The Painting

#54 Four Scars - Ceithre Chraiceann

After the sun set and Lyle and I finished with our evening routines we lay in bed. Frankie - who I offered the couch to - opted to stay in the bathtub.

My head rested on Lyle's stomach with a few pieces of scratch paper by my side and a pencil in hand. I was trying to draw a recent guest who checked out earlier this morning. She was an older woman around eighty traveling with her husband. I often found older folks more intriguing to draw, usually it was because I perceived there to be so much inside of them. Many more experiences in their little tow than could fit inside the mind of a person half their age.

People past the age of sixty also seemed more open, not necessarily in sharing but in kindness. Almost every week a white haired individual offered to help me with the dishes or told me I didn't have to trouble with making their bed. The kindness acted as a sort of mirror, they didn't try to hide behind it like a mask. To me it was more fulfilling to play with and capture the duality of pain and content through the eyes of those who knew it so much longer and had come to a conclusion of how to manage it.

Tonight however, it was hard to concentrate. My drawing was slow moving as I kept coming back to what Frankie mentioned in the bathtub.

You know.

I didn't know. In fact I didn't even know what direction to search for what Frankie hinted to when he uttered the simple sentence. Before Lyle went to live with Beth and Ivy something happened, but what? Her biological family? She never spoke about them. Lyle didn't talk much about anything that happened before we met. I got the feeling that it wasn't because she wanted to hide it from me, but because she simply didn't see the relevance. I knew her now and that was it, what happened to her or who she was before was irrelevant. But not to me. I wanted to know all of her.

"Hey Lyle." I stirred putting down my half finished drawing and turning to my side so my cheek lay on her stomach. At my voice Lyle put down the book she'd borrowed from Grace giving me her full attention. "Remember when I asked you about your parents?"

"Asking a question about asking a question? We're getting tricky now." She laughed but didn't discard my words as she nodded.

"Can you tell me about them?" I ventured. "Frankie mentioned you two went to high school together and then something happened, but I didn't really get much of the story."

"Why do you think it was my parents?"

"I don't know you just never talk about them - I mean you never talk about much in your past - but I just figured you had to live with someone before Ivy and Beth." I paused. "You don't have to tell me, but I am here if you want to. Believe me, I know it's easy to keep your past close to your chest and I never imagined I would share my story with anyone but here I am. And honestly I am so happy I did because you... you know."

And this time both of us did know.

We knew that before Lyle came into my life I could hardly be defined as a person. I was a mannequin, filling the space where May went. Running through the motions and avoiding the pain.

Lyle took a deep breath rocking my head with her actions. "There's not much to tell. They were never around and I spent most of my time at my neighbors."

"Beth and Ivy?"

"Yes, they took care of me. More than my parents ever did"

"Why's that?"

"They were both just took invested in their jobs to notice me. Then one day on their way to work they got hit by a truck and –" She stalled and my hand found hers giving a reassuring squeeze. "And I moved in with Beth and Ivy. Quit school and went with the wrong crowd for a bit."