- 4 -
Crimson
Mary stayed home from school for the rest of the week. On Saturday morning, Mom finally allowed her to go out. "You want me to come with you?" Mom asked.
"I'll be fine. Just visiting Ba," Mary said. The more she sat around doing nothing, the more she thought about Carter in the hospital, which tempted Mary to iron her own hands from guilt. "Besides, you need sleep. You've just come off a monster shift. Why did you work so long?"
Mom lowered herself into a chair at the kitchen table. "It's this new patient, Scotty. He was having some trouble last night and we were short staffed, so I stayed."
Mary's mother worked in the kids' cancer ward. The kids there were the kindest and bravest kids Mary had ever met, and it was always a big deal when some of them got better and were able to go home. The nurses would throw going away parties. But then there were the ones who didn't get to go home. That was always hard.
Mom rubbed her eyes. "Sometimes I wonder what good we're doing. Some live. Some don't. All of them suffer."
Mary didn't know what to say. She never knew what to say in times like this, when she wanted to offer words of comfort and couldn't. Instead, she put her arms around her mother's shoulders.
"Thanks, honey," Mom said.
"Promise you'll rest and eat?" Mary asked.
"Yes, doctor," Mom said. "Now go on. Say hi to Ba for me."
"Will do." Mary kissed her on the cheek. "Oh, I need a new sketch pad and some paint. Can I have some money?"
"Where's your allowance?" Mom asked.
"I bought a brush with it," Mary said.
Mom raised an eyebrow. "All of it? What's this brush made of? Unicorn hair?"
"Well, no," Mary said uneasily. She didn't buy things like clothes and makeup often. But when it came to art supplies, it was hard not to get the good stuff.
Mom shook her head as she opened her wallet and took out some cash. "Here. This is an advance on next week's allowance."
"Thanks." Mary stowed the money in her bag and picked up her wide portfolio carrier before she left. She'd taken art classes in school for years, but she learned how to paint from her grandmother, Ba. Painting was their favorite thing to do whenever Mary came to visit.
Riding the bus again was a little eerie. All the noises—the engine, the creak in the door hinges, and the various beeps and clicks seemed sharper. When the bus came to Fair Avenue, Mary got off and hiked the few blocks toward Anna's Art Supply, which was actually run by a guy named Ben. Anna's wasn't in a great part of town, but since it was still pretty early in the day, Mary felt safer about going there by herself. The store was squished between a crappy pizza joint and a fortune teller/psychic whose windows were covered with purple curtains.
Inside, Mary saw a man at the counter cutting open a cardboard box. He looked up and smiled. "Hey there, Mary."
"Hey Ben," she greeted.
Ben was, for lack of a better description, a beautiful man. He was in his mid-thirties and a bit on the short side. But he had toned arms and great hair. For a while, Mary hadn't understood why his shop wasn't called "Ben's," since he was the only one there. Then once, he told her about his wife, Anna. She used to run the store with him. Their friends jokingly called them "Banana," since that's what their names sounded like when you said them together fast. Ben said that's what he wanted to name the store, but Anna said it was cheesy. So, they stuck with naming it after her.
About seven years ago, Anna went to the bank to make a routine deposit. A guy with a gun came in and tried robbing it. He didn't get out before the cops got there, and he took everyone inside as hostages. Mary remembered watching the standoff on the news with Ba. The police brought in a negotiator and everything. Then Mom got home from work, and she turned off the TV and said no one could turn it back on until the next day. Mom had just started working in the ER at the time, so she must've wanted it quiet so that she could rest. But Mary heard at school what happened the next day. The stand off lasted for hours, but eventually the bank robber shot two people before trying to shoot himself. The police got to him first, though, and he lived. One of the people he shot survived, but the other didn't. The one who died was Anna.
Ben, still wearing his wedding band after seven years, opened the cardboard box and pulled out little tin boxes of mints. He put them on a wire display rack that was sitting on the counter next to the register. "Help you find anything?"
"Just getting a sketchbook and a tube of primary red," Mary said as she made her way through the narrow aisles to get what she needed. "What's new with you?"
"Not much," he said. "Same old, same old. Got some cool projects going on in the back."
"Really? Can I see?" she asked. Ben rented out studio space in the back of his shop to other local artists, and Mary always liked to see the works-in-progress of professionals.
"Sure," Ben said. "Come on."
