Stripped by Laura Beiler

I wipe white across the canvas again, irritated at myself. Why can’t I get this right? It should come from me, from what I am feeling, not me trying to replicate someone else. Yet, here I am layering more white on top of thirteen failed attempts at painting this one canvas.

It’s his fault.

He was the one that gave me this feeling, put me in this situation, caused me to turn to my oils and brush and it is he who keeps me from being able to create.

I feel disgusted.

More than that, I am betrayed, grievous, and hurt beyond measure. How do I put that on a blank canvas?

My deadline is fast approaching and I know that if I don’t get this painting done I will lose out on a large commission. The man who will write the check, shopping for some rich bachelor who I will most likely never meet, he told me, “Paint whatever you feel. My buyer is all about pieces that emote.”

Well what can this buyer know about my feelings?

Can he know how he left, what went down that day that has caused me to only be able to present a white streaked, layered- but void- canvas?

That day two weeks ago was quiet, still. I had awoken and found that another night had passed and I had slept by myself. This has occurred on multiple occasions, increasing with frequency. He was home, at the kitchen table, sipping coffee from the cracked white mug he always drank from. He looked at me, a scowl on that rugged face, his brown hair tussled and brows furrowed thick over dark eyes. If I had not loved him I would have feared him seeing his face like that. As it was my heart sank to see him disapprove of me. Self-consciously I moved my hand over my belly, rubbing it gently and turning away from him.

I reached for the coffee pot, noting he had not set out a mug for me. He used to, but these past two weeks he did not. I reached in the cabinet door above the coffeemaker and grabbed one. Purple. Cracked.  The coffee poured slow and thin.

“I can’t do this anymore,” he grumbled.

I turned to face him, his mug still in hand but empty. He put it down on the table and then I noticed he was dressed.

“Can’t do what?” I asked, nervously. I rubbed my belly again.

He flung his hand wildly in the air, gesturing about us. “This, all of this, I can’t do this anymore.”

A moment of silence, the two of us staring at each other, eyes deadlocked on one another. I think I knew in that moment what he meant but I was willing him to think again, to change his mind or say he was only joking.

“I thought things were better between us,” I spoke low, trying to remain calm, to not wake the kids.

“I thought so too,” he replied, his face never softening. “But the further along you get-“ here he pointed to my belly, and I rubbed it again- “the more I just can’t stand it. I thought  I could love you again, thought I could forget her and move on. I can’t even look at you anymore without feeling disgust, Anna.  You are so wrapped up in the kids and your work and you dote on me instead of telling me what I need, instead of helping me.”

He was right, in a way. Maybe I had been too forgiving, tried too hard. But I wasn’t the one that screwed up in the first place. This was not my fault.

“We have a baby on the way, and two kids upstairs sleeping,” I answered through gritted teeth. “You would give up on them too?”

“I just can’t do this anymore. I don’t want to be this man, this man tied down to all of you, always settling for less, always looking for a way to just make it through. I want my own life, a life worth living, a life I can make the way I finally want it to be, not something I just accepted.” He looked me square in the eye, still not trying to be kind. “I don’t love you anymore Anna. I never think I did, really.”

“Robert,” I whispered. The tears had poured forth now, and I didn’t stop them. “You can’t just leave.”

But he moved on to the front door, and there I saw the bags, the bags he had packed when he was not sleeping next to me last night.

“I don’t care what you think of me, I don’t care about this or what happens next. I’m going to her.” He barely turned his head half-way to speak to me, picking up the bags. He walked out of the door, closing it tightly behind him. The sound of the click of the lock so final. When he closed that door he shattered my heart, slamming the door to my soul and breaking it into a million pieces. Even the baby felt it because she leapt within me, lurching my stomach.

For a week I was inconsolable, my sister coming down to help with the kids, making sure I at least ate. That’s when I got the call from the man for the buyer, the man who came by and saw my wrecked and dirty house and disheveled clothes and chalked it up to the “artist’s way.” He looked out of place in his dapper suit and shined shoes.

Without Robert’s income I knew I needed this job and so I accepted. And here I am, a blank canvas with layer upon layer of incomplete pieces because I just can’t get it right. I put my brush down, look at the white streaks that have almost covered yet another layer of my “emotions.” Worthless.

I take a step back, rubbing my belly. How do I even begin to tell her about him? Will she think it is her fault? The boys certainly don’t understand, and I fail each time I try to talk to them because I don’t understand either.

I hope that other girl was worth it, all that he lost because of her.

I grab the rag and wipe at the canvas. A few layers peel off, the ones that are still wet, and the red and black leak through. I cock my head to the side, then grab the mineral oil and pour it on the rag. Maddeningly I wipe across the canvas, more here, less there, pulling off layers. Purple and yellow -sorrow- peak through, more red- anger- and then more purple. Like a bleeding heart with the veins ripped out along with it the colors emerge in the center of the canvas. Carefully, with more point to it, I wipe the rag on the left and right, expanding outward in small strokes, pulling out the color until blue remains. Tears, not perfect drop shapes, but tears like the ones that poured from my eyes ever so long and fall forth once more.  I spatter orange across the whole of it, masking it somewhat so that any literality is masked, like the veneer I wear as a mask when others ask about him for the hundredth time. Then, with my brush still soiled with the white mingled with the colors of the last layer, I brush out rays of light on either side. Subtle, barely noticeable. Because that is how hope comes; not like a bright shining light exposing and driving out the dark, but like a small candle far off, suggesting a chance for change.

It is a change I need, a hope I need to find. Making my way through the dark of a broken heart and carrying on without him, I don’t think I will find it. But like this art, where I peeled and stripped away the darkness with which he covered my soul, hope shines out.

It makes me sick that the best work I have done is because of him. Because of her. But where I am is because of him, because of love he first gave, and then took back, because of time we had together and now apart. He will always remain in my past, but now hope can be my future.

For once, satisfied, I let go of the brush, and let go of him.