Chapter 14

Dad met me at the airport in Phoenix. Barbie was with him. I'd forgotten she'd planned to prepare dinner for him. Had my sudden, unexpected reappearance squelched any plans? According to their thoughts, apparently not.

Barbie had a new boyfriend, an eighteen-year-old fry cook. Argh! Her thoughts weren't that complimentary about him: good-looking but smelled like stale grease and was dumber than a post. Verbally, she waxed eloquently about his many qualities. I suspected she'd done a little bottom fishing to get laid. Yep. He wasn't hung like a horse, but he had staying power. Still, he wouldn't be her heartthrob much longer.

Dad was pleased to see me. He'd missed me, and I glommed onto the love he bestowed on me like it was a life raft. Without it, I might have broken down again.

Barbie had rented a movie, but it didn't interest me, and I was tired. It had been a rough day. Barbie's presence forestalled any discussion with my father about my problems with Jason, so when Jason didn't call by ten o'clock I went to bed, leaving Dad and Barbie to finish watching the video.

I didn't masturbate. Did Jason?

The next morning, I rose anticipating a lively discussion with Dad about Jason, Sara, and my gifts, but he was missing. I found out later that he had a meeting with someone from the government about a new grant.

I bumped around the house waiting for Jason to call. Ten o'clock came and went, and then eleven. At noon I found myself standing in front of a blank canvas.

With a blank mind.

My creative juices were dryer than the still, hot air outside. I couldn't settle on one emotion long enough to slap any paint on the canvas. I'd discovered I had to feel the emotion I wanted to portray, let it infuse me from head to toe, before any positive results would shine through.

Pick one and concentrate, I told myself. Ten minutes later the canvas stared blankly back at me like a huge, rectangular white eye. My cell phone remained silent. I checked it. Yes, it was turned on. Yes, the battery was charged. Argh!

Back to the canvas. Red excites; blue depresses and green relaxes. Pick one, dammit! Yellow. How about yellow? Sunshine. Warm. It denotes happiness and joy, but it's also the color of cowardice and deceit. Jason? No. Give him some slack. Why hasn't he called? He said he'd call everyday, said we'd talk a lot. I couldn't call him. Could I? No. It was his move.

The phone in the house rang. I hurried inside. The call was a recording announcing a new low interest rate for home mortgages. Refinance now and save! I slammed the receiver down. Fuck!

Lunchtime. Fix something to eat. Just in case, retrieve your cell phone from the studio first. The phone was still turned on; the battery was still charged. Argh!

I couldn't call Jason, but I could call Sara. I looked up her number and dialed. No answer. I didn't leave a message, but I added her phone number as speed-dial number four.

The ham and cheese sandwich tasted like cardboard. The coca cola was flat.

The movie Barbie rented wasn't any more interesting this morning than it was last night.

Two o'clock.

Take a swim. Exercise. What if he calls while I'm under water? Careful. You're becoming ridiculous. I put on a bikini and dove in. My cell phone rang on lap twenty.

"Hello," I said, out of breath and dripping water on the cool deck.

"Waddaya doing?" Barbie asked.

"Swimming some laps." Could she hear the disappointment in my voice?

"Boring."

"Yeah."

"Have you heard from Jason?"

"No. He said he'd call everyday, but the day's still young." It is! Why am I acting like such a dork?

"Wanna get together and do something?"

Click, click. Another call. My heart raced. "Hang on, Barbie." Flash button. "Hello."

"Hi, Katy."

Jason!

"Hang on. I'll get rid of Barbie. She's on the other line." Flash button. "It's Jason, Barbie. I'll call you back." Flash button. "Hi, lover. I miss you."

"I would have called you sooner, but..."

His tone of voice told me he was extremely upset. When he didn't finish his sentence, I became alarmed. "What's wrong, Jason? Is it Sara? Is she all right?"

"No. She fell apart again last night. She's back in the hospital."

"Oh, no! Did she try to commit suicide again?" Is it my fault? I asked myself. Did I do something, say something that set her back?

"No. If she'd been alone, she might have tried, but I was with her. After her appointment with Dr. Rourke yesterday afternoon, Sara became listless, very depressed again. As the evening progressed, she became worse, weeping uncontrollably, holding herself, rocking back and forth. I called Dr. Rourke, and she put her back in the hospital."

I had to know. "I'm so sorry, Jason. Ah, did Sara regress because of something I did?"

"No! Well, maybe in an around about way. Remember, you told Dr. Rourke that Sara had blotted out all thoughts about her daughter, not just those thoughts that upset her?"

My heart sunk. "Yes, but Dr. Rourke didn't believe me."

"She does now."

"You mean she actually admitted I was right?" I asked incredulously.