She followed him through a back door to the studio. It was a little messy, but the hand tools were properly stowed in the tool cage and the table saw was clear and unplugged. A sign that read, "The most dangerous tool in this shop is the one you're using," hung over the large shipping door in the back.
At the center of the room stood a magnificent sculpture made of metal and colored glass. It looked like a cluster of flames with a stunning bird rising from the center.
"Wow," she said breathlessly.
"Like it?" he asked.
"Yeah," she said. "Whose is it?"
Ben smiled.
Mary looked at him. "This is yours? You're making art again!" After Anna died, Ben hadn't made anything new. Until now, at least.
Ben chuckled. "I figured it was time. Try walking around it."
Mary did so and saw he had arranged the flames to make them look like they were moving. The bird also looked like it was flapping its wings.
"This is awesome," she said.
"Glad you like it," he said. "It's in an art show coming soon."
"When is it?" Mary asked. Then she added, "Do you have to pay to get in?"
"If you want to come, I'll get you tickets," he said. "You can bring your grandmother and maybe your mom, too."
"That would be awesome." She looked at the sculpture again. "I would love to do something big like this."
"What would you make?" he asked.
Mary thought for a moment. "Maybe a mobile of the planets. Kinda like this sketch I did for a painting that never got made." She pulled out her old sketchbook and showed him the page.
"That would be awesome," Ben said. "It would make a much better mobile than a painting. You should do it."
"You think so?" she asked. "Well, I can't at home. There's no room. And my art teacher doesn't have power tools and stuff like that."
"You can use my workspace and tools at no charge," he offered. "And I can get you the same discount I use on my own supplies."
"Really?" she said. "You would do that?"
He chuckled. "Sure. I know things are tight when you're reusing sketch paper." He flipped through a couple pages of her old book with the telltale eraser marks.
She smiled. "Thanks. I'll ask my mom."
Mary paid for the new sketchbook and red paint before going to catch the next bus. She got off a couple blocks later and walked to a pleasant building with a sign that said "Agape Retirement Home."
A tiny Filipino woman behind the front desk smiled when she came in. "Hi, Mary."
"Hi, Ms. Nancy," she said as she signed the visitor's log. "Do you know where my grandmother is?"
"She's in the courtyard painting and waiting for you."
Mary thanked her. In a sunny corner of the courtyard, Ba sat before a canvas propped up on a tabletop easel. Her black and gray hair was pinned into a bun behind her head.
Good, Mary thought. That was a sign that Ba was feeling well today. Still, she made sure to walk around to the front so that Ba could see her. Mary learned a long time ago not to approach her from behind. "Hi Ba."
Ba looked up and smiled. "Hi Con," she answered, using the Vietnamese word for "child." "How was school today?"
"It's Saturday. I didn't go to school." She kissed her on the cheek before settling into the next chair.
Ba looked at her curiously. "What happened to your hands?"
Mary had tried to cover her injuries with a long sleeve shirt, but it didn't reach the bandages on her hands. She and Mom had agreed not to tell Ba about the accident. They didn't know how she would react. "I fell down in the street on the way to school."
Ba added some paint onto her brush. "The way you just said that sounded like you were hiding something."
That was one annoying thing about Ba. When she was in her right mind, you couldn't hide anything from her at all.
"Are you okay?" Ba asked.
"I'm fine." But of course Mary was fine. Carter was the one who wasn't okay. She started getting depressed just thinking about him again, so she quickly opened her portfolio to get her mind on something else. "I brought my nebula. You remember I told you about the picture I found on the NASA website?" She took out a canvas and placed it on the table. It wasn't finished yet, but this was Ba. She'd seen pretty much all of Mary's projects before they were finished.
"That's coming along wonderfully!" Ba said. "It's just like looking through your telescope on the roof."
Mary laughed. "I don't think the telescope is strong enough for that."
"Are you entering it in the school contest?" Ba asked. "You should also enter the one you did of the Northern Lights."
Mary unrolled her brush bag and took out a round brush. "I'd never win."
"You don't know that until you've tried," Ba said. "Paintings are meant to be seen, Con. You should let the world see the beautiful things you make."
Mary took the new tube of red paint and squeezed some onto an empty spot of Ba's palette. She mixed in a touch of black to make crimson. As the paint came together, she realized it was the same shade of blood she had seen on Carter's body at the accident.
No matter what she did, she couldn't get away from him.
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