Intaglio: The Snake and the Coins (36 page)

Cole laughed
again, but this time the sound was bitter. 
Hard
.

“Yeah, but
sometimes it’s too late to matter.”

The older man
shook his head in wordless disagreement, taking a long drag on his
cigarette.  The momentary silence felt comfortable, as if they’d sat on
this step any number of times before.  Cole wasn’t sure he’d
ever
talked
to anyone other than Ava this way.  Finally Oliver blew out a line of
smoke, angling it to the side as he continued.

“So you fucked
up tonight.  So what?  It’s only one time.”

Cole dropped his
gaze. 

“Well…”

“Okay, so it’s
not the
only
time,” Oliver corrected, “but it’s
a time
... a
single
choice
.   It’s not all that you are. There’s something
underneath… pushing you to do it.  So tell me, Cole,” he said, pointing at
him again with the burning cigarette.  “Where’s this all coming
from?  What is it that
really
scares you?”

Again, Cole felt
unbalanced, things coming unmoored around him.   His boat of thoughts
was listing, rudderless.  He took a ragged breath, wondering why it
sounded so much like a sob, then turned to Ava’s father.  Hoping he’d
understand.

“I’m scared
she’s gonna leave,” Cole gasped, “just like everyone else.”

Oliver smiled,
though his eyes – the same bright blue as hers – were sad.

“Ah, now...
that’s
the heart of it,
right there, isn’t it?” 

He reached out,
squeezing Cole’s shoulder, then dropped his hand back to his lap, fiddling with
the nearly empty package of cigarettes.  Cole swallowed hard, wondering if
he was supposed to answer. 
He didn’t think he could
.  His
throat was a painful lump, eyes burning.  Too many emotions churning
inside him to form words.

“Someone else
might tell you she won’t leave,” Oliver began, staring out over the snow below
them, “but that’d be a lie.  I have no idea what Ava will do, and I won’t
pretend I do.  What I
will say
is that you can’t control her
actions, but you can control your own.”  He turned back,  catching
Cole’s eyes.  “So you tell me.  What choices
that you can make for
yourself
will make it easier for her to stay?”

Cole took
another drink of coffee while he thought.  He coughed nervously before he
answered.

“I probably,
uh... I need to learn to deal with my temper."

He glanced back
to Ava’s father, wondering if this was the
right
answer or if he’d just
made things worse by admitting how fucked-up he was. 

“And that came
from...?” Oliver prompted, an eyebrow rising.  There was no judgement in
his expression.  Just benign interest.

Cole closed his
eyes, feeling the press of memories hovering at the edges of who he was. 
He’d been answering questions without thinking for the last hours, and this one
bubbled from his mouth in the same way. 

Unbidden
.

“It comes from
issues I had... issues I
have,
” he corrected thoughtfully.  “Things
to do with my dad in particular.  There was a lot of anger in the house I
grew up in.”

Cole opened his
eyes, catching Oliver watching him.  There were lines incised on his
forehead; the same ones that appeared when he hadn’t known where Ava had been
last night.  He looked older than he had a moment ago.

“You told Ava
about any of this?”

“Not
everything... though she kind of understands it.  I… I don’t want to freak
her out, you know?  My anger kind of... panics her.” Cole responded.

Oliver nodded,
lifting the cigarette to his mouth, and breathing deeply.  He laughed as
he answered, breath making white clouds in the early morning air.

“Yeah,” he said,
“that sounds like Ava... but she’s gotten her head together the last few
years.  She’s been working at that for a long time.  You should talk
to her about it sometime... it might surprise you how much she’ll understand
where you’re coming from.”

There was something
about the sorrow folded into his tone of voice that had Cole sitting up in
concern.  As he listened, Oliver began telling a story, his voice many
years away.

