Richard brought a painting home. It was a painting of a man holding an umbrella. Or, he wasn’t holding an umbrella. It was a painting of several men falling from the sky like drops of rain. None of those men had an umbrella. I asked him what the painting was going on about.
“What do you mean?” he said.
I looked at him and then at the print that he was fastening to our living room wall. “What do you mean what do I mean?”
“I’m not sure I understand your question.” He flinched as he lifted the framed image into place. His arms were strong, deliberate.
He left it there just like that. I had to look at it every single day. I hated everything about that fucking painting. And the worst part was that I couldn’t exactly understand what he liked about it. He was suddenly choosing to be immersed in something completely foreign to me.
A few days later, at a second-hand shop, he found another print. This one did have an umbrella in it, of that I’m sure.
“What’s this one about?” I asked him. You see, I wanted to know why in the world this man I had known for fourteen years of my life was interested in this painting. I thought this natural curiosity might bring us closer, might help me learn something about him and maybe endear him to me. But he seemed put off by the whole thing.
“What do you mean?” he said, smiling at the painting in his arms. “Look at that…”
For a second, just a second, I thought he had been speaking to me, so I looked at the painting. I saw a man with an umbrella covering his face. I saw nothing. I felt as if his interest was some secret I wasn’t in on. I realized he was not speaking to me, but to himself. Or to the painting, I’m not sure. Even though I now knew he was not talking to me, I said, “Look at what?”
“Hmm?” He turned his body towards mine, tucking the print carefully under his arm. “What’s that?”
I sighed and looked around, finding a nice, framed painting of a bouquet of white roses. “How about this?” I said, pointing. “Quite nice, right?”
“Mm, very nice. Roses for my dear Rose.” He winked and peered around for the register. I couldn’t help feeling insulted. My name, Rose, was as ordinary as this painting, I guess. I was reminded of The Devil Wears Prada. “Flowers in spring,” Meryl Streep said sarcastically, pursing her lips. “Revolutionary.” I made a note to rewatch it, but never got to it in time. A shame.
Christmas came a few months later. I bought Richard a black umbrella with a brown, bamboo-like handle. One with a sturdy curve at the end. You could easily beat someone with this umbrella if they were to attack you. Of course, if. Anyway, that morning we sat in front of our Christmas tree, just the two of us. Richard stared at the still-wrapped gift in front of him and said, “Wonder what this is!”
I wasn’t sure if he was joking or if he could tell it was an umbrella. My horrible wrapping job made the whole ordeal a bit ambiguous. I remember he had been ignoring me the day I bought that umbrella. He’d been reading about those paintings, and sent me away with a dismissive wave.
The umbrella cost me about ten dollars at the same second-hand shop he had found that hideous painting. I thought it would be nice, you know, because Richard had become kind of obsessed with this painting. He would stand and stare at it for hours sometimes. I’d caught him staring at it from the dining table when we sat to have our typical dinner of chicken and salad. He even had it as his lock screen for fuck’s sake, which used to show a photo of him and I in the Maldives.
But then the accident, the accident and then, of course, he cleaned it up for me as if nothing. He did it so well. And then I… Well, I didn’t come apart at all. It was as if nothing happened. Same with him, you know. But this painting was opening up a kind of chasm between us. Suddenly he was sleeping on the pullout sofa. Suddenly he was gripping my hand tighter when we crossed the street or saw a police car, or when I carved the turkey on Thanksgiving. A drama queen, I’d say to myself, that was my Richard. A truly dramatic man. I just felt like this gift would close up that chasm just a bit. Maybe act as a small bridge.
He opened the gift carefully and with the attention to detail that I always admired in him. I used birthday-themed wrapping paper that I would be sure to reuse in the future. He looked at it and ran a hand over his white hair, his eyes squinting, perplexed. His chubby fingers caught momentarily on the curls.
“What does that mean?” I said, pointing at his face.
His eyes floated down to mine. “What do you mean?”
“That expression. Don’t you get it?” My laugh sounded like a slowly deflating balloon.
He turned his head to the side, looking at the umbrella. He held it up, spinning it from its handle, around and around until it looked like a blur.
“Okay,” he said simply. “Sure.” His lips tightened. “I’m sure this’ll be useful in the springtime. Thank you.” He kissed my forehead. “Yes.”
He put down the umbrella.
“Well don’t you love it? It’s like the one from your painting!” I pointed to the painting on the wall, just above the couch where we sat.
He stared up. “Which umbrella?”
