The Dream Canvas

  The Dream Canvas

  Written By: Kitty Canfield

  Chapter 1

  Dottie

  Present Day

  I used to think life was nothing but a string of meaningless events tied together by pure luck. Destiny didn’t exist in my world. Life was nothing but chance. There was no man upstairs monitoring our every move. No force in the universe guiding us along a set path. No fairy godmother sprinkling magic pixie dust over our silly little heads in order to lead us back to our fate when we’ve strayed too far. I used to think people put too much of their hopes and dreams on finding something they called true love. In my mind (pun intended), love was just a cruel concoction of chemicals in a person’s brain. A dangerous cocktail of serotonin and dopamine. Unicorns and butterflies that could quickly morph into bullets and sharp knives. Love appeared as an innocent young child when provoked would become a ravenous cannibal. At the time, my focus in life wasn’t on emotions or cultivating a love life. Soul mates didn’t exist. My focus in life, my ultimate M.O., was art. Art kept me going. It kept me breathing and moving and flowing. And on occasion, art even had the power to stop me from jumping off a bridge or two.

  My priorities changed after I met Isaiah. He unexpectedly waltzed into my life at a time when I needed him the most. Back then I would’ve gouged out my eyes before admitting that, but I am woman enough to admit it now. This is the story of how my life changed, and of how my belief in love shifted dramatically. I am a different person than I was a year ago, thanks to Isaiah, my late father and an eccentric friend. If it wasn’t for fate stepping in to save me with a little help from them, I would be a miserable, calculated person living life as a string of events. Going through the motions and never really feeling the movement. I wouldn’t be living, really living. I would just be sucking up oxygen and taking up space. A trash-producing, robotic artist with a piss-poor attitude. And let’s face it, we don’t need another one of those around.

  So this is the story of how I met Isaiah McNally. The man who came crashing into my life like a tidal wave of emotion. The man who broke through the brick wall I had built around me that had kept all other people at a safe distance. The man who I had known and loved many lifetimes before…someone who would change my world in ways I’d never imagined.

  But here’s the thing. You won’t just be hearing from me. You’ll be hearing his side of the story, too. Why is that, you might be wondering. There are two sides to every story, and to exclude one side means to tell an imbalanced version of the real thing.

  Chapter 2

  Dottie

  1 year ago

  For an entire year I had waited for this event – Tampa’s First Annual Local Artists Exhibition – and it had finally arrived. I had put the obligatory blood, sweat and tears into preparing for it. The blood from numerous popped paintbrush blisters in the palms of my hands, the sweat from working in an apartment with a dysfunctional air conditioning unit, and the tears…well, I won’t lie. There weren’t any tears. I wasn’t a crier. I didn’t cry often, if ever. I prided myself on being a woman who was in control of her emotions and therefore in control of the world around me.

  The event was taking place in Centro Ybor City, which was literally the center of my quirky little neighborhood. Ybor City is nestled in the northern corner of Tampa, Florida, and is filled with a rich Hispanic heritage. It’s also home to many up-and-coming young artists and outside-of-the-box entrepreneurs. The centuries-old cobblestone streets would be filled with local artists proudly displaying their work: paintings, mosaics, photographs, sculptures, pottery, any and every kind of artwork you could imagine. Of course I was partial to oil paintings which up until that point in my life was my one and only true love. I’d taken up painting as a hobby in middle school and hadn’t stopped since. My Mom had said it was like the ghost of Rembrandt rented a space in my body. My second love was discovering unique underground artists. After all, I was one of them myself. Most of my weekends were spent attending local museums and exhibits in search of the next Frida Kahlo or Andy Warhol. I knew what good art was, and I knew what it wasn’t. The paintings that stood in my bedroom might have been more than your average, run-of-the-mill pieces of canvas doused with oils, but to me they weren’t quite perfect. I knew at least fifty other artists who used the same medium that could’ve blown my work out of the water. But I’d never let my insecurities keep me from my passions. I wouldn’t even allow Rory’s cynical comments to bring me down. A never-ending game of I’m rubber and you’re glue.

