Canvas

8| The Roof

Laying his head back down on the rough wall of the roof, he imagined what it would be like to live without a home to go back to every night. His life might be tense because of his father’s moods and his mother’s strictness, but he still had some place warm and soft to lay his head. 

He was never without food—though they never ate at the expanse of mahogany that sat empty in the dining room of their apartment. His parents insisted on only dining in the formal restaurant on the first floor of their building, or at a string of expensive restaurants scattered throughout the streets of D.C., like pearls spilled from a broken necklace. Bright, shiny, beautiful restaurants steaming with hot meals and brimming with painted people. Not his painted people, but his father’s. 

Dinner was not a family event; it was a possibility for publicity. His father wouldn’t miss an opportunity to be seen having a pricey meal with his fancy family. But, Charlie thought, at least he had a family. At least he had food. It was more than most, nowadays. He should stop thinking that he could—that he should—have more.

He needed to be grateful for what he had. Even if it meant he had to forget everything about his sketches and paintings, or the girl on the street, and become his parents’ puppet. He should let his art go and follow in his father’s footsteps, though he hated the idea of becoming anything like him. Detached from feeling, uncaring of the pain around him, ignoring the beauty of his world. But there was only so long that Charlie could push against his parents. Eventually, he would lose. Accepting the inevitable would save him years of frustration and suffering.

Letting go, he feared, would leave a permanent bitter taste in his mouth that he would have to live with until the day he died. He would be trading one shape of heartache and hardship for another. Which was worth fighting for? Which would be worth the pain?

The sky ripped at its seam, the gray clouds bowing back gracefully for the rain to begin. It started slowly, a drop here and there, like the sky was crying softly for D.C. Charlie wiped his cheek and continued to watch the night. A little rain wouldn’t hurt him.

The rain continued to fall, quietly at first—a gentle cloud of mist. But before long, it became aggressive and heavy, a steady stream of a shower, followed by the strong fierceness of a storm. Soon, the rain fell like icy tacks, needling him with the cold.

He squinted up to the sky, letting the pain of the frozen rain clear his head. He spread out his arms wide and opened his mouth, gathering a yell. The pain, frustration, everything he kept bottled inside of him rushed forward but fell mutely from his lips. The profoundness of his loneliness—a loneliness that twisted in his gut and slithered around his heart—couldn’t even find an abstract voice in a scream. It was as silent as his paintings.

Closing his eyes, he dropped his hands and head, bowing his neck to the rain. He hauled himself to standing, resigning to the weather and exhaustion that he had refused to acknowledge for hours. He pulled himself over the low wall and hopped onto the top landing of the fire escape, leaning over as far as he could without falling. 

It would be easy to slip, he thought to himself. To tumble through the air and feel—for just an instant—that he was free and flying. The rain fell harder, pinging and clanging on the metal loudly, just daring him to do it, but he ignored it and made his way down the first flight of stairs.

Down, down, down the steps he spiraled, dragging a wet hand through his rain-tangled hair. The storm still followed him, even a couple stories down from the roof, buried under the metal landings of the fire escape. The cold was pulling the warmth out of him, replacing his muscles with a painful, wrung-out feeling. But he kept climbing down.

As he rounded another set of stairs, he thought he saw a flash of red, like a bright poppy blooming through cracked pavement, but when he blinked, it was gone. He shook his head, lecturing himself.