The Painting

In an average size room sits a woman. Around her lay the furnishings of her whole life. To the average observer, this would look like a person who hordes things. Never throws anything away. By the apparent disarray of things scattered about it would seem like she never did throw anything away.

The room appears to be a family room. There is a couch and a love seat placed end to end to form an "L" shape, with a coffee table overflowing with things that are spilling out onto the floor. There is a large window across from the couch. The curtains are pulled back and reveal a street just outside.

It is barren, no cars parked against the curb. There are other houses you can see just looking out the window. It appears empty since besides the lack of cars in the driveway, the lawn is brown and dry from lack of water. There is no movement in the house across the street. No curtains in the window, just the reflection of the house that I am staring out of. Almost like a mirror looking back on itself over and over.

There is a man leaving with looks like a bag of tools putting it into a truck. He is smiling. He must be leaving for work. The kids wave at him, the blond girl and the dark haired one, as they ride away on their bikes. It looks idyllic. Like a normal life.

Inside the house, it appears dark. There is a lamp on the table, but it is not turned on. Again more piles of books and boxes sit on the table next to the lamp.

On the walls are pictures framed in various colors and sizes. There is a picture of a girl, blond, blue eyes, smiling likes it a picture from school.

Another one is another girl, dark hair and eyes, smiling like the first only older. Another school picture perhaps.

There is a picture of a man and the same two children, posing for a silly family portrait. They are all dressed in similar colors and a fall like background makes it appear that they are outdoors, except there is no leaves or grass on the ground below them.

More pictures fill the room and behind them lay a dark and dingy grey color of paint. It is old and peeling much like someone who has just sharpened a pencil and the shavings remained curled up. It is like that in most places on the wall.

The woman is sitting in the midst of the family room. Sitting amongst the stuff piled high around her. Upon closer inspection you see, cards, lots of cards. Some with Happy Birthday written across the top, others have Anniversary printed on them. It appears that there are boxes upon boxes of these similar cards, packed neatly inside as if someone had saved each and every one because they hold memories. Memories of a time when it was given to commemorate a special occasion or time in this persons life. I count at least 10 of these boxes. Pictures scatter what should be the floor. These are pictures much like the ones that appear on the wall but much smaller, like ones you take from a camera. There are pictures of the same family along with the women in various places, all of them smiling back.

On the table sits a phone. A plain black phone, cordless, perhaps waiting for a call or to make answering the phone much easier since to get up from this mess and find it again would be like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. There is a clock on the wall over the couch. It is wooden and about 3 feet around. It has what looks like roman numerals, to display the current time. Here it is 3:01pm. You could almost here the clock ticking, like the loud tick tock sound you hear when all is quiet in your home, except for the ticking of the clock. Ticking away the minutes from your life, one at a time.

The woman appears to be waiting. Waiting for something or someone. She is sitting on the floor with her blanket of pictures. Her cheeks appear to be stained by tears that are still sitting on the curves just waiting for more to appear so they can follow the path down her face, like the ones before those. There is a paper on the table, with the faint words marked at the top, "Things to Do." Numbers appears after that with a list of tasks. Some have been checked off, because a line is drawn through them. Laundry. Grocery Shopping. Water the Lawn. Feed the cat. Take out the trash. Take kids to the mall. Pick up present for hubby. Only the last one remains unchecked.

I notice the small details in the picture now. Ones I didn't quite notice before. That the house across the street is this same house because if you look quite hard enough you can see the reflection of the woman in it. One thing is different in the reflection is that the man leaving for work and the children riding the bikes are missing. They aren't in the reflection. The clock is still at 3:01pm and the tears haven't fallen just yet. It's a painting. A painting of a woman waiting for her family. A family that isn't coming. A husband that isn't returning. The woman is waiting for something that isn't coming. The painting has one word painted in red, across the bottom, capital letters. It simply says, "Selfish"

One thing catches my eye that I didn't see before, is that this home or room is sitting in a pit. I can tell because only the rim of the pit is above the room this woman sits in. Above that, only a faint glimmer of light. It is a room in the bottom of a pit.

This picture is the latest addition to the gallery. It's still wet from being painted. The woman sits looking at the picture sitting on the floor and this time, the tears do fall. They catch up with those that have gone on before them. They join the others on the floor of the gallery.