A
Relaxing Morning at Home
Jason
sat at the kitchen table and relaxed into his chair. It was a
beautiful Saturday morning. Spring was in full bloom, the sun was
shining and a warm blossom scented breeze was wafting in through the
windows.
The morning chores were
done, the kids were outside playing and his wife, Karen was going to
be stepping out for a couple of hours. Bliss! He took a sip of coffee
and spread the newspaper in front of him.
Karen came bustling into
the kitchen looking at her watch.
"I'm late, Jason. Do I
look alright?"
Jason smiled and reeled off
the carefully choreographed response. "You look beautiful, honey."
He spotted something then
and froze. "Um, Karen? You got a bit of green paint on your nose."
She put her finger to her
nose then looked at it and laughed. "Silly me. I was doing a bit of
painting this morning. "
She went to the sink,
dabbed at her nose and turned to him.
"Is it gone?"
He nodded and she bent
down, brushed her lips on his and left.
"Whew." He muttered.
"That was a close call. She would have had a few things say if I
hadn't noticed that."
He had just started to
relax when Karen's brother, Roy, put his head in the kitchen
window.
"Hey Jason, can I borrow
your golf clubs. I'm teeing off in a couple of hours."
"Sure. I'm not using
them this weekend. Come in."
He led Roy to the spare
room. He opened the door and was hit by the heavy smell of oil
paints.
"Woe! You should open a
window. You could get high in here."
"Karen would throw a fit
if I did. She's taken the room over as her painting studio."
Jason remembered when she
had decided to move her studio into the house to save money. She had
been so stressed that he or the kids would mess up her work. He
promised they wouldn't even go into the room unless it was an
emergency. Sometimes, though, he snuck in to look at her work.
He looked around at what
had once been a tidy room. The furniture had been stacked into one
half of the room. An easel with a painting in work was set up next to
the couch. Canvasses leaned up against the walls; paint, jars and
brushes littered a book shelf.
At least she had drop
cloths spread across the floor and some on the furniture. He sighed
at the shredded up paper lying on the floor in front of the easel and
then gaped when he spotted a heavily used pallet resting on the arm
of the couch. He had to suppress an urge to tidy up. How she could
work in this chaos was beyond him.
Roy was transfixed with the
painting in the easel. Jason looked on, admiring it. It depicted a
black and white cat
sitting in front of some bushes.
"Your sister a great
painter, Roy."
He nodded and whistled.
"She sure is. The detail is stunning. The cat has a white face but
she somehow put in black flecks that gives the impression of
individual hairs."
"Did you notice the eyes?
Look at them and then move to the side."
Roy did as he was told and
then laughed. "The eyes follow me. Amazing."
"She's been working on
this for weeks. It's her best work yet."
Roy looked at his watch.
"How about those golf clubs. I need to go."
Jason nodded at the closet
behind him. Roy opened it, pulled out the bag and then looked back at
him.
"Tell Karen, I love her
work," Roy said as he swung the clubs over his shoulder. The bottom
of the bag caught the painting and knocked it off the easel. Jason
watched in horror as it dropped face forward onto the pallet and then
slid into the scatter of shredded paper.
Jason felt his stomach
lurch; sweat beaded on his forehead. He slowly picked up the painting
and put it back on the easel. The pallet was stuck to the canvas
hiding the poor cat. It slid down and fell to the floor leaving the
cat's face a white smear mingled with the green of its once
beautiful eyes.
Roy pulled off the paper
that was stuck to it and sighed. "Maybe we can fix it, Jason."
"What? I don't know
anything about painting."
Roy looked at him and
smiled smugly. "I was quite the artist in my day." He grabbed a
brush and a pot of white paint. "I'll just touch up the face."
Jason wasn't prepared for
that. He swiped at Roy's hand to take the brush away from him. All
he accomplished was to create a long smear of paint projecting from
what used to be the cat's head.
"Now look what you made
me do," Roy said. "I know what I'm doing. Now go back to the
kitchen and relax."
Jason found himself pacing
in the kitchen until he heard Karen's car pull in. Panic washed
over him as he ran back into the studio.
"She's home!"
Roy smiled, looking
relaxed. He had Karen's smock on, a pallet in his hand and was
dabbing the painting with a brush.
"I'm just finished. I
think it's better than what she had."
Jason looked at it in
shock. "But... but... that's not a cat. It looks more like a
unicorn."
"Oh."
He
didn't look so confident anymore, especially when he heard Karen
coming in the front door. He dropped the pallet and brush.
"I need to go. I
blame the kids. It easier that way."
Roy left and he could hear
Karen call after him.
"Roy? Why are wearing my
smock?" He heard hurried footsteps approach.
"Jason?"
Jason sank down into the
couch, dropped his head into his hands and awaited the coming storm.
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