Second Chance

Wednesdays had become softer since I started my course of action at the museum. No longer the midpoint of the work week but a point of interest and, now, opportunity. Those same walls that had seemed tepid with possibility now lit up in full orange warmth as I waited for Michael to join me.

Of course a slight uneasiness pricked at my stomach and throat, what if he doesn't come? But I pushed those down and stared forward, making my world small enough to only contain the edge of the frame.

"Hey."

First his head came into my view and then the rest of him, all blonde hair and misty eyes, a smile on his face like he was happy to be there. I smiled back, tried to appear equally full of mirth, but what if my face didn't listen and I looked awkward?

"I'm glad you're here. For a moment I was worried you wouldn't show." His eyes moved over my face for a moment, "Same painting, hm?"

"Yeah…Same painting."

“Well what do you need to get out of it?”

My new acquaintance had a good hand for asking questions that felt like being choked, although the actual hands attached to his wrists were delicate with a pattern of almost visible veins like the tree roots under the pavement stones that ruptured everything above them. The question, right.

“Understanding?” Vague, I found it was easier if I was vague enough for people to fill in the answers they wanted.

“Profound,” Michael nodded slightly, “but I meant more like is it for an essay or something. If you’re stuck getting back to the roots of why you’re here is a good starting place.”

I wasn’t adverse to saying the truth so much as worried it would scare someone away, if they thought I was weird, I thought it would be as if those beige stones opened up and swallowed me whole, trapping me between floors listening to the steps of conversations overhead.

So it surprised me when I heard the words that came out of my mouth, “I think if I can just understand one painting the rest will open up to me.”

“Poetic,” Michael commented, his voice sounded soft, gentle, thoughtful as he paused for a few moments, I didn’t dare look at his face; “Okay, then let’s start from the very basics. An intro to how to appreciate art, as it was.”

He seemed to enjoy being my teacher, delighting in the small details; sit here, hold this, look here. Even standing in front and gesturing dramatically to me and the empty room to keep us engaged.

Michael explained to me, in terms I mostly understood, how to appreciate art; how to look outside the frame and not at the walls either side (Although, later, he clarified that you could actually consider the framing and location in the building too) to analyse the details the plaque gave you no matter how small because they were there by design to provide context.

He would check in with me, quiz me on previous topics, and we spoke long into the afternoon although it felt still, static, there were no windows in the room (which i had noticed) because the sun could damage and bleach the painting (so he told me) and my watch seemed so far from him to tear away my gaze.

“So!” Michael turned to me a final time, his shirt spinning out like the swirl of a skirt, and clasped his fingers together, I could see charcoal under his nails and at the slight tips of his fingers, I had never used charcoal but was it so sticky so- “Tell me one observation you have of this painting. I will be marking you on this out of…hm 100.”

I had actually always liked tests, careful rules and specific recall, it was simple, straight and succinct until it came to essays and opinions. Needless to say I avoided it and only took subjects that needed numbers and statistics. But I was here to expand those horizons, to look out of the frame so i looked at that expectant face and tried to compose something that sounded normal and insightful no matter how to the opposite I felt, my head was filled with hundreds of disconnected thoughts and images and finding 2 to fit together seemed like finding a lost shoe in the ocean.

“I think,” my gaze glanced his way and saw only reassurance, “That,” Glance, “The artist, I think, chose to make the sunset red to be hyperbolic. It’s more about the way it feels on your skin, so red, it feels like radiation and fills your eyes and leaves those little floating images.” I could hear the confidence evaporate as my voice trailed off.

But he was there with an excited smile, hands spread out with excitement, excitement for me? Fingers that stretched wider than the frame behind him, from wall to wall of my vision and beyond. It was ironic that a student was teaching me so much but then again, why shouldn’t he? Michael knew more than me, had experienced more art than me, so he was the teacher here, a role he took with glee. It was nice to be considered like a student, not a nuisance.

“Like radiation! I like it. It sounds morbid though. Like the paint will melt my face off if I get too close. It’s a little too old to use Radium…Vermillion then?”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh!” His eyes lit up like a child about to tell you a joke he’d made up, “Painting is a dangerous business, between all the lead and the arsenic your average painter was as likely to paint their canvas with a splash of blood as a splash of red ochre.”

“I had no idea art was so dangerous.” I knew the obvious ones like Van Gogh Cutting off his ear but there were paints that could kill you? Actual radiation was used? I couldn’t help but eye up the other paintings with suspicion, were they safe? There was no glass, just a metal bar at floor level, a brass barrier you could accidentally trip over. More of a liability. A nice red velvet waist heighted rope would be ideal. Oh but children could slip under without even knowing it as forbidden. Both?

I found my thoughts slipping away from me like a waterfall of disconnected ideas and sounds and colours that passed through my neurones in a cascade of sensation-

“One time I cut myself sharpening a charcoal pencil with a scalpel too.” Michael held out his left hand and pointed to a thin white line across the side of his index finger just above the crease of a knuckle almost filling the gap between creases of his skin. It was slight, a glimmer in certain light, a pretty reminder of a life lived in delight, “A very dangerous profession.”

“Thank you for risking your life for humanity.” I cringed inwardly immediately, like a piece of paper being stomped on by my own stupidity. It wouldn’t surprise me if Michael turned and ran out that empty hall in disgust at my poor social skills. I would have if I wasn’t too awkward to hand him back his bag from beside me, it rested heavy and leather, a pommel horse between the bench and the nearest arched exit.

“Finally! Someone gets it.” Grey eyes lit up like the silver edge of dawn clouds, “I should get a badge so everyone knows.”

Relief settled over me, cool, soft but warm, a blanket just right at the start of summer, I settled back and let Michael revel in his ego. A glance at my watch revealed it was erring away from afternoon into evening and towards night.

He caught that glance and we arranged to meet up again next week. Just as we turned to part from each other I reached out, my clean fingers brushing the hem of his plaid shirt, childish, naïve; “So what’s my mark?”

Michael tilted his head for a moment, I could imagine the numbers spinning behind those eyes, “How about a strong 54, good attempt, applicable use of terminology, could be developed further. Student shows promise.”

And with that we were apart, I could feel a slight ache in my cheeks, smiling too hard? At a barely passing grade. I took a walk in the gentle sunset to the next station over, barely thinking of the train times etched into my memory, the warm red light seeming all the brighter as it caught the edges of stone window sills and still dark lamp posts. Despite the darkening skies filled with clouds the sky felt so much closer and so much further away. I gripped my hand to have something to cling to in that expanse of infinite possibilities.