Canvas

You’re sitting on an armchair, a mug of tea beside you, your child on your lap. She’s holding a book. She keeps asking where you got it from. You don’t recognise it.

Before you, a blank expanse stretches out, bleak and never ending. There’s nothing in sight that can jog your memory, because there’s nothing in sight. At all. It’s just empty and barren, devoid of anything whatsoever, just you and nothing, just you in nothing, and if you’re the only thing left doesn’t that make you nothing, too?

‘Dad?’ She’s looking at you with big eyes, waiting. As you turn to look at her, you notice something at your side. Something that can make the nothing go away.

‘Well,’ you begin, ruffling her hair, smiling as she squirms and giggles, ‘a friend of mine used to own a bookshop here…’

Paintbrush in hand, the blank canvas is no longer imposing. Colour creates certainty. With every stroke answers spring to life, and the fear of not knowing retreats further and further back. With every stroke, your world becomes more and more stable, and the unease from before seems like a distant dream. But it’s still there, an itch at the back of your mind, dormant for now but lying in wait.

You paint over it.

~

You’re sitting at the table, empty bowl in front of you, your daughter at the sink. She’s humming along to something as she washes, but you can’t place the tune. Smiling, she reaches for your dish, her head bobbing up and down. You sigh: ‘My little girl is all grown up.’

She scoffs, rolling her eyes, turning to clean. When you look at her, you see the baby in your arms, the kid at your side. But she’s not those things anymore. Before you stands a teenager, surveying her work, hands on her hips.

She flashes you a grin: ‘Ready to go shopping?’

Leaving the house seems like a mammoth task, but you nod. A few minutes later and you’re both stepping out, walking away. But then you freeze, and frown. As you stare at the door, things start to go hazy, the colour draining from your vision. Hesitantly, you ask: ‘Did I lock…?’

‘I’ll check.’ Your daughter turns back and rattles the handle. It stays shut. Your stomach settles, and with it the green of your garden returns.

‘I always feel like I’m forgetting something whenever I leave the house.’ Your daughter remarks, skipping slightly ahead of you, ‘When I go to school I’m always worried I’ve forgotten my maths book or something like that.’

‘School…how is school? What is it you’re studying?’

‘Maths, triple science, English lit, English lang, Spanish, RE, Geography, Music.’ She rattles them off quick fire like it’s been rehearsed, like a polished script she’s acted day in, day out.

‘Right, right…and what’s your favourite? Literature? I was always good at literature. We’d be reading Shakespeare and my classmates would complain about the language being too old- fashioned…but it always just clicked for me...’

‘We’re studying Shakespeare at the moment! We’re doing Macbeth.’

‘Macbeth, eh?’ You nod, but the world around you grows grey. Macbeth. What was Macbeth about again? Macbeth. Who was he again? Some kind of king? It’s been too long since you’ve read the classics. You’ve just been devouring crime fiction this past decade, so it’s no wonder you don’t remember. With every explanation, you find you’ve been colouring the surroundings back in, every reassurance another vivid stroke.

‘I’ve got the list here,’ your daughter announces, ‘do you want to take the top half whilst I take the bottom half?’

You didn’t even realise you’d made it to Morrisons.

~

Later that evening, your daughter puts the telly on, asking if you’ll watch with her. It’s getting late, but…

‘Go on then.’

Grinning, she does a mini fist pump of victory, before putting on an episode of Doctor Who. You hum along to the theme song together, and you have to remind her to be quiet, in case the neighbours want an early night.

Within a few minutes you’re lost. You can’t follow along. As the plot progresses without you, the TV drains of colour, and soon you’re trapped in emptiness. Your daughter seems impossibly far away, laughing without a care in the world. How is she oblivious to the blankness that was once their home? How can she not notice when it’s about to swallow them whole?

You think you start to see your feet turn see-through, but before the panic can spread, you feel a familiar weight in your hands: a paintbrush. With the power of creation at your fingertips, you have control. You can keep the nothing at bay. With every layer, the world grows lighter. With every splash of colour, stability returns. A dab of blue here makes you realise the volume is too low. A dab of yellow there makes you realise there’s no way to catch the story when the actors are too quiet.

‘The trouble is,’ you say, jabbing the remote, ‘they play the music so loud that you can’t hear them talking.’ The room is bathed in warm hues, the telly burning brighter than it ever has before. You ought to write to the broadcasters. It’ll lose them viewership. You’d think they’d understand such a simple thing, but -

- but the sound won’t increase. It’s already on one hundred.

