Tin Lily Read Online Free PDF Page A

Mom’s dead blood starts the bees up again.
    But pretty soon there’s paint and mint and whiskey. Pretty soon I see Hank sitting on the hearth, his back to the fireplace, his hand waving a tin gun. Then a paintbrush. Gun. Paintbrush.
    Gun. “ One year into two, two years into nothing. ”
    Paintbrush. “ Hold still, kid. Noses are the hardest to get down.”
    Gun. “ Lily, what did I do? Where ’ s your mother?”
    Paintbrush. “Lift your chin just a touch, Lilybeans. And for god’s sake, smile. Sitting for a portrait isn ’ t any worse than eating your mom ’ s burnt pot roast, ya Gloomy Gus.”
    I ’ m eight. My prize for sitting for Dad ’ s painting is a visit to Lagoon, where we ’ ll ride the roller coaster and the Log Flume, the Sky Ride and the Tidal Wave. We ’ ll eat churros and ice cream. And later we ’ ll pose for a picture. Mom ’ ll be a saloon girl in a frilly dress and Dad ’ ll be the sheriff, holding a tin gun, wearing a tin badge. I ’ ll be their daughter. When I ’ m eight I don ’ t want to be anyone else.
    I smile at Dad painting my face on his blank canvas.
    He smiles back. “ Not so bad, huh? ”
    “ Not so bad, ” I agree.
    I watch the way Dad brushes and dabs and sometimes smudges. “Where did you learn to paint?” I ’ ve asked before and he always waves my question away, like it ’ s not important. Today he feels like talking.
    His eyes go far away, a little squinty—his seeing-into-the-past look. “I used to doodle in notebooks, sometimes in the margins of novels. My mother saw something in those drawings and bought me my first sketchpad when I was six. For years after that, she would sneak me charcoal, pencils, markers, you name it. Eventually, we figured out I was best at this.” He points with his brush at the painting I can ’ t see. “While my father was at work, I would paint.”
    “Grandpa Henry didn ’ t like you painting?” At eight I only know a little about Grandpa Henry—that he ’ s not welcome in our house, that he ’ s mean.
    Dad gives me a funny look, like he ’ s searching for the answer in my eyes. “Grandpa Henry believed there was a right way and a wrong way.”
    “To what?”
    Dad rubs the hand holding his brush across his forehead, leaving a streak of red there. “To everything,” he says softly.
    Dad rubbing his head tells me to stop asking questions. Pretty soon he ’ ll start swallowing a lot and wiping his mouth. He ’ ll say he ’ s thirsty, but not for water. After a few beers, he ’ ll sit in his recliner and maybe nod off, maybe tell me I need to be stronger than I am. Stronger and smarter and not so gloomy. He won ’ t be kidding like when he said Gloomy Gus. He ’ ll be serious and his eyes will glint like two black stones and he ’ ll look different.
    I don ’ t ask any more questions and hope I stopped before the big thirst comes on.
    Hank disappears when Margie tugs on my hand. “Lilybeans?”
    “All set.” I turn my back on the not-shrine and the not-Hank. I step up and toward the hollow-sounding switchback—one-hundred eighty degrees from one set of steps to the next. About face. Hollow thump underfoot. Like a drum. Like a heartbeat.
    I’m in the hall that connects our rooms. I glance toward hers. Folded clothes are heaped on her bed, the laundry basket almost empty. A few towels left. Unfinished laundry, frozen in a gone-forever moment. I go there first.
    There’s just one thing. Only one. I touch the stuff on the bed and run my fingers along the soft bedspread she found on sale last year, then go to the picture on her nightstand. It’s one of me and her at the park. A rare one because she didn’t like giving up her camera. Another gone-forever moment. I take me and Mom at the park, wrap us up in one of the frayed towels and hold us against my chest. A shield to keep it all inside.
    “Okay,” I say.
    Margie and Officer Archie step aside. I follow my feet down the hall. One step. Two. Three steps.