Day 19

Deceptive ~

Perceptually misleading—that is how I have always seen myself.

People always tend to label me or make assumptions about who I am. I suppose that’s what happens when you’re different or have a handicap.

I woke up this morning to Phillipe curled behind me, his arms wrapped around my waist and his mouth against my neck. He told me a few days ago that he was done with the collection. He said Sacred was the final image, and he already sent it to town.

He was wrong. I knew I wanted him to paint one more picture.

I wanted him to paint Deceptive.

I wanted him to paint me from my perspective.

* * *

Stepping into the studio the next morning, I find him over in the chair I first saw him in weeks ago. Not one word is spoken as I move to the easel that is still set up where he left it yesterday. Steeling myself against what I’m going to see, I tell my heart to calm down.

I can feel his eyes tracking me. Instead of feeling uneasy like I did during that first meeting, I feel aware, and I feel loss. I feel the loss of a man I want and know I can never have. Turning to face the Sacred image, I am once again shocked by the knowledge that he never painted me in any of these replicas. It was always her. This time, I don’t back away from the recreation of her he has so painstakingly painted. No, this time, I reach out and trace my fingers down the violin.

“She truly is beautiful, not only her, but Diva, too.” I whisper to him, trying to let him know that I’m okay with this. I want him to know that I am resolved to the fact that I can never be her and that I can never have him, but my words are met only with the heavy weight of sobering silence.

I let my eyes travel over all the tiny details he has remembered, focusing on the position of her hands and the scratches on the violin. It is terrifying in its brilliance, and I know that each and every image he has recently painted is a perfect replica of the originals that are hanging in memory two floors below.

“There are no F-holes on any of the paintings after Solitary and Acquiesce. Why is that?” I realize belatedly and look over to him.

His shifts and his elbows move to rest on the arms of the chair. His fingers form a steeple in front of his mouth, covering the lower half of his face. Still, he says nothing.

There’s absolute silence.

“Why?” I question him again. I turn my eyes back to the image. Examining it, I theorize out loud. “Diva’s there, and she is naked. She is special. Her image to you is sacred, yet Diva is covering her. Why are there no F-holes?”

Blinking slowly, I trace my fingers over her again, scouring my brain. I am desperately trying to think of why. Why didn’t he include her tattoos, not only here, but on any of the final four? I am so involved in my own thoughts that I don’t even notice when he moves. His shadow falls over me from the opposite side of the canvas, alerting me of his nearby presence.

Lifting my eyes to his, clearly confused, I ask again, “Why are there no F-holes?”

“It is not my fault that when you look at the images, you see something unhealthy and disgusting. That’s all on you,” he recites her journal verbatim.

Everything slowly starts to fall into place. The pieces I couldn’t fit together from just moments before join as one.

“You were there that day,” I accuse softly.

His eyes lock with mine, unashamed at what he has just revealed to me.

“That day she argued with her mother, you were there, listening to her. Why?” Shaking my head, I ask a different question. “Why didn’t you tell her you knew about the argument? What significance did it make to leave them off?” I finally stop my rapid-fire questions and stare at him, anticipating an explanation. I pause, allowing him time to explain this strange revelation, so it makes sense to me.

Closing his eyes, he turns, pushing his hands into his pockets. Slowly, he moves to the open window and stops. I stand impatiently where I am, having learned that it is best to wait for Phillipe to talk than to push him.

“I could tell when I first met her parents months earlier that they didn’t approve of me or of us.”

Clearing his throat, he looks at me over his shoulder. I frown and as he pauses before continuing.

“They thought I had seduced her. Her father told me so the first time I met him. He didn’t understand that she was a woman. She was a grown adult woman who had feelings and desires. All he saw was the little handicapped girl he had raised.”

Turning to face me fully now, he leans back against the window, and his hair falls forward as the wind catches it.

“They didn’t want to let her go. I understood that.” He paused again, and his eyes pinned me with the force of his intensity. “I don’t want to either.”

Glancing down at the image before me, I lick my lips and move away from it, walking around the easel to stand in front of it. I leave nothing between him and me—well, nothing except for her.

“That doesn’t explain why you left them off,” I point out, being persistent as ever.

Closing his eyes, he shakes his head. “After Solitary, since she had permanently tattooed herself, I decided that I could give them this. I could leave her untarnished for them.”

I realize that I’m fidgeting with my hands, so I clasp them in front of my body and tilt my head to the side.

“When I came back from town and heard her on the phone, I knew it was her mother. She was shaking with anger at whatever her mother was saying, but I could also tell by the flush on her face that some of what she was hearing was ringing true with her.”

I find myself captivated by his story and also baffled by the thought of him believing the tale he was telling me. Before I can voice my reasoning, he continues.

“I decided not to add them out of respect—respect for her parents, respect for her, and respect for the music I defiled. After all,  I turned her and her music into something lurid and depraved.”

Eyes full of conviction challenge me as I narrow my own and step toward him.

“You are so wrong,” I stress.

He straightens and stands tall, freeing himself away from the window and wall.

“She wasn’t embarrassed, not at all. Didn’t you hear and read what she wrote about you?”

As I stop before him, I let my eyes search the face I have now grown so passionate about. How can he not see what I see? He’s so wrapped up in her and all that he thinks he did that he doesn’t even see what she left behind to show him.

Taking a huge risk, I reach up and gently cup his cheek. He doesn’t move, except for his jaw tightening beneath my palm.

“She loved you, Phillipe. She was so proud to have those marks on her skin. She wasn’t embarrassed at all.”

His nostrils flare as he leans down, so we are eye to eye.

“You weren’t there. She was agitated, and she looked humiliated.”

Shaking my head, I stare into his eyes to get my point across. “Well, we all know that looks can be deceiving. Don’t we?”

* * *

“You want me to paint you how?” he asked me again, sounding slightly confused.

“I want you to paint me looking at a wall covered with sheet music,” I stated again.

There was a long silence in the room.

Finally, he spoke again. “What do you mean? As in, you reading the music? You don’t use sheet music.”

I had thought about this many times. The whole emotion behind the piece that I wanted him to convey was one of deception, not really seeing what was in front of you. What better way to show that than me staring at sheets of music on the wall? For years, I had learned to play by ear, and for years, people had never really seen me as the woman I am.

 “I was thinking of a white room, like my acoustic room. Instead of the sound boards, it will have sheets of music everywhere. It will represent that sometimes what is front of you and what you are seeing isn’t really so. It can, in fact, be quite deceptive.”

Stillness wrapped around me as the room went silent.

A minute passed before he said, “I want to understand why you feel this way. Do you feel...” He paused. “Like I don’t see the real you?”

I took a deep breath and shook my head. “Oh no! Phillipe, god no. See, that’s the whole point of the piece. I want to call it Deceptive. I want it to make people think.”

His hand cupped my cheek, and his lips pressed against my own.

“Who do you think doesn’t understand you?”

“Everyone,” I replied quickly before shaking my head. “No, that’s not true. My parents, people who don’t take the time to know me, the ones who find out I’m blind and make a split-second judgment.”

I opened my eyes and looked to where I thought he would be. I strain to see, trying to remember everything about my dream from just the night before.

“I want them to see what they think I am but wonder at the title.”

“Deceptive,” he muttered against my mouth.

His warm breath brushed my lips as he tried out the title. Parting my own, I sighed, and his tongue entered my mouth. He kissed me deeply before pulling back.

“Truer words have never been spoken. You are so much more than they all know.”