A Happy Family In Red
To be around her is to become aware of what grace is. Not poised, cold grace, as possessed by a frozen statue, but warm, flowing, a blue-hared Cassatt. Every afternoon, she extends her grace to the artistic world, though few have seen the fruit of her labor.
This world, streaked with dim sunlight, was her domain, and the domain of her family's history. She had claimed this small space for the moment, though her talent was adaptable to any setting; the living room, the roof; at one time or another she had set her easel up in every available empty spot in the house. The attic was her home this day for the sake of privacy.
Worry, her constant companion, remained a hammer within her mind, pounding away at her peace; for the moment, she chose to push it away. The kitchen was clean; if it got dirty, she could just clean it again...she promised herself there would be time later in the evening for that. Her family, for once, cooperated with her creative spurt by remaining in a relatively calm state. Through the thin layers of wood under her feet, she could hear the muted, soulful tone of her eldest daughter's saxophone. Ears, trained by a decade of motherhood, also picked out a few shouts, the joyful noise of her husband and son as they watched something on the television in the living room. Her youngest remained asleep in her room and her mother didn't need to see this to know it as a fact.
Inspired by her own confidence, she selected a brush and began painting, using bold strokes to highlight her subject's vibrancy. She spared a glance every few moments for the various snapshots she had pinned up around her easel to insure accuracy.
Smiling as she went, her patience paid off as the face of her husband emerged in shades of red on her canvas.
Homer. He hadn't been her true love at first sight...at eighteen, she couldn't have pictured spending the rest of her life with such a rough, but passionate, kid. Her early sophistication sent her on a search for a man compatible to her needs; her lone day in detention wasn't exactly the place she thought she'd meet prince charming. But he had loved her from the first moment he saw her, to the point of manipulating her just so that they might spend time together. Well, who could resist so much need?
For her, their love story began on the night of their senior prom. When she saw him standing by the side of the highway, in his prom tux, stomping through the mud in such a hopeless, lost-child way, she knew that they were meant to be together.
Inside of her modern, firm, brilliant self had hid a nurturer, yearning to come out and find recognition, and her fate was sealed by just one night in a plastic castle at Sir Putts-A-Lot's Merrie Olde Fun Centre.
Homer had been rushed into adulthood by her unplanned pregnancy, and complained now and again about the dreams he'd given up for the sake of their new family's security. Somehow, her dreams were forgotten, now and again. At eighteen, she'd had them, and abandoned them too, just as Homer had.
Those very dreams had grown cloudy over the years; perhaps Paris had been her destiny before she fell for Homer; a year on a scholarship in some foreign land, some distant world that her mother and father had hoped she would reach. Instead, Little Marjorie, their brightest and best child, had gotten pregnant and then married right out of high school. Well, to their credit, the Bouviers had behaved in a tolerant manner...at the beginning of her marriage to Homer, at least. Her parents had allowed them room and board for awhile; Patty and Selma, for their part, had never liked Homer, and would never forgive him for "wrecking" their sister's future with Artie Ziff. But Homer, gallantly, had gone to work for the nuclear plant, saving their financial future. His income allowed her to quit her job as a carhop and become a full-time homemaker.
Had it all been worth the fear, the lean times, the struggle, the lost dreams? One look at Bart confirmed that she had chosen the correct path, made the correct series of choices. Her "special little guy", her fearless, darling little boy, was meant to be, to fight his way into the world.
Her only son had a fierce aggression that could only serve him well in this world, even if his intelligence was sometimes a subjective thing. His daredevil nature masked a genuinely caring heart, and she took constant comfort in that; Bart would survive, mostly because of his firm, unmovable will. When she tried to picture his future, worry once more curled itself about her heart. She could only hope that he would gain more interest in his mind. Otherwise, his life would follow Homer's and Abe's, and even her own father's down the path of desperation. He might still end up beneath the same crushing corporate boot that had hemmed in the lives of every man in their family.
Not that there was anything so horrible about that, she convinced herself. A smile, bittersweet, came to life; as had her own mother so many year before, she wanted more for her brood of three than she had been able to experience in this lifetime.
Her eldest daughter, Lisa: such a sensitive young lady. She had the most in common with her gifted daughter, but with Lisa lingered the strongest temptation to reach back through the generations and return to the parenting style of her own mother. Fortunately, over the passage of time, she had learned to stifle the nagging voice of Jacqueline, demanding constant perfection from her impressionable daughter...for the most part.
One of the greatest joys she had ever experienced as a mother arrived through witnessing the myriad, dizzying level of her daughter's youthful achievements. Lisa, such a demanding perfectionist, could not be stopped from applying intense pressure to herself, much to the concern of her mother; such drive would support her as an adult, but just as easily crush her fragile artist's spirit.
Maggie, her youngest, probably final, child, had the same fierce fire that her siblings carried. Though, having not yet passed her second birthday, that fire remained muted, it remained crystal clear that wide ranges of options were already available to one with such spirit. The likelihood of Maggie's becoming anything from a sharpshooter to a ballerina seemed feasible to her mother; for both the observer and the observed the future stood out there, nearly tangible, ready to be seized. Maggie, with her independent soul, would be the most likely of her children to seize it.
Marge Simpson stepped away from her canvas, carefully placing her palette back into its proper place, then cleaning her brushes in a workmanlike fashion. Her artistic impulse spent, she unbuttoned her smock and carefully folded it, prepared to head to the basement and stick it in the wash. Tenderly, she smiled at what had been created.
A perfect rendition of her family mugged back at her from the canvas.
Bart, making an outrageous face....Lisa, grinning widely, innocently, her hand enfolded by her father's...Homer, his smile almost as wide as Lisa's, a speckling of light-orange crumbs carefully applied to the front of his shirt, one arm wrapped around the shoulder of his wife. Maggie, sucking on her pacifier, hands folded together in a deceptively innocent way.
One final look at her self-portrait told a true story. She was older, tired, and sometimes, she wished that life had waited a moment more for her. That she had been given that extra moment or two to paint, travel..go to college.
But the commitment of love she had made to Homer, though not unchallenged, was unbroken; through times rough and lean, and, though he may shame her on occasion, it had been preserved. That, truly, was the ultimate hallmark of love.
Alerted by Homer's shouting down below (something about a video game again...oh dear..), she backed away toward the attic's trap door. At the last minute she paused, remembering something suddenly forgotten and rushed up to her canvas, dipping the tip of her index finger into the still-wet paint.
In her neat, perfect script, she scrawled her signature, and titled the piece.
"A Happy Family, In Red".