On the eighth Daze of Christmas,
'Tis the season to look back, and regret.
'Tis the season to look back, and regret.
Gifts of Red and Green by J.J. Sinisi
I couldn’t tell what it was supposed to be. A forest
landscape or a tulip, maybe? She asked if I liked it. Of course, I said. I
always did. How could I say otherwise? She was the only woman I ever loved.
I wondered aloud if she was attempting abstractionism.
I received a creased eyebrow in response. If she smelled the alcohol when I
spoke, she didn’t mention it.
The painting hung askew on the wall, long
intermingling pigmented streaks, joined as they were by the interminable will
of randomness, robbed its beauty save for one spot at the bottom, where white
and red and green joined to create a wonderful spiral of color in an otherwise
confusing mess of shit.
“It’s your gift,” she said. A heavy sigh from her pert
nose belied her smile, hid smoldering tears. “I paint them; then I leave them
outside to weather.”
“To weather?”
“Yes, Munch used to do it. Let the elements do
their worst. He even let his dog trample on one.”
“Munch? The guy who did Scream?”
She laughed at the fact that I knew this piece of
trivia or because I thought it worth mentioning. She wiped a stray tear which
had snaked around the large purple welt pinching her eye shut.
The bright Christmas tree crystallized white
shapes across her face and I imagined it shattering, her lips going here, nose
there, her cheeks flying away, all her beauty ruined in one cataclysm. The rage
still hadn’t left me.
“You didn’t have to do it,” she whispered. “It
wasn’t your responsibility anymore.”
A familiar ball gathered in my gut, grew limbs, climbed
through my throat. My eyes wandered back to the painting, away from her
splintered visage. I saw it then, the painting, what she had intended: the
weather and the wear, I watched the boiling red streaks until it was all I
could see.
“There was nothing left but blood,” I said.
“What?”
“Christ, Jamar.”
“But I look at you now,” I touched her lumpy cheek.
“I know I went too easy on him.”
The forecast was initially six inches, but lake
effect had pumped it up to a foot, and now all that swirling white mixed in the
darkness with the blinking Christmas lights. It was the first year I hadn’t
hung them for her and I felt that if the course of the storm didn’t blow them
down, I’d go out there myself and tear them away. I wanted to destroy anything
that had to do with him, obliterate the entire world because he had lived upon
it.
Moments later, the spinning light of a police car
added its own colors. It was time.
I looked out the window beside the door; saw the sheriff
getting out. “I left you a gift,” I said quickly.
“For Christmas?” she asked, crying now.
It climbed out of my mouth then fully formed: regret.
I felt I could see it, this thing that had always been between us, had now
taken shape, and would never go away. Neither her abusive boyfriend nor my
addiction could annihilate it. “Yes, for Christmas. It was in his apartment. He
won’t be missing it. I hid it in the shed, on top of my old desk. The one I
used to write at.”
The sheriff knocked and the wind howled.
“I miss your writing.” She glanced at the painting
again. “I miss creating art with you. I think that’s when it all died. When we
stopped creating.”
More knocks. He could see me through the door.
“It’s worth ten grand.” I chuckled.
“What?”
“It’s a Lichtenstein. Honestly, I was just glad I
didn’t see any of your pieces there.”
“We never painted together.” She paused. “So you
just took it?”
“I always was a good thief.”
“You were a better writer.”
“Open up. It’s Sheriff Johnston. C’mon, Cynthia. I
know he’s in there.”
I opened the door to Johnston’s well-weathered
mustache, white from both time and the storm. His green eyes evaded the saggy
crags of his wrinkles.
“Time to go, Jamar.”
