Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
Paint It Red
I reached with my paintbrush for the tiny unpainted space between the two bedroom walls and the ceiling that the roller had missed, stretching my back and arm and holding the brush by its very tip to avoid having to step down from the radiator to go fetch the stepladder I should have been using in the first place.
I knew ahead of time I was going to fall. Lying on the floor, I heard my kids run into the room and then run out screaming. My daughter, then about 12, started crying in the hallway as if she’d already decided the time to grieve had replaced the time to help. My younger son stood in the hallway, inching toward his room, typically distant from an unpleasant situation while the older son, fresh from his lifeguard and first aid training, came in and told me to lie still while my eyes filled with blood. Everything was red.
“Oh, no,” my husband said, looking at me and seeing, before I did, how my eyes were going to look in a few hours. “People will think I punched you.”
As predicted, I had two vividly black eyes the next day. I was fine physically. No headache. I had never passed out though looking at my face in the mirror the next morning was jarring enough to make me go weak in the knees. Wildly purple and blue, my eyes looked like a pair of cheap sunglasses had melted on my face.
“Everyone’s going to think I did something terrible,” my husband started in again while I was getting dressed for a big meeting with several county officials, including a couple of folks who worked with domestic violence. “Don’t be silly. I’ll tell them what happened. I fell off the radiator, for heaven’s sake. What’s the big deal?” I replied.
But I kind of wondered. How would people handle it? Would they ask me what happened? Would they laugh about it when I told the story of the radiator and the stepladder and how my freshly (county) trained son came to my aid? Would they think it was funny that my husband was worried about what the world would think about my black eyes?
I don’t know. They didn’t ask. At first, it felt like a game to me, like I’m sitting here with this face and no one is going to ask me what happened. And then it started to make me angry as if they didn’t care what happened to me or worse, they knew what happened but didn’t want to talk about it.
I made a joke at the end of the meeting. “I’m sure you all noticed,” I said with a smile. “In case you’re wondering what happened to me, I fell off the radiator while I was painting the bedroom yesterday.”
Oh, that’s terrible, they murmured and cooed and walked out the door. “Take care, Jan.”
__________
Photo: Photo by Steve Halama on Unsplash
11 Comments on “Paint It Red”
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Snow Door | wisconsinacademy.org
Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “At the Breakfast Bar” on WUWM Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “The Parish Hall,” on WUWM Lake Effect
“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
Reblogged this on Red's Wrap.
I used to crew on racing sailboats and fence competitively — both sports I adored and both of which left bruises, esp. fencing, which left suspiciously-placed bruises on my upper arms (as if someone had grabbed me.) Someone in a locker room once suggested I go for help…too ironic, as both sports demand ferocious competitive spirit, not terrified submission.
While in grad school I was trying to open a bottle of cheap-o wine with a cheap-o cork screw (this was early in to my relationship with wine and I was less than competent.) Said cork screw broke mid-operation and I was left with a screw sticking out of a cork and no way to pull it out. I decided a pair of pliers might be just the ticket and attempted to extract the screw and cork using the pair from the tool box. It was harder than I anticipated and I pulled and pulled until the pliers lost their grip on the screw and the tool (still in my hand) flew back and hit me in the face, leaving me with a black eye. After imagining telling my colleagues and professors, “I hit myself in the face with a pair of pliers while trying to open a bottle of White Zin” I decided to just go with “My husband punched me in the face.” 😉
Funny story. 🙂 I can see it happening.
I got poison ivy when I was pregnant with my second, and it looked like I’d been punched in the face. Then my toddler called 911 without my knowledge. You can imagine how that conversation went when the sheriff’s deputy showed up on the doorstep! LOL
And the more you try to explain it’s poison ivy, the more the deputy looks at you funny, right? I can just see it.
EX-ACTLY. 🙂
Hi Jan,
Don’t we always agonize over the things that others barely acknowledge!? I’m glad you’re better and that no one really assumed your husband was the culprit.
If you’re looking to strengthen the piece, I would start with the paragraphs that begin with “I”.
An idea for the first could read:
“The tiny unpainted space between two bedroom walls taunted me. It was so small–a few quick brush strokes, and they’d match the rest of the room.”
Hope that helps 🙂
Good suggestion! I like it so much better. Thank ytou.
Still thinking about your suggestion. That was good advice — I’m going to use that.
Wow. I can just imagine having to walk around like that. It is somewhat amazing to me that people tend to either not see things or think the worst of a situation. Nice job of describing a makeover in reverse.