With a careful hand, she drew the lines. It was a dark winter evening, and she left only her desk lamp to illuminate the space of her apartment. She paused, studying the paper before her with a critical gaze. She set her charcoal aside, and lay a darkened finger in the middle of her sketch. She dragged it slowly across the page, and under her breath, she spoke the single word:
“One.”
“You’ve got potential, Emma,” affirmed her professor. “I really do mean that. Sure, we get a lot of kids in here that start off with more skill than you, but they don’t go anywhere. They don’t want to put in the effort to grow. You’ve been putting your hours in, and it’s paying off. You’ve got some wonderful work to show from mid-semester.”
“Thank you,” Emmy smiled, shifting in her chair. To receive such great praise from one of her professors made her almost embarrassed. She wasn’t one who looked for much attention.
“It’s the truth. You’ve got a long ways to go yet, but you’ve made a wonderful start. I look forward to seeing where you’ll go next.”
Emma picked up her finger from the paper, and wiped away the excess smudge on her jeans. A car rumbled past outside her window, and she could hear sirens crying far in the distance. A bedtime lullaby, indeed, she thought as she let her eyes fall shut and her body slump. Her head ached with exhaustion, but she could only find sanctity in masochism. Taking in a full breath of the stale apartment oxygen, she sat back up and looked again upon her artwork. Picking up her utensil once again, she began making erratic strokes.
“Two.”
“Emma?” Paul asked cautiously, standing in the bedroom doorway. She broke from her focus, startled, almost smudging the near-finished piece.
“What?” She asked, letting off a sigh of exasperation. It was directed at him, per say; deadlines wore her to nothing, every time, and she was nearing nothing by that point. Still, Paul cowered back a bit and looked regretful that he had interrupted.
“It’s almost four in the morning… I just would like it if you would give yourself a break and come to bed,” he spoke tenderly, his eyes as soft as a doe’s. Emma felt herself break into a defeated smile, and he returned it without hesitation. He meandered over to her, and wiped a bit of misplaced charcoal from her forehead. “You’re so beautiful when you work,” he grinned, pulling her close to him.
“Twenty more minutes,” she finally replied, leaning her head on his stomach. He squeezed her shoulder, and stepped back.
“Okay,” he nodded, and she could see a faint disappointment cross his features, despite his smile. Twenty minutes had never meant twenty minutes.
She swallowed hard, feeling herself grow warm with regret. The thin charcoal shattered in her grasp.
“Goddamnit,” she hissed, bolting up from her seat. She whipped the remains across the room, and slammed her hands down on the desk. She dragged a dark, sweaty palm across the sketch.
“Three.”
“Ms. Hane, I just don’t think this is up to our standards,” Mr. Enger stated, studying the piece before him. Emma frowned, shifting the weight of the child on her hip.
“Mr. Enger, I did all that you asked. I don’t understand what the problem is,” she refuted, not used to receiving such harsh critique. The small boy she held began to tug at her ponytail and gurgle, and she made vain attempts at quieting him.
“It’s quite simple, Ms. Hane. You’ve fallen back on your craft, and it shows. For me to pay for something of such poor quality would be foolish. Perhaps you should accept that your attentions are elsewhere,” he snorted, glancing at the cooing babe. “I appreciate your time and effort, but we won’t be requiring your business here.”
Emma let out a haggard breath, tears pooling in the black mess. She slowly sat back down, feeling a disconnect from herself. She lay her cheek into the puddle, letting it grow beneath her. The night began to turn to dawn. She softly choked out,
“Four.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered to the tiny boy. He stood in his crib, looking up at her with curious brown eyes. She smiled sadly, running a hand over his soft little head of hair. He was the image of unspoiled innocence, a boy who still could easily forgive hurts and forget the loves of yesterday. His youth brought him quick healing. Her heart ached with the hope that he would forgive her for this. Or, if nothing else, forget her completely. She would be a smudge to wipe away from his childhood.
She kissed his forehead and left the room. She heard him whimper softly, and she felt her heart hesitate to beat. Thankfully, he quieted, and she continued moving. She stopped in the bedroom doorway, and looked upon another boy, one not so tiny, but with just as tender of a disposition. He slept in a mess of covers, breathing softly and slowly. She could tell he hadn’t slept well. They had ended the night on a note of finality; it was him, or the charcoal. After the meeting with Mr. Enger, she had closed herself off from everything and lived in that world of black mess. She worked obsessively to fix what she had done wrong, to be better and undo her failure.
“I can’t live with you like this,” he admitted, his face hot and moistened with tears. “I have loved you through every moment of this, but I’m beginning to believe that you love that black shit more than you love us.” Emma looked at him, her insides churning and mouth contorting to try and form the right words. But she could say nothing. The storm clouds suddenly lifted from Paul’s face, and his expression turned to that of pain. “You do, don’t you?”
As the morning sunbeams broke through the window, she left. She picked up her bag, and left a note on the kitchen counter before departing.
”You’re right,” is all it read.
She woke up to the bright midday sun pouring into her apartment. She blinked away cobwebs of sleep, pulling her sore body up in her seat. She looked at the dampened and smudge portrait before her.
“Five.”
A man and a boy, smiling with wide, innocent grins. And eyes filled with sincere love.
She picked it up, holding in her hands what she had loved more than anything in the world, but realized too late. She studied it, scrutinizing with a broken heart. She finally threw it into the wastebasket by her desk, a wastebasket filled with similar images of the two that had been discarded in days previous. She pulled a clean sheet of paper from a drawer, and started all over again. Just like she had done every day—her five-step epiphany.
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