Complementary Colors (36 page)

“Children.”

I plucked at one of Buford’s ears. There was a thread hanging loose where a stitch had let go. “I think the rules change when you’re not a kid anymore.”

“Why is that?”

I shrugged.

“When you were young, what did you hold?”

It was dark in my room, but the TV was on downstairs and they were laughing.

“Paris?”

“A pillow.”

“Pillows are good.”

I huddled in the corner.

“What kinds of things made you want to hold a pillow?”

Dishes clanked in the sink.
“I don’t know.”

“Were you sad, or lonely, or—”

“Scared.”
The carpet was thick on the stairs so they didn’t creak, but I always knew when he was there.

“What scared you?”

I don’t know how I knew.
“Harrison.”

“And why were you afraid of your father?”

He’d stand there for what seemed like hours with his hand on the doorknob
. “I’m not sure.”

“Did he hit you?”

“No. He just watched me.”
I always turned off the nightlight because I was convinced if he couldn’t see me, he’d forget I was ever there.

“And what were you doing when he watched you?”

I barricaded the door with toys.
“Eating, playing, running.”
When I was older, I used the chair from my desk.

“Do you think he watched you because he was worried about you?”

By the time I was in the second grade, I used my drafting table.
“No.”

“Then why do you think he watched you?”

Sleep became a luxury I couldn’t afford.
“He was starving.”

“What do you mean?”

I quit getting up to go to the bathroom. A few times, I urinated out the window but was afraid of getting caught so I snuck an empty bottle into my room and would empty it in the morning before I left for school and after he’d gone to work.

“I don’t know.”

“Then why would you say he was hungry?”

“I don’t think I knew he was. Not then.”

“Did he say something to make you think that?”

He didn’t have to. His eyes said everything his mouth didn’t
. I crushed the stuffed animal against my chest.

“Can we talk about something else?” I left Buford on the floor and climbed back into the chair. I draped my legs over the arm and nestled my back against the other. “You need a couch. This chair is too cramped. All head doctors are supposed to have a couch. You have toys, and you need a couch. I’m sure there’s something Freudian about that.”

“What would you rather we talk about?”

I shrugged.

Carmichael moved to his chair. “All right. Tell me about the painting you did the other day. You called it The Glutton. Why?”

“No clue.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Not my problem.”

“I can’t help you unless you talk to me.”

I threw my arm over my face. “Why does it matter what I called the painting? It’s not like you could understand anyhow. No one sees the pictures. They can’t.”

“But Roy can.”

I dropped my arm back into my lap.

“He told me about the showing at the gallery and the things he saw in your paintings.”

There were pockmarks in the tile ceiling. I played connect the dots in my head.

“Some of the things he described to me are disturbing. Are all your paintings like that?”

“No.”

“The one your sister sold. What was it?”

“I don’t want to talk about that, either.”

“It had to be important.”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s gone.”

“You sell a lot of your paintings. Why was that one so special?”

“What time is it?”

“Paris.”

“Has to be close to lunch. I’m hungry.”

“It’s ten thirty.”

“Feels later.”

“Tell me about the painting your sister sold.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

He cocked his mouth to the side and drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. “Okay. Fine. Then tell me about Harrison.”

“There’s nothing to tell you about him either.”

“It’s either Harrison or the painting, you choose.”

I straightened up and wound up with my boxers crowding my ass crack. I wiggled, trying to get them to move.

“Paris?”

“Fine.” I rubbed my face. “What do you want to know?”

“Tell me about the day he killed himself.”

The blood on his hands looked black under the bare lightbulb. The metal cage vibrated. Round and round the rabbit went. Eyes wild and screaming as it smashed into the sides.

“It rained.”
Somewhere between the shed and the woods, the sky spit icy droplets that sucked the heat from the day. My clothes, the leaves, the mud, it all stuck to my body.
“It was cold.”
There was no blood on my hands. There should have been. Like the rabbit’s feet, my palms should have been raw.

The rabbit was dead. Alice was going to be so heartbroken.

“What about the rabbit?”

I jerked my head up? “Huh?”

