The Paint Job
Before water pooled in small drops on Mrs. Stevens’ bedroom ceiling, before the drops dried into quarter-size coffee stains, before the stains blossomed into a sepia watercolor that sprouted circles within circles like the ripple caused by a pebble thrown in a still lake, Mrs. Stevens refused to let a painter into her house. She let the small flakes of Navajo White sift into her hair while she took a shower. She ignored the bacon grease and spaghetti sauce splattered on the teal splash guard behind her stove. She dismissed the clouds of hand prints from her grandchildren on the sage walls in the living room. She refused to fork out a cent to cover her walls with fresh coats of color. She wanted the house to weaken with her, its colors to fade like the pigments on her aging skin.
But when the brown edges of the water-stained ceiling seeped toward the brush strokes above her bed, she called Walter, the same painter who helped her late husband, Mr. Stevens, coat the house 16 years ago in paramount sage, niagara mist, sailing sky, and sea sprite.
“I want the sense that the ceiling has just been painted,” she explained to Walter, as they walked into her bedroom. He looked like he did 16 years ago, but his face was more round and his hair peppered with gray. “I don’t want a textured ceiling, you see, no small pebbles on the ceiling; they fall into my bed and make a mess, do you understand?” She leaned into Walter for her last question, like he was a child caught eating in the living room.
Walter nodded, stretching out his tape measure as the thin metal ruler reached across the room. He snapped it back and jotted something on his note pad. “No texture,” he said, wrinkling his nose.
“I want to see those brush strokes,” Mrs. Stevens said, pointing to the edge of the stain where a swoosh of strokes was barely visible in the dim light of the room. “I want to look up from my bed and have the feeling that the painter just stepped away for a moment, for maybe a beer or a cigarette,” she said, tapping Walter’s pad to make sure he noted her special request. “I don’t want smooth walls, see,” she said. Her voice turned deep, as if she were scolding him. He looked up from his notes. She looked at him without blinking, her eyes wet, the rim of her eyelids pink. “I want to know that a painter has been here, do you understand?” she asked.
“I think so,” he said, “keep the brush strokes,” he repeated.
“Yes, brush strokes and paint drips. I want drips of paint, too,” Mrs. Stevens said, tapping her finger on Walter’s notepad again then turning away to show him the master bathroom.
*****
Lawrence Stevens knew how to leave drips of paint in conspicuous places. When he and Mrs. Stevens first moved in to their house on Anderson Street, the walls were a stark white. Mrs. Stevens wanted something to fill the blank space, anything — paint, pictures, wallpaper. Lawrence complied. He brought home paint chip samples from Sears and they held them up to the empty walls. Then they went shopping for more, because Mrs. Stevens wasn’t satisfied with her husband’s selections.
She wanted variety, so she picked a different theme for each room, teal for the kitchen, like the antique bowls her mother had given her as a wedding gift, sage for the living room to match Mr. Stevens’ brown recliner, a glossy navajo white for the bathroom so the mold would be easy to see and wash off, and eggshell white in their bedroom, like the color of her wedding dress.
Lawrence loved painting — a hobby he had picked up from his late father who spent his last days blazing through paint-by-number kits. It was a way to relax at night after his shift at Cartwright’s frozen food manufacturing plant. But Lawrence was messy, impatient with the structure and prescribed assignment of color in the kits his father loved. Lawrence liked the feel of the brush moving freely across a surface. He played with color, mixing cool with warm. He despised prepping his media, no masking of edges or priming his canvas before use. Mrs. Stevens wanted him to make an exception with their house, break his routine of slopping the paint around by laying tarps over the carpets and lining the window sills and door frames with masking tape.
“I have a fine, steady hand,” he said. “No need for masking.”
Mrs. Stevens complained, worried about her carefully selected forest green carpet.
“No worries, dear, I have it all under control,” he said, sliding his arm around her waist and twirling her in the kitchen as he kissed her neck, her cheeks, her ears.
Mrs. Stevens complied.
Lawrence’s hand was steady, but there were a few drips of paint on the carpet. There were some uneven patches of color that coated parts of the door frames and window sills. Later, Mrs. Stevens spent hours trying to get out the paint that had splattered on the floor in their bedroom, the brilliant eggshell white screaming at her from the forest green carpet. She grabbed her scissors and cut out the drips of white so that bald spots littered the edges of the room. Then she took up a brush herself and fixed the patches on the sill, using masking tape to get a straight edge. She vowed to never let Lawrence paint again.
*****
“Usually we try not to drip the paint, Mrs. Stevens,” Walter said, his eyebrows curling toward each other, the lines on his forehead getting darker.
“Then don’t use tarps,” Mrs. Stevens said. “No masking tape. You can drip all you want in my house.”
Walter shook his head, “Are you sure, Mrs. Stevens, no tarps, no masking tape?”
“Yes, that is what I want. I can pay you more if you’d like.”
*****
Lawrence didn’t like to pay extra for things. He argued with Mrs. Stevens about hiring a painter to refresh the colors in their house after their children moved out and went to college. Mrs. Stevens didn’t budge, because she remembered how hard she worked cleaning up Lawrence’s mess the first year in their house. Then Mrs. Stevens reminded Lawrence about his ailing back and sore arms from his years at the processing plant. So he shelled out the extra money for help and hired his friend Walter, who was trying to start his own business, get out of the droll of his job at the plant where he and Lawrence worked, where Lawrence had planned to retire from in a few years, where he hoped to never set foot in again after he and Mrs. Stevens bought an RV and toured the states.
