“I don’t see you that way.” Truer words were never spoken. His hands engulfed mine and the contact was heady, almost to the point that I wanted to close my eyes so the room wouldn’t spin.
“Okay. Then I don’t want you to see me as someone you need to fix.”
I shook my head, but I felt the swell and pull of grief expanding my chest and stinging my eyes and was grateful for the shadowed arena that we stood in the center of. The sun was almost down and light dappled the perimeter with soft squares of sunset gold, but the center where we stood was dark and I could feel the horses behind me waiting, patiently waiting, always waiting. Their soft huffs and knickers were a solace to me.
“I never wanted to fix you. Not ever. Not the way you mean.”
“How then?”
“Back then, I just wanted you to be able to love me back.”
“Cracks and all?”
“Don’t say that,” I protested, hurting the way I always did when I thought about the way his life began.
“It’s the truth, Georgia. You have to come to terms with who I am. Just like I did.” His voice was so low and soft that I watched his lips so I wouldn’t miss anything.
Again, I felt the horses behind me. I felt them shift and then I felt a soft nudge at my back, and then again, stronger.
“Calico wants you to move closer,” Moses breathed. I stepped closer. Calico nudged once more, until my body was separated from Moses by only a few inches. Calico brought her head past my shoulder and huffed softly, her breath lifting the loose hair around my face. Moses’s eyes were wide, but his breath was steady and his hands stayed still and loose around my own. Then Calico moved around us and brought her body up flush against Moses’s back. And she stood with her head down, her eyes half-closed and her body still. Moses could feel her there, but he couldn’t see her. I felt the tremor in his hands and watched him swallow as his eyes moved past mine to where Sackett hovered nearby. And then Sackett was at my back, the side of his body pressing into me, supporting me, as if he and Calico had aligned themselves head to tail to keep the flies at bay. But Moses and I stood in between, sheltered by their massive bodies in the quiet shadows of the rapidly falling dusk.
“Can I ask you something?” I whispered, my heart pounding so hard I wondered if he could feel the vibrations in my hands.
“Sure.” His voice was as soft as mine.
“Did you ever love me?” Maybe it was unfair to ask, with two 1200 pound truth detectors pinning us between them, but I couldn’t hold the words back any more. “I loved you. I know deep down you don’t really believe I did. You don’t believe I could. But I loved you.”
“Georgia.” My name was almost a groan on his lips and I felt the tears spill over my eyes and hurry down my cheeks, eager to be free of the pressure that was building in my head. And then his arms were around me, drawing me up into him as if drawing strength from the Paint at his back.
“Why didn’t you stay away from me?” he choked. “I told you so many times to go away. But you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t let me be. And I hurt you. I created this situation. I did. Do you know that I have lost every person I love? Everyone. And just when I started to hope, to think maybe things could be different with you, Gi died. And she proved me right. And I wasn’t going to let you get anywhere near me. I was in a mental hospital, Georgia! A mental hospital. For three months. And I wasn’t going to let that touch you. I wasn’t trying to hurt you. I was trying to save you. I didn’t come back because I was trying to save you . . . from me! Don’t you get that?”
I shook my head fiercely, hiding my face in his chest, letting the soft cotton of his T-shirt mop up my tears. I hadn’t understood that. I had thought he was rejecting me, pushing me away like he always did. I hadn’t understood. But now I did. And the knowledge swept up all my broken pieces and sealed them once again. There was healing in his words, and I wrapped my arms around him too, holding him as he held me, abandoning resistance. His body was hard against mine, firm, solid, welcome, and I let myself lean into him in a way I never had, comforted and confident that he wouldn’t let me fall. The horses shifted, and I felt Sackett shudder as if he acknowledged my relief. Calico whinnied softly and brushed her soft nose across Moses’s shoulder, and I realized then that I was not the only one trembling.
