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The Museum of Living Color

by Ryan Cole

 

Red lust, as usual, comes in the morning. Red in the way that you whisper my name, in the tender caress of your fingers on my neck, where my dry skin soaks up your technicolor world. Where you are my brush, and I am your canvas: pliant, eager, ready to be drawn.

I smile as your scorched-earth skin comes to life. I swallow the vermilion heat on your tongue.

And I take. I steal as much of you as I can.

But it’s never enough. Not for me, or your family, or the portrait of us that they want you to create. The one that will hang in their gallery forever.

And you and I both know that your red never lasts.

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Revised placard text for: The Portrait of Maurice and Henrietta Mildrin (1925; Great Falls, VA; property of the Mildrin Family Gallery).

Maurice and Henrietta are pictured along with their six children on the azalea garden lawn of the Mildrin family estate. As is shown by the way that they gaze into each other’s eyes, red played a prominent role in the artists’ lives. Note the crimson undertones, the unabashed desire. Red lust is used to hide all of their flaws.

Note also, however, the smear on Henrietta’s chin — the dark-golden anger, the same gold that glimmers in Maurice’s right pupil. The artists claimed that these were due to the aging of the portrait, and that they never would have used such an impure color — especially gold — to paint themselves. Mrs. Henrietta Mildrin, the original curator of this Gallery, took pride in showing which colors made an appropriate marriage. And until her recent death, that marriage — and its portrait — was what every Mildrin relative strove to achieve.

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 Gold creeps in like the sun between the clouds. Your lust becomes a shadow of the fire that it was when you sculpted my skin with red-smeared hands. When you hadn’t yet dipped into your palette of emotions, the reminders of who you are and who you have to be — who we have to be — to have a place in your family.

“I don’t think we should go,” you say through your tie. You wrangle the ends into a paisley knot around your throat. “You’re still not ready.”

“I’m not ready?” I say, unsurprised, because I am no stranger to your swiftly changing colors — the inconvenient shades that you aren’t allowed to show. “It’s been seven years. I’ve learned what I need to know.”

“Maybe it’s not enough.”

I pull on my loafers, absorbing the words. Your gold never comes without a fine, serrated edge, forged in the heat of your growing frustration. At me. Your parents. Your bottled-up emotions. “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” I say with years of practice.

You sigh and rest the back of your hand on my cheek, staining me with all of your dark, dirty gold. One of the scant few colors you can share. “Alfie,” you whisper. “Don’t make me do this.”

I try to pull away, but the color won’t let me. It continues to flow. “You can’t just cancel,” I say, my cheek burning. “We’ve had this scheduled for months.” As if there weren’t anything strange about scheduling an appointment to see your great-aunt, whom you’ve known since you were a child, who has probably already seen what you’re trying to hide. Don’t blame me for showing you who you really are.

But since when did the canvas give advice to the brush?

“We’re going,” I say. “She even purchased our portrait frame.”

You pucker your lips into an irritated pout, and you let your color slide all the way down my back, under my blazer, where nobody can see.

My canvas skin shivers. I drink in the anger that you feel, but don’t want to. A piece of yourself that you would rather not own. And like a good husband, I let it all in.

I let it seep into the wrinkles in my stomach, the folds in my thighs that your scarlet-self adores. I stow it in my armpits, under my toenails. Tiny pieces slip under the flaps of my eyelids, so that when I go to sleep, my vision is a black field with bright golden stars.

But that doesn’t matter. You don’t need to hide from me.

The one we have to fool is your Great-Aunt Suzannah, and I’m starting to worry that you may be right.

Are the two of us prepared to join the Mildrin Family Gallery?

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Revised placard text for: The Portrait of Malachi and Joanne Mildrin (1939; Richmond, VA; property of the Mildrin Family Gallery).

Malachi Mildrin, the youngest of Maurice and Henrietta’s six children, is pictured with his betrothed, the smiling Joanne Mildrin, who is seven months pregnant. When the artists finished painting their official self-portrait — an act often saved for several years into a marriage — they had only been engaged for two-and-a-half months. 

Note the pale-yellow angst, the silhouette of displeasure that surrounds both their shoulders. It is worth noting that their union was one of necessity, a product of Mrs. Henrietta Mildrin, who disapproved of the artists’ premarital activities. Which begs the question: was Joanne’s smile genuine?

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Dots of faded yellow trickle from you in a haze as we step out of the car and onto the driveway. Your unruly blond curls, slicked into submission, cast you as a man that I don’t normally see: tamed, dampened, willing to suffer the necktie that binds you.

We walk past the fountain, up the granite steps that fan out in waves, and we stand on the threshold of a door that dwarfs us. It morphs into turrets and stained-glass windows and balconies that overlook a garden of azaleas.

