Page 72 of All That We Are Together

“Okay.” I shrugged. It’s not like I had anything else to do that afternoon, and I didn’t want to be by myself. “Douglas isn’t here either?”

“Yeah, he’s in the studio. Go up and see him. I’ll bring you your juice.”

I climbed the stairs two by two to the second floor. The notes of “I Will” guided me to his studio, and when I got there, I looked around with fascination. Douglas was humming the song with a brush in his hand while Leah danced around him. I gawked until he realized I was there.

“Hey, son! Come here.”

He stopped the music and smiled at me.

I walked in. I’d been there before, but usually with Oliver, and I hadn’t paid much attention to the colorful paintings placed all around the room. Only once, years ago, had I really noticed one, that picture of Douglas’s with the beetles sliced open and filled with daisies.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“What’s it look like?”

“I mean, because the music is so loud.”

“Music is inspiration, Axel.” He put the same song on again and pinned me with his eyes while he took from Leah’s hands a brush that had fallen to the ground. “Didn’t I ever tell you how I realized I was in love with Rose?”

I shook my head, a little embarrassed that Douglas was talking to me so openly about that subject. At that age, a stolen kiss from a classmate on the walk home from school was enough, and the wordlovestruck me as silly.

“It was simple. I was on the boardwalk with some friends, and I saw her in the distance. She was skating, her hair was disheveled, she looked wild. As she came closer, I heard the notes of this song in my head, and then I heard the words. All of it. I was hearing myself fall in love with her.”

“No way.”

“I’m serious,” he said. “I swear.”

“Then what?”

“Then I spent weeks looking around for her.”

“She must have thought you were nuts.”

He smiled and put the song on again. I watched him mix two swatches of paint on a palette full of color, and as the minutes passed and neither of us said a word, I sat on the ground, my back leaning against the wall to observe him painting. Leah started dancing around again to that song. Then she got tired and came over to me.

She was three, but she was still using a pacifier sometimes, and that day she had it with her. Her wavy blond hair brushed her shoulders; her cheeks were rosy. I let her sit in my lap. I usually never paid much attention to her; at that age all I cared about was hanging out with Oliver and getting into trouble, or watching the surfers all afternoon and trying to do like them, or looking at the girls’ butts in their tiny bikinis.

But that afternoon, I had everything I needed.

It was relaxing to watch Douglas move his hand and drag the brush across the white canvas, filling it with color. I looked away from him when Leah gurgled and I saw she’d fallen asleep in my arms with her ladybug pacifier still in her mouth.

“Here, let me take her off your hands.”

Douglas picked her up to go lay her down. When he came back, I was standing up, ready to go, but I lingered a moment to look at the painting.

“Like what you see?”

“Yeah,” I responded.

“You want to try?” Douglas passed me a brush.

“I don’t think I can,” I said, anxious. “I’m afraid I’ll screw it up.”

“I doubt that,” he insisted, and I gave up as he stood beside me with his usual sincere, immense smile. “I’ll tell you what to do, okay?”

“Okay.” I agreed.

“Close your eyes, stop thinking, then open them and paint.”