By Laura Browne-Lambert
Diptych is a series. To read the rest of the series, click the links below:
The virus killed more than one million people. Isa tried to remember that. She was lucky. Most days, she did. Other times, she basked in her own misery, angry that a society that had the ability to prevent such damage chose to let people get sick. Chose to let people die. Six months into her own bout with the virus, that slight felt personal. As if being someone who could get ill and stay ill meant she didn’t have enough value to be worth protecting.
Isa swiped the canvas with a deft stroke of her brush and left a glistening brown smear traveling up the center of the canvas. Her visit to the art gallery still swam in her mind. She felt guilty. She had painted a picture of the gallery closing as a way to get out her frustration with the director. He had ended her association with the gallery suddenly and without warning following setbacks caused by her health. As much as she might like to, Isa couldn’t control her body and having her exhibition removed from the gallery felt like punishment for something that was out of her hands.
Image Description: A light-skinned hand dips a paintbrush into a tub of brown paint. The surface is covered in tubs of paints in a variety of colors.
Credit: russn_fckr / Unsplash via Webador
But now, the gallery was closed. What had happened to cause it to shut its doors so abruptly? The letter the director had sent her made it clear that they were ending their relationship with her because of Isa, not because of a hurdle the gallery faced. The illogical part of her leaned into the correlation between her painting and the “permanently closed” sign hanging in the gallery entrance. It made her feel like she had made it happen – but Isa knew that was preposterous.
She gently stroked the canvas with a fan brush to give the impression of fur to the painting in front of her. Paintings of animals sold well at the summer craft fairs she would be attending in place of her gallery residency. The gallery must have run into financial trouble. Maybe the rent had been raised. Or maybe there were problems with the lease.
Isa gave her shoulders a shimmy as she tried to shake off thoughts of the gallery. That was the past and she couldn’t be responsible for the gallery’s closure any more than she could be responsible for Director O’Malley’s reaction to her health issues. Moments like these – moments when her mind swirled with stressful thoughts – made Isa wish Lenna had the option to work from home. She craved a solid hug from her favorite person. But Lenna was hours away from the end of her day. Mindlessly, Isa set a new canvas on her easel and scratched out the rough shape of their house with bushy, pink azaleas on either side of the forest green door. She added a silhouette of a woman at the door, locs pulled into tail at the back of her head.
Isa heard the combination lock on the door ping. The door opened and Lenna dropped her briefcase on the floor. Isa jumped up in surprise. Had so much time really passed? She wrapped her arms around Lenna and peered under her elbow to look at the clock over the stove. Three in the afternoon. Lenna was hours early. Isa thought back to their joint calendar. No appointments that she could remember.
Huh, Isa thought as she eyed the half-finished painting of her front door. Strange.
Add comment
Comments