He could see the swelling sea plain in his mind, just as he could
see Billie’s birth not Bill’s. Another sister to replace Jenn, leaving for
college. The family would be down some counts. Silvia could not be
replaced… and his father. There would be no man in the house. Tony was
no more his dad than the painting in his hand. He was a product of such
things, but never the thing, like a replica.
Tony pulled out a paintbrush. Fits of colors absorbed the woman.
Swirls of blue on blue on blue like Van Gogh in a fit of passion: blue berries without the thin membrane of skin, oozing. He painted a mustache
like his dad’s, speckled with grey. His woman was melting onto his hands,
all the colors of his life blurring together.
And when Chloe peeked in his door to check on him, she had
enough sense to leave him be.
Rebecca
Rebecca was not good at soccer and she hated herself for it. She
should’ve been. She practiced plenty, harder than the rest of her team…
she played her whole life since four! Whatever part of her brain that kept
her from athleticism made up for it in intellect. She could’ve taken trigonometry as a freshman; Dad vetoed it.
“You have to learn the basics,” he said. She understood that, but
his logic didn’t prevent her from being bored out of her mind.
Tony told her she was obsessed with books one time. He went on and on
about words and sounds and intensity.
She had a very big crush on Tony but could not understand why
he talked to her. It didn’t matter anyways; he’d been dating Lacey for
awhile now. She displaced her affection for him from her mind.
Boys were a mystery to Rebecca.
When she was twelve, Rebecca’s mom explained the whole “puberty” concept and the notion of womanhood. After, Rebecca immediately went to her father asking about boys.
“I don’t know,” he said. “It sort of happens. One day you just
wake up and you’re a man.”
“But isn’t that how it happens with women?” She had been
warned there was no definite warning the first time.
“Yup.”
That’s what scared her: the suddenness. That she could wake up
one morning with her childhood stolen right out of her. Like waking up
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