Arting Around All Day (open)
(( Continued from Picnics and Flowers ))
Rachyl handed a ten to the cabbie, covering both fare and gratuity, and got out with Meegan onto the curb before the Arch Museum of Art.
The granite steps were magnificent, clean, and rather striking in the mid-morning light. Linking arms again, they slowly climbed the seemingly never-ending steps towards the top, gazing occasionally at statues and fountains along the side.
"You know, I've never been to an art museum... We had a class trip planned once to go to the one in Philly, but I ended up with the chicken pox that week and never got to go." Rachyl sighed in memory... It seemed a lot of the "fun things" kids did during school she ended up missing due to illness or something more personal.
She hooked an arm into Meegan's. "That's a Monday, though, what time is the show?"
"Please be sure to bring Meegan as well. I could use more insight if she doesnt mind sharing hers."
"Not to worry, Nyra, I'll be there. When you are finished there, look at the painting next to it and think 'light at the end of the tunnel.'"
Meegan took her arm from Rachyl's and walked from the room, when she reached the top of the stairs she leaned against the railling to wait for Rachyl.
With a nod of her head, she bid Nyra good day, and walked up the stairs to join Meegan.
The taller woman leaned so lasciviously against the railing it was hard for Rachyl to not stop and stare at her delicious curves.
"I hope you don't mind me inviting myself along on the artistic tour she seems set on giving you," she said with a wink.
"Come on, lets go shopping."
Meegan started down the stairs with a wink.
As they exited, Nyra didn't seem to notice them, but a painting near a side exit caught Rachyl's eye...
It was a rather large oil painting of what looked like a view from the driver's seat of a car; signs were visible, if blurry, and there was a vague feeling of motion from the somewhat blurred seperating stripes. In the impossibly large rear view mirror, grossly distorted, were two figures, standing on a curb, the shorter figure with a hand raised, almost as if they were waving at the driver...
The speedometer was pegged at ninety.
Rachyl stopped dead in her steps and fell to her knees with a loud thud, staring, open-mouthed at the painting.
In the bottom corner, the tiny signature showed "J.Walker."
After a few minutes she flipped the page and walked onto the next one. "Light at the end of the tunnel, hhmmm." Once again she sat down and analyzed the work. Trying to view it as Meegan had told her. Her sketchbook was full and she sat till the sun sank trying to find that point of view. Hopefully she could talk with Meegan at the showing a bit more broadly.
((Nyra Out!))
Meegan's face was a mixture of panic and curiosity.
She remembered vividly the day her father had dropped she and her mother off at the rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike, then drove off... They had walked out just as he started driving away, and Rachyl remembered waving at him, the same way she did every morning, as if he were just driving to work...
And there it hung on the wall, for all to see...
The anger she used to feel, the rage she'd pretty much let go through years of therapy, meditation, and forgiveness, uncounted hours of hatred for her father bubbled up inside. All she wanted to do was tear the painting from the wall and rip it to shreds, bash the frame against a pillar, shatter it to splinters. Her fists clenched as she fell forward, eyes still riveted to the piece, her chest heaving as she tried not to vomit on the immaculate floor.
Slowly she lead her closest friend outside the museum. Once outside, Meegan lowered her to the steps, and sat down next to her, tucking an arm around Rachyl's shoulders.
"I'm here when you're ready to talk."
"How could he paint it? How could he flaunt what he did? Is it wrong that I want to tear it to shreds, then cut him to ribbons with the splinters? Or even stab his heart out, the way he did to me, to Mom, that day? Why does it hurt so much? When I thought I'd forgiven him, when I'd let go of all the anger and hatred I'd found inside me after I'd learned and been old enough to understand what he did, why does the distorted representation of his point of view make me so sick I want to vomit all the hateful things I've said, thought, written about, over the last nineteen years, or bash my forehead against one of those stone pillars until I can't feel anything, can't see anything but the blood I wish was pouring from his battered, broken, betraying body?"
A body-wracking sob, almost an explosion, came from her chest as she fell into Meegan's embrace, sniffling and gasping on her shoulder.
Rachyl hadn't 'properly' cried for what her father had done, had never shed a tear even through years of therapy and talking with her mother about it (as infrequently as they had) and the outburst was rather... liberating.
Straightening, she reached into her purse for a tissue and started giggling. As she dabbed her eyes and wiped her nose, she answered Meegan's inquisitive gaze. "I was just thinking, I'd never have met Nyra if I hadn't been concerned about her bleeding, and offered her a napkin to help staunch it."
A staccato sob wracked her again and she sighed, then cleared her throat, her voice a bit less choked with emotion. She took a clean tissue and wiped some makeup from Meegan's chest and shoulder, then hugged her briefly. "My place isn't too far, would you mind if we stopped by so I could freshen up? I didn't bring enough supplies with me to take care of something of this... magnitude."
Meegan laughed, then pushed herself to her feet, she reached a hand down to help Rachyl to her's.
She walked side by side with the designer to The Strip, and hailed a cab.
(( Continued in Sunday Shopping, Meegan and Rachyl out. ))