Your fingers scrape mine, but they aren’t really there. They vanish, brushless, into what we haven’t achieved, into how you haven’t shaped us into what we should be. You simmer in your worries. And I simmer with you.

You knock on the door, and you cringe when it opens.

“My little Maverick,” says Suzannah, who is almost three times your age, pinching her over-plump lips into a smile. She inspects you like I do when you aren’t paying attention, searching for a shade that you haven’t shown before, as if she knows that what we’ve crafted isn’t worthy of display. Then she squeezes my shoulder with a splotchy, brittle hand, betraying a strength that her thin frame hides.

“And Alfie, my dear, it’s been far too long. I haven’t seen you since the wedding. I’m so glad you’re here. Commissioning a portrait is a Mildrin family tradition, and you’re the first couple that I get to sink my teeth into.” She grins, veneers flashing, and she guides us inside.

You hesitate, afraid to walk into the building that will commemorate our marriage for generations to come, and like a fading ray of sunlight, you cling to the wall. Hover by the portraits that are hanging in the entryway. There is one, in particular, that captures your interest.

“Ah,” says Suzannah, shuffling over. “There’s your Aunt Melanie, back when she was pretty. And you, cute as a button.” She points at a much younger version of yourself, clothed only in colors that the Gallery condones. “But come on over here. Take a look at this one.”

She guides us to the other side of the sprawling foyer, where an oversized portrait hangs over the staircase. “See that one there, right over the banister? That’s your Great-Uncle Milton and his wife, Genevieve.”

This gets your attention. “Is that one new?”

“Oh, you know Henrietta, always hiding things away. I found it down in the basement in an unmarked crate, and once I knew you were coming, I chose to dust it off.”

“It looks different than the others. Doesn’t it?” you say. More erratic, you mean. Showing all the wrong colors. But you leave that unsaid.

“Each of us is unique,” says Suzannah, smiling coyly. She leaves it at that, doesn’t wait for you to answer. The two of us shuffle from the chandeliered foyer, leaving you alone with your long-dead relatives, and with a wrinkled hand on my waist, your great-aunt guides me into a cavernous sitting room, where a tray of miniature sandwiches and teacups is arranged.

Along with a large, empty square of oiled wood.

“Is this ours?” I say.

Suzannah nods with me. The empty frame rests grandly on an easel, and not just any frame. The frame to officiate our place in the Mildrin family.

“It’s beautiful,” I say, because truly, it is. A masterwork of cedar planks, intricately carved.

My eyes start to glisten, but I cannot cry. Not near Suzannah.

When I cry, I lose control. My canvas unfurls. The colors that you give me escape in all directions. They emerge from my dozens of carefully crafted hideaways: my wrinkles, my eyelids, the crease between my shoulder blades.

And maybe it’s the stress, or the guilt from our lies, but the teardrops that flow start to crack my façade.

“Alfie, what’s wrong, dear?” says Suzannah, her voice smooth. “Come over here, sit with me.”

I follow the trail of her hand to the sofa, because it’s already too late. Our secret is revealed.

“Miss Suzannah,” I say, “I apologize, really, I don’t know what’s come over me.”

“Well, I do,” she says, wiping my cheek. “And you can call me Suz. I’m not like my mother.”

“You do?” I croak.

She nods, her fingers dyed a burnt, rusty gold as she soaks up my color. “Maverick needs to accept that nobody is perfect. Not you, not me, not him, not even them.” She says that last with a sweep of her arms, to encompass all the portraits on the walls around us.

I wonder what secrets that sentence could hold. But she doesn’t elaborate. She taps me on the knee and motions to the foyer. “Why don’t you try to get Mav to come in here? The Gallery has some new rules that I’ve created, and I think he’ll want to hear them.” Another coy smile, knowing more than she lets on.

I leave her on the sofa. And I find you standing right where we left you before.

Your arms are crossed, eyes on the portrait of your Great-Uncle Milton — the one that, until now, no one knew existed — on the gold flowing out of his oil-sketched features. The gold so similar to what you repress, to what you’ve been taught isn’t clean, isn’t right. And around that gold, a hint of hopeful green, and a midnight-blue sadness that looks nearly black.

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Revised placard text for: The Portrait of Hugo and Melanie Mildrin (1966; Great Falls, VA; property of the Mildrin Family Gallery).

Hugo and Melanie are pictured in the conservatory of the Mildrin family estate. They are joined by Maverick, their newly adopted nephew, aged three years old on the date of commission, only six months after the tragic passing of his parents, the late Beatrice Mildrin and her husband, Murphy. 

Hugo and Melanie are blatant in their optimism. Note the dandelion stems that dangle from their fingers, the effervescent turquoise that bubbles from their lips, the wilderness of too-happy weeds at their feet. The promise of rebirth — a commendable theme — is strong in this rendition. Green hope drowns out their sordid, blue past. 

