Except for the scratch of the pencil on paper, the room is quiet. Outside, five floors down, the ocean waves hiss and burst.
For lunch, Paulette brings up more food Misty doesn't eat. Already the leg cast feels loose from all the weight she's lost. Too much solid food would mean a trip to the toilet. It would mean a break in her work. Almost no white is left on the cast, Tabbi has covered it with so many flowers and birds. The fabric of her smock is stiff with slopped paint. Stiff and sticking to her arms and breasts. Her hands are crusted with dried paint. Poisoned.
Her shoulders ache and pop, and her wrist grinds inside. Her fingers are numb around a charcoal pencil. Her neck spasms, cramping up along each side of her spine. Her neck feels the way Peter's neck looks, arched back and touching his butt. Her wrists feel the way Peter's look, twisted and knotted.
Her eyes taped shut, her face is relaxed so it won't fight the two strips of masking tape that run from her forehead down across each eye, down her cheeks to her jaw, then down to her neck. The tape keeps the orbicularis oculi muscle around her eye, the zygomatic major at the corner of her mouth, it keeps all her facial muscles relaxed. With the tape, Misty can open her lips just a sliver. She can only talk in a whisper.
Tabbi puts a drinking straw in her mouth and Misty sucks some water. Tabbi's voice says, “No matter what happens, Granmy says you have to keep doing your art.”
Tabbi wipes around her mother's mouth, saying, “I need to go pretty soon.” She says, “Please don't stop, no matter how much you miss me.” She says, “Do you promise?”
And still working, Misty whispers, “Yes.”
“No matter how long I'm gone?” Tabbi says.
And Misty whispers, “I promise.”
August 5
BEING TIRED doesn't make you done. Being hungry or sore doesn't either. Needing to pee doesn't have to stop you. A picture is done when the pencil and paint are done. The telephone doesn't interrupt. Nothing else gets your attention. While the inspiration comes, you keep going.
All day Misty's working blind, and then the pencil stops and she waits for Tabbi to take the picture and give her a blank sheet of paper. Then nothing happens.
And Misty says, “Tabbi?”
This morning, Tabbi pinned a big cluster brooch of green and red glass to her mother's smock. Then Tabbi stood still as Misty put the shimmering necklace of fat pink rhinestones around her daughter's neck. A statue. In the sunlight from the window, they sparkled bright as forget-me-nots and all the other flowers Tabbi has missed this summer. Then Tabbi taped her mother's eyes shut. That was the last time Misty saw her.
Again, Misty says, “Tabbi honey?”
And there's no sound, nothing. Just the hiss and burst of each wave on the beach. With her fingers spread, Misty reaches out and feels the air around her. For the first time in days, she's been left alone.
The two strips of masking tape, they each start at her hairline and run down across her eyes to curve under her jaw. With the thumb and forefinger of each hand, Misty pinches the tape at the top and pulls each strip off, slow, until they both peel away. Her eyes flutter open. The sunlight is too bright for her to focus. The picture on the easel is blurred for a minute while her eyes adjust.
The pencil lines come into focus, black against the white paper.
It's a drawing of the ocean, just offshore from the beach. Something floating. A person floating facedown in the water, a young girl with her long black hair spread out around her on the water.
Her father's black hair.
Your black hair.
Everything is a self-portrait.
Everything is a diary.
Outside the window, down on the beach, a mob of people wait at the edge of the water. Two people wade toward shore, carrying something between them. Something shiny flashes bright pink in the sunlight.
A rhinestone. A necklace. It's Tabbi they have by the ankles and under the arms, her hair hanging straight and wet into the waves that hiss and burst on the beach.
The crowd steps back.
And loud footsteps come down the hallway outside the bedroom door. A voice in the hallway says, “I have it ready.”
Two people carry Tabbi up the beach toward the hotel porch.
The lock on the bedroom door, it goes click, and the door swings open, and Grace is there with Dr. Touchet. Flashing bright in his hand is a dripping hypodermic needle.
And Misty tries to stand, her leg cast dragging behind her. Her ball and chain.
The doctor rushes forward.
And Misty says, “It's Tabbi. Something's wrong.” Misty says, “On the beach. I've got to get down there.”
The cast tips and its weight pulls her to the floor. The easel crashing over beside her, the glass jar of murky rinse water, it's broken all around them. Grace comes to kneel, to take her arm. The catheter's pulled out of the bag and you can smell her piss leaking out on the rug. Grace is rolling up the sleeve on her smock.
Your old blue work shirt. Stiff with dried paint.
“You can't go down there in this state,” the doctor says. He's holding the syringe and taps the air bubbles to the top, saying, “Really, Misty, there's nothing you can do.”
Grace forces Misty's arm straight out, and the doctor drives in the needle.
Can you feel this?
Grace holds her by both arms, pinning her down. The brooch of fake rubies has come open and
