STILL LIFE WITH NATALIE

It’s not a graveyard, it’s an ecosystem. I mean, yeah, there are graves, all tilting across a ragged lawn, and that’s all most people see—death, stones like rows of dry teeth. And in some graveyards, that’s all they want you to see—marble stark against a blank slate of manicured grass. And yeah, the light’s better in that sort of place, where the trees are tamed into shape and let the sun through. But the flowers are better here.

To paint flowers, you need an old cemetery. A century of mourners’ offerings gone to seed, taken root. The best kind of garden gone feral. And wild, native things carried on the wind that feed on all the richness under the soil.

It’s impossible to get my easel level on the lumpy ground. All my paintings are askew, slanted—I like it that way, now. It’s a whole new perspective—a new way to look at graves, at flowers.

We don’t have cemeteries like this back home. The water table is too high. All the bodies get stacked in stone huts, or burned and stored in a field that’s paved like a parking lot of corpses. And nothing grows but infernal moss. You know how to paint moss? It’s a wash of green. It takes less skill than finger-painting.

I add a bit of blue to the petal of a tiny violet.

At home, all that heat and wet makes the lifecycle swift. Accelerated decomposition. Sprouts splitting their seed cases right in front of your eyes. Plants die in layers, black and sticky, each generation insulating the last.

It’s cold here. Things move slow. It’s only September, but the tips of my fingers ache. The cold soaks in and everything smells like ice weeks before the snow arrives. The light has changed, and I realize I’ve been here for hours, only a few small blossoms finished. My models will shrink overnight, close up, maybe get nipped with frost.

I swish my brushes in my canteen, toss them in a stained wood box. I lay the wet canvas carefully in the trunk, nestled between the easel and spare tire.

I look back at the wild violets peeking out of the shadow of the stone. Their heads are already lowered, as if praying over the grave. A few of these blossoms will live forever, though, on canvas.

The picture will never be finished now. None of them ever are. Life moves too fast in the graveyard—the light shifts, and death comes too soon.

***

“You’re going to fail that class, Colin. Are you going to tell your mother? Or shall I?” My mother’s cousin, her doppelganger running twenty years behind, thumbs threateningly at her cell phone, scrolling through the texted chronicle of reports she’s made on my progress.

“I paint better than the professor.”

“Not if you count finished pieces.” Natalie stretches across the couch like she wants me to paint her. I’ve told her I don’t do portraits. I do still life. “Still Alives”—the flowers of the dead. They’re the memories—the last remaining thoughts of those that feed the roots. Clear minds grow pretty things. Dark thoughts grow weeds and poisons. I’m not just painting flowers, I’m painting echoes—the last stories the dead have to tell.

I can see in Natalie’s eyes that her grave would grow thistle and nightshade. I’ve warned her to see to her thoughts, lest she sleep eternal in a weed patch. But I think she likes it. I think she’d finger-paint dandelions.

“So what are you going to do for your first New England winter? What are you going to paint?” She cracks her back and folds an arm behind her head.

“I took some photos. I guess I’ll paint from them.” She must see me shudder. Knows I hate the thought. Knows it’s not the same.

“Are you still going to call them ‘still alives’ if the flowers are dead under three feet of snow?”

My teeth hurt. My whole face does. It must be the cold.

***

They call the largest model a conservatory. It has a heavy-duty composite frame and panels made to withstand heavy snowfall. Best of all, they’re opaque, and the light inside is milky, ambient. Deep troughs of rich earth line the long walls. The aisle is just wide enough for my easel.

Natalie squeezes a lump of dirt in her hand, crumbling it. “What are you going to plant?”

I’ll need a lock for the door. “Nothing. Just going to see what grows.”

She furrows her brow as best she can against the stiffening effects of Botox. “Things don’t just grow, Colin, you need seeds.”

“There are seeds in there already. I just don’t know what. Violets, probably. Definitely roses, lilies, carnations. Dandelions, probably. Weeds.”

Natalie’s face falls. She shakes her head and scrubs her dirty palm against her pants. “Colin, you didn’t.”

“I can’t give up my theme, Natalie, that’s half the beauty of the painting.”

“You took the grave dirt?”

“Just the top layer. I put the sod back down. No one ever goes there. No one will ever know.”

The conservatory door slams. Fiberglass panels rattle like dull drums. She’ll be calling my mother. Condensation dribbles down the frosted fiberglass. Sweat runs down my back. The heat—the dampness—it feels like home. But the grave soil is pure New England. It smells of promise. Of stolen summer. Of art.

***

“You’re grinding your teeth.”

“What?”

“That’s why your jaw hurts.” Natalie pulls my hand from my jaw and wipes at the mess my fingers have left behind. Dirt. No paint. There hasn’t been paint for weeks.

“It’s not worth the stress, Colin. Just drop the class. Take an incomplete and register again in the spring, when the flowers are back.”

“I can’t fail, Natalie. That’s not an option.”

“Waiting for the right time isn’t failing. Your theme is important to you. Great. Your professor will understand. But you’re not going to get daffodils in October, Colin. Not here. Not unless you plant them yourself. That’s not how nature works.”

She’s right. Her words are skunk cabbage and nettle, but they aren’t wrong. I said it myself—it’s an ecosystem. You need the whole cycle to make life.

I miss my classes. I tell the professor I need the time to work—need the light. It’s not a lie. I head back to the graveyard, where the flower stalks have turned to dry sticks and the grass stabs at my knees and palms like little sabers—like an army guarding the treasure under the soil.

The New England winter earth is hard—hoarfrost crackles under my spade as I pry at the layers of dirt. A lattice of ice, holding everything together.

