Family Portrait

Flash Fiction

Image by author

Kelsey perched on the edge of her stool, the canvas before her somehow resisting her best efforts to create an intimate portrait of the family that now remained only as a distant, though still vivid, memory.

Sighing, she set her brush down and headed to the kitchen where she opened the cupboard door and grabbed a fresh coffee mug, heedless of the small splotches of wet paint that joined the dried ones left behind earlier that morning. Les would be home soon and would, as usual, shake his head in mock exasperation, all the while grinning with a happiness borne of knowing that his partner was once again creating as he wiped the cupboards clean. It had been a while.

Except, maybe she couldn’t do this anymore. Maybe she had stopped painting for too long. Was eight months too long? Or had she just lost her ability to bring a canvas to life? Maybe grief had robbed her of her gift.

The news of Kelsey’s last living relative’s death had hit her hard. Trevor had been the brother she had least known, with the twelve-year difference in their ages. It hadn’t helped that he had left home when she was seven, moving half-way around the world, and had been terrible at keeping in touch with the family.

Still, he had been family, and she had loved him. Especially the occasional letters that would unexpectedly show up in the pink-flowered mailbox at the end of the drive. When their mother had died, Kelsey and Trevor had been the only siblings left of the five who had grown up in the rambling farmhouse. Mom had left it to both of them, and Kelsey had feared she would either have to find the money to buy out Trevor’s half or sell the only home she had ever known to satisfy the terms of the will. Her brother, however, had generously signed over his share, having no interest in returning to Canada and no need of the money.

His letter writing, which had lapsed for several years leading up to their mother’s death, had resumed after that with greater frequency, and, it had seemed to Kelsey, with greater fondness. In his last letter, eight months ago, he had even suggested he might come visit. A heart attack had taken him a week later. Trevor had never married and had no children. He had left his entire, sizeable estate to Kelsey. Somehow devastated by the loss of the brother she had barely known, Kelsey had grieved deeply. She hadn’t painted in the eight months since learning of his death.

She poured hazelnut coffee, her favorite, from the carafe into her mug and wandered into the small den that served as her office. She wiped her fingers on her smock, not wanting to smudge the letter she removed from the top drawer of her desk. Trevor’s last letter.

Kelsey smiled through her tears as she read his words. She’d read every one of his books. He painted with words the way she did with oils and acrylics, his pictures every bit as beautiful as her paintings, his letters carrying stories meant only for her, memories of their family dating back to her early childhood and beyond, allowing her glimpses of their life that extended beyond her own memory. Priceless gifts.

Kelsey’s eyes skipped past the final paragraph with its promise of a visit never realized to Trevor’s signature with the tiny picture of a bunny at the end. He had always signed his name that way, even, he had said, when autographing books, to honor his baby sister and the stuffed rabbit he had given her, along with a cheap set of watercolor paints, just before leaving for the wilds of Africa. Somehow, she had always remained seven in his memory, though she had celebrated her fiftieth birthday a month after his death. He had planned to be there to celebrate it with her.

She had named the bunny Blue, though it had been white. She couldn’t remember what had inspired the name. Blue had been extra special because Trevor had given it to her.  So had the paints. She had used them to paint her first picture—of Blue.  Her brother’s gifts had inspired her to begin documenting the world around her. She had never stopped.

None of her other toys had survived the ravages of the years, but Blue still adorned her pillow each morning when she made her bed. Les had complained about his being empty and the bed feeling lopsided until Kelsey had bought him a stuffed bear for his pillow. The pair had kept one another company for the last twenty-four years.

Kelsey dropped the letter onto the desk, jumping up from her chair so quickly she nearly spilled coffee onto it. Blue! That was the missing piece for her family portrait, the reason it wasn’t right. Seven-year-old Kelsey should have been holding Blue at that final gathering before Trevor had left. The last time they had all been together.

She practically flew through the hallway, dropping a quick kiss on Les’s cheek as he worked to remove the morning’s paint smudges from cupboard door.

“Inspiration?” Les asked, the joy in his eyes matching her own.

“Blue,” Kelsey answered over her shoulder as she disappeared into her studio, knowing that Les would have no idea what she meant. Right now, the need to paint was too strong to stop. Later, she would explain over a glass of wine. She had missed this. All of it. Once again, Trevor had ignited her creative drive with the gift of a little while rabbit named Blue.

---

I’m so glad to be back with a story of substance. I’ve spent most of the last year lost in a haze of pain, unable to even consider writing. I’ve recently been through one major surgery and am awaiting another. I’ve honestly been pretty emotionally and creatively paralyzed and wondering when, or if, I might ever find the motivation and imagination to write again.

Today, I pushed myself. I realized that the only way I was going to start writing again was to just do it. So I went to Take Three Words and had it randomly generate a prompt. The words it gave me were intimacy, stool, and rabbit. I changed the first word to intimate and started writing with no idea where these words would take me.

I think some of my own struggles over the past year bled through into the story, though Kelsey’s difficulties are different from my own. The other influence, though again a very different story from the one I wrote, was a book I just finished (The Memory of Lavender and Sage by Aimie K. Runyan, which deals with a woman who, after her father dies, moves to the small town in France in which her mother grew up).

I hope you enjoy this story as much as I enjoyed writing it. Truly, this act of creation has been a balm to my soul, much as painting is for Kelsey.

Thanks for waiting for me,

Dascha