“Thou shall paint. Thou shall leave and never look back. Thou shall not love.” Moses spoke against my hair. “Those were my laws. As soon as I was free, out of school, out of the system, I was gone. I wanted nothing more than to paint and run. Paint and run. Because those were the only two things that made life bearable. And then came you. You and Gi. And I started thinking about breaking a law or two.” My heart was thundering against my chest as he forced the words out, and I pressed my lips together so the sob building in my throat would not break free at the wrong second and muffle the words I desperately wanted to hear.
“In the end, Georgia, I only broke one. I loved,” he said simply, clearly, unequivocally.
He loved.
And just like that, Calico shifted and drifted away, lumbering toward the last rays of sunshine spilling through the far door that led out to the corral. Sackett followed behind her, moving slowly, his long nose snuffling along the ground as he moseyed, leaving me and Moses alone, wrapped in each other’s arms as if their work here was done.
“Who are you, Moses? You aren’t the same. I never thought there was any way I could love you again.” There were tears streaming down my face, but I didn’t wipe them away. “You didn’t know how to love. I don’t know what to do with this Moses.”
“I knew how to love. I loved you then. I just didn’t know how to show you.”
“So what happened?” I asked.
“Eli. Eli happened. And he is showing me how,” he answered softly.
He didn’t raise his head from my hair, and I was grateful. I needed a moment to find my response. I knew if I looked at him with pity or fear, or even disbelief, what we were building would crumble. And I knew then, if I was going to love him, really love him, not just want him or need him, I was going to have to come to terms with who he was.
So I pressed my lips against Moses’s neck and I whispered. “Thank you, Eli.”
I heard Moses’s swift intake of breath and he held me tighter.
“I loved you then, Georgia. And I love you still.”
I felt the words as they rumbled through his throat, and then I brought his mouth to mine so that I could savor their aftertaste. Nothing had ever tasted so sweet. He lifted me in his arms and I wrapped myself around him—arms, legs, old Georgia and new Georgia. And with one arm anchoring my hips and one arm banded across my back, Moses kissed me like he had all the time in the world and no place in heaven or hell he’d rather be. When he finally lifted his head and moved his lips from my mouth to my neck I heard him whisper,
“Georgia’s eyes, Georgia’s hair, Georgia’s mouth, Georgia’s love. And Georgia’s long, long legs.”
Georgia
I WORKED OFF EXCESS ENERGY by running in the evenings, but when I went for my runs I didn’t want to stop and make small talk, nor did I want people seeing my boobs bounce or making snide comments about my farmers tan in my running shorts. My arms and face were brown from working outside almost every day, but I wore Wranglers to work, and my legs weren’t even close to the same shade. Maybe all small towns were like Levan, but people made note of the littlest things, people noticed and commented and talked and shared . . . so I avoided the town and ran down through the fields, past the water tower and up past the old mill when I couldn’t sleep. And tonight I couldn’t sleep.
With my parents home again and things changing rapidly between Moses and me, I was anxious and unsettled. I wanted to be with Moses. Simple as that. And I was pretty sure that’s what he wanted too. But just like that summer seven years ago, Moses and I were hurtling forward at the speed of light, going from forgiveness to forever in days. And I couldn’t do that again. My dad was right about that. I was a woman now, a mother??
?or I had been. And I couldn’t act like that anymore. So I’d said goodnight to Moses and gone home early like a good little girl. But I wasn’t happy about it. It was definitely time to be moving out of Mom and Dad’s place.
I ran hard and I ran fast, the mini flashlights I carried in each hand streaking back and forth as my arms pumped a steady rhythm. My parents didn’t like me running alone, but I was too old to be asking permission to exercise, and the only danger in the fields came from skunks and distant coyotes, and the occasional rattlesnake. I’d had to hurdle one once. It had been dead. But I hadn’t known that until I’d seen it, still in the same spot, the next night. The skunks weren’t deadly and the coyotes were scared of me, so other than the snakes, I wasn’t too nervous.