“I got the phone
call from Child Services when I was touring in Berlin. I remember that when I
heard it was a trans-Atlantic call,
I just knew
somehow that something
had happened to my little girl
.
”  He glanced at Cole. “It happens
sometimes like that for me. 
Just knowing...
  when I left on
tour, things had been bad with Ava’s mom.  I never considered that if
they’d been bad for me, they’d be ten times worse for a five-year-old child.”

For a moment,
Oliver stopped, shaking ashes into the coffee can next to him.  His hands
trembled.

“The abuse,”
Cole whispered.

“A teacher saw
the finger-marks,” Oliver continued,  “and thank god she did!  Social
Services got involved.  Things were just...
bad
... that first
while.”

Cole swallowed
hard.  It felt like he
shouldn’t
be hearing this.  That he was
somehow spying on Ava, and the horrors of her childhood.  She’d hinted,
but never told him the full story like this.

“I came home, of
course,” Oliver resumed, “and the whole thing was just a shit-storm.  The
divorce, and then the investigation for neglect.”  He took the cigarette
from his mouth, rubbing his temple.  “Questions of whether or not I
knew
about Shay’s alcoholism.”  He frowned, staring down at the step, his words
growing rough.  “I did, Cole… or
I should have.
  And then
later… when Ava started talking to the therapist, there were questions of abuse. 
I was under the microscope too.  There were all these people asking how I
could have missed the signs... I
should have known...
but I didn’t see,
or I didn’t care... or was just too goddamn wrapped up in my own career to
notice.”

“Shit,” Cole
murmured. He didn’t know what to say.

Oliver took
several slow breaths.  He shook his head, staring out over the snowy
cityscape, lips quivering.

“It, um… it left
Ava with a lot of anger.  More than just,” he turned back to Cole,
gesturing to his cheek, “what a couple of fights would suggest.”

“God,” Cole
muttered, “that must had been terrible for you... for you both.”

Oliver nodded,
putting the cigarette to his lips, breathing it in, eyes narrowing.

“Yeah, it was...
but I made a choice to change it, and when I saw how deep the scars went inside
her, I made a choice to help her get past them.  Ava and me… we worked at
it for a long time
.  Both of us.”
  Oliver cleared his throat,
his eyes moving to Cole, pinning him down.  “You been to counselling about
your family issues yet?”

“N- not yet,”
Cole admitted, suddenly embarrassed.  He’d mentioned it to Ava at his
parents’ place, but he hadn’t even said anything to his father about it.

“You should,”
Oliver said with a wry smile.  “You’d be surprised how helpful it can
be.  Really shows you how everyone is human.  And that’s what this
whole crazy experience,”  he swung his hand,  “is all about.”

Cole stared out
into the early morning lavender bars of the city above the skeletal trees, the
golden light rising up into the sky, the variegated blues of the shadowy
snow.  He was overwhelmed by the admissions which they had traded here on
the metal-grated step.

 “After New
Year’s,” Cole said quietly, “Ava and I are going to start visiting my family
more often.  My stepmom wants me and my dad to work out some of our
issues.”  He winced, the thought looming.  “Ava suggested that my dad
and I go get some help dealing with…
things
.”

Cole glanced up
to see Oliver grinning, the cigarette angled jauntily in the corner of his
mouth.

“Then do it,” he
said.  “Do it for
yourself...
 not for your father, not for
Ava.”

Cole nodded.

“Just work on
myself. 
My issues
,” he repeated, his eyebrows knitting
together.  Things were making more sense today than they had in a long
time.  No obligations... just opportunities.

“You can’t force
people to do what you want,” Oliver added, “and I can’t promise she’ll never
leave you... but you need to make your own choices, Cole, so that Ava can make
hers.” He sighed, crushing the cigarette butt out against the bottom of his
shoe, then adding it to the growing pile in the coffee can. “Nothing’s
predestined.  Absolutely nothing.  Believe me when I say I know that
from experience.”  He ran his hands through his messy hair, linking his
fingers behind his neck and stretching his back with a loud pop.  “Now,”
he said happily, “let’s go pick up Ava, shall we?”