“You said the rabbit. What about it?”

I’d spoken aloud? What else had I said? “Nothing.”

“It was something. You went somewhere. You saw something.”

I shook my head.

“The rabbit.”

“No.”

“I want to know about the rabbit.”

Oh God.
My heart gave one sluggish beat after the other.

“Is that what the painting was about? The one your sister sold?”

“No. That was a happy moment. A good thing the…”

“The rabbit wasn’t?”

“No.”

“Did Harrison kill the rabbit?”

I needed to shut up. I tried to, but the words kept coming. “It died because it was scared to death by what it saw.”

“And what did it see?”

“Something Harrison did.”

“And what did he do?”

“I…” Earth sucked a sloppy wet kiss against the monster’s mottled skin.

“What did he do, Paris?”

A jagged pain dug at the inside of my skull with wicked claws.

“You breathe a word of this, Paris, so help me…”

I jerked myself out of the chair. Carmichael followed me and blocked the door. “Get out of my way. I’m done.”

“I can’t help you unless you open a line of communication with me.”

I tried to shove past him, and he held my arm. “Let go.”

Carmichael searched my face, then released my arm. “Fine.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“You do that.”

I opened the door.

“And by the way,” Carmichael said. “The craft studio is off limits to you from here on out.”

I laughed. “Like you can stop me.”

“I can. This is my facility. I can’t make you talk, but I can take away the privileges I give you.”

No paint. No way to escape. No way to quiet the noise in my head.

“Fine. I guess I’ll see myself to the exit.” Fuck him. He could keep his art supplies. I had better ones at my apartment.

“You aren’t authorized to leave.”

“I checked myself in.”

“You did. But I’m the one who decides whether or not you’re well enough to leave.”

I balled up my fists. “You bastard.”

“It’s for your own good.”

“My own good? I agreed to be here so I could escape a tyrannical bitch, not be trapped by you.”

“Julia doesn’t have your best interests at heart.”

“And you do? You don’t even know me.” I pounded a hand against my chest. “You know nothing about me.”

“Only because you won’t let me. I know you want to tell me things. I know you want to tell the world. It’s why you paint.”

“I paint because I like it.”

“Some, yes. But what I’ve seen you do here, you don’t do it for pleasure. You do it out of fear.” He took a step closer. “I want to know what you’re so afraid of. What’s your secret, Paris? Is it the rabbit? Or something else?”

It was right there churning in my gut, boiling a path up my throat, filling my mouth. I wanted to puke it all up on the polished gray floor. All over my thrift store shoes and Carmichael’s penny loafers.

I wanted to be free of the darkness. I wanted the beast exorcised from my soul.

“Paris.”

“I…”

He cupped my face. “Tell me. Tell me about the rabbit. Tell me about The Glutton. Tell me anything.”

“I can’t.” Tears cut cool lines down my burning cheeks.

“You can.”

I shook my head. “No. You don’t understand.”

“Then help me understand.”

I leaned closer and so did he. “It knows.” I whispered.

“It?”

“The rabbit.”

“What does it know?”

“It saw. It saw everything.”

“What did it see?”

“The truth.”

“And what was the truth, Paris?” He begged me with his eyes to let him bear this burden for me. And I was so tired. What would it be like to sleep? To really sleep? Without the drugs, the alcohol? Just the silence found in a world without my terrible sin?

The rabbit sat on Carmichael’s desk.

“Paris?”

It watched me, and I watched it.

Carmichael followed my gaze. “What are you looking at?”

The rabbit bobbed its head, and its pink nose crinkled as it sniffed the air.

“Tell me what you see.”

Its right ear twitched and then the left.

“Let it out, Paris.”

The rabbit hopped to Carmichael’s chair, disappearing from my line of sight. I craned my neck, trying to keep my eye on it. It hopped into the doorway from behind the wall.

The rabbit pawed its face.

I tried to pull out of Carmichael’s grip, but he held on. “I have to go.”

“Where?”

“The art room.”

“Why?”

“It’s coming.”

“The monster?”

“Yes. Yes.”