The moon was so full my flashlights were unnecessary, and as I neared the old mill, heading into mile three of my five mile loop, the soft white sky backlit the old place and I studied it with new eyes. The old mill looked exactly the same. I wondered why Jeremiah Anderson had hired Moses to clean it out and pull down old partitions and demo interior walls if nothing was ever going to be done with it. The windows were still boarded up and the weeds were taller, but there wasn’t seven years of growth and neglect around the place. Someone was keeping an eye on it.
Whenever I ran by, I remembered the desperation I’d felt the night before Thanksgiving seven years ago, the night I’d waited outside for Moses before chickening out and leaving him a note. But I always ran on by, ignoring the sense of loss, the old longing. But now, with Moses back and hope on my horizon, I found myself stopping for a minute to catch my breath instead of running past. Since seeing the face peeking out of the peeling paint on the wall in Kathleen’s house weeks ago, I had been thinking about the walls at the old mill, about Moses’s paintings. Something was niggling in the back of my brain. I didn’t know if they were still there—brilliance hidden in a dark, dusty old building, boarded up where no one could see them. Someday, someone would want to see them. For me, someday was now. I picked my way through the old parking lot to the back door Moses had always used, sure that it would be locked up tight.
I checked the back service door and it was locked, just as I thought, just like it had been when I checked it that night. But when I checked above the door frame the key was exactly where Moses had always left it when he finished up each day. I fingered it, incredulous, and then slid the key into the deadbolt above the handle and turned it, still not believing it would actually open the door. But the door swung open with a screech of tired hinges, and without hesitation, I stepped inside. I don’t know why I couldn’t leave it alone. But I couldn’t. Now I was here, I had my flashlights, and there was something I wanted to see.
Beyond the back door was a cluster of small offices and then a larger room that was probably a break room of some sort. It was much darker inside without the moonlight spilling over everything, and I held my flashlights extended like twin light sabers, at the ready to take out anything I might come across. The deeper inside I went, the more it changed. The interior was different. Moses had torn down all the smaller workstations in the warehouse portion, and I paused, swinging the lights in large circles, trying to get my bearings. The paintings had been along the back wall, in the corner farthest from the main door, as if Moses had tried to be discreet.
The thought made me chuckle a little. Moses had been anything but discreet. Moses’s stint in Levan that six months in 2006 had been the equivalent of a never-ending fireworks display—all color, crash, the occasional small fire, and lots of smoky residue.
I kept my lights moving in big swaths, forward and out and back again, making sure I didn’t miss anything. The light in my right hand shot past something huddled against the far wall and I jumped, dropping the light and then kicking it toward the shadowy figure as I scrambled for it. It rolled in an arc, the heavier end rotating around the lighter handle. When it stopped it sent a stream of light in the direction I was headed, illuminating nothing but the concrete floor and a pair of legs.
I shrieked, clutching at my remaining light and shooting it up and around so I could see what I was dealing with. Or who. The light touched on a face and I screamed again, making the light bobble and glance off yet another bowed head and then an upturned chin. The fear became giddy relief as the faces remained motionless and I realized I’d found Moses’s paintings, complete with dancing forms and intertwined bodies spread across a ten by twenty foot section of wall. I stooped and picked up my flashlight, grateful that my clumsiness hadn’t robbed me of the additional light.
It was almost whimsical, the painting. And it was much more cohesive than Moses’s smeared, terror-filled depictions on Kathleen Wright’s walls. The terror had been in Moses’s hand, not in his subjects, if that made any sense. He had been terrified, and it showed in every brush stroke. This was different. It was a cornucopia of delights, full of oddities and wonder, little puzzles and pieces all interspersed throughout the nonsensical display. And it was nonsensical. It brought to mind our discussion of favorite things and well-loved memories, and I wondered if I was simply seeing the five greats, multiplied by a dozen contributors who were also depicted on the wall. I trained my light on each part, trying to connect it with the next, wondering if it was just the darkness and the difficulty of illuminating the entire thing all at once that made it seem so new. I remembered some of it. But he’d clearly added more after the fact. I had seen it in October. He’d left at the end of November. And in that time his painting had grown.
