Painting Sunflowers.
A story of lost love by Robert Cormack
“I just like to sing for people who have lost love.” Mac Miller
Carole’s back in town now, sitting on my rug. She still calls it her rug even though I bought it from her a month ago. Everything she owned was sold or given away. The rug was the last to go. Her friend Helen dropped it off at my place before taking Carole up to the drying-out facility in Saint Sauveur. It was only 45 minutes from Montreal, but Helen wanted to get Carole up there before she did anything more to herself.
As they left, Helen said to me, “Tell Jerry he put her in a drunk house.”
Jerry was Carole’s boyfriend until he took off, leaving Helen to clean up the mess. Carole had stopped eating, stopped caring, stopped doing pretty much of anything. All she did was stare at those crazy sunflowers she’d painted on the living room walls. Helen called them triffids with faces.
Some people stayed longer depending on what kind of drunks they were. I didn’t know there were different kinds of drunks.
“Crazy shit,” she told me later. “Fucking paint everywhere.”
Helen got on the phone and called the facility in Saint Sauveur. They told her to bring Carole up the following day. She’d be there four weeks. Four weeks was considered standard. Some people stayed longer depending on what kind of drunks they were. I didn’t know there were different kinds of drunks, but there are, and they all need figuring out.
Anyway, that’s all I heard until Helen called to say she was picking Carole up again. Four weeks was up. It didn’t seem like any time at all.
“She’s staying with me for awhile,” Helen said, then told me she had a problem. She couldn’t take care of Carole on Sunday. Sunday was when she sold vintage clothes at a flea market down in Sherbrooke. It accounted for half her sales. The little shop she ran on Saint Laurent couldn’t survive without it.
“Can you take her?” she asked.
I couldn’t very well say no. I was the one who introduced Carole to Jerry in the first place. Jerry was my partner at an advertising agency down on René Leveque Blvd. One night we ran into Helen and Carole. I said, “Carole, this is Jerry, Jerry this is Carole.” They hit it off. Two weeks later, they moved in together. Who knew it would lead to this?
So Sunday arrives and Helen brings Carole over. Carole’s hair is cut back, one of Helen’s clip jobs. Helen’s own hair is orange, pulled up in spikes. Thank God she didn’t do that to Carole. Carole looks like a ghost as it is. Imagine orange hair on top of that?
“Watch her,” she says out in the hall.
“Here’s our girl,” Helen says, putting three bottles of mineral water in the fridge. She asks Carole if she’ll be okay. Carole nods. She’s sitting on the rug, running her fingers through the paint spots. I never managed to get them out.
Looking around one last time, Helen shoves her hands in her overalls and says, “I’ll be off then.” I walk her to the door. “Watch her,” she says out in the hall. “I mean it,” she says, “watch her.”
What am I watching for? I go back and find Carole by the window, listening to the drummers across the street. Every Sunday, they come to Mount Royale Park with their congas, bongos, and timpani. Someone starts a beat and the rest follow. They sit on the monument steps.
“Do you want to go over?” I ask Carole, but she’s miles away. Who knows what’s going through her mind right now? Maybe she’s back at the facility.
I ask her how it was up there. She shrugs. She tells me there were orchards everywhere. Deer came out in the early morning to eat the green apples. She sent Helen a postcard saying, “I saw deer today.” Helen showed it to me at the bar one night. “What do you make of that?” she asked, shoving it back in her overalls. “I’m paying to have her look at deer.”
Helen had written a cheque at the front desk that day at the facility. She’d been there before. One husband, one brother. She spotted Jerry a mile away the day I introduced them. “He’ll eat her up,” she’d said to me.
She said the same thing when Jerry and Carole showed up at the bar two weeks later, saying they were moving in together. They’d even bought the rug, their first purchase as a couple. They were both smiling away, ordering drinks, Carole lighting one cigarette after another.
“He’ll break her heart,” Helen said to me. “See if I’m wrong.”
What were the words of that Bruce Springsteen song? “We took what we had, we tore it apart.” That was Jerry and Carole all over.
Helen saw things I didn’t, I guess. No point going over it — not now, anyway. I haven’t mentioned Jerry, and neither has Carole. She sits, smokes, stares out the window. When she goes to the washroom, she leaves a cigarette going in the ashtray. Jerry called her “Careless Carole.”
In some respects, they were both careless. What were the words of that Bruce Springsteen song? “We took what we had, we tore it apart.” That was Jerry and Carole all over. They tore everything apart.
Now we’re sitting here with the drummers playing, Carole staring out the window. I go and make tea, then I sit on the couch. I ask Carole again what it was like up there at the facility. It takes her a minute. She squints like it’s a tough subject, like it’s many images she can’t quite grasp.
She remembers evenings with people sitting around talking. Some would get up and leave without saying a word. They’d just walk off. One of the women was there for a third time. Her name was Louise. She would say things like, “Third time’s a charm,” or, “One more day of sobriety.”
Louise told Carole it got easier with time. Drinking was a process. Most of the people at the facility had been at it for years. “You’re a babe in the woods,” she told Carole. “You’ll be up and spry before you know it.”
