Chapter Eleven
ELEVEN
In Louisa’s defense, this really is an extremely odd situation to find yourself in, and there probably isn’t any right or wrong way to react, so she reacts in what might be the only reasonable one: noisily.
“NO!!!” she yells at first.
A couple of seconds of silence follow.
“What the hell? NO! NO, NO, NO!” she exclaims after that.
More silence. Her brain is evidently searching for the appropriate words to describe how she truly feels, until eventually it decides upon:
“NOOOOOO!”
Then she lets go of the world-famous painting as if it has burned her, only to immediately pick it up again, terrified that it might get dirty on the ground. Unfortunately, her brain doesn’t offer any useful ideas for what to do next, so she quickly puts the painting back in the box and rushes after Ted, clutching the whole thing in her arms and yelling: “ARE YOU TOTALLY STUPID? WHY ARE YOU GIVING THIS TO ME? TAKE IT BACK!”
Ted turns around, with a look on his face like a person would have at the end of a long battle against an insect over a glass of juice.
“I’m not giving it to you. He gave it to you.”
“DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS IS WORTH?”
If Ted weren’t such an extremely grown-up and serious person, he might have rolled his eyes, but instead he just mutters:
“I know exactly what it’s worth, seeing as I was the person who bought it on his behalf at the auction.”
“SO WHY ARE YOU GIVING IT TO ME, THEN?”
Ted looks at her with pity, but unfortunately, this gets drowned out by self-pity. Life is long, his friend had said in the hospital, but he didn’t mention the fact that almost every moment hurts when you have to live it alone.
“He wanted you to have it because he… because he spent his whole life waiting to meet someone who saw a wall the same way he did.”
Louisa is trying desperately to find a way to balance the box in her arms.
“But how can I, what am I supposed to… What the hell? No! NO!”
She tries to locate her brain, but it has evidently left her head and slammed the door behind it.
“Sell it,” Ted suggests, as kindly as he can.
“SELL IT?”
“Or keep it. Hang it on your wall at home. Do what you like,” he sighs.
“I don’t have a home!” she replies.
Ted swallows and tries to balance between empathy and irritation.
“Okay. So sell the painting and buy a house. Buy ten houses. You’re rich now, I promise.”
Louisa’s eyes grow wild with terror.
“No… no, this isn’t… Why? You were his friend! YOU have to take it!”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because he gave it to you.”
Louisa thinks for a long time, so long that Ted briefly imagines he could just take his suitcase and leave and never see her again, but obviously he can forget about that. Suddenly she yells triumphantly, as if she were a genius:
“I know! You can BUY it from me!”
Ted can’t help smiling at this.
“I can’t afford it, my dear.”
“Aren’t you rich?” she exclaims, glancing at his clothes, as if everyone with clean pants must be financially independent.
“I’m a high school teacher,” Ted informs her.
This means very little to Louisa, since she’s not exactly sure what a high school teacher makes, so she mumbles:
“I can’t… don’t give it to me… it’s too much, I’m just a damn kid, I don’t even have a damn place to live, I’ve run away from my foster home, I sleep in cars, I can’t…”
It looks like it weighs a thousand tons in her arms now, even though Ted knows that it hardly weighs anything at all, so he probably has a good idea of the feelings that are making her knees buckle. Nothing weighs more than someone else’s belief in you. He could have said that, to console her, but unfortunately his own brain is too crowded with regret and loss. So instead, his jealousy shines through when he snaps:
“I appreciate that it feels like a great responsibility. But he chose you. He chose… you. Sell the painting so you don’t have to sleep in cars anymore.”
“Sell it to who? Everyone will think I stole it!” she exclaims in despair, and only then does Ted realize that she actually has a point.
He swallows hesitantly and adjusts his crooked glasses.
“Okay. So… sell it in there, to the same people I bought it from,” he says, gesturing toward the church with an expression of certainty on his face that he suddenly doesn’t feel at all.
He feels a degree of irritation now, because the artist didn’t think this through at all, because the artist always relied on Ted to think about things.
“It’s closed! It’s Easter! Everything’s closed!” Louisa retorts, in a tone that suggests that maybe she thinks Ted is something of an idiot.
“So you’ll be rich after Easter, then!” Ted replies, in a tone that suggests that maybe he is starting to feel like one.
“And until then?”
“What do you mean?”
Louisa’s whole body is shaking with sobs now.
“I’m homeless and you’ve just given me a damn painting worth a damn FORTUNE! In this town? I won’t survive until after Easter with this!”
Ted hesitates for a moment.
“What makes you say that?”
“Experience!”
He has to admit that he really doesn’t have a good answer to that.
“Maybe you could call someone who can help you? Your mom?”
“She’s dead,” Louisa says matter-of-factly, rather than with any sadness.
Ted absentmindedly scratches his hair, which no longer looks quite so neat.
“I’m sorry, I read the postcard and thought…,” he says quietly.
“You read my postcard? You’re not allowed to read other people’s MAIL!” Louisa snaps back at once.
