Color Theory

The first splash of color was always the hardest. Roy had been a hobbyist painter for what had become his longest love affair—twenty years and counting—but every time he faced a new blank canvas, there was a shyness to the way he would first begin to dribble paint across the white face before him. It was new, it was exciting, but there was also the undercurrent of worry: would this in fact be the painting that broke him?

No matter how he collected art books of the greats—Picasso, Rembrandt, Monet, and other names that were like songs to his mind—he had never allowed himself the deception that the painting would ever pay the bills. It was a fancy, something to pass the time, a beautiful thing unmarred by capitalistic pursuit.

But there came a time when he thought it would all fall through. Even now, he looked at his hands, covered in burn scars, and marveled at them as if they were miracles conjured right in front of his eyes. There were even greater pioneers, however, who had learned to paint with their feet or even their mouths. Imagining holding a paint brush poised at the edge of his lips, wooden handle clenched between his teeth, and he knew that this could have been so much worse.

His girlfriend balked at the studio fee every month. “Is it really worth it?” She had a way about her where he could sense her sighs before she huffed them out. “Aren’t you getting a bit old for this, Roy?”

That was the problem of today’s world: everything had to be justified with worth—or, rather, payment or restitution of some kind. It was bad enough he, at fifty-five, still had to teach part-time to afford his rent and expenses each month. The insurance money from the accident would only keep them afloat for so long. And Rita, ever so practical, did not care for being the breadwinner in their little arrangement.

The studio, which he retreated to for two hours each day, had become a sticking point in the relationship. If he had been younger, he might have cast Rita off instead, but now? There was no argument that he needed her even if, logistically, she did not need him in the same way.

“The studio’s got to go”—the words she would never say, but they were like an underlying heartbeat, a pulse, to each and every spat and quarrel.

The lease was up at the end of the month, and he had already given the notice that he would no longer be renting the room that overlooked a side-street downtown. There were touches of him everywhere—the green tie draped over a bare easel, a paint-splattered baseball cap on a window ledge, the beaten-up slippers he had forgotten to toss out a few months back—and he couldn’t imagine this space being someone else’s in scant days.

The paintings along the wall haunted him too: where would they find a home if not in this studio? He couldn’t imagine them sitting in a closet back in the apartment with Rita, and it was somehow painful to think of each canvas locked away in a storage space and likely never to be unearthed again.

But there was one more option. A phone call he had dreaded the thought of making, a place that might be the last refuge for a piece of him that had persisted for years, like an animal nursed to health before having to return to the wild.

His fingers still stained with blue paint, he fished out his phone from his jeans. He tried to chalk it up to old age that he fumbled as he dialed the number that he knew by heart even though it should have been the first listed on his contacts.

One ring and then two. His mind scrambled at the thought of leaving a voicemail, until a voice that was familiar yet painful said, “Hello?”

He took a deep breath. “Sarah? It’s Dad.”

Even without being able to see his daughter’s face, Roy could imagine the ice settling over her as she tried to remain as composed as possible. He couldn’t even remember the last time he had heard her voice, the last time he had even bothered to check up on her. It had to have been last Christmas. Or, wait, maybe her birthday.

He basically had no excuse except he probably deserved every spiteful thing she said about him to her friends, her mother, even her husband.

“Yeah, what’s up?” Her voice had cooled from its bright greeting. She probably had forgotten the number to screen his call. At least she hadn’t blocked him entirely in that regard.

It took him moments to remember his train of thought. “I’m getting rid of the studio,” he said, uneasy because he knew this was just an opening. She could easily hang up at any moment if she tired of him. Her mother had probably taught her that trick long ago.

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” she said—all the while with the undercurrent of wondering what any of that had to do with her, the daughter he seemed to pretend he didn’t even have.

“It’s been a long time coming,” he said. “But I was wondering…”

He trailed off, uncertain, not knowing if he dared even go down this path with her. But he had welcomed her into the studio like no other person in his life. When she had been ten years old, she had sat on a stool and posed for him, a grin stretched across her face. That had been before it all went wrong, somehow, and everything fell apart.

“What is it, Dad?”

Roy ran his free hand down the back of his head. “Do you want any of the paintings?”

There was a brief moment when he thought she might just hang up on him right then and there. No other ending seemed possible within his reach. In just that split second, he remembered tears streaming down her face, slammed doors, the roughness of the steering wheel when he had peeled out of the driveway and left behind the only family he had ever tried to build himself.

It had been a mistake for so many reasons, and he realized that more and more each day.

“Do you still have the one with the seahorse?”

The question sucked the air out of his lungs. “What?”

“The seahorse,” Sarah said. “You painted it the summer I stayed with you in the city, remember?”

He had thought she had hated that entire summer.

“Yeah,” he said, “yeah, I do. It’s, uh, it’s right here.”

“Will and I can come by and pick it up this weekend,” she said.

“You don’t want me just to mail it?”

There was a pause, a moment teetering on the edge, and he hated that he had asked the question in the first place.

“It would be good to see you,” Sarah said.

Those words were probably so much more than he deserved.

“Yeah.” The word was a sigh of relief. “It’ll be good to see you too, sweetheart.”

“Text me what time would be good for you, and we’ll see you then.”

“Sure, I’ll see you this weekend.”

“Bye, Dad.”

“Bye.”

All he could do was stare down at the phone as the call disconnected.

The studio had room for another set of memories—and maybe some second chances too.