As was becoming more common, he didn’t really want to hear, and he turned his back on the answer. He was at the kitchen sink.
She said, “I think maybe you love the painted version of me more…you paint me better than I really am.”
The sun glittered. “Don’t say that.” He died right then, he was sure of it. The water was grey, sort of overcast. “Don’t ever say that again.”
* * *
—
When the end came, she told him in the garage.
He stood with paintbrush in hand.
Her bags were packed.
He should keep all the paintings.
Her expression apologetic, as he asked his futile questions. Why? Was there someone else? Did the church, the town, the everything mean nothing?
But even then, when fury should have ruled over sense, it was only threads of sadness that hung from the rafters. They blew and swung like cobwebs, so fragile and, ultimately, weightless.
A gallery of Abbeys stood behind them, watching the whole scene:
She laughed, she danced, she absolved him. She ate and drank and spread herself, naked, on the bed; all while the woman in front of him—the unpainted one—explained. There was nothing he could say or do. A minute’s worth of sorries. For all of it.
And his second-last plea was a question.
“Is he waiting out front?”
Abbey closed her eyes.
And the last, like a reflex, was this:
On a stool, by the easel, was The Quarryman, lying facedown, and he reached for it, he held the book out; and for some strange reason she took it. Maybe it was purely so that a boy and a girl could go after it, many years later….They would keep and read and obsess over it, lying on a mattress, in an old forgotten field, in a whole city of forgotten fields—and all of that coming from here.
She took it.
She held it in her hand.
She kissed her fingers and placed those fingers on the cover, and she was so sad, and somehow gallant, and she took it away, and the door blew shut behind her.
* * *
—
And Michael?
From the garage, he heard the engine.
Someone else.
He sagged to the paint-spattered stool and said “No” to the girl around him, and the engine grew louder, then ebbed, then disappeared completely.
For a long time, he sat, he kept quiet and shivery, and without a sound he started to cry. He cried his stray silent tears into the passing face of artworks close by—but then he relented, and laid himself down, curled up, on the floor. And Abbey Dunbar, who wasn’t Abbey Dunbar anymore, watched over him, all night, in all her many forms.
For the next four or five days, father and son fell into a routine. It was a careful, side-by-side partnership, maybe like two boxers in the opening rounds. Neither was willing to take too big a risk, for fear of being knocked out. Michael, especially, was playing it safe. He didn’t want any more of those I-didn’t-come-here-for-you moments. They weren’t good for anyone—or maybe just not for him.
On Saturday, the day Clay missed home the most, they walked down the river, instead of up, and he was tempted at times to talk.