Ted stares at her in astonishment.
“That wasn’t… mail. It was a postcard. It’s like… accidentally reading the slogan on someone’s T-shirt.”
She rolls her eyes, which Ted finds highly immature.
“Why can’t YOU call someone, then? Someone who can take the painting!” she suggests.
“I don’t know anyone here. I’m not from around here,” Ted admits.
He thinks about the artist, and the medication he had decided to stop taking at the end, and about the journey here which Ted had tried so hard to persuade him not to make because he was so ill. Then he whispers:
“He didn’t live here either, we just came here because it was where the painting was being sold. He wanted to buy it without anyone knowing. He was worried someone would find out he really was dying, because then the price of the painting would go up and he wouldn’t have been able to afford it. So he sent me into the auction and we didn’t tell anyone. I realize now that it was stupid. I have nothing on paper to prove that he wanted to give it to you. I’m sorry… I really am. But I have to… go.”
He turns away again, so weighed down by the demons of adult life that his feet scrape the ground. Grief is a selfish bacteria, it demands all our attention. Ted doesn’t want to be rude to the girl, he just wants to be alone, he just needs silence so he can hear the artist’s voice in his head again. Feel his breath against his skin. You don’t wish for happiness when you have lost the love of your life, because you can’t even imagine ever feeling happy again. All you wish for is peace, calm, a long night’s sleep. You dream of nothing but being able to forgive time for making us old. For not letting us stay on a pier with our best friends. For letting summers end.
“Where are you going?” Louisa calls after him.
“Home.”
“Home? The place he painted? Is that where you came from?” she asks, picking up the painting again, making the frame scrape against the box.
“Yes,” he replies, without even turning around, because he knows every inch of that pier anyway.
“You’re going to bury his ashes there?”
“Yes.”
“Is it far?”
Ted stops and breathes through his nose, so hard and so irritably that Louisa is really impressed that no snot comes out, he must have incredible sinuses for such an old man.
Ted, almost forty years old, sighs:
“Yes. It’ll take several days by train.”
“Why don’t you fly?”
“I like trains,” he says in a tone that really doesn’t sound like it belongs to a train lover.
“So you’re afraid of flying?” she guesses.
Ted exhales so hard that his pants flap.
“ Everyone should be afraid of flying! Have you been on an airplane?”
“No. I haven’t even been on a train,” she replies calmly.
She feels a little ashamed when she sees how ashamed he is at hearing this, that really wasn’t her intention. But train journeys suggest that you have somewhere to go, or someone to travel to, and she hasn’t had that sort of life.
Ted turns toward her, but without meeting her eyes, and just mumbles down at the ground:
“I’m sorry, I really am. I hope everything… turns out okay for you.”
“Can I come with you, then? Where you’re going?” Louisa asks, so suddenly that in all honesty, it probably surprises her as much as it does him.
It is obviously an unbelievably stupid idea, but what is she supposed to do? Her brain certainly doesn’t help her at the moment, not one tiny bit.
“Definitely, definitely not!” Ted exclaims, horrified.
Then he turns around abruptly and starts to walk off with his suitcase and his friend’s ashes, moving so quickly that he stumbles, which embarrasses him, so he stumbles even more angrily out of the alley and into traffic, where he almost gets run over. A car blows its horn and Ted is a man who hates attention, so his face turns so red that it’s a miracle his skin doesn’t fall off. He stumbles on, the train station is on the other side of the street, and he almost makes it to the entrance before Louisa’s brain persuades her to rush after him and yell so loudly that the whole block can hear her:
“WAS IT YOU THAT FARTED?”
Passing strangers look at Ted with disgust, and his face is deep purple now, Louisa isn’t really the ideal company for someone who hates attention. Ted smiles nervously and apologetically at the strangers, then he turns to Louisa and hisses:
“What’s wrong with you?”
Louisa has gathered all her things and pulled on her backpack and she lumbers toward him, sweaty and out of breath, with the box containing the painting in her arms.
“Are you one of them? One of the boys?” she yells, pointing at it urgently.
For the first time since the hospital, Ted looks right at the painting, so it’s honestly something of a miracle that he keeps his balance, his shoes really are far too big for a fourteen-year-old. It’s cold in the street but he suddenly feels hot, and for a few moments his feet are dangling off the end of a pier, it’s summer and nothing terrible has happened yet. He blinks his way back to reality, glances at Louisa, and thinks about what the artist had called her: one of us . So he sighs and points reluctantly at himself on the pier.
“That’s me.”
Louisa’s voice is suddenly full of gratitude when she whispers:
“My whole life, every time I looked at the postcard of this painting, I always thought it looked like you were all laughing. How crazy is that? Being able to paint LAUGHTER? And I’ve always thought it looked like one of you had just… farted. It’s… stupid. Sorry… I… Sorry! There’s something wrong with my brain! I always babble when I get nervous, I…”
Ted is breathing faster now, his chest is rising and falling, his cheeks twitching, Louisa thinks it looks like he doesn’t know how to cry, like he has only read about tears in a manual and misunderstood the point. Then Ted points at one of the boys in the painting and says slowly:
“That’s Joar. He was the one who farted. He had… incredible farts. It was like he was completely made out of eggs.”