~

Whilst your daughter’s practising the trumpet in her room, you pass the time by reading. You’ve started a new murder mystery, the latest Harlan Coben thriller - at least, you believe you have, but the position of your bookmark tells a different story. You don’t recall any of the chapters you’re supposed to have read. As you look up from your book in confusion, you see the room has become as beige as the pages. The sentences float upwards to swirl around your head, mocking you, revelling in the fact that they hold secrets you’ll never understand. They fire punctuation at you: commas slice your arms, fullstops rip through your torso, and question marks worm their way into your insides, embedding yet more ignorance inside you. You feel like you’ve got brackets in your brain, blocking the flow of information inside you. You open your mouth to yell, but speech marks keep your speech enclosed, trapping your thoughts in your throat.

Dimly, through the pain of your shredded insides, you realise that the brassy fanfare has been replaced with heavy footsteps as your daughter descends down the stairs. Beaming, instrument in hand, she enters the kitchen. The golden glow of her trumpet has been illuminated by the paintbrush in your hand, and you are reminded you are not defenceless. As words fire at you like bullets, you shield yourself with colour, drawing over them, sighing as they dissipate. You apply paint to yourself; you feel it sink in. You know that every piece of punctuation - from semicolon to hyphen - dissolves as shades and hues return.

As you usher vibrancy back to its rightful place, you find you were never at fault. How can you be expected to remember the previous passages when you never read them? Your daughter may be older now, but she’s still a child, and children love to play pranks.

‘You shouldn’t move my bookmark.’ You chide her softly, gentle but stern, ‘You’re old enough to know better.’

Your daughter seems taken aback - probably surprised she’s been caught so quickly - but then she rearranges her face into sheepishness, mumbling how she won’t do it again.

Satisfied, you turn back to your novel. You flip through the chapters, waiting for familiarity that never arrives.

~

On Saturday morning, your daughter asks you if you would be down to accompany her to the bookstore.

(‘Down? I’m not ready to be put six feet under just yet.’

‘Dad! Why would you say something like that?’)

Aside from the bewildering use of slang, everything else is perfectly reasonable, and you agree to go. You’re a pair of bookworms, so when one offers, there’s simply no chance the other will refuse. You’re glad she’s inherited your love of reading. Better that than your bad back, or your susceptibility to colds, or your admittedly limited numerical ability.

As soon as you enter, your daughter makes a beeline for the young adult aisle, saying she’ll meet you by the crime section in half an hour. Alone, you scan the shelves, waiting for a certain name to pop out. Caine…Child…Coben. You make a triumphant exclamation, a bit too loudly, for the person next to you turns and stares. When you nod in greeting, they go back to their Christie novel, flustered.

You study each of the Coben books, looking for ones you haven’t read before. Surprisingly, there are a few you don’t recognise. Paleness threatens the aisle, but with your paintbrush in hand you ward it off. As you reassure yourself of your backlog at home - all the books you’ve bought but haven’t yet read - the idea that the room might fade becomes laughable. In the end, you decide to settle for what had been described as his latest mystery. It’s a stand alone anyway, so no harm done.

But when you get home, you see the exact same book on the table, bookmark slotted halfway through.

~

Your daughter’s at university now. You can hardly believe it. You know her as a child, and sometimes the adult her is unrecognisable. Sometimes, you forget she’s grown up entirely, and whenever you’re out shopping, you feel a pang of fear, worried you’ll be late picking her up from school. Once, you walked all the way to her primary school, shopping bags still in hand, when you got a call from the daughter you were supposed to be picking up. The world had gone white then, blindingly bare. But your shopping bags had morphed into a paintbrush and pallet, and as you frantically threw colours onto the canvas, you chalked it up to old age. Old age, and loneliness.

Now though, your daughter’s back for spring break. She’s curled up on the sofa, a mug of tea on the floor, despite the numerous times you’ve told her not to leave it there, lest it spill all over the carpet. You bend to pick it up, grunting as you place it on the table.

‘Dad, you didn’t need to do that! It was fine where it was.’ You raise an eyebrow at her, frowning, and she flushes, mumbling, ‘Well, I would have moved it, if you’d asked.’

‘Nevermind that now,’ you sink into the couch beside her, the cushions enveloping your weary bones, ‘what are you reading?’

Your daughter sits up, beaming. Her feet kick the edge of the sofa in excitement - you were right to move that cup.

‘It’s Harlan Coben! I got it from your bookshelf.’

‘Oh, really?’ You scrutinise the cover, but nothing comes back to you, ‘I guess I never got round to reading that one.’

Your daughter’s face falls almost imperceptibly, but then she grins, though her smile is shaky: ‘Maybe you should read this when I’m done, then.’

‘Maybe.’ You agree, but you know you won’t. You’re not a fan of reading, anymore. The narratives can’t keep your attention.