I lay the lumpy bag carefully in the trunk, nestled between the shovel and spare tire. Haul my harvest back to the long conservatory.

Finger bones rattle in terra cotta pots like dice in a cup, casting my fortunes. I drop fistfuls of rich earth over them—the same dirt they’ve known for thirty years. Long leg bones stretch along the flowerbeds. The oil at their core no longer shines, but it’s still there—a matte stain on dry meat. I can smell the life left there through the dust, like iron and old fruit. I seed my ground with these forgotten dreams, and see what grows. Pleasure or poison—it’s all art, either way.

I’m tired, and my back aches too much to bend over my canvas. And I need time. Patience, while the roots find their source.

***

I never thought I’d be so glad to see moss. I wash green across the canvas, feel the texture of the woven fibers against my roughened fingertips, calluses grating, my skin cells becoming a part of the piece. The smell of it comes in waves as intoxicating as the color—chlorophyll sweat clinging to my face like dew. My breath comes so quick it dries the paint in front of me before I’ve finished spreading it. I dip my hand back in the paint and smear it across the canvas. A few more days of warm wet and filtered winter sunlight, and there will be flowers. Flowers always follow the green, and the green always comes first.

***

The stalks all bend under the weight of shrinking blooms. Petals drop to the dirt without ever growing vibrant. The paintings all look as if they are viewed through smoke. I dab more brown along the edge of a leaf.

“Are you ever coming inside?” Natalie only speaks in oily ivy now. She casts so much darkness that I swear the plants are starved for light.

“I need to turn something in tomorrow. At least show some progress.” I rub my arm along my upper lip, wiping away the drops shaken loose by speech. Her glasses are fogged, but I feel her look. Like my mother peering out of her eyes.

“It doesn’t look like the flowers are doing very well.” She touches the tip of a finger to a limp petal and it falls.

“God damn it, Natalie!”

She turns on me, leans into her shout. “They’re not ‘still alives,’ Colin. They’re dead. You’re letting them die. Flowers need to be nurtured.” She turns away so fast that the breeze in her wake knocks another petal free.

She’s right, though. About the nurturing. Flowers need to be fed. Not just once, but over and over. I need to complete the ecosystem. I’m going to miss class again.

***

All my nails are split and my palms are a mess of blisters, but I can hold a brush.

I never noticed how many colors there are in dirt. It isn’t just brown. It’s a thousand browns, gold, green, even blue like Natalie’s hard eyes.

And ants aren’t just black, but are mahogany anywhere the light shines off their beaded bodies.

Spiders the color of dirty glass—inside a dark rainbow of organs.

Worms the color of salmon and skin, and worms the color of bone.

The dirt is alive. Still alive. Long after the flowers die. Long before new seedlings split their casing and take root, punch tendrils through the earth to the richness waiting there.

Nothing grows in dirt that isn’t moving, churning, recycling itself in the long throat of worms.

Life comes from life, or what life leaves behind, hidden in the dark center of bones. And hollow bones hold only echoes.

The liquid pooling in the sunken eyes is mustard-seed yellow, almost ochre, but a color I’ve never mixed before. My hand shakes as I dip the brush, gather pigment from around brittle lashes, and spread it along the edge of a daffodil. The perfect color for where the shadow of a headstone falls across the buttery petal.

There are flowers now. It’s early spring in my little garden. But there aren’t enough blooms to fill a gallery.

I lower the head of Albert Vernon 1926–1999 into the pot at my feet. Scalp slides from bone and teeth tumble from leathery lips as his cheekbone comes to rest against the pottery.

“Show me a pretty story, Albert,” I whisper to him. The smell of him sticks to my tongue, stink turning to flavor, and it’s ochre, too. “Your wife was all wild morning glory and bluebells. I bet she covered you with roses.”

I pour dirt over him. Gather water from the condensation troughs and saturate the soil. I need more blossoms, and fast. I still haven’t finished a painting.

***

Natalie brings me a package. She walks right into the greenhouse. Doesn’t knock. I need a lock.

The package is wrapped in red paper, green ribbon tied around it. Already? I’m running out of time.

I don’t want to set my brush down, but I do it. Get it over with. If she argues, I’ll just be distracted longer.

“Merry early Christmas. I thought you could use this now. Didn’t want to make you wait.” She smiles. It’s a nice smile. It’s a shame I don’t do portraits.

Then her face wrinkles. “Ugh! It stinks in here.”

I scan the beds. Everything planted, nothing visible except the flowers. Little pops of color bobbing over buried secrets.

“I got a weird fungus. Can’t get the stink out.” I smile back, take the package, snap the ribbon, rip the paper. Inside the box, resting on a pillow of tissue, is a pair of wool fingerless gloves. The stitches are strained in places, loose in others.

“A lady at work showed me how to knit them. I thought they might help you paint outside in the winter.”

She’d sewn roughly-cut suede patches to the palms.

“And maybe your hands won’t get so beat up gardening.”

Her thoughts are all buttercups and forget-me-nots, morning glory vines twisting around my heart.

“Thank you,” I say. I’ve forgotten how to say anything else.

She smiles. Sunflowers—black-eyed Susans. Colors I haven’t seen for months. Hues that have gone dry in my paint box. Colors I need.

The composition of her thoughts is stretched across the canvas of her face, and it’s more than I can resist.

***

The secret of Still Alives is that they’re portraits. Not of faces, but of minds—a moment of heart frozen in time, like a bulb wintering in the cold earth before the right gardener calls it up from the soil. Not everyone gets a portrait of their best moment. Only kings and queens, and Natalie.

The earth in my flowerbed dances with life. And from its shifting soil, a thousand blossoms unfurl. It reminds me of home.