Week 33: Every Yellow

By Rafferty Parke
Stowe High School, Grade 10

Maddie was terrible at waiting.

Mere moments of idleness were exhausting for her. At this particular moment, as she lingered at the doorway of the Golden Bridges Retirement Home, she was deciding what to do with her arms. When she crossed them, she felt she gave off an unapproachable air. Straight at her sides was too stiff a position; with hands in her pockets, too casual. She wished she had brought a bag to clutch.

Shifting her weight, she took the opportunity to glance at her watch once again. It was 11:04, exactly four minutes after she was supposed to be meeting her Senior Friend. The program had sounded appealing enough on the sign-up day. “Get involved in your community! Make someone’s day!” the sign had read. Now that the time had come, Maddie wondered just what would become of her day in the process.

If they’re not here by 11:10, I’ll go inside and ask around, she told herself. She looked down at her shoe and scuffed the cement with her toe. Looking up, she squinted into the sun and allowed the warmth to brush her cheeks.

She scratched her arm fitfully and checked her watch. 11:05.

“Madeleine?” a young voice called out.

Maddie turned to face a bright-eyed young woman with an airy brown shade of hair – it made Maddie think of iced tea. Dressed in cotton scrubs, she had a clipboard under one arm and a fragile hand on the other.

“This is Richard,” she said gently. “Richard, Maddie.”

Maddie quickly sized up her companion. He wore a heavy wool suit and gleaming loafers. Dark sunglasses shaded his eyes. She blinked, and then saw the cane in his hand. “Pleased to meet you, dear,” he said in a hoarse voice, adding a grin.

Blind, the nurse mouthed.

Maddie nodded in understanding.

“You don’t have to tell her,” Richard laughed. “Just ‘cause I can’t see you doesn’t mean I don’t know what you’re up to, kid.” Maddie imagined that he might have winked, if she could see his eyes. The nurse laughed good-naturedly.

“Well, I guess we’re off then,” Maddie said awkwardly. The nurse handed her an itinerary. Art Museum was the first item on the list. Before Maddie could protest, the nurse told them to have fun and look after each other, then left them alone.

“I guess we’re going to look at art,” Maddie said to break the silence.

“So we are.”

“But you–”

“It’s okay. I could use a stroll anyway.”

“Okay.” Maddie took his arm and they ambled along the suburban streets.

A few minutes later, Richard asked her: “Now, how old are you again, dear?”

“Sixteen.”

“I see.”

Maddie struggled to continue the conversation.

“Do you have any grandchildren?”

“None to speak of.”

“Oh.”

After an agonizing ten minutes they arrived at the museum entrance, where Maddie showed the woman at the ticket counter a pass she had been issued for the occasion.

“I was a docent here for years,” Richard offered as they started down a dimly lit hallway lined by paint-spattered works. “Until about ten years ago, when the eyes went.”

Maddie could think of nothing to say.

“Are the Pollocks still here?” Richard inquired.

“The what?” she asked, just as her eye caught a sign below one of the paintings. Jackson Pollock, it read. “Oh, yeah.”

“These always fascinated me,” he said. “It’s the contradiction that gets me – the deliberate haphazardness. Random perfection, or perhaps imperfect beauty.”

“Is it hard?” Maddie asked tentatively. “Not being able to see them?”

“Nah,” he replied with a careless wave. “I saw ‘em enough. I can still picture them now as well as ever.”

“What do you think of this one?” she asked, moving out of Pollock’s section. The huge yellow one in the gold frame?”

“Goodness, I don’t recall,” he sighed. “Guess I’m not as familiar with the back of my hand as I thought, eh?”

“Oh wait – it says here it was done in 2004. You wouldn’t have seen it.”

“What’s it look like, honey?” he prompted.

“Oh, it’s beautiful. It’s just –”

“Don’t tell me that,” he interrupted.

“What?”

“Show me.”

Maddie turned her gaze to Richard, to the painting, and back again. For the first time she noticed just how prominent the creases on his face were, the ends of laugh lines extending from behind his glasses.

“Well,” she began. “It’s enormous. Bigger than me. It - it looks like some kind of flower, but I’m not sure what kind. Maybe it’s not supposed to be a certain kind. The artist might have made it up.”

Richard made a small humming noise, by way of nudging her along.

“Anyways, you can see every stroke if you look up close. It must have been a big brush, and the paint’s really thick. It’s the kind of thing where if you look that close, it’s hard to tell that it’s all part of one big design.

“When you stand back,” she continued, her words growing steadier, “you just think it’s yellow. Like, it’s just a yellow flower. But then you lean in” – she did – “and you wonder how there can even be one word for all these colors.”

She thought of the warmth she had felt before. “There’s one yellow that’s just like the sun today, that almost burns your eyes if you look at it too long. And there’s a really creamy one, like butter. Along the edge, it’s golden, like an outline, but somehow it fits so you barely even notice it. You can just see a bit of the stem, and the tiny bit of green reflects onto the bottom of that one petal that’s turned up. There are some parts – like where the sun would hit it – where it’s almost white, like a platinum blonde. And that kind of blends outward, fading to the inside of a banana, and then the outside of a lemon.” She blushed, aware of her childishness.

Richard urged her further. “It makes you think of…”

“Summer,” she finished. “When all you had to live for was playing under the sun, for days and weeks on end. There’s so much joy here, like everything you’ve ever looked forward to in your life is all on this one canvas.”

A pause hung between them.

“That’s the brightest shade of yellow I’ve ever seen,” he whispered.

Maddie patted his back. For many more minutes they stood there, seeing.