The Perfect Shade of Blue

 The Perfect Shade of Blue

A Short Work of Fiction by Selina De Luca

Written for a Creative Writing Course Portfolio April 2013

Summer Blues Collection 1 by Gordon Harrison (Meech Lake, Gatineau Park, Québec, Canada)

“Why are artists always depressed failures?”

My thirteen-year-old cousin Kristy had asked me that at the last family gathering I went to, and I’ve been chewing on it ever since.  She had been flipping through my camera, where I’d captured some of my paintings as well as experimented with some really lame photography.  She handed it back to me stopped on a painting of a green-and-yellow parakeet in mid-flight, revealing the bright blue underside of his wings.  My favourite painting.

“Where on earth did you get that idea?” I had asked, astonished.  “Artists are rapturously happy!”

“Are you?”

“Of course, always!”

I had only gone to my aunt’s that day because I’d decided that enduring another horrid family gathering would be better than the month’s worth of messages I would get from my mother lamenting my absence.  I hated family gatherings for one thing: interrogations.  I should just write it all down and give a copy to everyone on my mother’s side, so when they want to ask me something they can refer to it instead.

“How is work going, dear? – ah yes, you wrote it here…”

-   How work is going: good. 

-   When I will quit and find another job: I don’t know.

-   How my artwork is going: it’s going. 

-   Do I have a boyfriend yet: NO.

“I’m not really an artist,” I had told Kristy, “I just dabble in it for fun.”

“What are you then?”

A good question.  I feel like it’s an offense to all talented and educated artists out there to claim to be one of them.  I bought a bunch of supplies on a whim. My undergrad is in music.  Not a BMus, a pitiful BA.  I write and paint for fun, I pretend I can dance and sing, and I compose music.  I’m quirky and I have crazy neighbours.  I have – had – a pet bird.

From where I’m lying on the couch, Kristy’s comment replaying in my mind, I can see every worthless inch of painted canvas in my living room.  Next door, there’s a huge party going on to celebrate the new pope.  It’s as though the wall between us doesn’t even exist: 

“Francis – Jesuit – so exciting – I love him!” – an awfully noisy party for one that doesn’t involve a lot of alcohol.  But they’re a big bunch, and all young, so I can forgive the noise.  Besides, we have a truce; they can praise their almighty Jesus on their guitars and have parties, and I can dance around the house to George Gershwin, sing along to my Joni Mitchell, and bang on the piano at the most ungodly of hours.  I could start a noise war and match their pope partying, but all I can do right now is wallow in misery on the couch and stare at the failed artwork around me.  

“The Home of a Broken Artist.”

That was a sign I put on my door once in a fit of dramatic self-pity, and immediately took back down because it was too pathetic and would just invite trouble from the Catholics next door.  It sits in my living room now, the word “broken” gloating with a gloriously ironic palatinate-blue beauty over the excuses for art cluttered around it.  I tried another sign – “Abby the Artist” – a legit artist! A legit delusional loser artist.  Then I gave up on signs. 

“Broken.”  So perfectly painted, so perfectly blue.  Broken, because:

1.       My art sucks.

No, really.  I’ll write, play music, paint, wave my “I’m an artist” flag, and it’s all just one big joke.

2.       I hate my job.

I’m a key holder at Suzy Shier. Not a manager, just a key holder.  Retail just doesn’t cut it for this wannabe painter-poet-songwriter university graduate.

3.       The boy I love doesn’t love me back.

Under the deck at my parents’ place I buried the key to the chest I keep under my kitchen sink.  Locked inside of it are poems and songs I wrote for Jackson McEvoy.  Most of the time I pretend that chest isn’t there.

4.       My parakeet is dead.

Okay, let me reword that.  I killed my parakeet.  Normally I’m not superstitious, but this is different.  I was writing a makeshift masterpiece on the inside of a cigarette box:

“An Elegy for Budgie”

(The height of my artistic achievements! His name, I mean.)  When I wrote the poem, inspired by some alcohol-induced idea to contemplate the afterlife of a parakeet, he was just as alive as ever.  Then I went to show him my masterpiece.

“The Home of a Prophetess-Murderess,” my sign should say.  “Poetry with the Power to Kill.” 

Now I lie amidst shades of blue, despising myself and finishing off an entire batch of cookies.  I had actually baked them for my neighbours; I had decided for once to actually accept their invitation and, benevolent neighbour that I am, I was even going to bring cookies.  But then my bird died.

It doesn’t matter; they would have baked me some if they knew Budgie was dead. Maybe not if they knew I was guilty though. Except, I wanted to give some to Mr. Seymour across the street, too. Oh well. 