“No, I—” I looked up. The men were falling from the sky in tidy specks. “Not this painting, that one!” I pointed to the much smaller print that occupied the entranceway, blood storming inside my head.
He looked at me, then into the hallway. “Oh!” He said, “Clever, yes, I see now.” And he patted my knee reassuringly, the brown of his eyes dry and secretive. “Thank you so much, Rose. Really. I do love it.”
“Do you?” I stared with desperation into his eyes. “Really?”
He nodded, his smile drawing a neat line across his smooth, unfamiliar face. “I do.”
We ended the night watching television and not looking at each other. I couldn’t stand the sight of his hand on my thigh, and his hollow, intentional laughter that melted into the sitcom’s laughter reel. Eventually, when we went to sleep, I dreamt of myself gnawing at the edge of that umbrella, until all that was left was a sharp, splintered edge. When I woke up the next morning, my jaw felt sore and clicked when I opened my mouth to eat my gray oatmeal.
When I had told Richard about the accident, what I’d done, how badly I’d messed up, he was so pale about the whole thing. I mean physically because he was just at that age when his melanin was beginning to break down but also in all other aspects. He just became so drained. He attended to the details, he wiped it all clean. He was always meticulous. Until finally that painting came into his life. He seemed like someone else. Someone with purpose. He had some sense of passion again, some colouring to him. Maybe he was afraid of me, of what I could do. Or it was a required commitment, duty. No matter what, he was going to see me through. Both were horrible.
Richard’s birthday came just a few months later. I stood in the kitchen, wiping down every surface and thinking about the takeout I’d ordered. By this point, the house was filled with replicas he made of the painting. He’d experiment with his impressions, sometimes using only his thumb to mimic the shapes abstractly, other times collaging magazine cutouts onto frames smudged with charcoal pencil. Everything in our place was overwhelmed with these images. I could barely handle it, but if this was what I had to endure, so be it.
When the food arrived, I stacked up the plates and utensils nicely. No one was coming since we had no friends. We lost contact with people easily. Perhaps others felt comfortable accepting our newfound aloofness—like we’d done them a favour. Regardless, I prepared an impressive setup and even put extra napkins at the table. Richard was due from the store any minute, so I made sure his place at the table was immaculate.
Then I heard the key fumbling in the lock, twisting and crunching with urgency.
“Oh, must be stuck! Just a minute!” I put down the plate of fried rice on the table and rushed to the door. “Just a minute, Rich!”
I opened the door. There, Richard, drenched. “Oh, was it raining? I didn’t realize…” One day the blinds had been drawn in our home and we just never opened them again. “I didn’t realize it was raining.”
“Mmm.” Richard trudged into the space, his lapel pressed and darkened by the weight of the rain. “It’s nothing.” He looked mangled in a way, like he’d caught more than just the rain. Or perhaps something had caught him.
“Okay.” I looked cautiously at him. “Are you okay?”
He nodded but seemed to be searching for something.
I followed his eyes to where the umbrella leaned, lopsided against a wall, having never been used. Richard took two long strides toward it. Something about him looked unreal, as if cut out and pasted into the home he stood in. Our home.
“Richard…”
“It’s nothing, Rose, really,” he said. He reached down and took the umbrella in both hands, surveying it with an indescribable conviction. And then, both hands on the curve of the handle, water dripping from every hem of him, he held the umbrella over his head, and ran toward the television.
“Richard!”
Richard stabbed at the painting over and over. The umbrella didn’t bend or break with the action. It was barely affected in the way that old things are made to sustain. I stared at Richard. The reflection of his figure curved in the surface of our vases, our television, the acrylic surface of our bookshelf. His face looked determined.
Then, as if stepping out of the whirling wind and into the eye of a storm, it all stopped. Richard looked at me, and I looked at him. I could see in his eyes my own face reaching toward me. I could see in his face what was mine. And suddenly we were both laughing, not hollow laughs but laughter of two people who shared a similar relief. A renewed purpose. Richard. I could laugh with him forever in our shared bubble. I could watch him break a thousand stupid, pointless paintings.
But Richard, my Richard, did something that he should have done a long time ago. And now, now the story reaches you from somewhere far away. And he is far away, too.
Sometimes I dream about Rich, and we’re always back to that moment of peace. I can’t remember anything about us before I told him what I’d done, and I don’t want to. Because it led us to that moment. That darling moment with the house filled with all the warm smells, and the wet, muddied path he left from the door to the painting, and to his final destination: me. And finally, deliciously, the painting in tatters. Blue and black confetti. The immaculate umbrella hanging from the crook of his elbow like nothing had even happened.