Louise had a husband, two kids. They were waiting for her to get better. When she finished at the facility, they’d pick her up and stop for cheeseburgers. After that, they’d see, they’d been through this before. “What about you?” she asked Carole, and Carole told her what happened with Jerry, him staying out, then her staying out as well. Everyone was listening.
Louise said Carole had good reason to go out. What did Jerry expect?
One woman caught her husband in bed with another woman. She burned the house down.
Of course, the rest of the group was nodding their heads. Who hadn’t done crazy things? One woman caught her husband in bed with another woman. She burned the house down.
Louise kept telling Carole to go on, ignore the interruptions. So Carole described those first nights after Jerry left. She kept drinking, going out, coming back. Then she started painting sunflowers, adding faces later on. Louise said it could happen to anyone.
“So you painted some faces,” she told Carole. “No biggy.”
Anyway, Carole and Louise became close friends. They’d sit in Louise’s room talking, going over their lives. Louise was looking forward to being home. When Carole asked her how the drinking started, Louise just shrugged. She didn’t even know. She had a good life, loving husband, two great kids.
“I guess I’m cursed,” she’d said.
She promised Carole they’d get together when they were better. Everyone at the facility said that. Nobody expected anything to come of it, but Louise made a point of giving Carole her phone number. She told Carole there were lots of deer out by her place. “They come right up to the back door,” she’d said.
The day Louise left the facility, they hugged on the porch. Louise’s husband was standing by the car. Louise waved goodbye, and they drove off.
Carole went back to her room. From then on, she got up early, waiting for the deer to come out of the woods. “I thought everything would be all right if I saw them,” she tells me now. “I wanted them to take me home.”
I didn’t know what she meant by that. For all I know, she didn’t either. She lights another cigarette, then stubs it out. “Let’s go across to the park,” she says. “I’m tired of talking.”
“I’ll get a blanket,” I say.
Out past the monument, we put my blanket on the grass. Carole says it was like this at the facility, lawns running out to the trees. Then she goes quiet. I don’t know what she expects me to say. We listen to the drummers. Next thing I know, Carole gets up and walks off, disappearing along one of the mountain footpaths. I grab the blanket and follow. A couple, lying there, look at me.
“Go get her, tiger,” the guy says.
“I wish you remembered,” she says. “I wish it wasn’t just me.”
Coming out at the top of the mount, I find Carole at the fountain splashing water on her face. I try to take her arm. She pushes me away.
“I wish you remembered,” she says. “I wish it wasn’t just me.”
She grabs a cab in the parking lot. She doesn’t look back. I went back to my apartment, expecting her to show up or phone, one of the other. It wouldn’t be the first time. I sat around, then went out. I don’t know when I got back. I stumbled in, noticing Carole’s tea cup on the rug along with a full ashtray.
This morning, I’m listening to the rain. Water is dripping down from the eaves. I called Carole earlier and got Helen. “How is she?” I asked.
“I told you to watch her,” she said and hung up
I’m staring at the rug now. I cross my legs and look across at the park. I can see trees all the way up Mount Royale. I’m thinking about those deer. I asked Carole what they had to do with anything. She said they made her think of her mother — about her dying — and a song by Peter Gabriel called “Solsbury Hill.”
I listened to the song last night. It didn’t have anything to do about deer. If anything, it’s about hope — but it’s an omen, too. Back at that facility, people were told they needed hope. They needed a substitute for the despair in their lives. I guess those deer helped Carole somehow. Carole told me yesterday she’d mentioned the song to me before.
“When was this?” I’d asked.
“One night at the bar,” she said. She’d been waiting for Jerry to show up. He never did. She was drunk, of course. She sang me the words: My heart going boom, boom, boom, come, he sayeth, grab your things I’ve come to take you home. “I kept hearing it when my mother died,” she told me.
Her mother committed suicide. Carole told Jerry about it, maybe Helen — probably Helen. I was the last in line. She also told me how she stayed with her father after her sisters left. She even slept in her father’s bed. He never got better. He remained that way until he died.
“You shouldn’t beat yourself up” I’d said to her at the time. “You did what you could.” I put my hand on her shoulder.
“Don’t,” she said. “I’ll start bawling.”
She didn’t move my hand away, though. She put her hand on my hand.
Like when someone trusts you, when they put their hand on your hand, sometimes you forget loyalties. You forget who belongs to who.
I thought about that this morning. I wanted to call Carole again. I wanted to tell her I remembered things, too. Like when someone trusts you, when they put their hand on your hand, sometimes you forget loyalties. You forget who belongs to who.
It’s best I leave it for now. Helen’s got a handle on things. Maybe in a few days, Carole will be her old self again, “all spry” as Louise used to say.
I asked Carole yesterday if she was going to keep in touch with Louise. She didn’t hear me. She was listening to the drummers over in the park.
I get up from the sofa and make more tea. Carole’s mineral water is still in the fridge. I guess I could call and say, “It’s here if you want it, Carole.” Or I could just leave it. Like I said, Helen has a handle on things. Maybe it’s best to wait. They’ll call if they need me.
Robert Cormack is a satirist, novelist and blogger. His first novel “You Can Lead a Horse to Water (But You Can’t Make It Scuba Dive)” is available online and at most major bookstores. Check out Robert’s other stories and articles at robertcormack.net
