“I’ve been thinking,” she said, “which is a stupid thing to say since we’re always thinking. But specifically, I’ve been thinking about you and me. Remember that guy, Mark? I re-did the math. It turns out you’re six times better than him. In fact, when you really crunch the numbers …” She opened the fridge and pulled out a Greek yogurt. “… You top every guy I’ve ever met by a factor of three, minimum.”
“I’m flattered, but you might want to check the math.”
“Nope. I used Excel … it’s all true, Duck. Math—I always hated it, but you can’t fight it. Addition, multiplication; even long division…no matter how I work the numbers, you and I are the answer to one long-ass word problem. It’s all you, Donnie. No one could be more loyal, not even a golden retriever. We don’t have to do anything about it, but I thought you should know.” She peeled back the yogurt lid and grabbed a spoon. “Hungry?”
She stirred the cup, mixing the creamy top layer with its black cherry bottom, skimming the spoon along the rim and holding it up to my lips, the yogurt cool and sweet as the spoon slid against my tongue, Amy’s finger brushing my chin as she plucked away the traces of dribbling black cherry. I swallowed, and Amy licked the spoon before handing it back along with the cup. Now it was her turn—closing her eyes, she waited as I topped off the spoon and brought it to her mouth, her lips parting, her tongue rolling for a quick taste as she licked around the edges, my hand steady, my heart thumping as she nibbled at the cream, her bare knees pressing against my legs. With eyes shut, she leaned closer, licking clean the spoon save for a single white dollop, which, eyes open, she dabbed with her pinkie and brought to my lips. Our noses touched.
“There’s something upstairs,” she said. “I want you to see it.”
Moving through the house, past the wine table and “Fake Plastic Trees,” we climbed the stairs, my eyes pulled toward the shifting tease of her pajama top, our arms extended as she led me to the landing. Down the hall her bedroom waited, the door ajar, the scent of fresh paint suddenly ubiquitous, dizzying and thick.
“I’ve been a busy girl,” she said, guiding me into her room, and I stopped, stunned by what she’d done.
Inside her bedroom she had pushed the furniture to one side; the mattress and box spring, both upright, were propped against the closet door, the bed frame disassembled, the pieces shoved together like a bone pile, leaving the far wall open and clear, the frames pulled from their hooks. A cloth tarp, splattered in swirls, covered half the floor, cans of paint resting on old magazines and the torn-off tops of pizza boxes; a stepladder stood in the center.
A moment passed before I realized what she’d done, but once it clicked, my spine shook.
The far wall had been painted blue, like the ocean on a morning in mid-May, the color pulling you in as if her room had become a diorama. She had captured the look and texture of the water: small, rolling waves in the background; a grainy, sandy beige by the floorboard; white cirrus puffs and the haze of the sun where the wall met the ceiling; and at the bottom, in the dark patch between the sand and the ocean, a set of tiny footprints leading into the blue.
“I started last night with some paint I had in the basement, not really thinking anything, just throwing paint like some bad Abstract Expressionist, you know? But then I saw what it wanted to be, what it needed to be, and then I put on Radiohead, opened some Riesling, and everything just flowed.”
She stared into the blue, saw something missing, then grabbed a brush from the coffee can on the stepladder, adding a blue-green mix in broad arching strokes at center eye-level. The image was uncanny, as if she’d cut through a dimension, the ocean beckoning, Amy’s bedroom wall morphed into Holman Beach itself.
“It’s still not finished … I think …but I wanted you to see it.”
She grabbed a second brush, tinting the blue near the shoreline.
“It’s…overwhelming. I didn’t know you were painting again.”
“I wasn’t, until today. Now I might never stop.”
She kneeled, adding dots to the shoreline near those tiny footprints, her eyes burning with a deep focus, seeing things that weren’t there yet. I knew the look; sometimes, when a scene started working in my head, the edges of the world would fade, and I’d step into the wormhole. She was there, I could feel it—as if the blues and yellows and greens were emanating from her body, coloring the wall like stigmata.
The brush dotted the surface with pinprick black, and she backed away, edging toward the ladder.
“I’ve always been pissed at myself for giving up. You should have encouraged me more, Duck. It didn’t always have to be about you and your plays.”
“I bought you those oil paints for Christmas one year,” I said, the king of lame. But she was right: in high school she’d won prizes too, but they could never compete with the glory of Donatello.
“It’s not your fault. I ignored me, too. It was easier being in your shadow, or being drunk and stoned, or C: all of the above. It’s not like I’m Frida Kahlo or anything. And then when Sarah …” It was still so hard to say. “…when Sarah died, all the good parts shut down. I couldn’t see anything… except that I’d let it happen.”
She set the brush back in the can.
“We let it happen.”
“You couldn’t help it; it’s a medical condition. Remember when we were eight and you fell asleep at the playground on top of that slide? All these kids were on the ladder behind me, waiting