Mr. Seymour actually saw my sign before I took it down.  He’d snorted at it and said,

“Something’s wrong with this.”

“What?”

“Broken at twenty?”

(I’m twenty-two, actually.)

“Isn’t it the most perfect shade of blue though?” I had asked.

“If you have to decorate, put something happy or you’ll worry your neighbours,” he’d replied.  I thought he meant the Catholics, who always seem to think it’s their business to worry about me, but later I realized he meant himself.  I think I’m his temporary replacement for his kids when they’re not visiting.

“Broken.” 

This time last year, I was high on life; loving school, going to church sometimes with my neighbours, wielding my identity as an artist like a weapon, and frequenting Friday’s Roast Beef House.  Those nights at the piano bar, I, eager, heartsick, and hopelessly obsessed, would wedge myself into the corner of a booth until I became a wall decoration, and watch him. Jackson McEvoy. 

Beautiful bright eyes below a mop of dark curls.  In my mind I’m back there now, swishing my straw around a cocktail the most luscious shade of dark pink, pretending not to notice the voice at the piano while at the same time basking in it, letting it wash over me as I drink it in.  Sometimes my eyes lift of their own accord and glance at the boy as he sings his “findin’ it hard to believe we’re in heaven,” terrified that he’ll see me, and terrified that he won’t.

“Now our dreams are comin’ true, through the good times and the bad…”

I take a cautious sip of pink and give up, letting my eyes stay fixed on him.  Most of the time he barely seems to care that I exist, but I still know we’re made for each other.

Knew. Were.

It was a dark shade of pink, my crush, and I could paint it.  I always pretended to believe he didn’t notice me at the bar, but really he was ignoring me on purpose.  When we saw each other at school, though, it was all, “Abby! How’s it going!” and I was all sing-song happy and hopeful again.  Until I figured out who it was he loved. Another girl, not me.

All this time, and I still have to push those memories away.  I hate this state of limbo.  I was free and ready to move on, and yet I must keep revisiting those days, and feel ashamed and cheated.  I can’t get away from it, because the memory of him is painted all over my life. 

“It’s time to get rid of these paintings,” my friend Shelah said to me one day when she came over.

“What?” I cried.

“Abby. Look at this place.  You want to get over Jackson? I look around, and what do I see.”

“I don’t know, what do you see, Shelah? Please tell me.”

She shot me an “oh shut up” look and started thrusting paintings into my face.

“Boy at piano bar, pink drink,” she said.  “Major’s hill park, pink sky, blue shadows, silhouette of a guy and a girl.  Blue abstract whatever this is. Another one, another one, another one. You practising your blues? This is pathetic. I see an obsession with Jackson McEvoy, that’s what I see.”

“I’m keeping them,” I told her.

My parents also, claiming a right to how much clutter goes in a place they’re helping to pay for, want me to purge.  I hate all of it, but neither they nor Shelah can convince me to part from even my most atrocious creation.  So it’s all still here, my experiments in capturing a mood on a canvas – a dark, hollow, Egyptian-Zaffre-blue mood that wants to know why Jackson McEvoy couldn’t choose me instead.  I won’t part with a single one, but none of it is beautiful.

That painting over there, though – that one is beautiful.  That green-and-yellow parakeet in mid-flight, revealing the bright blue underside of his wings.  My beautiful Budgie.  I stand up and retrieve it.  I painted it back in the earliest prime of my artistic confidence, but it looks like I’d just caught his spirit as it whisked away in a burst of colour to the parakeet-afterlife.  I remove the Gordon Harrison painting my parents gave me that’s hanging over the piano and replace it with Budgie’s Spirit.  The artist whose hand captured the joy and freedom of my beloved Budgie like this could not be a murderess.  I look with satisfaction at Budgie’s Spirit lording over the room like a true masterpiece, and the leftover melancholy I’d been sitting in all morning crumbles away.  

I think I know what the problem was with what Kristy said.  It was her mash-up of three completely unrelated things: depressed, failure, artist.  I’m no failure; it’s just all ups and downs on the way to success.  I can hold keys for Suzy Shier, attempt creative arts, and lose Jackson McEvoy, and still choose to be as rapturously happy as I can be.

I look around the room again.  Maybe I could clean this up.  Put some of it away, like the poems in the chest.  But not right now – right now I need to just get out for a bit.  The cookies are gone, but maybe there’s a bag of chips or something I can fork up – I think I’ll go to that pope party after all.

I’m not a failure, and I’m not broken. Maybe I have nothing to show for myself but a four-year-old painting of a parakeet, but hey; if anything, I’ve really mastered the colour blue.