Nobody had painted the walls.
I stopped abruptly and felt Tag at my back. I heard the way his breath caught in his throat and then the slow exhalation when he let it out on a stream of words even I wouldn’t say.
I had found my grandmother at around 6:45. I only remember the time because she had a clock in the entryway that spat out a bird that cuckooed on the hour and sang on the half-hour. But on the quarter hours, the bird would stick his head out and tweet loudly, making you aware the time was passing. Warning you the hour was coming. I had walked through the front door that morning, half-dazed, longing for my bed where I could sleep off the lust and the love that were clinging to my skin, and that bird had squawked at me as if to say “Where have you been?”
I had jumped and then laughed at myself and stepped into the dining room and called her name.
“Gi!”
“Gi!” I said it again and heard my voice echo in the empty house.
I didn’t mean to speak out loud, but Tag pushed past me and walked toward the walls filled with curling colors and twisted tendrils. It was like being on a spinning merry-go-round inside a circus tent, and everyone was a clown. The color was garish and grandiose, one color merging into the next, one face becoming another, like a photograph of a car in motion, nothing entirely captured, everything distorted by the perspective. I’d found Gigi at 6:45 in the morning. Georgia had found me at 11:30. I had painted for almost five straight hours and filled the walls with everything and nothing.
The clock had struck and the bird sang sweetly as I swept my aching arms up and down, finishing a face that had nothing to do with the face I wanted to see. And then Georgia had stepped into the house. Poor Georgia.
“That’s Molly,” Tag choked, his hand resting on the image of his sister looking back over her shoulder, beckoning me to follow. The gold paint of her hair spread out like a river and became the hair of several other girls, all running alongside her.
I could only nod. The whole thing was a blur. I didn’t remember most of it. I didn’t remember anything in detail. It felt like a dream, and I only had bits and pieces.
“Who are these other people?” Tag whispered, his eyes roving from one distorted drawing to the next.
I shrugged. “I know some of them. I remember some of them. But most, I don’t really know.”
“You like blondes.”“Nah—I don’t.” I shook my head slowly, protesting.
Tag raised his eyebrows and looked pointedly at the girls surrounding Molly and at the painting of my mother a little ways off, the basket of babies in her arms.
I just shook my head. I couldn’t explain the other side. I just painted what I saw.
“Mo?”
“Yeah?”
“This is freaky as shit. You know that, right?”
I nodded. “I didn’t know it. Not really. Not then. I didn’t even see it. I just lived it. But yeah.”
We both stared a moment longer, until I just couldn’t stand it anymore.
“So what would you think of a red couch in here?” I said. “’Cause that’s what I’m thinkin’-”
Tag started to laugh, the loud bark of stunned mirth shaking out the cobwebs and the lingering sense of horror in the room. He shook his head at me like I was past saving. “You’re sick, man. Really.”
I laughed too, shoving him, needing the contact. He shoved me back and I stumbled backwards, grabbing at him as we each grappled to get the better position to land the other on his ass. We bounced into walls and ended up pulling down the paint covered curtains, letting the fading light pierce the color-drenched room. But it was the walls that would have to go. Not just the curtains. I wouldn’t be sleeping in that house until the walls were white once more.
Georgia
THERE WAS A TRUCK PARKED at Kathleen Wright’s old house. It had been there off and on for two days. The front door hung open, and a few cans of paint sat on the tail gate, along with ladders and drop cloths and a wide assortment of other things. The truck was black and shiny and brand new. When I peered through the window like the snoopy, small-town girl I was, I could see the creamy leather of the seats and a cowboy hat on the dash. The truck didn’t look like anything Moses would drive. And I knew he’d never wear that hat.
But as far as I knew, Moses still owned the house. My stomach clenched nervously, but I refused to acknowledge it. He was probably there to clean it out and then he’d be gone. He probably wanted to sell it. That was all. Soon he would be gone again and I could go about my business. But my stomach didn’t believe me, and I spent the days in a nervous frenzy, accomplishing everything on my to-do list and feeling no sense of satisfaction in any of it. Dad was back home from the hospital and other than a little residual weakness, was doing fine. Mom fussed, which made him irritable, and I just tried to stay out of the house.