The Law of Moses(79)

It hurt. It hurt so much. I just needed it to stop hurting.

So I begged for a pardon. Just something to take me away for a minute, something to help me hide. Just for a minute. Just something that would give me one last moment of peace, something to help me face what came next.


But there was no cover granted, and when the fog lifted and the fever broke, I looked down into his face and knew my scarlet sins would never be as white as snow.

I came awake with a start, breathing hard, the pain of the dream still gripping my stomach and curling my legs and arms into my chest.

“What the hell was that?” I groaned, sitting up in my bed and wiping the sweat from my forehead. It felt like the dream I’d had about Eli and Stewy Stinker, the dream that wasn’t a dream. And then I’d woken up and seen the girl, the girl Lisa Kendrick said was her cousin. She’d walked through my house and touched the wall. And I’d made the connection.

But I didn’t see the connection yet. Not this time. I stood from my bed and stumbled to the bathroom, washing my face and throat with cold water, trying to ease the heat on my skin that always came with episodes like this.

It hadn’t been my pain—in the dream—it hadn’t been my pain. It had been a woman. A girl . . . and she was having a baby. Her thoughts and her agony and then the child in her arms as she’d looked down into his squalling face all indicated child birth. His squalling face? I suppose that was right. She’d thought of the child as a boy.

Maybe it was Eli, showing me his birth, the way he’d shown me his bedtime ritual. But that didn’t seem right either. It hadn’t been Eli’s eyes I’d looked through. It hadn’t been Eli’s thoughts in my head. But nothing with Eli had been like any other experience I’d ever had. The connection was different. More intense, more detailed. More everything. So maybe it was possible.

But it didn’t feel right. Eli showed me images and perspectives relative and relevant to his understanding. As an infant, being born into the world, he would not have had that perspective. It was Georgia’s perspective. It was as if I was looking through her eyes, feeling her emotions, her pain. Her despair. She had been filled with fear and despair. I hated that. I hated that she had felt so alone. Eli should have been celebrated. But in the dream, there was no joy or celebration. Just fear. Just pain.

And maybe it was just a dream.

That was possible too. Maybe I wanted to rewrite history so badly that my subconscious had re-created a moment that fed into my guilt and my regret, putting me there, in the room with Georgia as Eli had come into the world. I mopped at the water on my neck and walked down the stairs without turning on any lights, needing a glass of water or maybe something stronger.

I’d left the lamp on in the family room. I’d sanded down the entire wall where the girl had revealed her face. Last night I’d painted it again, covering Molly and Sylvie and the other, nameless, somewhat faceless girls beyond them with a thick coat of yellow. I wanted yellow in the room. No more plain white. I was tired of white. I got a beer from the fridge and held the can against my face, eyeing the cheerful, buttery wall, thankfully devoid of any dead faces. For now. I would paint the other walls when morning came.

My eyes skipped to the side as my thoughts mentally moved on to the next section of painting that needed to be done. The paint was bubbled on the far wall.

“Ah, shit.” I’d been afraid of that, afraid that the other walls would need to be sanded down too. But it had been more than a week since the paint on the back wall had begun to peel. The other walls had shown no signs of bubbling or peeling. I walked to the adjacent wall and smoothed my hand across the ripples. And just like that, the paint came off like tissue paper being unwrapped and pushed aside.

My mother’s face stared out at me with sad eyes and a slightly wistful smile. And I knew who sent me the dream. It hadn’t been Georgia’s perspective in the dream, it wasn’t Georgia’s memory. It was my mother’s.




***

Moses



IT WAS STRANGE. I’d been painting frantically since coming to Levan, though I’d controlled myself, resisting abandoned buildings and barns and cliff faces, and limiting myself to canvas. Every day it was another painting about Eli. I couldn’t stop. Some of them I left for Georgia, wanting to share them with her the way she had shared her photos with me. I was almost afraid she would come storming over and throw them in my face and accuse me of mocking her pain. But she never did. I almost wished she would, just so I would have an excuse to fight with her. An excuse to see her.

I had kissed her and then doubted the wisdom of the move for days afterwards. That kiss was like a living, throbbing pulse of fuchsia in my head. Maybe that’s why I felt compelled to paint. Eli came and went, showing me the same fleeting images and bits and pieces of his life with Georgia. But for the first time, my painting wasn’t for the dead. The painting wasn’t even for Eli. It was for me. I wanted to make him permanent. And I wanted to give permanence to Georgia.

But the dream of my mother shook me, as did the walls that wouldn’t stay painted. For several days I just worked on the house and left my art alone. I didn’t want to start channeling my mother in my paintings. I sanded down the entire living room once more, retreating all the walls with everything 4D’s, the hardware store in Nephi, had in stock for pre-treating old walls. The new coats of yellow seemed to be holding, and I moved onto other projects, keeping myself busy with physical work, doing what I could on my own and hiring the rest out, watching Georgia from afar and wondering how I was ever going to bridge the gulf between us.