Short Story

(Continued)
 

The difficult part of this painting so far is that I've chosen to use Bonnie Parker's body (which is rounded, fuller-bosomed than Minnow's) in her thirties-style tight sweater and ankle-length skirt, but Minnow's face atop it, the duskiness of Minnow's skin, her shimmering lips, oddly dark next to Clyde's paler, pixie-earred head.

I don't know if this is a problem or not--time and distance will enable me to decide.

To underscore the baser passions at work in this bucolic landscape of buttercups, daisies, verdant hillside, I've elected to insert a cigar between Minnow's lips, though we know Bonnie didn't smoke.

The second painting features Bonnie and Clyde in bed. Since Clyde had intimacy problems, I've represented this painting as a tableau of struggle and surrender, both figures nude, Bonnie straddling Clyde though each of them's wrapped below the waist with a sheet, Bonnie's palms pushing Clyde down against the mattress.

But--because I want to suggest continuous motion, the eye traveling everywhere--Clyde's struggling to throw Bonnie off him, the eye moving fluidly in a circle from Bonnie's downturned head to Clyde's uplifted torso.

Here Minnow, glimpsed in profile, is a color study of red-on-brown, her raisin cheeks flushed to the point of coronary, her breasts an upswaying Bonnie's.

The third painting's a solo snapshot: Bonnie's face--Minnow's--in the coffin. The funeral home's curled her dark hair, arranged it in beautiful sausage curls fluffed away from her cheeks.

Eyes closed, body swathed from the neck down (the bullets shredded her whole body), she looks dainty, pristine, dead and yet still a lady.

And this is the painting I value most, the one I can imagine hanging in our home together after I present it as a surprise to Minnow.


Minnow doesn't come to dinner though the housekeeper, Maria, prepares all her favorites: jambalaya, smoked turkey, snap peas. Dispirited, I can't even pretend that I want to sit at the picture window tonight; I eat much too fast; then, swirling a half-glass of Rose, I wander barefoot around the living room, casting about for something to do that might make me feel better.

Maria's gone now, and, alone, I look at the light patches the moon imprints on the dusty floor, on the little pile of stones--stones I love to play with--on the hearth of thick gray rock.

The Calder piece, I think suddenly.

It always makes me feel better.

The thought doesn't bring me joy but--at least--some modicum of peace.

I meander into the bedroom, snap open my green-velvet jewelry box, rummage through my tangle of rings and necklaces, pull open the dresser drawers, search them one at a time then, moving faster, faster, go through them all again.

It's missing.

The Calder piece is missing.

I close my eyes, concentrate hard, as if listening for something, a footstep, an explanation, words of love that might stir the too silent air.


I feel her climb into bed beside me. Her breath pungent with meat and whiskey and--God knows what--animal blood, enclosing us in a weird privacy of stink. I breathe deeply, try not to gag. Her laugh husky, Greta-Garboish. "And then--" she whispers. I open my eyes, keep them narrowed; she wouldn't know I'm watching as she unpins the Calder piece from her sweater, points the pin toward my belly, angles so carefully she thinks I can't feel a thing.

Alfred always did call me "stoic."

It requires all my will power, though, to keep myself from screaming.


I wake the next morning feeling as if I've suffered through the same nightmare over and over and yet--though it's been running continuously through my mind--the action's hazy, the images chaotic, involving running and cutting and tight skirts binding calves and bullets pausing inches before faces they'd love to blast open to sprays of blood and bone.

I ease out of bed, my nightgown rank-smelling with sweat. I need to bathe today. To comb my hair. One step at a time. I gaze at the opaque window and do nothing, my limp hands resting on the mattress.

When she wanders into my studio, carrying a bottle of scotch, I don't even protest, don't ask where she's been. She's a malicious drunk, I decide--must be, after what happened, but I don't care what transpires now--I want my Calder piece back, damn it, and she's not going to leave till I get it.

I'm wearing my painting smock, standing before Bonnie's face in the casket. I watch Minnow cross the room, inspect each of the other two paintings, the scotch bottle hugged to her chest, her long, slender fingers roaming, lovingly, the neck.

