Painting Without Hands
“Are you coming, sweetheart?”
“I don’t see why I’m here.”
“Geoffrey is your cousin.”
“Second cousin,” Justin reminded his mother.
“He’s still family.” Geoffrey was the son of Jennifer’s favorite cousin.
Slowly Justin got out of the car which his mother had just parked in the lot at
the Veteran’s Hospital. “What am I supposed to say to him?”
“Just talk to him like you’d talk to anybody else.”
“But we have nothing in common,” Justin said.
Jennifer stared at her son but said nothing. She continued walking towards the
entrance. She asked for Geoffrey’s room at the front desk. She and Justin rode
up in the elevator in silence. As they approached the door of the room they were
told Geoffrey was in, Justin hung back.
“Mom, I’m not sure I can do this,” Justin said uncertainly.
“Of course you can,” Jennifer told him.
With a sigh Justin followed his mother into the hospital room. There were
several beds in the ward. They could see Geoffrey in the bed closest to the
window. A couple of beds had men in them. They looked spaced out or asleep.
Three beds were empty.
“Geoffrey,” Jennifer said as they approached the bed.
Geoffrey’s head faced the window. He turned slowly toward them. He was
twenty-one years old, but he looked a hundred.
“Hello, Aunt Jennifer,” he said even though Jennifer was his mother’s cousin,
not his aunt. He had called her that most of his life. “What did they have to
bribe you with to get you to come here?”
Justin felt like he had been struck. That was exactly how he felt. His mother
had coerced him into coming with her. Brian had been part of it too. This was
the last place he wanted to be.
“They didn’t bribe me, Geoffrey,” Jennifer said calmly. “I wanted to see you.”
“Lovely to see you too,” Geoffrey said bitterly. He turned his eyes back to the
window.
Justin studied the flat area of the bed where Geoffrey’s leg should be. It had
been blown off by a roadside bomb in Iraq. He shuddered at the thought.
“I brought you some homemade cookies,” Jennifer said pulling a little box out of
her bag. “Would you like some coffee to go with them?”
“Sure,” Geoffrey said, but he sounded like he could have cared less.
“You remember Justin,” Jennifer said. “He came with me today.”
“Hi,” Justin said looking at his mother helplessly.
“You grew up.”
“So did you.”
“I’m going to get some coffee for us all,” Jennifer said. “You two have a chat
while I’m gone.”
“Mom,” Justin said quickly, “I can get the coffee.”
“I’m happy to get it,” Jennifer said with a smile. She nodded towards Geoffrey
who was again staring out the window. “Talk,” she mouthed.
“Mom!” Justin mouthed back but his mother was already leaving the room. “So…” he
said sitting down in the chair near the bed. Since it was in front of the
window, Geoffrey was forced to look at him.
“Why don’t you leave?” Geoffrey asked with a hard edge to his voice. “I know you
don’t want to be here with the cripple. I make everyone uncomfortable.”
“I’m not uncomfortable,” Justin lied.
Geoffrey snorted sounding a lot like Brian when he was about to call Justin on
his shit. “You don’t need to be here. I don’t want you here.”
“I don’t want to be here either,” Justin said taking a page from Brian’s book –
the brutal honesty page. If he fucking had to be there, he might as well try it
on his second cousin. “Self pity makes my dick soft!”
“Wha…What?” Geoffrey asked his eyes opening wide. He looked at Justin, really
looked at him for the first time. “Why did you say that?”
“I thought it might get your attention. Someone I know says that. He’s right
too.”
“You’re gay.”
“Yeah, like the whole world doesn’t know after the bashing.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’ll never really be okay again,” Justin said with his own bitterness.
“But you look okay.”
“Looks can be deceiving. The bashing …changed everything.”
“That’s exactly how I feel … about my leg.”
“I can identify.” Maybe he and Geoffrey did have something in common after all.
“How…How did you get through it when your hand was useless?” Geoffrey asked.
“I almost didn’t.”
“But you did.”
“Yeah, eventually. I had help from some wonderful people.”
“Is that why you’re here? You’re supposed to help me?”
