Six
I’ve gone back twice.
I know it’s crazy. I’m single, sitting in a room full of couples falling apart, and I keep going back.
I still haven’t attended the chronic illness group. I tell myself it’s because the wrong group is helping, which is true. It’s also considerably easier to listen to strangers talk about their marriages than to sit in a room full of people whose bodies have betrayed them and admit mine has too.
But I’m painting again.
There are colors on the canvas that weren’t there three weeks ago. Now they do, because something cracked open and started moving. I’m not asking questions about why.
I’m working fast today, which is how I work when it’s going well. I’m not entirely sure what the piece is yet, and that’s fine. Sometimes you have to let it tell you.
I’m practically bouncing on my heels, which isn’t like me, but the energy has to go somewhere. I want to keep going until it stops or I fall over, whichever comes first.
There’s a light tap on the studio door before it opens, and Madison steps inside.
She’s wearing a tailored cream blazer and an expression that says she came straight from a meeting where she made three major decisions and was right about every single one.
She looks between me and the canvas.
“Ah,” she says. “You’re painting again.”
“Right?” I spin around to face her, brush still in my hand. “I’ve got three ideas running at the same time.”
“Have you taken something?”
I stop. “What?”
“You’re very…” She gestures vaguely at my general existence.
“Animated?”
“I was going to say unhinged, but yes.”
I cross the floor, take her face in both hands, and press a quick kiss to her forehead. “I’m inspired, Madi.”
She laughs, startled.
“When’s the last time you saw me like this?”
“Genuinely? Before the block.” She looks over my shoulder at the canvas, tilting her head. “What broke it?”
I turn back to the easel and make a tiny, useless adjustment to the bottom-left corner. I can’t tell my sister I’ve been sneaking into couples group therapy. She’ll have questions I can’t answer.
“I’ve started running,” I say.
Of every possible lie available to me, I’ve selected the one least supported by twenty-six years of evidence.
“Running,” Madison says flatly. “You?”
“Me.”
“Running?”
I turn around. “Don’t give me that face.”
“You were just never the most… athletic.”
I point my brush at her. “You broke your foot trying to cheerlead.”
“That is completely—”
“Twice, Madison.”
“That’s not—”
“Same foot. Both times.”
She winces. “Too soon.”
I set the brush down and wipe my hands on the rag hanging from my back pocket. “Do you want coffee? I’ve got the good stuff.”
“I can’t.” She moves further into the studio, picking her way around the stacked supply crates with careful steps. “I just wanted to check in. You haven’t been to family dinner in a while.”
The thing about family dinner is that it requires getting there, sitting there, and getting home. On a bad week, that’s three separate negotiations with a body that doesn’t always work. Some days I’m fine. Other days I wake up, and my joints have decided to make every step an ordeal.
The problem with being fine sometimes is that people assume you can be fine whenever you need to be.
I don’t know how to explain that to my family yet.
It’s not that they wouldn’t try to understand.
They’d try very hard, in the Callahan way, which means everyone has loud feelings about it at the same time.
Growing up, Mom’s bipolar disorder took up the most room. It had to. When she was sick, everything else shrank. Every ache and stumble I had as a kid got filed under growing pains, clumsiness, or stress at home. The doctors agreed.
She’s sensitive. She’s responding to her environment. She’ll grow out of it.
I grew out of asking.
Mom is doing well right now, and I know how fragile that balance is. If I drop a whole new set of health problems on her, she’ll feel guilty for not noticing them sooner. I’ve watched her spiral from far less.
So I say nothing. I show up when I can, and I don’t explain the times I can’t.
“I’ve been busy.”
Madison looks at me for a long beat, deciding whether to push. She decides not to.
“Mom’s doing well, right? I was with her yesterday, but she’s not hiding anything from me?”
Madison’s smile curls at the edges. “She’s doing great. The meds are working.”
“You’d tell me if she wasn’t.”
“I’d tell you.”
I hold her gaze for a second before changing the topic. “How’s wedding planning?”
“Good,” she says, loosening up. “The venue is locked in.”
“You’re not going to do a runner like Piper, are you?”
She laughs. “God, no. I’m running straight toward that man.”
She deserves this. She’s spent so much of her life handling the family’s emergencies like a one-woman crisis team. She deserves someone who shows up for her the way she shows up for everyone else.
“Another commission?” she asks, pointing to the canvas.
“This one’s just for me. Getting whatever was stuck out of my system.”
She nods toward the row of canvases turned toward the brick wall. “Can I see those?”
“No.”
She raises a brow.
“They’re for the show. They’re not ready.”
“I won’t judge.”
“I know you won’t. I still don’t want you to see them.”
When a piece is unfinished, it exists in a state I can’t fully defend. Having someone look at it too early feels like letting them read a half-written sentence. They fill in the gaps with their own ideas, and then I have to carry their interpretation around while I’m trying to finish.
No one sees them until the varnish is dry. Not even Madison.
“Where’s the exhibition again?” she asks.
“A gallery over in Silver Lake.”
“You’re up for it?”
There it is.
Last year. The show I backed out of. The phone calls, the apologies, everyone telling me they understood as I lay in bed, barely able to lift my arms, hating myself for proving them right.
Rowan. Always almost there.
I force the thought down.
“I’m up for it. They reached out a few weeks ago,” I continue, picking up a clean palette knife to keep my hands busy. “They want a full series by autumn, but I need enough new work to fill the space. Which is why this”—I gesture at the canvas—“is such a relief.”
“I’m glad it’s back,” she says quietly.
“Me too.”
She picks up her bag from the crate and straightens her blazer before looking around one last time.
“I need to go, but come to family dinner next week.”
“I’ll try.”
“Rowan.”
“I’ll come.”
She gives me a look that means she heard the difference between those two answers, but she just smiles and lets the metal door swing shut behind her.
The studio goes quiet until my phone buzzes on the workbench.
Westbrook: Reminder: Group Session—Tuesday, 6:00 p.m.
I should stop going. I know I should, but then I look at the canvas on the easel, and at the three new ones drying against the wall.
Tuesday it is.