And then I found her. The face that had stuck in my mind and bothered me throughout the last two weeks.
I centered both of my lights above her face so I could see her better, and she gazed down at me reproachfully, light spilling down over her head like she wore a biblical halo. I felt a little sick and more than a little shaken as I realized I did know her. It was the same face I’d seen on the newly painted wall the day I’d gone to retrieve my photo album from Moses. Maybe it was the angle or the expression on her face, but where the image had seemed merely familiar on Kathleen Wright’s wall, it was recognizable now. I had known her. Once.
The sound of old hinges being engaged ricocheted around the mostly empty space, and for a split second I couldn’t place the sound. Then I realized the back door, the door I’d come through only minutes before was being opened. I’d left the key in the lock.
Moses
THE LEVAN CHURCH was a cool old building with light colored brick, soaring steeple, and wide oak doors built in 1904. There had been some renovations done in the intervening years, and I thought it could use some stained glass, but I liked it. It always made me think of summers with Gi as a kid and the sound of the organ, peeling out over the community as I ran out the double doors and headed for home, eager for movement, desperate to be free of my tie and my shiny black church shoes.
I was restless. Anxious. I hadn’t seen Georgia since the day before, and other than a quick text message, complete with my five greats for the day and her smiling emoticon for a response, we hadn’t interacted.
I had a client come all the way to Levan for a session, and I’d spent the day painting a woman asleep at her desk, her hand clutching a pair of reading glasses, a messy pile of books nearby. Her mouth was slightly open, her hair gently curling against her cheek as she rested her pretty face on her slim arm and slept. The man who had commissioned me had told me how she often fell asleep that way, among her books, nodding off to dream land and never making it to their bed. His wife had died suddenly the previous spring, and he was lonely. Rich and lonely. The rich and lonely were my best clients, but I felt for him as we’d talked, and I hadn’t been as brusque or as blunt as usual when I had communicated the things I could see.
“I didn’t see the signs. All the warning signs were there . . . but I just didn’t want to see them,” he’d said. The woman had died of heart failure, and he was sure he could have prevented it if he’d been more proactive.
He’d left without his painting, which
was the norm. I had some finishing touches to add and it needed a few days before it would be dry all the way through and I could send it to him. But he’d left happy. Satisfied, even. But I wasn’t happy or satisfied, and I set off on a walk I didn’t want to take in hopes of ridding myself of the excess energy that hummed beneath my skin. And I wanted to scout out Georgia’s house and see if she was around. I shot her a message with no response and ended up swinging past the church, the dry leaves scurrying around my feet like a mouse battalion, racing across the road as the wind caught them and pushed them onward.
My client had talked about a snow storm coming. But the night wasn’t especially cold, and it was still October. But Utah was like that. Snow one day, sunshine the next. The homes around the church were decorated for Halloween—ghosts twirling in the wind, fat pumpkins resting on porches, bats and spiders crawling up windows and hanging from trees. And when the organ started up, it was so Halloween appropriate I jumped a little and then cursed myself when I realized what I was hearing.
The lights were on at the church and a dark colored pick-up was parked close to the chapel doors. I stopped to listen and within a few bars knew exactly who was playing. I walked up the wide steps and pulled at the big oak door, hoping it was open, hoping I could sneak in the back and slide into a pew and listen to Josie play for a while. The door swung wide with a well-oiled sigh and I stepped into the rear foyer, my eyes immediately falling on the blonde at the organ and the man in the back row, closest to the foyer, listening to her play something so beautiful it made the hair rise on my arms and chills shiver down my spine.
I recognized him as the man in the cemetery, Josie’s husband, and I slid into the end of the pew he was sitting on. He was sitting right in the center, his arms stretched out on either side, his booted foot crossed at the knee, his dark eyes on his wife. When I sat down he turned those eyes on me and nodded once, a barely perceptible movement, and I decided I liked him just fine. I didn’t want to talk either. I wanted to listen.