  A fleeting thought crossed my mind to trash the trio of paintings that I’d been working on the past three months…it was that feeling of having cold feet before your wedding. You have your dress on, your hair and make-up done, you’ve waited for this day your entire life. Now everyone’s in the church waiting for you. You’re ready to walk down the aisle, when you get a gnawing feeling in your gut to run and never look back. This was my chance to hit the highway.

  But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I had already thrown out at least a dozen paintings that year. They probably weren’t all that bad, but I had convinced myself they were total shit. Plus I needed to eat, and painting was my one and only skill. The one and only thing I did in order to earn a living, and Rory wasn’t pulling in much from his random gigs at coffee shops and dive bars. I stared at the paintings for a few more minutes, seriously considered setting fire to them, then walked away and took a shower before I lost self-control and decided to throw the paintings in the dumpster.

  Two blocks down from my apartment was a little new age shop called the Crystal Owl. The owner, Miss Anne Marie Griffith, agreed to let me post up my work on the sidewalk in front of her shop. She had even offered some of her shelves and display units to use during the Exhibition. I remember when I first met her, she seemed like a kooky cougar-hippie, but after only a few conversations with her I realized how much I adored her. I was lucky to have a friend like her so close by. When I wasn’t painting or bitching at Rory, I was hanging out with Miss Anne-Marie and helping her run the Crystal Owl. I did it for free. She was a good friend of mine, after all.

  I set my coffee mug into the sink and shuffled to the closet, waking Rory in the process. You might have thought it was the wee hours of the morning, but it was at least noon. He slept in often after a hard night of bongs, booze and band practice. I remember thinking he would never grow up, and I would have to live with a twenty-five-year-old teenager for the rest of my life. I grabbed my favorite pair of jeans and a slouchy shirt and draped them over the footboard of the bed. “Dottie! Why are you awake so early?” Early indeed. I ignored him, as I always did. This was the best method to keep your sanity intact around Rory Langdon. Hell, this was the ONLY method.

  I walked around the unmade bed, and one-by-one turned the paintings towards the wall to stop them from silently glaring at me. They were a constant reminder that I’d been drowning in a pool of painter’s block for the past six months. Possibly longer. It had been so long, I could hardly remember what it was like to feel inspired. Unfortunately, there was this nagging necessity to keep painting in order to pay the bills. I’d tried to get a real job after college, but I was only trained in one thing – art. I sucked at computers, so being a graphic artist was a no-go. I sucked with kids, so being an art teacher wasn’t going to fly. I hated needles, so being a tattoo artist wasn’t an option either. That left me with one possible career path – starving artist. And up until that year, I’d had many visits from the muse. I had never wanted for inspiration…

  But painting memories of my Dad had begun to wear on me. Memories of the two of us fishing, camping, Dad teaching me how to tie my shoes and ride my bike. Even paintings of the day I lost him and whatever emotions or lack of emotions I’d felt that d
ay. My misery over losing my father had been my muse for years. He had been my inspiration for painting since the tender age of eleven. My father was an explorer and a marine biologist, and I adored him. I used to swear that when I grew up I wanted to be just like him, until the day of the boating accident. Then I realized how selfish he’d been to chase sharks and whales all around the world, leaving me and my Mom to fend for ourselves for months at a time. A mixture of anger, resentment, and sorrow still wells up inside of me when I think of him. There are a lot of happy memories that float on the surface, but just underneath those happy memories are currents of pain.

  When I turned eighteen I got a tattoo to honor his memory, a living piece of artwork that not even I could trash. A piece of my father to carry with me everywhere I go. Yes, I said I hate needles, so you can imagine how pleasant the experience was for me and my tattoo artist. The tattoo consists of a mural of aquatic animals – starfish, an octopus, a shark, and exotic fish of various kinds swimming around on my left arm. From my shoulder to my wrist, it’s a sleeve I designed myself. Mom wasn’t too pleased when I first told her I’d gotten a tattoo, but when she saw it she burst into tears. She knew what it meant, that Dad might have left us but the memory of him wouldn’t die. She seriously considered getting a tattoo herself. She claimed she was going to get a shark on her ankle. One day I took her to the tattoo shop drawing in hand, and like the true lady she is she backed out graciously. She said she didn’t want a man with a name like Danger to permanently mark her body.

