June 14
Today I wanted answers. I wanted to know why Bryan left us all those years ago. He didn’t just leave us, why he left us with almost nothing. I was determined to have my answers. I’m just not sure I was ready for what I found.
Charlie gave me Bryan’s address. It turned out to be an old brick warehouse. It must have been built at least eighty years ago. I was surprised to find Bryan working in such a place.
When I opened the door, I stepped into another world. This old factory with ceilings that soared to the heavens and arched windows overlooking a courtyard had been transformed into a sculptor’s paradise. There were tools of all assortments, platforms of wood, ladders, and casts for poring molten metal.
A man with a torch wearing a welder’s mask was perched on the edge of a scaffold, encircling a bronze horse rearing on his hind legs. He moved deftly around the horse ten feet about the floor, flames leapt from his torch.
“Excuse me.”
I tried to attract the man’s attention.
“We don’t give tours,” he yelled, without even pausing.
“I don’t want a tour,” I yelled back.
“My work’s in galleries, if you’re interested there’s one on Cedar.”
“I’m not interested in your work. I’m looking for Bryan Burke.”
“Why?” he continued.
“Is he here?”
“No one sees Bryan unless they talk to me first.”
“I’m his sister.”
The man paused to lift his welders mask. I couldn’t see his face any better, covered in grime and sweat.
“Jo?” a voice from my childhood called.
“Bryan?”
“I’ll be right down,” he said, removing his ear plugs.
I noticed a sketch taped to the wall of a woman holding a baby in her arms. The same bronze woman I’d seen at the gallery. Bryan was Alexander? The sculptor whose work was so popular?
“What’re you doing here?” he asked, wiping his hands with a rag.
His hair was so thick with plaster; I couldn’t tell if it was still brown or gray. The fine dust had settled into the deep lines on his face. He looked hard and cold like one of his statues.
“I wanted to see you, see how you’re doing?”
Now that the moment had arrived, I didn’t know what to say. I knew I wanted answers, but hadn’t thought of how I’d get them.
“I’m fine,” he said, motioning to the workshop around him. “Living the dream.”
He was living the dream. He was living my dream.
“I’m glad you’re doing well,” I lied.
My brother was the artist. The artist I wanted to be, that I was meant to be.
“What about you? Still painting?”
“Some.”
How did this happen? Bryan was good, but I was more talented. I was the one with the scholarship.
“Any galleries?” he asked.
“No, just a hobby.”
“Hmm.”
He nodded as if he understood. But how could he? He was the famous artist. I was the one who got a job and took care of our younger sister. I was the one who sacrificed everything when he took what we had and left us alone.
“You’re a sculptor?”
“Yes,” he replied.
After we’d been so close as children, shared secrets, summer adventures, and bedrooms, I never thought there could be awkwardness between us. But there was. All that easy familiarity was gone. We stood staring at each other for a long while, not knowing what to say.
“Well, I’m going to get back to work. It was good seeing you again, Jo.”
He turned his back on me like he did all those years ago. I almost let him walk away again without knowing, but I just couldn’t.
“Why did you force us to sell Grandma’s house?”
“I didn’t force you to do anything,” he laughed. “I took what was mine.”
That’s how he looked at it, like we owed him.
“What was yours? You threw us out on the street and never looked back.”
“You were on full scholarship. You had a dorm room to go back to. Allie could have stayed with friends and then gone to college somewhere or got a job,” he said.
“I had to quit because of you.”
I was yelling for the first time in a long time. I was yelling and it felt good. I wanted to let him know what he’d done to us, to me. How unfair he’d been. How he had changed the entire course of my life. I should have been the one with the workshop and paintings in galleries, not him.
“I didn’t make you quit anything. You were an adult, an adult, Jo. An adult who was and is responsible for her actions,” he yelled back with a violent anger I’d never seen in him, but I was through backing down.
“I had no choice after you took everything we had.”
“You had a choice and you chose to quit and from the looks of it, you’re still choosing to quit.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know you wouldn’t be here if you had the guts to actually pursue your dream and use your talent. Don’t come here blaming me. You’re a coward, too afraid to even try,” he said.
“I’m not a coward,” I screamed back.
He didn’t know what courage it took to walk away from everything, to accept total responsibility for a kid when you’re little more than a kid yourself.
He asked what I was expecting from him. I was expecting some kind of explanation that would make sense of everything that happened after Grandma died. I was expecting an apology to squelch the growing anger. I was expecting to find my brother, but left knowing he wasn’t there anymore. I wasn’t expecting to be left with nothing, a hole, doubts. But I couldn’t express all my feelings, so I just left.
Why did I quit school all those years ago? Why did I change my major to business? Was it because Allie really needed me or was I afraid that without anyone to fall back on I couldn’t make it? I knew the road would be hard, maybe too hard. Maybe I thought I didn’t have the talent everyone kept saying I had. I still have my doubts.
It didn’t matter anymore. I have a fifty percent chance that I won’t survive anyway. So what do I have to lose now? I want to be a painter. I’ve always wanted an impractical dream. Why not? Now was the time to forget practical and just live. How did I get so far from that kid who use to wait by the gate, dreaming of tomorrows?
Read Full Post »
Deidra Alexander's Blog 