genuine smile spread across his face as he tapped his fingers on the tablecloth in time to the music. "Thanks, Church." He said when he noticed that I was watching him.
"What did I do? I didn't do anything." I objected through feigned innocence.
"You thought of me. Thanks." Joe drummed on the table and nodded his head with the beat. "Put Dave Brubeck on after this, huh?"
"Andy!" I called to the house. "After this, Brubeck, `Take Five,' whole album, both sides, OK?"
"Got it, Uncle Church. Coming up." He yelled back.
"You OK now?" I asked Joe.
"Shush." He scolded. "This only helps if you let me enjoy it."
I made the motion of zipping my lip and retreated to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. Once I had a mug full, I stepped out front with it, and Shawn followed.