by Lauren Silverman
Dead Grandpa sat at that canvas and spilled his heart into it. He bled primary colors all over the brushes and the floor and probably didn’t clean up. Wherever that was, the stains are still there, wherever that was, but all you have left are solid chunks of paint, yellowed and browned because no one realized how much a silly little landscape painting meant to him. It crumbles when you touch it—don’t do that again. You’re going to ruin it.
You are temporarily haunted by ancient turpentine that died seven decades ago, unaware that its soul would be imprinted in some dusty attic ‘til you found it because Auntie shoved it up there years ago. She couldn’t care less about art. She never saw the point. Why work with such awful chemicals for no money, says Auntie, when you can be a doctor and work with such awful chemicals for a nice big house and a Cadillac?
Auntie is probably right, yet here you are, crouched down so you don’t bang your head and fall on Dead Grandpa’s paintings and ruin them, standing up so you don’t accidentally jam your elbow through the crackled canvas. Auntie is probably right. That’s why you’re in medical school and not art school. But there’s something about Dead Grandpa and his rotten old landscape paintings with snot-colored trees and tiny brush hairs stuck in the blobby clouds. Something that makes your mind wander.
The floorboards are made of cold wood and your feet are bare. The paintings are getting older, and so are you.
