What We Hold In Our Hands (6 page)

Braden was in bed, reading his favourite book—
Green Eggs and Ham
. His fine brown hair had been cut short and straight across his forehead by André's barber. The soft down on his cheeks and nose glowed in the lamplight, which cast his shadow, large and diffuse, onto the opposite wall.

“Daddy!” He put down his book. “Hot chocolate!”

André set Braden's mug onto the bedside table. “Where's Bridget?”

“In her room. She got a phone call.”

Long distance no doubt. Better not be collect. Bridget had dozens of long-winded friends and relatives in New Brunswick, where she'd grown up and lived until just a few months ago.

“No marshmallows?” Braden asked, showing André his sad face, lower lip pushed out, hound dog eyes.

“Not tonight. How was school?”

“We made poppies for Remember Day, to remember the soldiers who died. Mrs. Skinner put my poppy on the wall.”

“Good.” André sipped his cocoa, thinking of his high school art teacher, Mrs. Flynn, how she'd praised him, misleading him to believe he could be an artist. Now, with Barry's terse encouragement, he was trying to paint again. Liz would laugh at him if she found out. She used to call watercolours old-lady paintings.

“What about Winslow Homer?” he'd asked her. “What about Sargent? Their watercolours are more artful than those blobs of paint on a canvas you love so much.”

“They were both old ladies,” she'd replied with that tenderly mocking smile of hers.

Would she call him an old lady too? Would she call Katya an old lady? Katya's paintings made Barry's eyes light up. Liz did used to say that André was old-fashioned. When they were dating, she had seemed to like that about him, liked how he'd worn a tie when he took her out to dinner, and opened the car door for her. But sometime during their marriage, it had become a deficit, a sticking point.

Braden said, “We're singing a song for Remember Day in the gym. Can you and Mommy come watch me?”

“Sorry, Bradie, I have to work.”

“Can you ask Mommy?”

“I guess so.” A brief spasm shot through his chest, a mere twinge of what he'd feel if he phoned Liz. Even if he called her, she might not show up, too busy with her new job in acquisitions, paying ridiculous sums of money for paintings that looked like nothing at all. There'd been a picture of one in the paper yesterday—a plain blue canvas with a snaking yellow line. The brashness of it had made his eyes itch. Katya's paintings had an abstract quality, but they always suggested something real.

He grabbed hold of Braden's hand, gently squeezing it. “I wish I could be there to hear your class sing.”

“That's okay. Mommy will come.”

“She may be busy.” She didn't see enough of Braden, but the little she did was too much for André. He begrudged her any part of the comforting burden of their son's love.

“Goodnight.” He kissed Braden's forehead, and turned off the light.

With the dark came panic like a rush of water into his lungs. He had to breathe slowly and deeply to make it recede. Tomorrow he'd talk to Liz. Right now he wanted to fall into bed and forget. He heard the kettle hiss. Bridget was off the phone, making herself a hot drink. He'd tell her she had to smarten up if she wanted to stay. But when he entered the kitchen, she was washing the dishes.

“Do you want some tea?” she asked, her face flushed and smiling, as if she'd been on the phone with a boyfriend.

“No thanks. Braden and I had hot chocolate.”

Even the back of her neck where it met her shoulders was pink. He remembered kissing Liz in that exact spot while she stood stirring cake batter. He'd felt her muscles move under his lips as she leaned back against him.

Bridget was wearing a
T
-shirt and flannel pyjama pants. He wanted to stand close behind her, to lift the
T
-shirt off over her head. But she was nineteen, exactly half his age, and Braden's nanny. He felt nauseous with fatigue and confusion. If only he'd worked up the nerve to ask Katya out.

“Goodnight.” He headed for the stairs, rubbing his neck.

André didn't mind the morning drive. He listened to the all-news channel, and reviewed his schedule for the day. But his drive home that night killed him. As his Jeep crawled along the highway, his bones aching, he kicked the day around in his head. There'd been a client's complaints, a hint from the senior partner that he wasn't clocking enough hours, a co-worker's snide remark about his choice of tie: “Wife pick that one out for you, Andy?” Had that been deliberate cruelty? Did the man realize that André no longer had a wife?

“You hate it there,” Liz would have told him. “When are you going to start your own practice like you're always saying?” He'd put off phoning her all day. He'd have to call tonight. After dinner. He hoped Bridget had remembered to cook the fresh salmon he'd bought at the market.

When he opened the door, Bridget was sprawled across the sofa, reading a novel, while Braden sat inches from the blaring television. He wondered what Katya was doing right now, tried to picture her relaxing after work in soft, old jeans like the ones Liz used to wear, but he couldn't envision her surroundings, and realized he knew nothing about her life outside of class.

“Turn that thing down,” he yelled.

Bridget reached for the remote.

“What have you done about dinner?” He removed his glasses, rubbing his eyes.

“It's fish sticks and French fries,” Bridget said without looking at him. “Yours is in the oven. Braden and I have already eaten.”

“What happened to the salmon I brought home yesterday?”

“I'll make it tomorrow.”

“It won't be fresh tomorrow. That fish cost me twenty bucks.”

“D'you want me to cook it now?” She stood up, hands on hips.

“You can do it in the microwave with teriyaki sauce. It'll take five minutes.”

“So why don't you make it yourself?”

“Why don't I do everything myself? Because I pay you to help me do the things I don't have the time or energy for.”

“Well, I want a raise.” She glared at him, challenging him like a teenage girl standing up to her father. With her clear, blue-grey eyes, pink and white skin, and the freckles scattered across her nose, she could have been Braden's sister. “If you want me to do all this fancy cooking, I want a raise.”