"Bonnie Parker," she says, after awhile.

"Uh-huh," I say, and focus my gaze on the coffin painting.

"I like them," she says finally. "They're different from your other work, but I like them." She uncorks the scotch, takes a swallow.

"Please don't drink around my paintings," I say, hating the tightness in my tone.

"I'm not drinking," she says, lying--it seems--automatic to her now.

"What do you call what you're doing?"

"Trying a new kind of scotch."

"Well," I say, "will you please stop 'trying things' around my paintings."

To my surprise, she nods quickly, smiles.

Looking down at my paint-splattered sneakers, I whisper, "I don't care where you've been. What you've been doing. But I do want that Calder piece back. Today."

"What Calder piece?" she asks me, so surprised I'm taken aback.

"The one you used to cut me last night."

"Somebody cut you, Georgie?" Minnow asks, and I feel nearly faint; finally I say, "I have to go lie down" and brush past her outstretched arms, her too obvious expressions of concern.


At midnight, a full moon; I blink, pass my fingers over my eyes, wishing they were stitched with the spider-fine thread used at funeral parlors, listening for breath sounds; but there's nothing. Smiling, I toss back the blankets, rise quickly from bed, so quickly that--once again--I'm lightheaded, though that could be excitement, I think, or anticipation: I pad barefoot into the bathroom down the hall, rummage through the medicine cabinet, pull out the Lithium a doctor prescribed once for my depression, a topical ointment for arthritis, locate, finally, a half-used bottle of codeine I took when I had a kidney stone once.

In case the tablets are out of date, I decide to take two.

Then three.

Then four.

Hell, I think, reading the bottle. I hope this doesn't kill me.

I chase all four tablets with a glass of water, a rapid head-toss, stride back to bed, huddle beneath the covers, and wait.

Because I'm strong enough to do anything, I decide.

To expect pain. To meet it head-on.

To survive it.

Foolish woman, I think, and drift back into sleep.


Cramps in my stomach, as if I were miscarrying. I slide out of bed, dash for the bathroom, pull my hair away from my face, vomit into the toilet.

When I'm emptied out, numb, I lean back against the wall, my white nightgown tucked up around me, my bare bottom cold against the linoleum, my private parts.

And then, I ache. In my belly. Legs. Feet. I conjure myself posing against a tree, envision holes.

I don't want to look at the damage, I decide--I won't be ready for hours, maybe, to face it.

And if I was conscious for part of it--for seconds, even--what does that mean?

Is blood stronger than love?

I don't know. Hell--I just don't know. I've always been an idiot about such things, it's true. Always hated sex, the primordial inside every human, never dreaming that I--with my very existence--might lure it forth.

And I don't even know if I dreamed what I heard. The "Why did you, why did you," like an animal as she wielded the pin, the one Calder designed especially for me, the one he designed to celebrate who I am.

An American icon, right?

A woman on paper.

A woman without flesh.

But the paintings. The paintings. I have to see them. To touch them. To reassure myself of--what?

That I can withstand the loneliness, the void her absence will create?

I rush down the hall. Throw open the door. Above, clouds thrashing like sheep giving birth, that twisted whiteness everywhere.

I shield my eyes, peer straight up then stare at the paintings for a second before registering them, all the Minnows gazing quietly back, each figure punched full of holes, hundreds of tiny eyes glowing like the eyes I never even knew I painted on a strand of yellow weed that made me as joyful as I made Minnow once, before she refused to look at me anymore.

And, tacked to each painting, a note--her note: To help you see me better, Georgie, before you die.

§ § §

Terri Brown-Davidson's poetry and fiction have appeared in more than 650 journals, including TriQuarterly, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Denver Quarterly, and Hayden's Ferry Review. She was one of the featured poets in the anthology TriQuarterly New Writers (1996). She has received 35 national writing awards, scholarships, or fellowships, including the AWP Intro Award and a Yaddo residency fellowship. She holds the M.A., M.F.A., and Ph.D. in English and creative writing.

She can be reached at: tbd@idavidson.com

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