be loved. But that’s life, I guess. So anyway, I went home that night and I walked from the kitchen to the back porch. It had all these windows. This ugly red carpeting. And that’s where my grandmother painted. I stood there and watched her. Just the way she moved her right hand. The way she moved her head. The way she hummed and just focused on what she was making. It just caught me off guard. So I watched her paint.”
“That’s why you started?” Amelia asked.
“Not even close, love. I went to bed that night and left her alone. When I saw her painting again, I asked her some questions. Part of me didn’t want to invade her alone time. She never got any time to herself. Not with me around. She took care of so much for so many people. The crazy part was, the second I started messing around with paints and all that, I was good. Really good. I never knew I could do that.”
“A natural.”
“Passed down from the greatest, maybe.”
“So let me just ask this… I’m trying to picture this, Josh. You and your grandmother sitting side by side, painting pictures together. Or you are drawing and she’s painting…”
“Exactly.”
I saw the look wash over Amelia’s face. A dangerous look. Her eyes wide and almost puppy dog like.
“That’s adorable,” Amelia said. “I hate that word. Shoot.”
“Stop,” I said. “It’s fine.”
“Describe it to me.”
“What?”
“I really want to picture it, Josh.”
“Why? So you can write about it?”
“No,” she said. “I swear to you. Everything you’re telling me now is for me only.”
“So, this is a private one on one, huh?” I asked.
“Of course. So I can fill in the gaps of what I don’t know about you. The stuff that’s been driving me crazy for a long time.”
“Is this you confessing that you’ve thought about me all these years?”
I stepped toward Amelia and she was fast to put her hand out and stop me. Her hand against my chest wasn’t going to stop me. I’d do the same thing to her. My hand to her chest. Feel those curves…
“Please,” she whispered.
“She would sit in her chair and paint. I would sit on the floor with my legs stretched out. My back against the wall. The floor was hard, unforgiving. She offered to rearrange things, but I didn’t want to mess up what she had there. And we’d talk. About everything. Everything in life. I’d watch the way she would paint and sketch. I would mimic it.”
“That’s killing my heart. I didn’t realize… I mean… what a happy memory for you to have. A happy time.”
I slowly put my hand to Amelia’s and peeled it off my chest. I brought her hand to my lips and kissed the back of it. I slowly moved my fingers and put the palm of my hand flat against hers.
“Not even close, love,” I whispered.
“What?”
“It didn’t last as long as you think.”
“What are you talking about?”
My eyes met Amelia’s. On the surface, sure, the story I was telling was good. Happy. One to remember forever. One to never forget. But that moment of life only paved the way for good and bad to collide.
“Amelia… I started to draw, sketch, and paint… and that was right about the time my grandmother no longer could…”
There were a thousand days mixed into my story that I left hanging behind. Left on the shelf like a bottle of booze I swore I’d only touch on a holiday or for some kind of celebration. Those were the days that pieced together another puzzle. That was for a different time though.
I looked at my hand that had been touching Amelia’s hand.
“Answer me honestly, love,” I said. “Are you going to keep writing for that woman?”
“I don’t know. Honestly. She had an idea or two, but I don’t know. I don’t know her. Who would read it. If I would have a chance to make something out of it. It’s…”
“It takes a piece of you to do it,” I said.
“Yeah. That’s a good way of putting it.”
“I remember the first time I saw it happening to her,” I said. “Her right hand twitched. She made this extra brushstroke and didn’t mean to. The look of fear and anger on her face. She covered it up. But it kept happening. It took a month before her paintings started to look different.”
“What do you mean?”
“Parkinson’s,” I said.
“No.”
“Of everything she had and lost… it wasn’t fair. I wasn’t the greatest of help at