flashquake Fiction - Reflection On a Hard Shell by Vanitha Sankaran

flashquake
Reflection On a Hard Shell
by Vanitha Sankaran
First appeared in The Paumanok Review, Spring 2001

Marge caressed the edge of her canvas. With the rough sketch blocked in and the underpainting applied, she could glimpse what her composition might become. Ocean on one side, sand on the other, herself straddling in between. Not bad for a rusty amateur. She still remembered the scene like she'd been there yesterday, standing under the awning of a juice stand near Pompano Beach, listening to the summer rainstorm pound into the fabric. In the humid aftermath, she'd propped her easel in the wet sand, fingers aching to hold a brush. Marge sighed. The woman she'd been was untouchable now, just a reflection in a steamy mirror.

How was she supposed to find herself again?

She picked up her dappled palette and selected a round brush, then dipped it in a puddle of color.

Naples Yellow Deep. The taste of saliva that rose under her tongue every time she thought of her marriage. Where the hell had it all gone wrong? When had Ernie's needs eclipsed hers? Why in God's name had she let them? Marge slashed a gash of yellow for an expanse of beach, then stippled in the sand and the broken fragments of seashells. She picked up another color.

Cerulean Blue. Like her nightly glass of Bombay Sapphire, quaffed in secret while Ernie watched the news. Damn him for never noticing. Damn her for needing him to. God, blue was supposed to be soothing and sincere. When had it taken on despair? She rent an ocean into the canvas, poured her truth into the murky water. Her catharsis swirled in eddies under the surface. Now it was time for the sky.

Alizarin Crimson, she chose the color without thought. So many pictures she'd painted with this, a bluish red, it was almost impure. Like the blood roses wilting on the table behind her, the kind Ernie had given her on their first date. And on every anniversary since. It wasn't his fault she hated him. She hated herself too, for the weak wispy nothing she'd let herself become. She smeared some paint onto her palette and bled her regret into a dying sun that stretched across the heavens.

Marge stopped to moisten her canvas, then started brushing in the details, wet paint on wet paint. The hatred of red seeped into the grit of yellow, and was halted by the fear of blue. She worked without pause, sketching here, thwacking there, then stroking through and through. It was finally taking shape. She took a step back and stared. She'd painted herself on an island, glaring at her reflection on the carapace of a Florida Blue Crab. A hemorrhaging sun set behind her as she grasped the cracked shell. The stark outline of her body leapt out of the hazy background, mirroring the colors of the crab. Edged in yellow, tipped in red, and tinted in a greenish blue.

The only thing that separated the woman from her reflection was the force of her own anger.