There is a painting that hangs on my living room wall. At first it seems innocuous, a vision of a simple Sunday morning in the dry California hills, where a family walks to a red-roofed, whitewashed church along an unpaved road. A board and post fence, tilted and cockeyed as if intoxicated from road dust, wanders underneath a tree—a Eucalyptus?—and out of the frame.
What a pretty scene! The church is charming. The sun is hot on the yellowing, mid-summer hills, and a thin, white scrape of clouds is so bright it likely makes our devoted wayfarers squint as they approach the house of worship, where the doors are open and a behatted gentleman and a woman in a yellow dress are already on their way inside.
Can you smell the leaves of the Balsam Poplars near the parsonage? What pleasant shade they offer this time of year! And although the grass along the road grows dry and has begun to lose its green, its golden sheen and hay-sweet scent fills one's head with fond memories of simpler times. Happier times.
But don't be fooled. Lean nearer the painting and look closer. Okay, now you're breathing on the glass and getting it steamed up. Either stop breathing, or move a few inches back.
Now, do you see it? I know. I didn't see it either, at first. Actually, I didn't notice it for a long time. To think that this painting has been on my wall for years, and for decades before that hung in my grandmother's living room.
Have I told my mother? Of course not! She probably grew up with this painting, and I don't know what frightens me more—knowing that it loomed like a sinister phantasm over her lighthearted Parchesi games and dolly tea parties, or worse, that she saw it, kept the terrifying secret, and keeps it still.
Every time I glance at the painting, I want to call out to the couple entering the church, "Look out! Don't do it! Run!" But I know that if they attempted to flee back down the steps, a breeze would lift the man's hat off his head, and he would go back for it; he always goes back! And then it's too late. Too late! Oh, he never listens to my warnings or his wife's admonitions. (I think he goes back for the hat because his wife is a nag and always telling him what to do and it drives him crazy. It's not even his favorite hat.)
If I could enter the painting, I would run in front of the horse pulling the spring wagon, waving my arms, pleading to the unwitting family to Stop! To save themselves! I grab the horse's bridle to pull his head away before he turns towards the parsonage and his blinders no longer protect him from the horrors. But he is too strong for me. He rears, the dry, worn shaft snaps, the farmer's family tumbles from the wagon, and there are cries of grief and terror. At this point I leave the painting, because I'm pretty scared, and would not be much help to the people in the wagon anyway.
You might ask, Why do I keep this painting? Go head. Ask. Well, I guess I keep forgetting to take it down. I tend to easily get distracted, and after an episode in which I try to save the painting's incognizant human (and horse) subjects, I notice that there's still that pile of get-well-soon cards stacked on the television cabinet, or the cable box is sure getting dusty, and I should get the feather duster out and clean it.
We have an oven sitting in our hallway. It's been there since Memorial Day when we moved it out of the attic behind the knee wall to clean a bunch of junk out of there. I wasn't going to move it back; that attic is really hard to work in! It's a very awkward space.
Eventually I'll put an ad on craigslist or something. It's a nice little oven, perfect for a studio apartment, and is super good condition. Maybe I'll ask for seventy-five bucks for it.
Anyway, that's why I still have the painting hanging in the living room. It's kind of like that oven.