“And you need to paint?”

“Yes.”

“Because when you paint it goes away.”

“Yes, yes…please…”

“And what happens if you don’t paint?”

“It will come out of here.” I put a hand on my chest. “It will be angry, and then the only way to escape will be down the rabbithole.”

“The rabbit lives there?”

“The white rabbit. I’ll have to follow it down the hole, or the monster will kill me.”

“Why does it want to kill you?”

“Because it’s angry. It’s so angry.”

“Tell me why it’s angry.”

My lip trembled, and tears ran down my cheeks, soaking the front of my shirt.

“Tell me, Paris. Why is the monster angry?”

“Because…”

“Because why?”

I shook my head. “Please, I have to paint. Just let me paint.”

“So it will go away?”

“Yes.”

But he wasn’t going to let me. His determination slid through his gray eyes and consumed any pity he felt for me. I didn’t care if he pitied me or not. I just needed him to understand why he had to get out of my way.

“I want to see it.”

He had no idea what he was asking. “No.”

“I’m not afraid of it.”

I tried to twist away, and he pinned me to the wall. “You don’t understand. You can’t. No. Don’t let it. Don’t…” If it took getting on my knees and begging, I would do it.

“Show it to me.”

Beside me, the white rabbit stood on its hind legs and cocked its head.

Fear erupted from my chest on the back of a scream. I shoved Carmichael back and ran down the hall. When I reached the art room, the door wouldn’t open. There was a clear view of the roll of paper sitting next to the shelves through the window. A brand new crate of paints was on the floor beside it.

“Paris…” Carmichael and two orderlies approached from the end of the hall.

The white rabbit rubbed against my ankle, and I drove my fist through the glass. A shower of fragments hit the ground, but the metal weave inside kept it from giving way. I clawed at the wire, tearing my fingernails and cutting fiery lines into my skin. The edge came loose, and I was able to get my hand through the hole and undo the lock.

Powerful arms wrapped around me.

The monster stirred.

“No, please, you can’t.”

Its eyes opened.

“You have to let me paint.”

“I just want to help you.” Carmichael tried to make me look at him. I snapped my teeth, just missing the tips of his fingers.

“Goddamn you, you’ll wake it up.”

The white rabbit had a smear of crimson across its side. It kicked up its rear legs and bounded down the hall.

“No, please. I don’t want to go with you.” But it was too late.

The monster rose out of its pit. Decay and filth sloughed off its mottled flesh. A stinking cloud of sour milk and rotten cabbage followed.

It took a step, and even the earth trembled in fear.

“I’m sorry.”

Yellow eyes regarded me with no empathy. I was a coward.

“Please, I was scared.”

I’d let it suffer, and now I would feel its wrath. I was a liar. “Stop. Please, oh, please stop.”

The monster dug its fingers into my chest and cracked me open. Then it spilled out of me and into the world.

Strength is the only thing I remembered clearly. It shot me into a high as addictive as any drug or sex with Roy.

With every pump of my heart, the rage inside me grew until it swept away pain, mercy, and my conscience. Until it filled me, overflowed, and contaminated everything around me.

The orderly tightened his grip, but he had me around my ribs, leaving my arms free. I shoved my elbow into his nose and slammed my foot back into his knee. The second man tackled me, and we hit the floor. I head-butted him in the face. He let me go. The tread on my shoes lost traction when I hit a smear of blood.

Caught in the fury, I could only panic. Clawing at the wire and slamming into the door over and over, unable to remember how to open it or even what it was. I only knew the barrier was in my way and I had to get through it.

Then it was gone.

Dr. Carmichael said my name, but I was trapped inside the monster’s belly. Swallowed whole, I would remain there until it shit me out.

Brushes, crayons, and poorly drawn still-lifes shredded under my hands. I threw aside the chairs and tables in my way.

The monster had nothing but its anger and hate for me. It screamed. It bit. It destroyed everything in its path.

Another group of orderlies descended and took me to the floor. My limbs were restrained, my body pinned. I sank my teeth into one man’s shoulder and nearly bit through a second man’s thumb.