She listened to her grandmother’s pendelum clock laboring across the room. Nick, it went. Nick. Nick. It seemed to report each second just a little too late, as if after so many human generations and households it were finally getting tired. Tired of everything, she thought. Certainly tired of us. But that was the way it had worked when Gail was a girl, too. Always barely making it. But never failing. It would keep time that same scratchy, precarious way forever, she thought, if there were someone to keep it company, to keep lifting its black weight.
Several times now the clock had hypnotized her. She would discover her painting hand in her lap and realize she’d been sitting inert, saying in her mind, nick…nick…nick…nick. And she didn’t know if minutes had gone to waste, or hours. As if she’d been counting, but with only one number: one…one…one…one.
If we could only break the rules a little, she thought. If we could make each second last a harmless bit longer than the previous one. That’s all it would take. A second stretched to a minute, a minute stretched to an hour, an hour to a month, a year to a lifetime. With just that little change we could stay here forever, finishing everything we’ve started, fixing everything we’ve ruined, making everything good.
Nick…nick…nick…nick, she thought, trying to accomplish it, like the afternoon as a girl when she’d tried with her will power to make a pencil roll. Her mind still felt the bruise of it, of trying to believe something she couldn’t. No! No! No! she told herself. No pretending!
She had taken Ed back. He had called and said, I’m sorry about everything, if we could just try one last time. She had said, what about Ginny? Skinny? Oh, Jenny. Yes, where is your drunk anorexic would-be covergirl now? She left me, he said. I haven’t seen her for over two years. Well why did you wait until now, she asked. You know how the job is, he said. But no, it wasn’t just that, I didn’t think you’d want me, didn’t think you should want me. Well what makes you think I’d want you now, she said. Please, Gail, he had said, this is the last time we can try.
She had said, come if you want, but I’m not changing for you, I’ve got my life working, I’m not going backwards for you.
He was there in less than 24 hours. He came with a suitcase. He didn’t even bring his writing things. I’ve got everything I’ll ever need now, he had joked bitterly.
Please, she had said.
He had made it clear he was there to apologize and atone. He forgave her and hoped she could forgive him also though of course she had much more to forgive. She said it was both too soon and too late for that. He could do what he wanted while he was there and they could be civil to one another, but if he was going to badger her for more than that he would have to go away.
For two weeks they’d been perfectly civil. She was perfectly cheerful every day and she had finished three paintings, easy ones but as good in their way as she might ever hope. His return had given her that, at least — shut her in with her art by giving her something to shut out. He had moped. He watched a lot of the news reports and ceremonies. Once when she caught him crying she said, it’s morbid, it’s like throwing yourself an early funeral. He said, some of us have a heart. Spare me, she said. But she had never seen him so grieved. It stung her to be cruel to him, and that made her even angrier. He deserved cruelty. She deserved revenge.
She had felt the horror and grief of it, too, but somehow she had kept it distant. She had painting to do. She had always said she painted for the satisfaction and not the money or recognition, and not even for others, and now she was proving it.
She was glad he had come. She had been too generous in the divorce. She could have demanded the house, but instead had bought his share. It was satisfying to know that his marriage to Jenny hadn’t worked, but it did not fully compensate for her suffering. He had made her feel worthless. She had wasted the last years of her youthful beauty in a stupor of sleeping pills and self-loathing. For a long time she had stopped painting. She was glad for a chance to even the score.
Until yesterday she had been fine. Then, in the middle of the day, her concentration had started failing. She had to fight a panic that this painting, the only one that mattered now, would not get done. Then she had her first nightmare — they said everyone was having them now. In the dream, Jesus came to save the world but got disgusted and flew off to a different one. Now she had been sitting in the studio since sunrise and had trusted herself to apply paint only that once — when Ed had come in brooding.
I have to finish it, she told herself. I have to to do something good today.
She looked at the clock and saw that it was almost noon. When she looked again, two hours had passed. Her paintbrush was on the floor. Her mind was thick with drowsiness. No! she said aloud. No!
She stood up, paced quickly to flush the cobwebs and fear from her mind. It had not been the clock’s trance this time — those were just minutes. This was hours. She could not believe she had let herself nap on her last day to finish it.