Painting Day

• Susan Ollington, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2018

“Chloe, just go check the mail,” she breathed, her dirt-brown eyes landing on me. Every time mum needed the step ladder, I was sitting on it, the inevitable result of trying to help. I always get in the way on painting day. I was there when mum picked out this month’s colour: purple-green, something calls mauve.
Now the wall behind the TV is half-dressed in it, trying to disguise the last colour she got bored with. She’s done this every month since we moved into this geriatric house. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with her, she just doesn’t like looking at the same old things every day. I suppose that’s why I’ve heard people call her unstable.
I get up and head out the arthritic front door, its joints creaking. Rain is uncongenially bucketing, but I appreciate the fresh air. I feel like I’ve inhaled so many paint fumes that one day I’ll die from it.
I flick through the mail, walking back up the wrinkly, cracked, concrete driveway. But something in my wad of letters catches my eye, and I just. Stop. A letter for me.
I shove the others in my pocket and struggle to open the soggy envelope, tossing it on the ground. The rain is relentless. Unfolding the letter, and with a saddened sigh, I recognise my father’s cursive writing.
To Chloe,
I’m sorry for leaving so suddenly, but I’m coming back for you. You need to be with me now, mum’s too unstable to look after a little girl. I’m picking you up at the end of the term. Everything is going to be okay.
Love, Dad.
An angry tear slowly tumbles down the side of my face, angrier than the rain which disintegrates his words. I try to slam the letter into the fresh puddles in the concrete, but it mockingly falls like a snowflake to its soggy death. I bolt inside and pound up the ancient stairs. Almost splitting the bedroom doorframe behind me.
Burying my face in the pillow, I scream. “Why is he doing this?!” I beg the cold cotton. “What would he know about girls?! And I’m not little!” I take a deep breath between convulsing sobs, my pillow as wet as the drowned letter outside. And in the echoing quiet, I hear her.
A thud reverberates through the rotting floorboards. I’m too scared to make a sound. Slowly, I scrape open the stiff door, and peer through the frail posts on the stairs, and there she is.
Curled into a tiny ball on the floor.
Fragile and shaking.
Mauve paint spread through her hair.
Multicoloured t-shirt a reminder of many painting days before.
She lets out a quiet sob, and I break. I tiptoe down the complaining stairs, but she pays no attention. I pick up her brush and place a delicate stroke on her wall. She looks up. Her eyes say everything: You’re right, there’s no use worrying about it until it happens.