The Paint
*
Clearing the layers
“Jean immediately started throwing away food in their pantry. It was amazing!”
Robert snorted, reaching over the table to steal a sweet potato fry from my plate. I went to smack his hand away when he lightly tapped my beer, causing it to wobble.
I saved the lager.
“How do you feel about your mom attempting to hold on?”
I sighed, taking the beer and sipping it. I spent the entire hour-long drive thinking over my mother’s plan to hold out as I listened to a never-ending soundtrack of angsty sirens attempting to lure me to comfort.
I paused. “I feel like it’s a bad idea. It surprised me.”
Robert took my other hand into his as I grinned, holding my beer in the other hand. I raised a brow as he said calmly, “Bree, I don’t know why you’re surprised. Your mother would never turn down the opportunity to die as slowly as possible, painfully, with everyone around her.”
I dropped my glass on the table, laughing as we dove for the napkins to mop it all up.
I lay in bed later that night, staring at the wall across from me, my back to a sleeping Robert. His rattling snore reminded me that I was the only one still awake. Yet, this wall held my attention, its beige paint and landlord’s special baseboards mocked me.
This world was a piss-poor combination of mediocre and generic.
People exist in it. We work, survive, and then we die.
When we are gone, our belongings are either thrown away or fought over by relatives, desperate to cling to someone’s ThighMaster.
Our homes are painted over, and pictures are removed. Someone takes our beautiful wooden molding and covers it in slabs of thick, white paint without dusting first.
I carefully crawled out of bed and lay on my stomach, facing the baseboard and looking closely at it.
The white paint clumped strangely, with distinct layers of varying paint mediums, including eggshell and latex, and what appeared to be a matte finish on top.
I reached forward with my finger and dug it into the soft paint, scraping it under my nails. The chips hurt slightly as I continued to dig.
White matte—probably “Pure White.” Underneath, sticky latex: surgical white. Finally, in the eggshell, the chipped portions were visible under the previous layers. I drove my finger in further, clearing some of it as I saw a bit of brown below.
I frantically started poking at it. My nail bent under the pressure, but I was unwilling to stop. I could feel my breath hitching as I freed more wood, as if I was saving it from some hideous crime it didn’t deserve.
Then, the paint chipped and pierced the flesh under my nail. I gasped in pain, flinging my hand back, as I pulled the wood-lined paint chip out, only to be hit with blood.
I panicked and put my finger into my mouth, getting to my feet and rushing to the bathroom. I could hear Robert stirring. “Bree, are you all right?” he mumbled.
I held my hand under the running faucet, the cold water sharpening the pain. I let out a small whimper. “It’s fine, go back to sleep.”
Then the door opened, and I saw Robert’s eyes go wide.
My finger was covered in blood, and my stomach churned. I hated the sight of blood, and while the pain was subsiding, I—
When I blinked, the light had changed. It was morning, and I was in bed again.
The wall was still scraped. The blood on the carpet was real. I moved my arm and felt my finger burning as I moved it and looked at it.
Robert had bandaged me up. The gauze carefully covered the finger, and I knew he’d done what he always did—disinfected it, bandaged me, and laid me in bed.
I rose from the bed, only to find him walking in and shaking his head. “Lay your ass back down.”
I expected a laugh, but his face was tight. I frowned and sat back down as he walked over, a cup of coffee in his hands. He handed it to me and then frowned. “Are you feeling better?”
I nodded, sipping the coffee, but the confidence didn’t match my eyes.
“Do you want to discuss why you went postal on our baseboards last night?”
I took a deep breath, then paused. Paige’s words were piercing my mind as I battled my nature. I just wanted to crawl into myself. But I knew that wasn’t what I was supposed to do. I finally spoke, my voice barely above a whisper.
“Why does it feel like our lives don’t matter?”
“Because it doesn’t.”
I blinked. Typically, Robert would tell me that I was being morose. That the world sucked, but our lives mattered. This was different.
“What?”
Robert sighed. “Sorry, it’s just—” He cleared his throat. “Our lives don’t matter, in perspective. We are one of eight billion people on Earth. For millions of years, we have lived and died.”
Great. Robert’s field had allowed him to embrace the most miserable parts of himself. I groaned. “I don’t need the technical answer.”
Robert frowned, and I knew I had already lost him. I gulped my coffee, feeling it burn down my throat as I continued, “As people, why does it feel like no one cares what happens to us?”
Robert shrugged. “People are selfish, Bree. You know this.”
I leaned back against the headboard. This conversation was already going poorly, proving why I had never shared what was happening in my head.
Then, I made the fatal mistake of the morning.
“Ah, yes, selfish, terrible people. Do you think if we hadn’t been fucked up by all of them, we’d even be together?” I set the cup down and continued, “If we ever really had a choice?”
I turned to look at him, his brown eyes wide. I realized my mistake. “I-I mean as a hypothetical.”
Robert scoffed and stood, then said with a scowl, “Hypothetically, you are saying we are only together because we have terrible families?”
I raised my hand in a calming manner, “Rob—what I meant to say—”
“Is that if you weren’t so desperate to run away from your family, you wouldn’t have even ended up with me?”
At that moment, I knew I had two paths. I could lie or tell the truth. The lie wouldn’t solve the issue, but the truth would hurt.
“I mean, yeah, most likely.”
He froze. I wanted to reach for the words and shove them back into my mouth, but it was too late. The room was less vibrant and faded, with the sounds playing as if they were coming from an old television.
It was like watching a grainy VHS on fast-forward: Robert pacing, arms flailing, his words reduced to silent fragments. The closed captioning, “ You act like I’m just your trauma mascot ,” hovered at the bottom of the screen.
Then, the video lurched, and the sound rushed back like we’d hit play. Yet now, he was silent on his own.
He threw on clothes, grabbed his keys, and left the apartment, leaving me and my words in his wake.