Of particular importance: these artists were prone to feeling a wide range of emotions, the command of which, some would say, was less than ironclad, and which, for better or worse, they passed down to their children.

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As you emerge from your reverie, you touch my arm and say, “Alfie, I’m sorry.”

I’m sorry, too. I’m sorry that your parents didn’t teach you restraint, to summon one color when you don’t need them all.

But then again, those colors are what drew us together.

“It’s alright, Mav,” I say. “Our portrait will be the most spectacular one of them all.”

You smile at my smile. You allow yourself to relax. The golden anger fizzles to a cool, plain white, as fresh as new soil. Complacent and tired from the storm of emotion. And out of that soil springs a leaf, and a stem. A hopeful bud of green wriggles out from your eyebrow, another from the curlicue swirl in your ear.

I allow them to blossom. You smell of crisp spearmint and rosemary thistle. You sparkle like a newly chiseled emerald jewel. And the green flows freely, into my canvas, brimming with all of the innocent positivity that your childhood-self on the wall exudes. This is one color that I gladly soak up.

“This portrait of Milton,” you say, your voice shaking. “It’s what I wanted us to be. But he’s so . . . sloppy. His colors bleed everywhere.”

You turn your eyes inward, not thinking of Milton.

“Mav,” I say quickly, reaching through your storm, the green so wild that it doesn’t let me through. “Suzannah said it’s okay, that we don’t need to hide it anymore.”

But you’re already lost. The green is too fragile. Your emerald retracts, compounding on itself, and with all of the pressure that comes with too much hope, it shatters.

“I’m going to take a walk,” you say, pulling away. You let go of my hand and descend the staircase.

When you slam the door behind you, it squashes the garden that we almost let grow.

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Revised placard text for: The Portrait of Abigail Mildrin (1993; Herndon, VA; property of the Mildrin Family Gallery).

Abigail, the daughter of Hugo and Melanie Mildrin, and the cousin to her adopted brother, Maverick Mildrin, is pictured alone. She is the only Mildrin artist to abstain from marriage, as part of a vow taken on her twenty-fifth birthday, and which the prior curator, Mrs. Henrietta Mildrin, took great issue with. 

Given that the artist took her vow with conviction, it seems odd that blue sadness would dominate the portrait. Notice the sapphire ripples in her frown-lines, the dark-navy tears that cover her cheeks. Could it be, perhaps, that Henrietta made certain rehabilitations? Those that show Abigail as Henrietta saw her: sad, lonely, unworthy of happiness? The Gallery shall never know, for Abigail has since estranged herself from the Mildrin family.

---

I make my way back into the sitting room, alone, and I collapse on the sofa.

“Feeling a little bit Abigail?” says Suz, repeating the joke that once spread through your family. As if blue grief — that none of you show — were something to laugh about. “Believe me, I’ve been there. We all have at some point.”

She picks up a sandwich and shoves it into my hand. She watches me eat as she sips her tea.

I nibble on the miniature ham-and-cheese triangle. “How did you hide it?”

“I didn’t,” she says. “Why do you think Henrietta hated me so much? She would die all over again if she knew I were in charge now.”

I inspect her skin; there are no scars of blue, no pockets of sadness. Wrinkled cream flows from her fingers to her neck — and not the cream of worry, but the cream of contentment, a product of years’ worth of blending and refining, of honing her palette to a balanced spectrum. One in which each of her colors is welcome, but none so violent they burn out the rest.

“I wish he could be like you.”

“But he can,” says Suz. “Alfie, my dear, ours is a family of visceral emotions. Maverick needs to learn how to let himself out — not just the red, and not just the green. Once he can accept that the other colors have a place, he can learn to control them.”

I sigh and set my half-eaten sandwich on the table. “You make it sound so easy.”

Suz just laughs. “It can be,” she says. “All you need to do is show him.”

“Show him?” I say. “I’m no artist.”

Suz leans all the way over to my cushion, and she dramatically cocks one of her over-penciled eyebrows. “What do you plan to do with all of his colors? Hide them forever?” She slowly shakes her head. “My dear, you can use them. It may not be pretty, and it may take some time, but Mav needs to see that his emotions are valid. That all of them, together, make you both something special.”

“But Mav’s supposed to guide me. The brush on the canvas.”

“Traditionally, yes.” Suz winks at me and smiles. “Every other Mildrin artist has painted their own portrait. But in this case, I think we can make an exception.”

I chew on my lip, unsure what to do.

Suz seems to notice. “Here, take this,” she says and reaches for my cheek, pinching it with all of the compassion I can hold. “It’s something I wish Henrietta had given me. It’ll help you see the best in what you already have — if you’re brave enough to reveal it.”

