I am trying at a bird. It won’t come out very well because I haven’t been painting long, but it’s soothing nonetheless and fills my time. Yesterday was the flower garden. It didn’t turn out the way I wanted either, but I’m determined to improve.
The flower garden is just outside the window. The flowers are mums and pansies and, oh, how they brighten the lawn with brilliant shades of crimson gold and orange!
They remind me of his face—the flower garden, the bird. I’m certain the bird is a thrush. It’s back is a reddish-brown color, and its throat and breast are white with black spots. He is really a most magnificent bird. I think I might write a poem about him. Not the bird. Though the bird reminds me of him.
When I’m not painting or outside in the garden with the flowers, I try to write poems. I thought up this nice poem about the beautiful weather we’ve been having lately, but I forgot it. So now I carry a pen and notebook around everywhere I go just in case I think up another one.
It is another lovely fall day here in Belmont. The window is open just enough so that when the crisp, October air stirs amid the flowers outside, the room is filled with their sweet fragrance. I wonder how many autumn days like the one today have graced the earth before my existence? How my soul longs to have known them!
Of all the seasons, fall is the one most dear to me. The changing colors—and some may think me grim for saying it—remind me that there’s beauty even in death. Winter is different. There is nothing in Winter. All that remains of Autumn is swept away; the leaves, the colors. The sky turns grey, and all the earth is washed a sterile white, a hospital white, so that nothing’s left. Even the foliage of the evergreens is smothered in snow.
Now someone’s playing the piano. It’s Lana again. She plays like I paint. My concentration suffers greatly when she’s at it, but it makes her happy. She picked up the habit ever since Nurse Foley brought us that record player to use in the lounge. Lana’s favorite was the Paul Creston record, but she played it so often the others complained, and Nurse Foley had to take that one away. Poor Lana has to content herself with Jim Reeves and Don Gibson now. She got so upset over the whole thing, she swore she’d never speak to Nurse Foley again, but I heard them having a rather pleasant conversation, just this morning in fact. Lana asked Nurse Foley if she could find her some Benjamin Britten records to play and she said that if she behaved herself she might try, and Lana hasn’t thrown one tantrum since.
Victoria can’t stand Lana. Miss Priss, she calls her. ‘Oh, but she has the sweetest smile,’ I say, but she just rolls her eyes. Victoria seldom smiles. When she does it’s faint and melancholy. Her lips move slightly upward, but her eyes stay cold and grey. They remind me of winter.
Oh! There he goes. I will have to paint the rest from memory. I should like to paint his face when I get better. Victoria asked me what he looks like, but it’s not easy to describe a face that’s perfect. I told her I would have to paint it for her, but I’m not good enough yet, so she’ll just have to wait. Not too long I hope.
Victoria is so kind to me. The flower garden was her idea. Everyone has got to calling it ‘Victoria’s garden,’ the nurses too. She told me she was tired of gazing out through the rain at the empty green lawn, the ugly shrubbery, and that wrought, iron gate at the driveway. She often spoke of her little garden back home, and how nice it would be if we had one just like it. I thought it was a wonderful idea, so I wrote a letter, and I suppose they thought it was a wonderful idea too, because they let us put one in a few weeks later. She seems to smile a bit more, in her own way, though she still has her bad days. One time she slept in late and missed a session, so the nurses wouldn’t let her go out on the lawn and smoke that day. She got angry and began hitting the wall with her fists till they bled. I do worry about her, but it seems the garden has done her good. I wish he could see it. I’ll have to show it to him when he picks me up and takes me away from this awful place. He has a glossy new convertible; a sea-green Chevrolet Bel Air, and after we leave here we’re heading straight for the west coast. The beaches in California aren’t so long and lonely like the ones here, but full of laughter, where bodies lay strewn about the warm sand, and winter is a thousand years away.
I suppose I will miss some things about Belmont. The New England autumns, the scenic drive between here and Boston…the hospital. Not the empty white walls or the lab coats or the slick linoleum floors, but Victoria and Lana and the garden; Nurse Foley too. She’s a regular mother hen.
Well, it seems I’m finished. I admit, it’s not much better than my flower garden painting. I wish he didn’t fly away so suddenly. I do envy him. The bird, I mean. Sometimes I feel like a bird locked up in a cage. The grates on the windows don’t help. How I long to take flight! My heart is so close to bursting some days, I can’t sleep or sit still. Sometimes I can feel it leap from my chest. I do hope Victoria will take care when I’m gone. I tell her I will write her letters, even call from time to time, and that as soon as I get to California I’ll send her a—oh, but the nurse has come. It is time for my appointment with Doctor Ainsley. He will ask me all about him, as he usually does, and I’ll tell him about his beautiful face; how it reminds me of the sun, and the trees, and the stars…he’ll ask me about the stars again. Sometimes I look up at the stars and feel big, sometimes I feel small. I’ll tell him that now I feel big, and that it’s been that way for a while. I’ll tell him that he’s coming to take me away too, and that we’ll just as soon be wed. Doctor Ainsley will nod, and smile, and record everything in that book of his, and when we’re through, I’ll return to my easel by the window and maybe paint the women meandering about outside on the lawn.
