Free The Art of My Life by Ann Lee Miller Page B

keep walking down this road.
Someday you’ll be a paranoid old man with no gut-level bond with
another human.
    “ Maybe you can live
disconnected from me, but I can’t live disconnected from you. I’ll
starve. Maybe you think you can smoke recreationally. You can’t.
Not with our genes. In fact, I think you’re in too deep now. Only
God can get you out.”
    Cal’s expression hardened and her
anger intensified.
    “ How’s it working for you,
Cal—without God?” She rose, pirouetted, and walked down the pier as
calmly as if she exited the Nutcracker stage. Her chest and throat
ached to cry all the tears she’d never learned to cry.
     
     
    The sound of Starr’s voice clanged off
the weed altered fun-house walls of his skull. God, God, God,
God.
    There was something his mother had
said he wanted to remember. But the slapping of the waves against
the dinghy seemed to separate into octaves, punctuated by a pelican
squawk, the deafening bass of wire and rope pummeling masts in the
wind.
    Blood careened through his body. He
could feel it pulsing in his veins and capillaries, webbing through
the back of his head and in his throat—intensifying like headlights
recharged by a car’s generator.
    The boat bounced in the small swells
of the river where it had drifted. He should thread the oars
through the oarlocks, angle the bow toward the Escape , and
row, but the process seemed too complex.
    The stench of exposed barnacles filled
his nostrils—like Starr’s tirade. He didn’t want to remember it.
He’d smoked to forget her expectations. Still, something niggled at
him. Something important.
    His mind merry-go-rounded to Aly. He
loved Aly’s order—everything in its place—the peace he felt when he
stared at his work, matted and framed on the wall of her condo.
Thoughts materialized, clouded, and wisped through his fingers.
She’d learned to read his art and understand things he didn’t know
how to voice. The guy inside meant something to her.
    Aly’s face, the touchdown of his lips
on hers, the forest scent of her sleeping in his arms, the timbre
of her voice when she said she loved him a long time ago…. He’d
banked on Aly’s still caring. But it didn’t matter how she felt if
he had nothing to offer her.
    The airplane engine drone of vehicles
crossing the causeway crept to an automobile hum. The crackling of
wind in his ears no longer sounded like maximum decibel radio
static. A musty blanket of dissatisfaction settled on
him.
    The boat jostled, and he felt
disoriented. He eyed the marina, North Causeway Marine, the
opposite shore. He’d drifted into the middle of the river. He
shoved one oar through its metal circle. The second. He dug into
the water. Heaved the oars. Glanced over his shoulder at the Escape . Levered the dinghy five feet closer.
    Starr had come down to the dock why?
His brain slogged through river silt. She’d been pissed. Odd. She
was critical, always. But clamped down. Under control. Because… he
slept with Aly.
    Ha. If only.
    Something about Cal’s smoking…
reminded her of Leaf.
    His head cleared as he neared the Escape . He tied the dinghy up and hoisted himself onto the
deck. Leaf’s story. That was the thing he wanted to remember. He
sat on the deck until he scraped all the chad of his grandfather’s
cautionary tale from the fuzz of his memory.
    He didn’t want to repeat history any
more than Starr wanted him to. He thought about the hundreds of
times he’d stopped by Leaf’s metal trailer on the beach. He’d
always chuckled at the queasy mix of hot dog and head-shop odors
that spilled out the window. But it wasn’t funny if it smelled like
your future.
    He stumbled below to shower and shave
away the leftover lethargy. Lego pieces of a plan stacked one on
top of the other in his head. Starr’s criticism finally did
something other than make him want to quit trying.
     

Chapter 8
     
    October 16, second
post
    Why did Van Gogh bleed bold
color and strokes on canvas? Did