Page 44 of Room 13: Bred By the Bears

He held up the one picture that I had of a fully formed painting. The last one I did. The one that set Jason off.

“That piece was the proverbial nail in the coffin. It was calledgoodbye. Jason took one look at the picture and just started going bonkers, telling me that the painting was going too far. That it had become my crutch. The only thing I loved or paid attention to. The fight got ugly, and he started throwing my paintings over our balcony.”

It was so strange I could talk about Jason and losing my art with a sort of tired detachment, but not what caused the divorce.

“Do you miss it?” Ryker asked, handing me back my phone.

“Miss what?”

“Painting. The sense of life that courses through you when you create. Seeing the world through the eyes of an artist and desperate to rush home to capture it. The rush of completion when your critical eye finally decides something is done and it’s time for the world to see it.”

“I think that piece of me died that day. Because not only do I not miss it, but just thinking about picking up a paintbrush makes me ill. And angry.”

* * *

The driveto the house in Bogue Chitto meandered around safer topics after such heavy topics. Chantilly’s date with Herman Littleton, and the two follow up dates they’d had. He apparently quite enjoyed her bossy nature, alot. Though it still pickled her that her father was the one to fix them up.

“Do you have parents?” he asked as he pulled into the driveway and cut the engine.

“I do. They moved north after Katrina. And well, we don’t speak a whole lot. There are a lot of choices I’ve made they don’t agree with. Starting with going easy for college, majoring in painting, meeting, and marrying Jason, divorcing Jason, and going into business for myself as an interior designer. They think I’m ‘hitting up their friends’ to fund my ‘bohemian lifestyle.’”

“That’s ridiculous.” Ryker took hold of my hand, leading me around the back of the house to a sort of maze filled with sculptures.

“No, what’s ridiculous is that they think I’m a cursed child. I was born on the thirteenth, during a full moon apparently, and some other superstitious BS. Anything that goes wrong in my life, or whenever I act in a manner they don’t approve of, it’s because I’m the cursed child.”

He took me through the gardens, showing me his early pieces that he said were “terrible,” but I saw absolutely nothing wrong with them. There were so many varying works but each one you could feel the emotions Ryker felt when he created them.

“When you first met me, you told me your favorite piece of mine was calledWindow.That you felt the longing in that piece. I had a professor in college. Dr. Shaw. Because of him, I nearly got dismissed from RISD. He said that my work showed talent, but it was dishonest. These,” he waved to the statues behind him, “were flat, and told the viewer what I wanted them to see, instead of inviting them to see what I didn’t want to show.

“I was absolutely panicked. Not only did I not want to get kicked out of school, but I wanted to know how to fix what he thought was broken with me. With my art. And he told me to create a piece that broke my heart. To put into the universe, as art, the moment I felt changed my view of the world.”

His voice had gone soft. He’d lead me up the backstairs to the patio where it looked like Armel and Obi were in the beginning stages of setting out dinner for all of us.

“Windowis about my life in foster care. Always staring out that window, either watching the caseworker after dropping me off, or waiting for someone to come and claim me.”

Obi slid the glass door open and poked his head out. “Y’all want anything to drink?”

“What do you say, Sweet Thing? How does a glass of wine sound?”

Obi stepped out with a decanter and four glasses setting them on the table before filling each glass.

“I think I was about nine when I went to Leon’s house.”

“Oh, shit.” Obi looked over his shoulder as if trying to decide how to make a fast get away.

“You can stay. It’s not like you’ve never heard it.” Ryker waved at the chair across from him, which Obi flopped in to.

“Leon was a drunk. I have no idea how the state allowed him to be a foster parent. But they did, and my number came up.”

His voice was detached as if reciting the preamble to the constitution and he just needed to get it all out fast while he still remembered.

“There was a single television for the eight of us he and his wife cared for. When I was there, we were five girls and three boys, and it was always a race home from school to see which of us would control the thirty minutes of television we got to watch before Leon came home from work.

“The boys were laying on our stomachs in front of the TV as kids do, yelling over our shoulders at the girls, because we got to watchRescue Rangersinstead of whatever girl show they were screaming and begging us to watch.

“The fight escalated to shouting and screaming at each other, as it does with kids. Apparently Leon had come home early from work. And we woke him up with our fighting and stomping and door slamming. He kicked me, hard. Telling me to shut the hell up and let the girls have the TV. Except he missed my ass, which he swore he was aiming for, and got me in the testicles. They tried to downplay it. Like it was just a minor bruise, and an ice pack would make it feel better in the morning.”

I felt nauseous. Sick to my stomach that anyone could treat a kid like that. I wanted to throw myself into his lap and provide comfort, but his peaked cheeks and stony expression was a billboard, I thought, for letting him be until the story unspooled.

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