“I don’t want to run,” I assure her.
“Are you sure?”
“Positive,” I say. But I can’t help myself. “Did a ballerina ruin your life or something?”
“You could say that.” She laughs. “Iwas a ballerina, a lifetime ago.”
I wait for her to say more. She doesn’t.
“And now you’re a painter?” I prod.
“Aren’t we here to talk about you?”
“It can wait,” I say. I’mdesperatefor it to wait. I want to cling to any distraction life will give me—and Kimiko’s art is a fantastically bizarre distraction.
“Okay, but it’s not a happy story.”
I nearly laugh. No one looking at these walls could think they were inspired by something happy.
“I was a ballerina, until I wasn’t. And then I felt like I was nothing. In the wake of my injury, a therapist suggested I try painting. I took to it naturally, signed up for classes after a while. I painted happy stuff then. Landscapes, some still lifes. Always bright, peaceful images. Serene. Myhusband said I had the ability to capture joy in a way that brought him to tears.
“Since I couldn’t be a ballerina, I figured I’d try being a mom. Shortly into our marriage, after suffering my third miscarriage, I… I painted it. He didn’t like that.”
Something in the way she says that makes me freeze, my blood chilled from just a few simple words.
“When I began my second life, I had a hard time readjusting. The caseworkers, they warn you not to start earlier than five years old. And I didn’t. I was ten.” She shakes her head, seemingly baffled.
“Being back in my child brain was weird. I used to think I was in control of myself—of my actions, if not my emotions or thoughts. But then I was a grown woman in a child’s body, having childlike tantrums even though I knew better. It was disconcerting. Scary. And I didn’t have anyone to talk to—for years, I thought I was the only one. I felt so alone. Painting helped.
“I know it’s kind of disturbing, but I like it. After a lifetime of creating beautiful things—onlybeautiful things—of being expected tobea beautiful thing and nothing more, I find it liberating to create something ugly. Though I’m not quite brave enough to transformmyselfinto an ugly thing.”
She stops talking, and the silence stretches on. It’s my turn, but I don’t know what to say.
“Do the other people from the group know about your paintings?” I ask carefully.
“Yeah, right,” she scoffs. “They’d have a field day. I’m sure they would see these paintings as confirmation of everything they already suspect.”
I want to know what they suspect, but I’m scared to ask. She eyes my glass.
“You haven’t touched your wine. Too reminiscent of all the blood on the walls?”
“I’m sorry. I—” I almost can’t get the words out. “I drank red wine the night I died. I seem to have lost the taste for it.”
Her eyes widen, and she stands.
“Oh, you don’t have to—”
She takes my glass and tosses the wine back like it’s a shot.
“You want to know why everyone hates me, right? I’m gonna need a couple more drinks for that. How about whiskey?”
She leaves and a minute later returns with two glasses of whiskey and a far-off look in her eyes.
“I had two kids. Reyna and Milo. They were six and eight.
“Whenever I hear people tell their stories about being up in that bizarre office, it always sounds like this rushed, manic frenzy, over before you know it. Not me. I stayed for what felt like days, sitting across from my caseworker in silence. I didn’t know what to say.
“What kind of mother would wish for her kids never to have been born? What kind of mother, if given the chance, would go back in time and make that wish a reality?