  Knock. Knock. Knock. “Are you almost done in there?” Rory banged on the bathroom door. He was in one of his obnoxious moods again. It was something I had gotten used to. It was almost expected. If he wasn’t complaining, I was worried. He was always bitching about something, be it me taking up the bathroom or not enough food in the fridge or the cats sharpening their claws on his beat-up guitar case. I had gotten used to dealing with his seemingly teenage bullshit, and he dealt with mine. Not the most romantic relationship, but we kept each other company on those lonely nights. I look back at it now, and I think it was simply comfortable to have someone around even if we hardly got along with one another. I was the kind of person who believed I didn’t have any emotions, and so I could easily tune out others’. The only part of our relationship that was any fun was the sex. And we usually had more angry make-up sex than we’re-so-happy-together sex.

  “Yes! God. I’ll be done in a minute.” We had been living together for a little over two years, on and off. Sometimes he frustrated me so badly I would threaten to break it off, particularly after he’d gone on one of his binges with his bandmates. He had proposed to me without a ring, and the next day had taken off with no warning. After getting his fill of pills and skanks, he came crawling back to me in a state of withdrawal - uncontrollable exorcist-type puking and shaking. And like an idiot, I took him back and nursed him back to health. Got him into a detox facility and stayed by his side until he was clean again. The sad thing was I knew in my heart he never appreciated the support, but I did it anyway. Maybe I thought he would change. Maybe I thought he would be forever thankful to me for aiding him in his greatest time of need. Maybe I was just plain stupid. Nevertheless, we were engaged for the second time, to my Mother’s dismay.

  I stepped out of the shower and onto a shaggy green rug, reluctant to take on the day’s challenges. But boy was I ready to sell some shit and bring in some cheddar. The fridge was looking pretty bare and the water bill was a month past due. Luckily I still had some money in savings leftover from my inheritance. But I only dipped into that when I was really hurting for funds. The last time I touched that money was the day my refrigerator had broken, leaking everywhere and leaving me to pay for the damages to the hard-wood floor in the apartment. Yes, usually a landlord would pay to have this fixed but like an idiot I had signed a lease in which I agreed to be responsible for any and all appliances. A broken refrigerator also meant that all the groceries I had bought had to be replaced - the milk had soured, the seafood in the freezer spoiled, Rory’s hamburger meat turned rank, the tofu turned into a slimy lump. I had to go spend another hundred dollars on food for the coming week.

  Rory tried to persuade me time and again to get a “real job”, but my comeback was that he should be doing the same. There were no listings for “rock star” in the help wanted ads, nor were there listings for “starving artist”. Deep down I’d always known he saw me as a meal ticket and a convenient way to get laid. Nothing more, nothing less. So why had he proposed to me twice? Were we really right for each other or were we together because misery loved company?

  He violently banged on the bathroom door again, shaking the loose towel rack on the back of the door. The door slammed open. I really needed to get the lock fixed. “Are you going to make some more coffee or what? You drank the last of it and left none for me, dude,” he rubbed the sleepies out of his brown eyes and fished around the dirty vanity for his toothbrush. After knocking a container of cotton swabs on the bathroom floor, he muttered a few French curse words. Rory had spent ten years of his childhood living in Canada with his Aunt. Apparently his Mom could only handle so much of his bullshit before she needed a break. While he was there he learned how to speak fluent French. Every once in a while, I found it sexy. Most of the time it was annoying.

  “You have two hands. You know where to find the coffee and filters.” I knew these sarcastic-comments only fueled his fire, but sometimes it gave me thrills to wind him up. I took one last peek at myself in the antique mirror above the sink, tied my dreads into a knot at the base of my neck, and traipsed out the bathroom slamming the door behind me. The sound of a door slamming echoed loudly off the apartment’s brick walls. So I made sure to slam it often just to piss him off. He caught onto my game and ignored my immature attempts to piss him off.