“I don’t know why the fuck I’m here,” Justin admitted.
Geoffrey actually laughed at that. “At least you’re honest about that.”
Geoffrey’s face sobered. “I thought I was doing the right thing going into the
army and fighting in Iraq. It’s such a mess over there. I don’t know what the
fuck I was thinking. And now I’ve lost my leg.”
“But not your life.”
“Right, there’s life after having your fucking leg blown off.”
“There is, you know,” Justin said seriously. “I thought my life was over after
the bashing. I couldn’t use my hand. I couldn’t do my art.”
“But that all miraculously disappeared and you’re fine.”
“There was nothing miraculous about my recovery at all,” Justin told him. “It
was months of painful therapy, and baby steps to be able to fucking feed myself,
and the worst was … knowing I’d never be able to draw like I once did.”
“No therapy is going to bring back my leg,” Geoffrey said bitterly.
“No, it won’t, but you can learn to live without it.”
“How the fuck do you know?”
“I had to learn to live without my art,” Justin said.
“Liar!” Geoffrey reacted. “My mother said you were painting and had some kind of
a show.”
“Yeah, I did. Graphic art using a computer. I can barely sketch the way I used
to, but I’ve learned to do art in different ways.”
“Oh.” Geoffrey seemed to be considering that. “How did you learn to do that?”
“My … lover got me a graphics program for the computer,” Justin replied.
“Lucky you. I don’t have a lover. Never will … without my leg.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yeah I do.”
“Geoffrey, I know what this period of your life is like,” Justin said laying his
hand on Geoffrey’s arm.
Geoffrey pulled away a little bit, but then seemed to change his mind. He left
Justin’s hand on his arm. “I can’t stand it,” Geoffrey choked out. “I just want
to die.”
“I know,” Justin said. “I felt like that.” He squeezed Geoffrey’s arm.
“Then why aren’t you dead?”
“People,” Justin replied. “Different people who talk to me and made me see.”
“See what?”
“Hope.”
“Is there hope?”
“As long as you’re alive there’s hope.” Geoffrey rolled his eyes and looked out
the window. “One of the people I met was this artist, Adrienne. She had been in
a car accident – a quadriplegic. She could move one finger, and somehow she was
able to paint. She had a showing in an art gallery. I have one of her paintings.
She gave it to me.”
“How could she paint with one finger?”
“There are people who paint with their mouths and feet. It’s a way of getting
the feelings out, feelings that cripple us otherwise. My art changed so much
after the bashing. I hated everything. My art was cruel and harsh, but that’s
how I felt.”
“And now?”
“It’s not quite so violent,” Justin said with a smile.
“Maybe I should take up painting,” Geoffrey said with a wry smile of his own.
“Now that I could help you with.”
“You think I could paint?” Geoffrey asked in surprise.
“I think you can do whatever you set your mind to.”
“Coffee,” Jennifer said as she came back in the room.
“Cookies,” Geoffrey replied. They all sat around the bed catching up on other
members of the family that they hadn’t seen for a while.
When Jennifer and Justin stood to leave, Geoffrey said, “I wouldn’t mind another
visit. I’m going to be in here for a long time.”
“Sure,” Justin responded readily. Jennifer smiled at both of them.
As they walked away, Geoffrey turned to stare out the window. Maybe the sky
looked a little bluer than it had before his visitors.
*****
“How did it go?” Brian asked as Justin closed the loft door.
Justin shrugged. “He’s not in a good place.”
“Who would be with your leg blown off?”
“Yeah.”
“What did you talk about?”
“You, and Adrienne, and painting without hands.”
“I thought it was his leg that was missing.”
“It is, but he might try painting.”
“That’s good.”
“Would you come with me next time?”
“There’s going to be a next time?” Justin nodded. “I didn’t think you wanted to
go at all.”
“Sometimes a man needs to listen to others, even if they are older lovers who
bribe them with the best fuck of their life.”
“It was a masterpiece,” Brian said smugly.
“Maybe we could paint another one,” Justin said coyly.
“Without hands,” Brian said as he threw Justin over his shoulder and headed for
the bedroom.