"No. You were right about her, too. She thinks you're a fake, out to take advantage of Sara and me. Still, your comment - guess, according to Dr. Rourke - provoked her to hypnotize Sara again during their afternoon session, and she discovered that Sara's recent, relatively happy state of mind occurred because, for Sara, it was as if Donna had never been born. After Dr. Rourke altered the post-hypnotic suggestion, Sara couldn't handle the few memories of her daughter the new post-hypnotic suggestion allowed, so she regressed, fell into another state of deep depression."

"That's so sad, Jason. How is she now?"

"I don't know. Last night, Dr. Rourke and her team started the desensitization process again, so she was stable when I left the hospital at five this morning. I grabbed a few hours sleep, and I'm on the way to the hospital again right now. I'd have called you sooner, but..."

"I understand. Don't worry about me. Take good care of Sara. She's special, Jason. I wish I could be with her, but I know that's not possible. I would like to speak with her when she's able, though."

"She'd like to talk with you, too. After we dropped you off at the airport, she told me you were like a breath of fresh air for her. She likes you a lot, Katy."

"I feel the same way about her. Someone ought to string that asshole she married up by the balls."

Jason hooted a laugh. "Yep, a breath of fresh air."

"She won't get well until she can have her daughter back in her life, Jason."

"Don't say that, dammit!" he said angrily.

"All right, but what if I'm right? What then?"

"She'll get well. If I have to bring in more specialists, I'll do it. I'll do whatever it takes, Katy."

"I know. I'll help anyway I can. I wish I could be there for you, too, but I know I can't. Just remember I love you, Jason."

"I love you, too. I haven't had time to think about our problem. If I can, I'll call you tonight, and we'll talk about it. I just arrived at the hospital, Katy."

We said our goodbyes, and I pushed the end button on the phone. Poor Sara. If I had a daughter, and someone took her away from me, I'd be depressed, too. No, I wouldn't get depressed; I'd get flaming mad. I'd fight back. I'd be like Jason. I'd do whatever it took to get her back. Sara can't fight back, though. The same man took all the starch out of her. Maybe Jason and I should do her fighting for her. How? I was a teenager; Jason a college boy, and Sara's husband was a ruthless, wealthy man. The logistics sucked, too. I lived in Phoenix, the bad guy in Denver. Jason was in Denver, but only temporarily until the college year started in the fall, or his sister became normal again, whichever happened first, which meant we'd need to fight the battle for Sara and her daughter sometime this summer because I firmly believed Sara wouldn't get well without her little girl in her life. What could Jason and I do? We couldn't even take the fight to bad guy.

Bad guy? What was his name? I asked once, and Jason told me. Gary... something. Yeah, of Moby Dick fame. Gary Melville.

Fight? How? What kind of fight? Certainly not fisticuffs. Think. Break down the problem. Consider the options.

Problem: Gary Melville, a ruthless, wealthy man, has restrained his ex-wife, Sara, from interacting with their five-year-old daughter, Donna. Sara can't handle being cutoff completely from her daughter and falls into a deep depression, becomes so depressed she tries to kill herself.

Solution: Convince Melville to allow Sara to spend some time with her daughter.

Unknowns: One. The initial assumption might be flawed. Is Sara's inability to interact with Donna the root cause of her depression? Dr. Rourke believes it is; so do I, but the question didn't have a definitive answer. Two. The big question - Donna. How does she feel about being separated from her mother? Is the situation her preference? Or does she pine for Sara (my assumption), like Sara does for her? Three. Why the restraining order? Besides being depressed, is Sara some kind of a threat to Donna's welfare? A stretch, I know, but possible. Four. Assuming Sara should be with her daughter, besides being an uptight, self-righteous asshole (Jason's description of the man), what is Melville's motive to keep them apart? Five. Under the Destroyer's (Dad's nickname for Melville) care, is Donna in any physical or mental jeopardy? Dad thinks she is, and he's usually right. If so, time is of the essence. Six. Does Melville have a weakness we can exploit? Once Sara can communicate effectively again, perhaps she could provide some clues. Seven. Criminy, I could go on and on. The unknowns outnumber the facts at hand.

Conclusion: While waiting for Sara to function again, start filling in the blanks. Make the unknowns known.

Fighting Options: One. No, it's impossible to effectively list fighting options until the unknowns are known. Besides, the facts we'll uncover will suggest options we'd never consider in our ignorance.

I had the bare bones of a plan to help make Sara whole again. Would Jason cooperate? Would Sara? Time would tell.

With a workable strategy to ease my lover's mental anguish and help his disturbed sister, I relaxed and hugged myself. My college boy still loved me. He'd called and promised to call tonight if he could.

Energized again, I remembered I'd promised to call Barbie. I dialed and told her I wanted to get some painting done. She understood.