“We'll talk about it later,” he said, suddenly exhausted. “Just cook the salmon and make a salad while I change.”

Bridget stomped into the kitchen.

Braden continued watching television. André wondered how many times his son had had to do this very thing—enter that other reality in order to tune out his parents' fighting. He wished he could crawl in there with him. Often he too sought refuge in television, the Internet, or one of the other distractions life offered with such apparent generosity—work, drink, anger. Painting was different. He'd followed it like any other escape route away from himself, from the memory of Liz saying that all he was to her was a big mistake, but every week it led him right back to that cracked place inside.

When André came downstairs, Bridget was fixing a salad. “Since I'm making salad for you, I might as well make some for myself. I need to eat more healthy. You've got so much junk food around here.”

“You don't have to eat the junk food. The chips and cookies are treats for Braden, not for you to stuff your face all day.”

She slit her eyes at him.

“You should be more respectful. If I was this rude to my boss, she'd fire me in a second.”

“So why don't you fire me?” She tilted her head, and a hint of a smile crossed her face, as if she guessed why, as if she wasn't really angry.

“If you don't smarten up…” He couldn't finish his sentence. He didn't want to fire Bridget. He wanted to kiss her.

“I do my job,” she said. “Braden likes me. I take good care of him. I don't see why I have to uphold your bourgeois standards and fancy foods.”

“Because that's what I pay you to do.” His skin tingled with something like happiness. “I pay you to uphold my bourgeois standards, and take care of my bourgeois child.” Arguing with Bridget felt fun and bracing like a game, not like fights with Liz, which had left him feeling damaged and desolate. “And I pay you to help me create a comfortable, nurturing environment for him so that his mother doesn't have a leg to stand on if she tries to get custody.”

“Will she try?” Bridget looked down at the rings of red pepper she'd just sliced on the cutting board, her splendid anger dissolved into sympathy.

He shouldn't have mentioned Liz, or even thought about her. “She doesn't seem to know what she wants.”

“She hardly ever comes to see him.” Bridget dumped the pepper rings into the salad. “It looks like you're safe.”

“It's not safety I want.”

The next day, he came home to a clean house and a pot of homemade chili.

“Have you thought about that raise?” Bridget asked, while the three sat eating.

“This is good.” Braden smiled conspiratorially at Bridget.

“Thanks. It's my father's recipe.”

“Okay,” André said, “but you have to keep this up.”

“Keep what up?” she asked, wide-eyed.

“You know what. The cleaning and cooking, the stuff you're paid to do.”

“Whatever.” The kitchen light seemed to shine right through her skin, making it as translucent as one of Barry's washes.

André watched the corners of her eyes and mouth turn up into a private, self-congratulatory smile, the kind of smile he'd sometimes caught on Liz's face in the middle of breakfast, or when she kicked off her heels after coming home late from work. He'd never seen Katya smile like that. She grinned openly or not at all.

“Is Mommy coming to my assembly?” Braden asked.

“I'm going to call her tonight.”

The last time they'd spoken, he'd found himself yelling into the phone. She'd picked up Braden from school without telling André first.

“This yelling is the reason I didn't call you,” she'd said. “I'd like to see Braden more often, but I hate having to go through you all the time.”

“You should have thought of that before you left.”

“You know this isn't working, André.”

“Braden and I are fine.”

“He needs his mother.”

“You think we can't function without you, that we spend our time moping around the house, but you're wrong. We're both fine. So why don't you just leave us alone.”

“My lawyer is going to call,” she'd warned. But so far, he hadn't heard.

Thursday, Katya was early. She set her paints beside André's. “I didn't want to miss the demo.”

“It's a still life.”

She wrinkled her nose. “I prefer a good landscape.”

“Still life's okay. Maybe I can get it right this time.”

“It's not about right. When are you going to learn that?”

“It's all about getting it right,” he said. “Sometimes the gods smile but most of the time they don't.”

Miriam turned in her chair to look at him. “You have it all wrong,” she said. “The gods can't smile unless you do.”

André frowned. He suspected the women of mocking him.

“You don't smile much, do you?” Katya laughed.

He resolved to work up a smile for her.

Barry was composing the still life—one half of a watermelon lay on its cut side like a dark green hill, the other, sliced into wedges, revealed its red flesh and black seeds. He placed one wedge in front of the melon hill and one behind, then added a spray of purple leaves to partially conceal the bulk of the fruit.

“Okay,” he said. “I'm going to start with a sketch.” He roughed in the melon pieces and the leaves with a soft pencil. “I like that composition. It makes a nice negative shape of the background. I'm going to have a small dark—the leaves and the dark stripes on the melon rind.” He shaded them heavily. “A large mid-tone—the melons and the cast shadow. And a medium-sized light—the background and the reflections on the fruit. You might choose to make the background larger and have a medium-sized mid-tone, but this is the way I'm doing it.”

André thought he'd do it that way too. He'd yet to see one of Barry's paintings go awry. He watched in the overhanging mirror while Barry put paint to paper, and, without any apparent thought or effort, conjured bright images.

Eager to begin, he followed Barry's lead, and let his painting take shape under his brush, exploring the curve of the melon rind and the vibrancy of its flesh where crimson blended into rose madder. He remembered to leave triangles and squares of white paper for the highlights. He forgot about himself, forgot about Katya sitting beside him, the other students bent over their paintings, and Barry making his rounds, until the teacher stood behind him.