What Should Be
Short Story
What Should Be peers into a woman’s soul on the anniversary of her lover’s death as she paints the cityscape before her. Only her son sees the deeper truth.
Elya sat precariously perched on a three-legged stool before an easel precariously perched on the slope of a hill and considered the cityscape before her. No emotion rose as she stared ahead, though childhood bafflement returned. What she saw with her eyes was only an illusion behind which something honest must exist if only she could see beyond the monumental structures.
Scruffy jeans, a warm sweater, and thick boots shielded her from the late winter chill. Normally, she’d never paint outside in February, but a surprise thaw had melted the vestiges of snow and warmed the air, offering a hint of spring. Leaving her seventeen-year-old son, Kai, to struggle through math homework that she couldn’t possibly understand, she had gathered her easel, art paper, paint boxes, and the fold-up stool, packed them into her small gray car, and headed to this lonely spot overlooking the city.
She dipped her brush into a pale yellow concoction she had stirred to perfection and traced the skyline. The Capitol took prime position in the center, while the grand library with its sturdy pillars stood to the right. Other structures she couldn’t identify abutted against the sprawling university named after some explorer she had heard about but forgotten.
As her hand traced the straight lines of stone and steel, her mind wandered and a resounding tone filtered through unbidden. “Planned cities! That’s what we need.” It was Jano’s authoritative voice, always so certain of himself. Whenever he drove through the city, weaving around derelict buildings, closed shops, and homeless people huddling on street corners, he would repeat his diatribe. “Planned cities!” He had a plan for everything, Jano did. Except his sons, of course. He never not planned on them.
As if watching from a distance, an image filled her mind: herself and her boy standing before a gravesite, a fresh stone at the head etched with the words “Jano Malik Bortov – a Man with Grand Plans.” Yes, Jano always had grand ideas about everything. A shiver worked over Elya. Was that only two years ago?
She shook her head and refocused on the scene. The noon sun had abandoned its topmost position and started its descent. Hints of shadows altered the interplay of structures and streets. She squinted at the soft edges, blurring the distinction of where one ended and the other began.
Another gravesite image crawled into her mind, this one merely a cracked clay mound with nothing to mark the life of the woman who had lived and loved and bore Jano his second son—Wiley. Elya had not let Kai come to the cemetery. He had been so young when Karina died, and besides, he hardly knew her. He knew his half-brother, as children often do, through the simple games they played together as boys.
Suddenly, Elya couldn’t stand the sickly yellow paint. She squeezed other colors onto the tray mechanically, her hands working as if they had minds of their own.
There had been some fun times, as odd as that seemed in retrospect. How could she have gotten along so well with her lover’s other mistress? Yet she had. She and Karina bore sons, only a few years apart, and though she had raged at the man, his supreme confidence in her love, his need for her affection, always drained her fury to a muffled cry in his embrace.
Karina never complained. She had sat at Elya’s kitchen counter on countless afternoons, drinking strong cups of coffee, chain-smoking, and applying bright polish to her nails, insisting that polygamy was the nature of men, and they could not be expected to do anything beyond their nature. Bearing Jano a son was her one great achievement in life. That and chatting pleasantly with customers while working at the Fuel Stop.
The comforting cigarette smoke eventually morphed into a swirling demon and choked the life out of Karina’s lungs. She died when her boy, Wiley, was only six. A lump formed in Elya’s throat. She set her brush aside. Above the tray of bright colors, the sickly yellow skyline stretched from one end of the canvas to the other. She hated it.
Squeezing her eyes shut she tried to block the questions that always pounded on her brain when she thought of Wiley. What had happened to the boy? She had taken Kai with her, she would be late for work otherwise, when she dropped Karina’s son at the foster care house.
Kai had strained, leaning his full weight against her grip, one hand stretched out as if to grab his half-brother as she tugged him away. In the car, Kai had dropped his head onto his chest and would not look at her. She swallowed down the familiar nausea and heaved a deep breath. It wasn’t my choice. I couldn’t take him. I could hardly manage to feed myself and Kai.