Then Louisa laughs so loudly that it echoes across the whole train station, and then Ted almost laughs too. It’s certainly the closest he’s gotten since the artist fell asleep beside him for the last time.
“I’m sorry the police came and got your friend, I’m sorry that was one of the last things that happened to him,” Louisa manages to say, and clumsily starts to shove the painting back in the box.
Ted smiles sadly:
“Don’t be. I haven’t seen him so excited in years, he felt young and dangerous again. He was… he was such an idiot, you need to know that.”
“How long did you know him?” she asks.
Ted blinks slowly and adjusts his glasses.
“I knew him since we were little, I’ve… always known him,” he replies, because with the sort of friendship they had, there was never a “before.”
Louisa leans over the painting and says, into the box:
“When I was little, I used to think about all of you when I was trying to sleep. I thought I would fall asleep, and when I woke up I would be there by the sea with you. And you’d teach me to swim.”
At this point a door slams inside Louisa’s head, because now her brain is back, and it wants to tell her she sounds like a damn stalker when she talks like that!
Sure enough, Ted hits a new personal best at looking uncomfortable. He glances at his watch.
“I should probably go now,” he mumbles anxiously, then takes out his ticket and goes through the turnstile.
“So can I come with you?” Louisa repeats, simultaneously awkward and shameless, which is quite an achievement, and quickly slips through the turnstile after him.
It is, of course, not the greatest idea she’s ever had. Because the combination of Ted and Ted’s suitcase and Louisa and her backpack and the box isn’t exactly what the engineer who designed the turnstile had in mind. They get stuck like two tennis balls in the mouth of an overambitious golden retriever. Ted has to clamber over his suitcase to get free, and then Louisa climbs out, trying very hard not to touch him, and it really doesn’t go very well.
“Leave me alone!” Ted snaps, falling forward as she crashes into him, hitting him on the back of the head with the box containing the painting.
His glasses end up even more crooked. He gets to his feet and grabs his suitcase and the box of ashes and starts to run. As if that were going to help, seeing as Louisa has much longer legs. He stumbles all the way to the end of the platform before giving up.
“WHY?” Louisa yells behind him.
It’s a little unclear whether the question is why he’s running, or more generally why he’s such an irritating person. Ted doesn’t answer, he just slumps over his suitcase like a middle-aged man who has seriously overestimated his fitness.
“Why…,” Louisa repeats behind him once more, “why did you even give me the painting? You could have just kept it! Or sold it yourself! Why…”
Ted stands there, furious and exhausted, his hands on his knees, and pants his reply:
“Because he loved me and he believed in me! And this was his final wish!”
He falls silent because he has to bite his bottom lip to stop it trembling. Louisa sees the train approaching the platform. Say something smart, her brain is yelling at her.
“Is there anyone where you come from who can help me sell the painting?” she shouts, still barely audible above the squeal of the train’s brakes.
That was actually pretty smart, even her brain has to admit that, because then Ted does something that he will soon regret immensely. He replies with a groan:
“Yes. Maybe. But she…”
“Well, then! I’ll come with you and meet her and then we’ll sell the painting and share the money!” Louisa nods quickly, as if the matter is thereby settled.
“NO!”
“WHY NOT?”
Ted throws his arms up in frustration.
“Dear God, you can’t just ask a strange man if you can go with him to—”
“Why not? Are you planning to kidnap me?” Louisa interrupts.
“What? Of course I’m not going to kidn—”
“Look, I don’t want to be mean, but you’re pretty small,” she points out. “I reckon I could take you.”
“What on earth… what are you talking about?” Ted wonders, recognizing that the conversation has gone off in a radically unpleasant direction.
“Kidnapping!” she explains instructively, then stands up straight as if to demonstrate her size and how difficult it would be to put her in a box or lock her up in a cellar, for instance.
“I’m not planning to kidnap you… but I suppose that’s exactly what I’d say if I was thinking of kidnapping you?” Ted protests.
Louisa looks at him thoughtfully for a long time. Then she says:
“You seem to know an awful lot about kidnapping.”
“What?”
“I’m just saying that for someone who isn’t a kidnapper, you know an awful lot about—”
“Okay, I’m going now!” he declares, and walks quickly toward the train that has just pulled up to the platform.
“You’re right, we can talk more on the train,” Louisa nods enthusiastically.
“No!”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re a child! I can’t just take a child to…”
“Do you have something against kidnapping children? Is that where you draw the line?”
“No! I mean, yes!”
“I’ve just turned eighteen. I’m an adult. I can go wherever I like.”
“Congratulations.”
“Thanks. So that means I can come with you?”
“That really, really isn’t what it means!”
“But WHY?” she yells, which makes Ted lose control and yell back:
“BECAUSE I CAN’T TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOU AS WELL!”
And that’s the first time she sees him cry.