I feel the smear of color that oozes from her fingers, pink mixed with red mixed with cotton-candy-fuchsia, that clings to the surface of my skin like oil. She gives me a color that I’ve never felt before — one that you’ve never had the power to share — and my canvas isn’t sure what to do, how to act.

The violet is alive, pulsing with potential.

“Now, get out of here,” she says, patting me gently. “And don’t forget the frame.”

---

We don’t see each other much over the next few days. You are as normal, drowning in yourself. I am in the basement, drowning as well — but this time, not in you. I wade through the sketches that I’ve practiced over the years; I study the rules that you’ve taught me that we need. Then, I crumple those up and throw them in the trash can.

And I start something new.

On the first day, I stare at the frame on the wall, the carved-cedar treasure that we brought home from Suzannah’s.

On the second day, I trace the wooden planks with my fingers, memorizing the lines that will one day define us.

On the third day, I lay my hands bare in the center. I press on the canvas.

And I let you all out.

Every searing touch of red, every ember of gold, every muted, not-good-enough drop of tainted yellow. The emerald smiles that give me false hope and the deep-blue despair that always comes after. I swirl these colors that you’ve given me to hold, and I give them back to you, with some of my own. Some that I’ve created, and some that I’ve discovered. And under them all, a streak of violet burns — the violet of love, a messy, tangled thing.

Later that evening, you come downstairs, and you find me in the basement. “Alfie,” you say. “Wha — what are you doing?”

Rather than answer, I hold out my hand. I wait for you to wrap your fingers in my own. And with the hint of a smile, I lead you to our portrait frame. Both of us shaking, slick with sweat. Both of us scared to see what we’ll create.

With my palm in the flurry of colors on the wall, I allow you to guide me. Your brush to my canvas, as it always should have been. There are deep, wide strokes. There are colors that bleed. There are tears and emotions we’ve never acknowledged. And for the first time in seven long years, I don’t care.

And I hope, in time, neither will you.

When we are done, I lean back, and I stare at our portrait. The me that I see is raw and pure and covered in all of the scars that I’ve earned, from the red-fire lust and the golden-anger blade and the indigo sadness that blooms when we fight.

“That’s us,” you say, as you let your shoulders sag. Not in a good way, but not like before, when your colors were stifled. Now, they run free. Now, your whole family will see us as we are.

“That’s us,” I say, holding your hand.

I smile and know that I wouldn’t change a thing.

---

Original placard text for: The Portrait of Maverick and Alfie Mildrin (2003; Fredericksburg, VA; property of the Mildrin Family Gallery).

Maverick and Alfie are pictured in their home on the eve of their seventh wedding anniversary. These are two bold, daring artists. The maelstrom of colors is a sign of their honesty, an acceptance of their flaws. They are vulnerable, something much needed in these halls. Their portrait is unique, in the hundred-year history of the Mildrin Family Gallery, in being the only one to incorporate true violet. And by embracing their own chaos, they make it a masterpiece.

 

 

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Host Commentary

…aaaaand welcome back. That was THE MUSEUM OF LIVING COLOR by RYAN COLE, and despite years of reading slush in this castle, it’s his first time for one of his own stories to appear at Escape Artists; that doesn’t mean there’s not plenty more to read if you enjoyed that, though, so check out his website at

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Emotions are never easy, straightforward, simple to delineate and identify. Particularly as someone socialised as a male through the nineties and noughts, emotions were seen as lesser, a weakness to be overcome and expunged rather than acknowledged and embraced; I distinctly remember being told, plainly and bluntly by a leader, that “Scouts don’t cry”, and there’s a strain of particularly masculine thinking that still persists and pesters us today that believes the ultimate debating position is to be utterly logical and devoid of emotion. The irony there is, of course, that emotions are inescapable, intrinsically human, and to pretend you are not prey to them is in fact to be deliberately ignorant of them and thus completely subject to them. You need to acknowledge them to account for them.

But that’s still ceding the premise, of course, that emotions are something to be compensated for, something to be controlled and corralled and let me tell you, friends, as my therapist is trying to tell me, that there is no happy destination at the end of that path. Emotions are who we are: what we feel is what we do, what motivates and drives us, what shapes our thoughts and our responses. You can no more consider yourself without your emotions than you can consider a town without its people: everything in you is in service to fulfilling your emotional needs. We can’t control that chaos and turn it into conformity: instead of clinging to the shoreline as the waves of our emotional sea batter us, we need to learn to sail on the waters, navigate the storms and ride the swells and tides. We are who we are, and better to learn to steer it and lean into our winds than try to fight it, and flounder on the rocks. So thank you, Ryan, for the honest appraisal of what love is, what life is, what it is to feel and to be and to share a journey with others.