Where the River Ends - Charles Martin [132]
When I was a little girl, you held my hand and walked me down to the Dock Street on the opening night of Annie. I was so scared. But once in the theater, you pulled me aside, knelt and pushed the hair out of my eyes. You said, “Abigail Grace, you weren’t made to sit in those seats.” Then you pointed my eyes at the stage and the spotlights. “You were made to stand up there…under them. Go take your place.” Dad, Doss is a lot like me. Remember that. He’s worth it, he needs you and we all need him. Trust me on this one.
I’m leaving you a present. But there’s a catch. It’s held for safekeeping in the chest of my husband. Unwrap him, and you’ll find me. I gave him my heart a long time ago and I don’t need it where I’m going. If you swallow your pride long enough to see past your own private pain, you’ll find that you two are more alike than you think. And that you can learn from him.
I know this will be hard for you to hear. If you read this letter and think I’m just trying to have the last word, don’t. I’d gladly trade it.
I love you.
Yours,
Abigail Grace
AFTERWARD
I went home, climbed up into my studio, unrolled my scroll and started at the beginning. My life with Abbie. I let the tape roll, walking down each sidewalk of pain—each anchor line—and when the hurt got to be too much, I stopped the tape and dove in—sketching that one single frame. I’ve cried more in one year than the rest of my life combined.
Tears on the canvas.
The only difference now is that I no longer paint the world I wish I lived in. I paint this one.
THE SENATOR STARTED coming to see me on the weekends. At first, he just followed his toes around my studio. We didn’t talk much. But slowly the words came. He’d ask questions about style, form, process. Good questions, too. I think in another life, he might have had an artistic bent. Finally, I set up an easel for him and taught him how to work with charcoal. Not too bad, either. Surprisingly, the senator had a soft side. He hated the Yankees but after a few weeks, he ran his fingers along the frame of my Nat Fein print. He shook his head and said, “I suppose it’s coming for all of us.” I reached into my closet, pulled out my dusty attempt at Babe’s face and handed it to him. While the photo evokes emotions of sadness few words can create, my picture shows Babe, eyes staring up through baggy eyelids, cheeks fallen, staring out across the house he built. Yet beneath the shell of the skin he once trotted around the bases, he’s smiling. He’s still Babe. The senator liked that. I handed both to him. “Please. They’re yours.”
A single tear trickled off his cheek. Finally, he said, “Abbie once told me that nobody paints like God, but”—he waved a hand across the studio—“you get pretty close.”
Not a week passed that we didn’t sit in my studio, quietly making art. It was what we did. Together. You’d think Washington might miss him, but he could slip out when wanted.
A year passed.
HE HAD BEEN THERE all morning, the two of us easy with each other’s company and lost in the smell and color of paint. Not talking had become easy. Which told me a lot about us. At lunchtime, he was walking out. I’m not sure why, other than time, but he finally stopped to ask me the question that had been on the tip of his tongue for almost a year. He pointed at Indomitable. I’d finished her several months ago and let her hang there, staring down at me. He said, “May I…please?”
It was his olive branch. The senator had forgiven me. More important, he had forgiven himself.
“Yes.”
A deep breath, big enough to fill