The crimson triangle flickers, becomes a glowing azure parallelogram. Metallic flecks of turquoise and indigo break away as it mutates further, expanding with shimmering, darkening shakes until a perfect violet circle is formed; then, with a calculated tilt of my head, the ephemeral colors and shapes vanish, falling away into plain lines of black and white.
“It’s the right thing, Liane. It’s what we need to do, now.” My father is speaking to me in the living room. To avoid having to face him and his limpid, grieving eyes, I feign a continued fixation with the optical painting, though the magic of its shifting hues and dancing geometry have been spoiled, reduced to a binary haze.
“This painting is lovely,” I say, closing my eyes. There’s a faint buzzing in my head.
His tone is halting, perplexed in the wake of my detachment. “Liane? I know this is upsetting, sweetheart, I do. Can you please talk to me?”
“Is Benny still downstairs? We really need to be going.” I check my watch without registering what it reads, my back still turned. At the corner of my vision I see yellow rectangles blossoming through black diamonds, pink stars bursting against turquoise octagons; bereft of my bitter, disbelieving gaze, the artwork’s illusions have reactivated.
“He’s in front, with Rex. Liane, please talk to me about this.” His voice is barely under control. I look up into a spiral of amethyst semi-circles, a looping curve of jade trapezoids, and a kind of iron courses through me.
“You know how I feel about this. And you’re doing it anyway. So don’t pretend my input matters. Or that you care about it.” Harsh. By his stillness I know I have hurt him, and a perverse pleasure flushes through me. He deserves it. Three golden arrows converge upon two scarlet pentagons, and then I regain the angle that shatters everything back to flat, colorless dormancy.
“She is very sick,” he whispers, raw, wounded. “She is hurting very much.”
I shift my head, but the bright hues, the fluctuating shapes do not immediately reappear. The illusion proves itself elusive, I think to myself, but presently an aquamarine crescent shoots across the canvas, mutates to sparkling square offshoots of cobalt. I sigh with relief. The expectant heaviness in the air tells me I am supposed to say something.
“In her right mind she would never agree to this. And you know that. But this is more convenient for everyone, right?” Instantly I regret this, regret it before it has even fully left my mouth, but I am too proud, too vindictive, and so, unrevoked, my words settle angrily into the room.
My father draws in a sharp breath, and I grimace. I sense that he is about to answer, perhaps savagely, perhaps magnanimously, but instead he stalks away, shoes clicking across the mahogany floor, thudding up the carpeted stairs. In the evanescing cloud of his aftershave, the painting becomes dominated by a glittering ruby cylinder, the color reflecting my cheeks and my sudden shame.
I consider going after him and apologizing. Worry it might be manipulated into a concession of the broader dispute. The allure of existing in a state of having been wronged – of battling against unjust forces, earning an indignant moral supremacy – is powerful, even if it demands a certain degree of self-deception. For allowing this reversal of grievance, for temporarily elevating my father’s hurt above my own, I seethe. Twin ovals of a silvery-blue sheen, like teardrops or storm clouds, twist against the upper corners of the painting.
I wait for him to come back down, deciding that when he does we will have an honest, productive discussion about what the coming days will look like. But even after countless, brilliant iterations of the painting’s power – magenta prisms spinning into cyan cyclones, cardinal-red spheres burgeoning against peacock-blue cubes, emerald fractals enveloping ribbons of teal and chrome – he does not return.
A standstill, then. Reluctantly I tear my eyes from the canvas. Through the windows beside the front door I watch Benny dash alongside a furry, golden blur.
I will not chase after my father, not today, and so it is time to say goodbye.
The green lace curtains gently shield the sun, allowing a soft, white glow to suffuse the quiet room. She is sleeping now, our earlier conversation, contrived and distressing as it had been, having exhausted her. It would be a peaceful scene if not for the discordant beeping of the machines, or the unsettling, arachnid tangle of tubes that shoot from her frail body. I sit in the chair beside her bed and rest my head in my hands.
“He doesn’t believe in you.” My voice is strained, unfamiliar. Against her cheek, pale blue pinwheels twirl, become soft lavender rhombuses. I rub my eyes, and they vanish. “I know he loves you, and I know you’re not all the way here anymore, but how can he give up? How could he ever give up on you?”
She gives no answer in repose, lying there serenely, and the question rings out empty, childish. I stroke her limp hair. “I’ll keep you here, Momma. Someone has to, now.”
After a few quiet minutes, I reluctantly rise, kissing her waxy forehead. The stairway is empty, my father’s agitation betrayed by the muffled noise of his bedroom pacings. A noncommittal farewell floats from my lips towards that shuffling motion; it is difficult to imbue the simple phrase with such a complex fusion of contrition and benevolence, but I manage it. Outside, Benny shrieks with glee, the sound breaking off into a bubbling, arrhythmic laughter.
As I move to the front door, I cast a final glance at that mesmerizing, hallucinatory canvas, but once again it is dull, a grayscale graveyard of thin, holographicsticks. I come closer, turning my head this way and that, but this time, no matter which angle I strike, the painting remains static, shapeless, colorless; as it must always have been.
END
Rami Rudensky is from Long Island, New York, and currently attends Washington University in St. Louis.