by: Laura Browne-Lambert
Diptych is a series that should be read in order. Read other issues of Diptych by clicking the links below:
Yesterday had been so easy. She had woken next to her wife, Lenna. A year after their wedding, the word still excited her. Wife. One of her life’s little miracles. Getting herself out of bed had been relatively easy if she discounted the ever-present grogginess, and she did not need to use her cane on her way down the stairs to breakfast. Chores and errands all had been doable, and her head cleared enough for her to get a painting ready for the gallery next week.
Living near the coast meant most tourists sought out the classics – canvases covered in ocean views, sandy dunes, weathered cottages, and battered, old rowboats with the paint peeling off. Quaint if you did not know the history of the rowboat or ride out long, icy winters and forceful winds. Isa was happy to take the tourists’ money, but she preferred to capture local life when she could. The calloused hands of a fisherman. The laugh lines on the faces of old men playing checkers in the park. Tourists did not want paintings like those. They took away from the fantasy, but a community center or a VFW sometimes wanted them – especially if one of their own was featured.
Today had not been so easy. People think getting better is linear. Not true. Isa had learned that by now. She kept learning it, over and over, every time she had a day like today. Huddled on the kitchen floor, she sucked breath after breath through a throat stuffed full of cotton into lungs that ached for air.
Her baseline grogginess had been replaced with the feeling of swimming through molasses with eddies on either side that sucked her thoughts into their current and carried them away. Pushing herself up to a seated position took far more energy than wanted to admit, and each step felt as though a large rubber band had looped itself around her chest, arms, and legs, pulling her backwards. She had leaned heavily on the cane as her shaking legs took her down the stairs and a light wooziness had sent her tripping into the couch on her way to the kitchen.
CW: ableism, language
Image Description: A clip of a simple, abstract painting with a geometric sketch of a woman's head and torso. She reaches up toward the sun in the top left of the painting. Made using watercolor, shades of red, orange, blue, and purple complete the drawing.
Credit: Laura Browne-Lambert
Isa had tried. She really had. She had gone through the motions of making breakfast – though she had forgotten her routine and had to dive through the molasses in her brain to find them. Toast. Tea. Tomatoes. She had forgotten to drink the tea. It had taken her so long to get her head to focus on the canvas that she lost the vision. Her hands had shaken too much to paint something saleable, and her unsteadiness left her scrubbing paint off the hardwood. By the time she started dinner, her energy had been spent. She had felt her legs go out from under her as she pulled a head of cauliflower from the refrigerator with hands so week that she had to clutch the vegetable to her chest.
Now, she lay in a heap in the middle of the kitchen, refrigerator doors swinging and cauliflower rolling across the room to smack into folded wheelchair waiting patiently by the door. Probably should have used that earlier, Isa said to herself. But that would have required forethought. Instead, she stayed put, riding out the muscle spasms and the aches, the weakness that took over every fiber of her body, the strangled air fighting its way into her lungs.
She and Lenna would be having frozen pizza, again – obviously. Or maybe just Lenna. Going to bed would be awfully nice, right about now. Isa used to like watching reruns or re-reading a favorite book when she was sick, but this was a different kind of sick. Today, both options sounded more than exhausting.
A long, fluffy tail landed on her face. Isa spat and sputtered.
“Hey – Floofer – get your – fluffy butt – out of – my face!” she gasped. She lifted a hand and waved it pathetically. The tail whooshed as the dark, long-haired cat turned lazily to bunt her head against Isa’s lank tendrils. The purple dye did not do much to liven her head on days like today, when it sat greasy and unkempt, untouched by a brush or even her fingers.
A slam of a car door heralded Lenna’s arrival. Crap. Now Lenna was going to walk in the door, find Isa on the floor, and worry. Lenna’s worry often looked much like crankiness. Hinges squeaked and the door swung wide. Lenna’s tired face changed to cross pout.
“Hey, how was your day?” Isa asked.
Lenna answered with a question of her own. “What are you doing on the floor?”
“Overdid it.”
“Why would you do that?”
“I don’t know,” Isa said, pushing herself slowly into a seated position. The handles of the cabinets she rested against dug into her shoulder blades, but she made herself wait until she caught her breath. “I guess I didn’t want the day to get wasted.”
“Is that dinner?” Lenna asked. She eyed the cauliflower from across the room.
“It was gonna be,” Isa said. “I’m thinking frozen pizza.”
“I’m not eating it frozen.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Uh-huh. I’ll take care of it, but I’m putting you on the couch first.” Lenna circled her arms under Isa’s armpits and around her back and lifted. “You’ve got to stop thinking of rest as a waste of time.”
Isa walked backwards, secured chest-to-chest with Lenna until her legs bumped the couch and Lenna tipped her onto the cushions. The move would have been arousing under different circumstances, but Isa was appreciative of the lumpy pillows. “I just – I want to live the way I used to live. Do the things I used to do. I miss that version of me.”
“Maybe it’s time to put some of those things on the shelf for a while.” Lenna threw a blanket in Isa’s general direction. “Focus on finding things that bring you peace now. Do new things that give your life meaning now.” She left for the kitchen. “Did you paint today?”
“I tried. I – I couldn’t get my body working today. Made a mess. Ruined a painting.” Isa held a fist against her forehead and focused on the feeling of knuckles on her brow. “Took all day to do just that. Couldn’t get my head together either. Not sure if I even had a real thought. How did I make it through a day without thoughts?”