Cole glanced
around in concern.

“You think
she’ll be okay if I show up?”

Oliver grinned,
brushing ashes and snow from his clothes as he stood up from the step.

“If there’s one
thing I know about my daughter, it’s that she’s got a hell of a temper, but if
you can leave her alone long enough to deal with it...
deal with it in her
own way...
then she’s usually pretty reasonable.  Besides which,” he
added with a wink.  “You’re coming as my guest.”

Ava stood at the
canvas, paintbrush in hand, absorbing the impact of the image she’d just
created.  Hatred and shame and the blue-white heat of fury howled in the
brushstrokes.  Blood and pain in every smear of pigment.  Ava lowered
the brush, shaking, to her side, drawing it in…

Her rage made
manifest. 

She’d stormed
into the studio minutes after the fight with Cole, messily power-stapling a
rectangle of fabric to the wall.  No framed canvas and no time to make
one.  The painting wasn’t primed, leaking in places like Frankenthaler’s
work which Ava abhorred.  But it was fitting  in this case...
like
tears or blood
... seeping into oblivion.  The torn edges of the
fabric  hung raggedly, like tattered  sails, paint smearing the edges
and marring the wall beyond.  The image itself was formed out of layered
colours and scribbled text.  Most words were nearly illegible; some of
them were still half visible:
Kip Chambers... Cole Thomas… Choices... Need
to get away from them both... Price of freedom... Always running... Away… away…
away…

In the centre of
the painting loomed Ava herself.  She wore a grey cloak that billowed out
on both sides, hooding her face in the deep cowl.  Bright sunlight cast
her features into deep purple shadows.  Behind her was a swirl of text and
colour.  She dominated the foreground, running toward the viewer, one hand
at her throat, the other pressed against her mouth.  She didn’t know how,
but she was certain that some kind of decision had been made.  That she’d
chosen.  Ava knew (though she hadn’t painted it in) that Cole was the one
she was leaving behind.

‘The fight just
made it easier…’

Ava dropped the
brush into the tin can with a clatter.  She did a slow turn, taking in the
hard angles and messy canvases that formed her studio space.  The room was
drenched in the mid-morning sunlight, and Ava belatedly realized that she’d
painted the entire night away.  Her father would be here soon.  For
the first time in hours, the corners of her lips turned up instead of down and
she let out a relieved sigh. 

She wasn’t
happy… but she was settled.  The darkness of her soul was expunged.

Ava wasn’t sure
how
Oliver did it, but her father always seemed to know when she needed him the
most.  Exhausted now that her anger was obliterated, she headed to the
backroom to clean up in the sink.  A few minutes later, she was back in
the studio, trying ineffectively to lift paint smears out of her good jeans and
shirt with a turpentine-soaked rag. She’d destroyed the outfit in her haste to
paint out her anger.

“Goddamnit!”

The cell phone
rang from its perch on the couch’s arm, and Ava’s eyes flicked over
suspiciously.  Ava grabbed it, checked the caller-I.D.  Though she’d
dealt with her own demons, she wasn’t sure she was ready to deal with Cole’s
yet. 

It was her
father.  Dropping the rag, she flicked her phone on and put it to her ear,
careful not to tangle it with her earring.

“Hey Dad...” Ava
said tiredly, “I was wondering if you’d forgotten about me.”

There was a
chuckle on the other end.

“Nah... just
needed to make sure you had a chance to do your work.”

Ava eyed the wet
canvas.  Paint dripped down the woman’s face –
‘my face…’
– making
it tear-ravaged as well as furious.  Ava’s father called it ‘
work,’
but it really amounted to her emotions, uncontrolled and unbridled.  These
paintings were the explosive moments that took her to unwanted places. 
The ones where
she didn’t fucking CARE
what the consequences were.