The Law of Moses(77)

I rolled my eyes, and he grinned, making me grin with him before I remembered that I was embarrassed and ticked off that he had kissed me and left town. It felt a little too much like the past. The grin slipped from my face and I turned away, busying myself shaking out the saddle blankets.

“So why did you come back?” I kept my eyes averted. He was quiet for a minute, and I bit my lips so I wouldn’t start to babble into the awkward silence.

“The house needs more work,” he replied at last. “And I’m thinking of changing my name.”

My head shot up, and I met his smirk with confusion.

“Huh?”

“I heard there was this new law in Georgia. Nobody named Moses can even visit. So I’m thinking a name change is in order.”

I just shook my head and laughed, both embarrassed and pleased at his underlying meaning. “Shut up, Apollo,” I said, and it was his turn to laugh.

“Good choice. Apollo it is. There aren’t any laws in Georgia about guys named Apollo, are there?”

“No,” I said quietly, still smiling. I liked this Moses. It was a Moses I had liked before too, the Moses who teased and taunted and pushed and prodded, setting my teeth on edge while making me love him.

“I brought you something,” he said, turning the canvas around and holding it in front of him so I could see.

I could only stare.

“Eli helped me,” he said, quietly.

I couldn’t look away even though his words repelled me. I didn’t want this Moses. I wanted the Moses who smiled and teased. I didn’t want the Moses who talked about the dead as if he were intimately acquainted with them.

“I started seeing him for the first time after I saw you in the elevator at the hospital. I didn’t know who he was. I didn’t put it together, not until I stepped back from the painting and saw you, riding a horse, holding Eli against you. And still . . . I didn’t understand. I just knew I had to come here and find you.” He stopped talking then. We both knew what had happened next.

“I want you to have it,” he insisted gently.

When I didn’t move to take it, he set it gently against a stall and left me alone with the gift from my son.





Georgia




EACH DAY THERE WAS ANOTHER PAINTING. One was left on the front seat of my unlocked truck. One was propped up on one of the tack shelves in the barn. And they were all of Eli. Eli sitting on the fence, his face so sweet and serious I could almost remember a moment just like it, as if Moses had taken a photo and turned it into art. But he had no photos. I’d taken them back. And there were no photos that even came close to what Moses created—the detail in the curls of Eli’s bowed head at bedtime reading the worn yellow storybook, the depth of his brown eyes fixed on his horse, Eli’s little feet in the dirt and his finger carving his name into the mud. The swirling brushstrokes and vivid color were signature Moses—even the mud looked decadent—and I couldn’t decide if I loved the paintings or hated them.

There was one of me. In it, I smiled down into Eli’s upturned face, and I was beautiful. Unrecognizably so. It was the Pieta starring Georgia Shepherd, and I was the loving mother, gazing at my son. My mother found that one when she went out to rake leaves. Moses had left it sitting on our doorstep. I was two steps behind her, but she found it first. And she held it for five minutes, staring down at it in agony and wonder, tears running down her face. When I tried to comfort her, she gently shook her head and went back inside, unable to speak.

Moses returning had been incredibly difficult for my parents, and I had no idea how to make it better. I had no idea if I could. Or if I should. And I didn’t know if his art was helping. But Moses’s pictures were like that, glorious and terrible. Glorious because they brought memory to life, terrible for the same reason. Time softens memories, sanding down the rough edges of death. But Moses’s pictures dripped with life and reminded us of our loss.

I remembered how Moses had talked about art, about anguish, and I knew then what he meant. His pictures filled me with sweet anguish, an anguish so ripe and red that it threatened to turn bad if I looked away. So I found myself staring at the pictures constantly.

Other than the paintings, left where I wouldn’t miss them, Moses kept to himself and watched me from a distance. I would see him across the pasture, standing at the fence that separated Kathleen’s back yard from our property. He would always lift his hand, acknowledging me. I didn’t wave back. We weren’t friendly neighbors. But I appreciated the gesture all the same. I wondered at the brazen kiss with his hand around my braid and at his teasing in the barn, and hardened myself against further contact, though he made sure I saw him every day.

Most of the time, when I was running therapy sessions, Mom or Dad would join me as another set of eyes, watching the horse while I kept my gaze on the folks or vice versa. But Dad had another round of chemo scheduled, and Mom was going with him. They were going to stay in Salt Lake for a few days with my older sister and her kids before heading back. Mom didn’t want to leave with Moses back in the neighborhood. I just had to bite my tongue and remind myself that I had made the bed I was now lying in. Literally. I’d lived at home too long. I’d relied on my parents through Eli’s life and Eli’s death, and now, at twenty-four, it was my own damn fault that they still treated me like I was seventeen.