“Planned cities! That’s what we need!” Jano’s shout echoed in Elya’s ears as her eyes popped open. She reached for the brush to steady her nerves. Jano is dead. Elya is dead. And only God knows where that boy ended up.
She dipped her brush again and started to move across the paper, dabbing here and there with indistinct strokes. A sound of crackling twigs caught her ear, but with long training, she forced herself to pretend indifference—a bomb could explode under her feet and she would not be the least disturbed.
The crackling steps stopped and a shadow leaned over her shoulder and broke across the easel. Her son’s voice rose behind her. “Thought I’d find you here.”
Elya nodded. How much her son understood, she could not say. His kind nature – patient and generous – so different from his father, always surprised her. It was as if he had been plucked from some other race of beings that had discarded human weakness, only acts of decency hinting at his larger humanity. She continued to paint, her hand working faster, mixing fresh paints, dabbing across the page at a spectacular rate.
A long-exhaled breath and Kai signaled his reluctance to speak. But then, as he often did, he forced out his words in a rush, a necessary job to be accomplished as quickly as possible. “I went to see him. Even offered a prayer for his soul.” A long pause. “Someone had left flowers.”
Jolted, Elya suppressed her reaction. She had not left flowers. Who on earth would? She had stopped visiting Jano’s gravesite when Kai learned to drive. He took himself there on every anniversary of his father’s death and rarely said a word about it. During that same time, she would gather her paints and try to keep memories from tearing her soul into bits. Her vision blurring, she couldn’t see the page before her, but her brush continued to progress, darting here and there, filling in the empty spots.
“I’ve forgiven him.”
Elya’s hand dropped onto her lap, her paintbrush leaving a green smear on her jeans. It took her a moment to lift her head and glance aside at the tall handsome man that was her son. Honesty was her only recourse. “Me, too.” She shrugged. “But love and forgiveness does not amend the wrong he did to you…and others.”
Kia seemed to ponder this as his gaze fixed on the distant city. Then a dip of his head accented to her truth. A snort, and he moved on. “Planned cities!” Kai’s tone lightened into almost laughter. “You remember how he talked about his grand plans? How he would arrange cities according to human needs—everything from collective daycares to old age homes?”
Bile rose; Elya swallowed it down and whispered, “Yes.” There was so much that could not be said, but they both knew. The irony was not merely bleak, it was tragic, awash with the flotsam of cruel insensitivity and clownish ignorance. A warm hand landed on Elya’s shoulder and pressed with familiar kindness.
Kai spoke softly, “I like your picture better.”
Confused, Elya peered into her son’s face as his gaze wandered across her painting. She looked at what her hand had wrought, and they joined in silent communion.
On the canvas, the city had dwindled within the embrace of a woodland and an open field filled with vibrant flowers. The buildings had diminished to a fraction of their former size, and even the grand dome huddled in obedience to a greater power. The hard-lined streets had thinned to wandering earthen paths. Two matriarchal oaks bordered the page, their life-bright foliage streaming down the sides, while squirrels scampered across the verdant grass.
Did I paint this? She looked up and saw the sharp-edged cityscape had melded with afternoon shadows where imaginative possibilities grew.
Kai’s voice, soft and unassuming, rose like a refreshing breeze. “You see what should be there.”
What should have been. Elya knew she could not go back in time and imbue Jano’s vision with honesty, alter Karina’s self-destructive trajectory, or save her son’s half-brother. But she could paint a better picture.
She gathered her paints, closed the lid, and handed the painting to her son. “Carry this for me?” Then she collapsed the easel and bundled her equipment into her arms.
With the folded stool tucked under one arm, Kai carefully clasped the painting and strolled beside his mother down the hill toward home.
A. K. Frailey is the author of 21 books, a teacher for 35 years, and a homeschooling mother of 8.
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