Thalo Blue by Jason McIntyre Page A

weekdays, skipping class at times, he painted while music pounded beyond the door, he painted while couples had awkward high school sex in other rooms, he painted as the liquor cabinet at the Leland residence was emptied then refilled then emptied again. People peeked into the room or sat on the bed or crowded around him to watch as he whipped off another masterpiece. And he was talented, that much everyone could see. He became a modern day Pollock, but with an audience of rowdy, jeering high school kids to rev him up. And always at his side, was a handy joint, ready to be puffed, or a handy little pill, ready to become fuel for this new, this renewed , obsession.
    The colors weren’t reinvented or even made brighter by the meth variants. They just seemed different. He couldn’t explain that with articulation, but he did understand the resurging energy the Adams brought. He hadn’t felt that kind of energy in a long time. Early on he hummed while he caressed the blank portraits with bristles and the blade of a palette knife—and everyone sat quiet. Later, borrowed records of Oliver’s would spin nearby, spilling out songs like The Rolling Stones’ 2000 Light Years From Home , Baba O’Reilly by The Who, Pink Floyd’s Piper At the Gates of Dawn album, and an endless strew of Velvet Underground records—mostly stuff that had been recorded before he was even born, mostly stuff that Oliver had listened to in his younger years. As time progressed, the tunes were forgotten and his humming gave way to low grumbling talk. Talk about politics, what he could see in his mind as he painted, talk about the middle-east—what Hussein had done right, he said with audacity on one occasion—talk about big business and where he stood on that. The view from his father’s office tower and what it would feel like, maybe, to dive headlong from one of its tinted windows was another description and one that drew gasps from the girls and cheers from the boys. The essays turned into rants and he stalked back and forth at times, in argumentative style, dabbing diminishing globs of paint from his brush onto the empty surface at the easel.
    This was all the finest novelty at first, the beatnik painter who expounded on the virtues of life and described the colors in his head. But after a while, as with everything, the gimmick wore off. He became, as the school year rounded its final bend, just a novelty act, an objet d’art. A young man with but a brush and a bawdy voice.
    Vivian thought it delightful at first, then cooled, as did everyone else. Their purple fires of passion became embers, the fireworks of the summer before had been extinguished, and an initial indecision about whether to leave the next fall and attend McGill or stay and go to York University with Zeb had become a moot point. She left and he stayed. Theirs was a cancelled courtship, the future of which no longer up for debate.
     
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    Zeb insisted to Oliver that he would be taking a year off before going to York, and Oliver insisted to Zeb that oh no he would not be taking a year off. Zeb informed his father that a trip to Europe with his friends was in order. He had to keep up, you see, had to be like all the rest—those with influence, prospects, and all the time in the world before settling into their degree programs at the more prestigious schools. Presentation Is Everything, dad , he told him. And Oliver, without even a pause, informed his son that a trip to Europe was not in any such order and would not ever be. Presentation, it would seem, cost too much.
    Oliver was clearly agitated with all the time the boy had been spending away from his studies. His anger came from the fact that while Zeb had never gotten a grade letter below an A—not in his whole academic career—he had not succeeded in getting the grades he could have garnered with even an iota of effort for school. If you spent half as much time studying as you did painting or doing God knows what