  I got dressed and slipped on my sandals. I gave in and started a second pot of coffee. It was now past noon, and I could hear the hustle and bustle on the sidewalk below. Single pane windows aren’t decent sound barriers, but I didn’t mind too much. I had grown fond of the sounds of city life. The ring of the last surviving trolley car as it passed by, the occasional honk of a horn, the click-click-click of the changing traffic lights.

  “Are you coming to help me this morning?” How many times had I asked for his help and had gotten a grunt in reply? Too many times for me to count.

  “Help you with what?” he acted like he had no clue what I was talking about. He knew.

  “The Exhibition. You know, the thing I’ve been talking about for the past year?”

  “Oh, right. Well, I would but I’m supposed to go practice with the guys. Jeremy just got his new bass, and we’re working on a new song.” Sometimes I swore he was a tenth grader with a fake i.d. who had fooled me into thinking he was a man. It’d happened to me once before. When I was twenty-one, I met this hot guy at a gothic bar downtown. He told me he was twenty-one, and I ended up sleeping with him. I found out later through a friend of a friend that he was actually seventeen. He had a fake license. I was mortified. That’s a secret I’d kept to myself for years. I didn’t want anyone thinking I was a Chester Chester Child Molester.

  “Alright. I can handle it myself.” Per the norm. I should’ve known he wasn’t going to help me set up. It wasn’t the first time I had to do something on my own.

  WHAM! One of my two cats knocked over one of the canvases and dashed under the bed with a hiss. “Brain! Really!?” I yelled at the rambunctious feline. Not that it fazed him anyway.

  “I don’t know what you’re so worried about,” Rory said as he lathered his face with shaving cream. “That’s the worst of the three. You should dump it. Take the other two,” he said as he ran a razor over his wiry, copper chin-whiskers. I sat hunched over the edge of the bed and lifted the painting from the floor. My eyes drifted over the neon colors overshadowing a montage of dark, sad figures in the background. Silhouettes of ripped anatomical hearts and an empty swing set wove together a scene
from some sort of freak show - like the sideshow of a circus. Come see the hairy beast-woman! Five cents to see the two-headed monster! All it needed was a pair of serial killer clowns and it would be complete. This painting was titled It’s Never Playtime, American Horror Story worthy, for sure.

  When I had painted this piece earlier that year, I’d utilized the pent-up emotions from the day I’d lost my father. Those painful emotions were entwined with what I went through the first time Rory had abandoned me for the little white pills. I knew he had a drug problem, but I guess I’d subconsciously chosen to ignore it. I kind of hoped if I acted like it wasn’t there that it would eventually disappear. But his recreational use of benzos and pain-killers turned into a full-blown addiction. He began saying he needed them to ease the pain of his bad back, an old injury from his childhood. Pretty soon he had gone from using them with friends to doctor-shopping and visiting dozens of pain management clinics in the area almost on a weekly basis. He was hooked. One day without warning, he left and didn’t come back for weeks. He returned with track marks on his arms, and he was sick as a dog. What was I supposed to do? Leave him out on the streets? I let him back in, and basically nursed him back to health. A small part of me felt like a hero. I thought he would inevitably recognize that.

  To say I had abandonment issues was putting it lightly. You see, I didn’t want to feel my emotions, I’d much rather ignore how they felt and just paint them. To get them off my chest and put them down on canvas. This way I could escape, to a certain degree. I didn’t have to worry about dealing with my emotions. I had an outlet for my depression that I thought was healthy at the time. Lord knows it truly wasn’t.

  Rory used to call me a feminist, but I argued that I couldn’t be a feminist if I was living with a man as pig-headed as him. As long back as I could remember, men seemed to leave me left and right. Even when Rory was with me, I still felt alone in my apartment. He was there physically, but he wasn’t there emotionally, nor in any other way for that matter. Then again it didn’t matter because I had always told myself all I needed in life was a paintbrush and a blank canvas. I didn’t need a man to make me happy. That was impossible anyway.