Lenna refused to answer. Instead, she said, “You’re taking tomorrow off. Sleep all day if you need to. Binge watch a show, read a book, whatever – just stay in bed or on the couch. You can use the wheelchair to putter around the kitchen, but only so you can eat things you can microwave.” She sighed and settled on the other side of the sofa. “I can’t stay home with you to keep you honest, so you gotta promise that’s what you’ll do. And next time you wake up and have a bad day like this, you have to tell me, and you have to take it easy. Forgive yourself.”
“Okay.”
“That’s it? Just okay?”
Isa groaned. “I don’t know what else to say, Lenna. I’m agreeing to your terms. Trying my best. Just – I’ll have a few good days and think I’m improving and then I overdo it. My head doesn’t catch up with my body. I miss the signals.”
Lenna sighed. “I know. Just try. For me. Would you?”
“I’ll try.”
“We’ll put it to rest, then.” Lenna ran a hand through Isa’s hair. Are you going to be ready for next week?”
Isa felt tears of defeat forming at the corners of her eyes. “No. I think – I think I might have to cancel.”
“So, cancel. First thing tomorrow.” Lenna said. “Maybe paint things you want to paint rather than things you have to paint for a while.”
Isa nodded and swallowed down a bit of nausea. “I think I have to.”
Image Description: A clip of an abstract watercolor painting with bold, black lines giving the impression of a river passing through the hills. Shades of greens, blues, and purples color the painting.
Credit: Laura Browne-Lambert
Isa took a few days off and pushed the event at the gallery off an extra month. She spent one of those days trying not to feel like she let people down. Boredom settled in by the end of the first day. The itch to move around and clean the house reached her by the second. Depression sank into her bones by the third.
A hand on her shoulder pulled Isa out of a fitful nap. She stretched.
“You’re home already?” Isa smiled.
“It’s dinner time,” said Lenna. “How are you feeling?”
Isa whined her way through another stretch. “Lethargic.” She thought for a moment. “My body hurts from laying down too much. I feel heavy.”
They dined on takeout – miso soup and fried rice – comfortable in the familiarity as Lenna chatted about her day.
“Oh, I almost forgot.” Lenna jumped up from the table and rummaged through her briefcase. “Wanda was going to throw out all her old paint from the fair last week, but I said you could probably use them.” She returned with a large shopping bag filled with a rainbow array of half-filled plastic bottles. She held one up.
“Huh, I’ve never seen that brand before.”
“Is that bad?”
“I’m sure I can make them work.” Isa took a bottle in hand and inspected it more carefully. The vibrant teal shone through the clear bottle. “I like how rich the colors are, anyway.” She pulled out a few more bottles, each one more vibrant than the next. Mesmerizing.
Lenna sat back down. “Well, give them a try and just toss them if they don’t work. I was saving some waste.”
“Thank you, Love.” Isa stuck her lips out for a kiss.
Filling a canvas with color gave Isa a feeling of fulfilment so intense that it was nearly tangible. She chased that feeling as she set out her brushes, palette, and water, set her canvas on a tripod, and set out a stool for herself. The stool was part of a losing battle between trying to encourage herself to sit and moving around to access to angles. She would start here, at least.
Isa set out the paints from the night before, eager to see how well they worked. Again, she found herself drawn to the teal. Somehow, the blues and greens that mixed to form the color were each visible despite the perfect blending of the two colors. Similarly, the reds and yellows that blended to make the orange shone through the bottle. Isa selected the cerulean – blue of a perfect Caribbean lagoon – and flicked the cap off. A bubble must have formed in the bottle, she thought belatedly. Thick, blue-green paint burped out of the bottle and poured over her fingers.
“Shit.”
She set the bottle down, trying to catch paint as it gurgled out of the bottle and dripped onto the table and the floor. With a final glug, it ceased. Shimmering, intensely sea-green liquid leaked over the table’s ledge and spread across the maple-stained floor. Isa grumbled and reached for a towel and mopped the biggest globs of paint off the floor before she realized she had spread paint up her arms. She dropped the towel in the laundry bin and opened the sink tap using her elbows. Strangely, the water ran clear. Had the paint dried on her skin already? That seemed impossible.
Isa scrubbed with her hands and the viscous paint spread across her skin, cerulean wash over chapped, white hands. She really ought to get a better moisturizer. Still no paint traveled down the drain. Huh. Were her fingers going numb? Tingles worked their way from her fingertips to her palms and up to her wrists. Maybe I should call poison control, she thought. The pins and needles left a cold numbness in their wake as the worked up her arms. When they reached her neck, Isa fumbled for her phone, paint smearing across its surface. The touchscreen failed to respond. An intense dizziness overwhelmed her senses. Isa stumbled. The kitchen disappeared.
Liquid color swirled.
Spinning into deep tunnels, angry whirlpools sucked her down into their depths.
Viscous waves washed golden marigold across her eyes and splashed viridian into her ears.
Deep amaranthine crests spattered her teeth and trickled down her throat.
She aspirated an ultramarine storm and choked on jaundiced surf.
She thrashed.
Image Description: An abstract watercolor painting, bold, geometric lines give the impression of a woman with her hands reaching toward a sun. Her blue skirt trails down the length of the page and cuts through green hills like a river.
Credit: Laura Brown-Lambert
Image Description: Orange directional signs painted on the side of a stucco wall. The signs say "to be continued."
Credit: Reuben Juarez / Unsplash via Webador
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Didn't know where this was going but I want more!