“YOU’RE DRUNK.” Button’s arms were crossed over her bony chest, her lips pressed together so tightly they’d turned white.
“My art history teacher’s a sexist ass,” Eve said as she took off her coat. It took several tries to snag the hook on which to hang it. She leaned against the wall to kick off her boots, picked them up, and dumped them on the shoe rack.
“Hmph,” Button said.
Avoiding her grandmother’s piercing gaze, she walked with slow deliberation to the kitchen. She pulled a beer from the fridge and slid onto the bench at the Formica table.
“You’re not supposed to mix alcohol with your medications.”
Button stood in the doorway to the kitchen, her silver curls glowing in the overhead light and her face twisted into THE LOOK. It was usually enough to keep Eve pretending that all was well, but not tonight.
Twisting the cap off the bottle, she said, “It’s just one beer.”
“And how many before that?”
“I’m celebrating Sara’s birthday.” Her voice echoed back to her from the mouth of the bottle, rounded and warped. A laugh gurgled up her throat and escaped on a bubble of beer, leaving fire in its wake.
“Eve.” Button placed a hand on her shoulder. “It’s a hard day for both of us. But we’re all we’ve got left. We need to stick together.”
She ran a finger over the ring of rust where Donna’s tin of maple syrup had sat for the first seventeen years of her life. It had never occurred to her before this moment that the rust was the same colour as Donna’s eyes. She yanked back her hand and wrapped it around the bottle of beer, as though trying to soothe a burn.
“Are you listening? I’m tired of watching you turn your back on everything you have.”
“I have nothing except you.”
“You think so? Come here.” Button grabbed her hand and pulled.
She slid along the bench and allowed her grandmother to lead her into the hallway.
“Kuk arop, vest du visn vi hoykh du shteyst. You forget how far you’ve climbed. How much you’ve overcome, even in this past year.”
Button had hung Eve’s paintings along the hallway. Over the years, she’d filled every inch of available wall space.
“Look at this.” Button stabbed her finger at a painting. “Really look. What do you see?”
“A better life.” A time before Donna bounced her tuition cheque and Eve had to spend her first year at community college instead of Emily Carr.
Button let out a breath. “But what did you paint?”
“Paris. The cobbled street of the Rue Crémieux after a rain shower.”
“One of my favourites. I love how the light from the street lamp bleeds into the shadows. It’s very fluid, very dreamlike.”
Button pulled her along the hallway. “And this one?”
“A café on the Rue Saint-Honoré. I’d paint it differently now. Tighten the focus to that scatter of bread crumbs, and where the coffee splashed into the saucer. Highlight the imperfections.”
“Yes,” Button said. “You should try that. And what’s this one?”
“All right. I get it.”
“What is it?”
“It’s the field of quicksilver plants in the Crook, where Sara and I used to play. The leaves look like tinfoil.”
“They do,” Button said. “And see how the tiny yellow flowers seem to glow, as though lit from inside?”
“They look that way at dusk, in the spring. The flowers smell like honey.”
Button nodded. “You really captured something. It’s haunting and whimsical. Sad, too.”
“I painted it the year after Sara died.”
“Yes,” Button said.
“I wish you’d take it down.”
“That won’t change the past. It won’t hide you from the truth.”
Pulling her down the hall, Button pointed out each painting, highlighting the parts she thought were particularly good, and reminiscing on the story behind each. When they reached the end of the hallway, they stopped in front of Donna’s bedroom door. It hadn’t been opened in three years.
The painting was of the Adlers’ backyard in early summer. Leigh stood in the driveway with a basketball tucked under his arm while Sara picked flowers that looked like daisies. Button touched Sara’s painted cheek, traced the flowers clutched against her chest, and ran her finger over the blood-red soil at Sara’s feet.
“Button, don’t.”
“You still miss her, don’t you?”
“She was my only friend.”
“It wasn’t your fault. You understand that, don’t you? No matter what people might have said.”
Eve didn’t bother arguing.
Button sighed, turned back to the painting. “My Frida. My beautiful artist. Since you were very small, you always dreamed so vividly. With so much colour and detail. To have the talent to paint those dreams, to share them with others, that’s a gift from God.”
“You don’t believe in God.”
“Who said that?”
“You did. You said you didn’t care how you were raised, you had trouble believing in a God that would let children die before their parents.” Button was born in the Warsaw Ghetto. She’d seen more atrocities in her childhood than Eve could ever imagine.
Button waved a hand, looking flustered. “Ignore what I said. Atheism is a luxury afforded the young. At my age, I’d be foolish not to hedge my bets.”
“Don’t talk like that. You’re going to live a long time.”
“I’ve already lived too long. My point is, don’t use your heartache as an excuse to give up.”
“And my guilt?” Eve asked before she could stop herself. “What should I do with that?”
“What do you have to feel guilty about?” Button turned away before hearing the answer, as she always did.
For a moment Eve paused on the cliff’s edge, staring down into the abyss. She imagined unburdening herself, speaking of everything Button pretended not to know. But her grandmother looked so small and fragile in her threadbare bathrobe, and the lines etched around her eyes looked like cracks in an old foundation.
And despite all the evidence to the contrary, Button believed she was a good person. She needed that.
Stepping back from the edge, she said, “Nothing. Let’s eat. I’m starving.”
She pulled her grandmother away from the painting of the Adlers’ yard, and led her back to the kitchen.