“I’ll paint the bedroom,” Lawrence said to Walter, “you paint the others. And I’d like you to prep, it’s what you do well.”
Walter complied.
*****
“I can drip paint if you want,” Walter said. “Usually we give people discounts if we drip paint or mess with the sills.”
“I’ll pay you extra, I said,” Mrs. Stevens said.
“No need, ah, but, I will need... I will need you to sign that it’s OK if I drip the paint.”
“I’ll sign what you want,” Mrs. Stevens grabbed the pad from his hands and wrote in capital letters, “I will not charge Walter for drips of paint on my floor, for brush strokes on my ceiling.” Then she signed her name at the bottom of his pad. “Here, it’s signed, now just paint the way I want.” She tapped his pad again to make her point.
He hunched over his legal pad and a jotted a few notes about the measurements of each room, then typed a few numbers into his portable calculator. He ripped a piece of yellow paper from his legal pad and gave it to her.
“Here’s my estimate, Mrs. Stevens.”
She looked at the figure circled in blue on the paper, then looked at her stained ceiling. She thought the brush strokes near the center resembled a bunny rabbit. She wondered if Lawrence, her husband, had aimed for that when he painted the ceiling a new color, sea sprite, that summer afternoon 16 years ago. It was mid-July when the average temperature hovered around 90 degrees. It was a Saturday, and Walter was spending it with his family, so Lawrence was alone with Mrs. Stevens.
She remembered laying in the bed, reading while he painted a few coats of a new sky blue color on their bedroom ceiling before lunch. She was dripping with sweat. She watched the perspiration float down the center of Lawrence’s chest, along the line of fur that ran down to his belly button. The fan blew hot air, but Mrs. Stevens still glistened, felt swollen with heat as if her clothes were tighter. She was hot, she needed relief. So she removed her blouse.
She lay in her bra and underwear, but still felt as if she were boiling, her skin expanding. She wiped away the droplets sliding between the crevice of her breasts. She put down her book. She watched the muscles on Lawrence’s back flex and release as he stroked the ceiling. She watched his thick fingers tighten around the brush handle as he pushed the paint along the surface. She noticed the hollow in his lower back shine, his waist spill slightly over the waist of his pants.
She took off her bra, imagining his brush painting the curves of her body with the cool white of eggshell. She slipped out of her underwear, feeling swollen and moist.
“Lawrence,” she said, turning on her side so the curve of her hips looked sculpted.
“Yeah,” he said, wiping his forehead with his upper arm, then dipping the brush in the can of paint.
“Are you ready for a break?” she asked.
“Just a minute,” he said, gently rubbing the sides of the brush to wipe off the excess before he reached for the ceiling again, but then he turned.
Mrs. Stevens remembers how he glanced at her for a second, then added one stroke on the ceiling before he turned again, his hand still pressing the brush against the surface. She can still see the twists of the brush stroke near the water stain. He turned, forgetting his arm, his brush, his paint job and dropped it all to join her on the bed. She remembers the brush tumbling to the floor, sea sprite splashing against the side of her bed, the drips still caked on the box spring almost two decades after his haste.
She remembers his hands, still wet with paint, spreading her thighs, streaks of light blue sticking to her knees, circling her nipples. She was boiling, spilling over, his tongue cooling her off, tempering her heat. He tasted salty like the ocean, his hair wet and metallic, his body as swollen as she was, melting on top of her until his skin was clothing her, covering her with his paint.
*****
Mrs. Stevens folded Walter’s estimate and led Walter to the front door. He closed his book, put his tape measure away and shook Mrs. Stevens’ hand.
“Thanks for thinking of me, Mrs. Stevens,” Walter said, “we’ll get started right away.”
Mrs. Stevens watched Walter leave in his van. She closed her front door and stared at the brass knob in her hand. She noticed a small smudge of sage on the bottom, remnants of a fingerprint. She stroked it gently. She unfolded the yellow paper and read her instructions again: “Brush strokes on my ceiling.” She walked slowly down the hall past the kitchen, looked down at the edge of the carpet, pausing when she saw smudges of periwinkle glimmer on the dusty molding.
Her legs felt weak. She couldn’t lift them, so she shuffled across the carpet, her feet swishing loudly in the silence of her house. She was hot, beads of sweat pooling above her lip, in the back of her neck. She bent her swollen joints to unbutton her blouse, letting it fall on the floor. She unzipped her skirt and dropped it around her feet as she sat on the bed. She lay down, folding the yellow paper in her hand. She looked at the brush strokes on her ceiling, noticing how the shape looked like a bunny, as her thoughts turned to that hot summer day 16 years ago.
Beeper Peddle is a writer and healer living on the East Coast. She lives with her partner and their beloved soul puppy. Beeper writes about sorrows, lies, and deep loves. When you read her work, you will dip down into her heart and end up in all manner of body parts. Should you find yourself reflected in these words, it is merely coincidence; however, it does not surprise her you share the same heart. Find her at bethpeddle.com and @beeperpeddle on Twitter and Instagram
Sharon E Ross (she/her) grew up in California and raised her daughter in Maine. Her poems, essays, and feature stories appear in The Pacific Review, Lake Effect, DASH, and Portland Press Herald’s Raising Maine. She earned an MFA in creative writing from the University of Southern Maine. When she’s not teaching, she likes to ignore Google maps to see where the road will take her and imagines random strangers meeting cutely.
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