Free to Read: "The Painted Man"
All it takes for a story to find life is a single sentence. For “The Painted Man,” that sentence is, “When the last paint falls from my eyes, what will I see then?” I sat on that sentence for a long time, wondering what it would become. Honestly, my first thoughts were utterly unrelated to what you’re about to read. However, I believe that “The Painted Man” does justice to that idea that shook me months ago.
The Painted Man
by Thomas Broderick
“Of all the kinds of decay in this world, decadent purity is the most malignant.”
My dad used to say that the saddest things in the world were a child who’d lost their paint and an adult who hadn’t.
My dad loved cartoons, innocent cartoons made in a time when they were just for children. They still make those kinds of cartoons today, but that’s all there were when he was a kid. Watching them now reminds me of that old Vonnegut quote: Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.
“Children need that,” he said to me a long time ago. “A world where there is no pain, suffering, or death. Where problems are trivial, and friendships forever. A world painted beautiful.” He was right on that account. Children who lose their paint too soon … you see it in their eyes, a sort of premature sadness that leads to a broken adulthood.
Most people lose their paint as they grow up. Sometimes it happens after moving away from home, having sex for the first time, getting a job…that sort of thing. The world suddenly looks less splendid, more real. It’s a natural process but a conscious choice. You have to want to move on.
My dad didn’t want to give up his paint, which meant he wasn’t much of a father to his children once we all became teenagers. I think he knew he was too scared to change. That’s why it was sad to him.
No matter the reason, we hated him for it.
In later years, my brothers and I didn’t speak to dad much besides holiday visits. He always had some happy cartoon on – Charlie Brown, The Grinch, stuff like that. He would sit on the family couch for hours and watch those old shows. He was where he belonged, the last place he felt accepted. At least my children got to live with him in that world for a little while.
Dad began to lose his paint right after the diagnosis. “My feet, my feet,” he cried out one morning while I was visiting. “Why now? Why couldn’t I…” Tears fell freely down his face. Mom said it was a side effect of the medication, a delusion. But I knew he really felt it. Losing something he had cherished his whole life, it terrified him.
As the disease progressed, he shed his paint from his legs, torso, arms, and neck. Each missing flake revealed more of the truth – he was an emotionally frail man who never grew up.
Dad was on his deathbed when he asked me, “When the last paint falls from my eyes, what will I see then?”
“Just close your eyes,” I told him, not knowing that we had just had our final conversation.
Dad died that night.
I think of dad whenever I see a child with their paint. It really is a beautiful sight. But we all have to lose our paint eventually. That’s just the way it has to be.
Isn’t it?