Now Fix It

By Meriska Klien

His hair brushed against his cheek while he moved around the canvas. She was captivated by the way his upper lip pushed down into his lower as he concentrated. He glanced at her, the painting, her.

“It’s almost done,” he said. She took a step away from the wall, but he rushed to press her firmly against it. “No. I’ll turn it towards you.”

She stayed like that, up against the wall. He strode, barefoot, back beside the canvas, which was placed at an angle away from her. He spun it around. The sun from the window to her left fell directly on it. She gasped. He had painted her hanging.

“Do you like it?” he asked. She opened her mouth to speak. “It really captures your likeness.”

She looked back at it and, though he was not wrong, noticed the artist was modest in his appraisal of his work. He had not just captured her; he had improved her. His rendering of the hawkish shape of her nose and her large ears imbued features that she carried awkwardly with a certain allure.

He had even turned her room into something remarkable. The slanted light coming from her left was pictured illuminating stagnant dust held up by air. The chips in the paint of his walls were more balanced than the scattered ones behind her. He had depicted the laminate flooring as porous and soft, not hard as it felt when she walked on it. The only problem, really, was the gnarled rope around her throat.

He was supposed to paint her standing as she was against the wall. Why has he hanged me? she wondered. His version of her body was cold and blue. She pressed her hand against her arm; she was warm and pink. How bizarre, she thought.

“I’ve really captured the wood up here, don’t you think?” He pointed to a beam in his painting that jutted out from the wall below where it met the ceiling.

She furrowed her brows. There was no beam in her room. But when she turned to scan her wall she found it above her. How had she not noticed it before? It was thick and quite unseemly, but he had represented its grain in a way that made it something elegant.

Sensing her satisfaction, he continued, “And see the noose? I’ve taken great care to brush in every thread of the rope.”

She examined the illustrated noose. It was quite exquisite, but where was its referent? He must have imagined it, she thought. But he smiled and shifted his eyes above and past her. She turned, and there it was. The upper half of the rope was tied to the beam and the bottom half into a beautiful noose. How had he captured it so perfectly? He must possess a great understanding of the physicality of things, compounded with an innate solidarity with the brush.

She gazed at him and thought herself lucky that such an important artist had paid attention to her for so long, had so painstakingly rendered her on canvas. She looked down at herself and the inadequacy of her body frightened her. Things felt much better when she imagined herself as the new woman he had created from her. Tears built up in her eyes.

“I know,” he said, “I’ll help you fix it.”

He moved towards her until they were both standing below the noose. He bent to press his shoulder against the back of her thigh, and lifted her so she sat on his right shoulder.

“There,” he said. She opened her mouth to express her gratitude. “Now fix it.”

She lifted the noose above and around her neck. He pushed her up and then dashed from underneath.

Her hair twitched against her cheek as she struggled. Minutes later it stopped, and she swayed gently back and forth. He glanced at her, the painting, her.

“It’s done,” he said. “Another reclamation.”

He gathered his paints and brushes into a duffel bag and checked the canvas one last time before stowing it under his arm and leaving. The woman in the painting had a familiar gleam in her eyes.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Meriska Klien lives in Lethbridge, AB, where she is an undergraduate at the University of Lethbridge. Her stories have not appeared anywhere prior.