After changing out of the bikini into my painting shorts and t-shirt, I donned a smock and stood in front of the blank canvas again. Thinking about what the Destroyer did to Sara angered me. Dare I try to portray anger on canvas again? Damned straight I could. No, not merely anger. Rage! Anger's deeply disturbed cousin. I let the anger fermenting inside me build, and then imagined scenarios that deepened my anger further until I felt rage creep in and start to take over.

I dipped a brush in red paint, the color of anger, my usual starting point whenever I tried to portray the emotion, but I hesitated. What did that article I read last week say about red? Yes, red is related to the heart. The face turns red when the heart is exuberant. Did red depict a joyful emotion? No. When someone is angry he sees red. I remembered another article, one about auras, that said the frequency of the color red is produced by the emotion of anger. The same article suggested that a spurt of red entered an aural field during a temporary outburst of anger. Try using red as a burst, not the base color.

Perhaps I should let the viewers' eyes mix the colors so they see red, and then offer a small but dramatic red form to bring their emotions together. I turned to the small part of the canvas on which I'd successfully portrayed the emotion of anger. Except for one small form, red was conspicuous by its absence. Why hadn't I noticed before? Perhaps I was over intellectualizing the process.

If not red, what color should I use as a base? Black? Black suggests sophistication, elegance, and mystery; also death, strength and evil. Worth a try.

No, black isn't right. Too dead. How about a blue that's almost black. Better. Much better.

Rage. How does rage feel? What are its aspects? Is it sharp, jagged? No. Another mistake I'd been making. Rage is very intense but not sharp, more like overwhelming, controlling, purposeful. It doesn't burst upon me, like anger. It settles in, controls, becomes crushing and very, very intense.

It occurred to me that rage made me feel powerful. The emotion seemed to take on a life of its own, as if it fed on itself.

Blue-black and... burnt sienna... no, too bright. Make it darker, muddier... yeah, better. Some paint started to run. I reached to stop the runs, but hesitated. No, it's all right. Let the paint run. Let it take on a life of its own. No, no sharp edges.

A palette knife feathered the edges.

What fuels rage? Fear. Rage starts with fear. Is Sara full of rage beneath her fear and depression? Or is her fear and depression the result of rage?

Try another direction. Cobalt violet. Yes! Texture. I need texture. Sand? Maybe. No, not there. Over... yes. Careful. Feather it. Good. Circles. To feed on itself, the forms need to be circular. Take out the linear. Better. Stack one form on another, one color on another.

Turn the canvas. Let the paint run the other direction - crisscross, intersect. Good, do it again, but at an odd angle. No. No. No. Wrong angle. It's gotta be jarring but subtle. Argh!

I worked for four hours. Dad interrupted me once, but I ignored him, and he went away. When I stepped back from the painting my heart raced. Rage! The painting wasn't finished, but the underlying emotion shined through.

Like a method actor, I'd willed rage to rise up and become my dominant emotion, but as I gazed at the painting, I felt the fury inside me melt away. Rage gives way to joy. Rage will lose the race with happiness every time. I rushed into the house.

"Dad! Dad! Where are you?" I shouted.

"Right behind you, cupcake," he said calmly.

I spun to the sound his voice. "Come! See!" I dragged him into my studio and stood him in front of the painting.

He gazed at the painting. Dad wouldn't mollycoddle me. He'd tell it like he saw it. He frowned, and then a small, clever smile curled his lips. "At first, I thought you were trying to paint anger again and feared I'd need to tell you that you failed. Then I felt it. Rage. Deep, compelling rage," he said, his voice full of wonder.

"Yes! I did it! I did it!"

I jumped into his strong arms, wrapped my legs around his waist and gave him a dozen wet kisses.

"Whoa! I'm not a horse, little missy. And, I'm certainly not a stretched canvas. You're getting paint all over me." He tried but failed to sound gruff. He was too delighted about my success. Delighted, but not surprised. When I'd told my father what I was trying to accomplish with my painting, unlike me, he never doubted that I'd succeed.

I landed back on my feet. Still excited out of my gourd, I actually jumped up and down like a cheerleader. When I calmed down a little, I stood gazing at the painting. "It's not finished yet, but..."

"As Paul Valry said, 'An artist never really finishes his work; he merely abandons it.' Have you finished Serenity?"

I blushed. "No, but I'm close."

"It's finished. Futz around with Rage for a few more days. Let the paint dry, and I'll frame both of them. We'll hang them on the large, blank wall in the family room. I've been saving that wall space for some paintings of yours worthy of praise."

He saw my look of delight as I started toward him to hug him again, so he held up his hands to arrest my move toward him. "Please, cupcake, no more wet kisses. Are you hungry?"