Robert Butler - From Where You Dream - The Process of Writing Fiction

"What?" He sits at his stool and arranges his colors in little blobs near a large, primed canvas smeared with muted tan and brown.

"They were outside the door," I say.

"Again? He won't give up."

I watch Megumi at the other end of the house, in the kitchen, pulling the flowers from the white sheet, then slicing the stems. She drops aspirin in the water of a large bowl, and then pours in a little 7 UP. Her long fingers pluck at the flower buds and move them like the heads of children for a photograph. Suddenly, she looks up and smiles. I think: these flowers are for my mother.

My father moves the canvas closer to the stool, pulls at his shirt and strokes his chin. I see the wooden window screens open behind him, and through them the close walls of the house next door. Only a narrow alley separates us from Paco. Is Paco her lover? Or does he want her to dance, to return to the studio where a small group of aging musicians gather and recollect?

"Where should she sit?" I ask.

He looks up, surprised, and glances around the studio. "I forgot," he says. "I've never done this."

"Not even for her?" He knows exactly whom I mean.

We pull the vinyl chair from between the two tables. Megumi appears with the bowl and the flowers. "Should I put these on the desk, Mr. Bonnard?" she asks and puts them there before he can answer.

The vinyl chair is arranged near his stool and canvas. Lights are directed toward the coffee-soft cloth. Megumi slips out of her elaborate heels, sits, tucks her legs beneath her, and straightens her dress. She smiles and blinks. The light hits her small shoulders. In the light, little quilts in the fabric around her breasts reveal their intricate stitching. I am standing next to my father, next to the blank canvas and staring with him. We both stare. The old and the new. She is there. Her presence, to me, is suddenly profound, surreal. There is a blue glow in her black hair. I think of turning to my father; this is something he will also know. She is beautiful. But instead, Paco appears between us.

His voice seems louder now. The anguish in his trilling tongue is severe, cracked: yah-yo-yah-yahahahah-o. We both turn to the window.

"Sketching a rose," my father says.

"Sketching what? Maybe he's practicing," I say.

"Impossible. She will dance soon."

"Have you talked to her about it?" I ask in a quiet voice. "What does she say?"

As a marine, my father survived nine months in Tu Cung, Vietnam. He was never wounded, nor did he receive any commendations. The pattern is hard to follow. He talked about rivers like the sound of rain. And when it rained he felt as if a river was being dropped on him. His stories are told in chunks. The images aren't clear. I can't picture him in fatigues and boots, holding a rifle and humping a rucksack. Maybe he didn't. Maybe he served in some other capacity.

After the war, and college, and graduate school and teaching, he sold work in the Tate Mitchum Gallery. He was collected and appraised. I have found his name in serious books of art criticism. At times, he visited universities by invitation to speak and to teach. But years have since passed. The Tate Mitchum is closed. The collectors are obscure.

But he still paints. His work has stretched beyond the days of Tate Mitchum. He says he has invented a wholly original process more compatible with human brain chemistry than seratonin. I am not sure what he means, and do not ask. It is not what matters. It does matter that Paco disrupts an already shaky marriage. But one that has lasted through its shakiness,

and perhaps because of it, a long time.

* * *

"I married a restoration expert. A practical woman who wanted a kid for Chrissake." He tries to sit at the stool calmly. He sketches the shape of a face and intersects the face with lines.

I move closer to the window, and hear across the alley, the tink of glass against glass. Paco's singing slows and moves farther away. I try to imagine what would happen if we simply knocked on the door, confronted him. But it won't happen.

I watch my father filling in Megumi's left eye. I know that eye, its smallness, its Asian teardrop, its engaging brown. He will not confront Paco. He will not confront his wife. They must decide for themselves. I understand. If I discover Megumi watching a man in the Indian restaurant where we often eat lunch, or the little playhouse on a warm night, it hurts. A little knife stabs me in the side. But I will not speak. She must love me in the face of other men.

The singing is louder, comes close. My father cracks the pencil against the floor, then stands and paces. He pushes his fingers through his hair and shakes his head. I grab the stool before it falls, and look at my fiancee.

"We should go," Megumi whispers.

"No, I can't leave him now." I go to the window where he kneels, and peer over the sill with him. I see nothing. The song has stopped. I wonder if we are the only ones who hear it.

"I think she's there," he whispers.

"Impossible," I say and kneel too.

"Help me push this," he says and unlatches the window.

The windows of the studio have not been opened in years. I pry my fingers into the paint and dirt between window and wood and push as the seal cracks, the window slowly opens and warm, wet air flows in and settles against our faces.

"You watch. I'll be right back," he says and rises.

I watch the alley and the darkness of Paco's windows. A white curtain floats up and settles, floats up again. I imagine an entire life beyond the alley and that apartment. A life my father makes in his paintings. I could have chosen to be a painter. Maybe I am. He taught me to draw. He encouraged me. I drew sneakers and the toaster oven and her, even her, when she dressed in long skirts and shawl, the chopsticks in her hair, to teach at the studio or to dance. I didn't know. I fixed her. He was proud. He taught me to draw without looking at the paper. I remember the first time. The old shoes tangled together, the laces, the perspective of one shoe atop another.

No singing. No sound at all. Not even cars on the roads outside, doors, children, music. Nothing. My knees start to ache, but do not move. This is important. Not to see Paco or my mother, but to carry this through for him.

He returns, and between his legs, pointing straight up, a rifle. It has a thin barrel and a metal sight at the tip. "I didn't know you had that," I say.

"Pellet gun. She's gone, Son."

"Gone," I repeat. Not my mother, I realize. The chair where Megumi sat is empty. The light brightens and burns the empty chair. The canvas where he started to paint her looks like it's smoldering in the intense light.

My father pumps the pellet gun angrily. He claps the stock shut, then pumps it again.

"It needs ten pumps to get through that window," he says between breaths.

He sticks the rusty barrel through the window and rests it against the windowsill. He snuggles the stock against his shoulder and cheek, cocks his head, watches. "Tell me if you see them," he says.

"You won't shoot her?" I ask.

He looks at me like he can't believe I would ask the question. He will not shoot her. He is sane. He will shoot Paco.

"I can't see anything," I say.

My father takes deep, heavy breaths, then blows air slowly from his pursed lips. Some practiced routine for shooting, I guess. But the alley is silent. The windows are empty of movement. I'm not sure if anyone is there anymore.

"I'll check around back," he says. Before I can ask him what this means, he's gone, slipping from the room like a young man, agile, on a grave mission.

I watch the alley for a few seconds and wonder if my father will appear wearing fatigues and a mask of black and green. I hear the screen door slam, but no one appears. I stand and try a few numb steps, but my legs are chunks of wood. I walk like Frankenstein, grab the stool, and lean on it. I stretch my legs and feel the size of the canvas in front of me. My legs run beneath it when I'm this close. I see all the grains and imperfections of the undercoating. I see the spaces in the charcoal lines where he's drawn Megumi's faint outline. It's only a human shape. I don't see her yet.