the mallard and the pond.
She chewed at the corner of her mouth until she tasted hot pennies. With a mouthful of red iron, she chewed her way across, thinking of symmetry. The mallard remained motionless, standing on the frozen pond. It held its green head high. Its eyes were perfect black circles of paint with a speck of white in the middle, a suggestion of light from within, as if he possessed with and intelligence deeper than any other mallard could hope to understand. His yellow bill was clamped shut, perhaps to bite back laughter at his own predicament on the ice. He balanced himself on smears of white, periwinkle, and baby blue as the sky and frozen pond’s colors melted together and reflected off of each other.
“You’re absolutely certain this is all that survived the fire?”
The edges of the canvas were unscathed, protected by the chill of pained ice and snow. It hadn’t even coiled in on itself in an effort to dodge the lick of flames. Malcolm Stolly wore the same car-salesman smile he’d worn when he took Lola’s hand in his own (hers was buried in the warmth of both of his in what had been a brief, pleasant moment of intimacy).
“That’s all there is,” he confirmed.
Sympathy and softness seeped into his voice, but it was too weak to survive the journey to his eyes quite yet. “Penelope Fielder was a treasure to the art world. The loss of her life, studio, and the paintings she’d been working on will hurt the entire Dallas community.”
The comment stung, though it wasn’t meant to. Reducing the vibrancy of a woman’s life to the product she produced and how strangers felt about it was as cold as the frozen pond the little duck struggled to cross. He, like his artist, was forever frozen in time.
“It’s a shame she didn’t have time to finish this,” Lola’s fingertips traced the chipped wood of a tree, noting flecks of white canvas peering out from beneath. A stag’s head jutted out from behind the wood, his antlers drooping as he watched the duck stumble across the frozen pond. There was no concern or curiosity in the stag’s eyes. He just watched.
Lola sensed the insurance agent’s shoulders tensing as she touched the canvas. It was as if he expected her to snap the unfinished piece over her knee. It would be too easy, like breaking a branch or a bone. She smiled at him and hoped it was reassuring.
“Thank you for giving this to me.”
Malcolm laughed. This time the smile reached his eyes, which Lola decided were soft like the earth after a spring rain – naturally, effortlessly.
“Of course,” he touched her arm, providing warmth and pressure for a fleeting moment. “It’s only right that you have something to remember your grandmother by.”
-
Dreams were murky fearful things that no amount of therapy could shed. She’d memorized the coping mechanisms for the waking world, but there was little that could be done to rescue her from her unconscious mind. Cruelly, her dreams transported her to her grandmother’s painting, where she was forced to shiver and stumble blindly through an incomplete frozen world in the midst of a flurry. A mallard quacked in the distance, laughing at her pain. In some shaky semblance of a plot, dream-Lola knew she’d come out to the frozen lake with her grandmother, only to irresponsibly lose her in the snow. She dug blindly while her hands burned from the cold. It was no use. Lola would never get to say goodbye.
-
When she awoke with her face wet (from tears or sweat, she wasn’t certain), she swore she saw the mallard kick his little feet in the darkness, watching her on the wall above her nightstand. The stag tipped his head to her and winked, as if exchanging an inside joke. Her body went numb as they stared at one another. The barrier of the canvas was her only protection from the animals on the other side. With the blood in her veins nearly as cold as the frozen pond, she threw the blankets back and tore the painting from the wall. he swore she heard the distant panicked cries of the duck as she dragged the canvas to her closet and flung it into the darkness.
“Out of sight, out of mind,” she murmured to herself and anyone (or anything) that could hear her.
Free from prying eyes, Lola crawled back into bed where she tossed and turned until daylight peeked through the blinds, washing her pale bedroom in a golden haze. She scrambled for her phone to turn off the alarm she no longer needed. The phone’s screen lit up, greeting her with the last tab she’d had open: her grandmother’s contact info, followed by a history of frantic phone calls she’d made until she was told about the fire. Her thumb hovered over the DELETE button. A blurry image of her grandmother stared at her, offering a flat close-mouthed smile. It was one of the few photos of Penelope, cropped from a larger family photo and stretched to a blurry smear of pixels only Lola could recognize.
She let her phone clatter to the nightstand and rolled over, burying her head in her pillows until it was time to wake up. Somehow, amidst the confusing drift of meaningless sunlight and time, she managed to find dreamless sleep.
-
A chill and the sound of webbed feet slapping frantically against a hard surface woke her before her alarm clock. The quacking had returned, almost reminiscent of a dog’s frantic barking by now. It was loud, deliberate, and constant. Without context (or perhaps with context), it sounded mocking. The boundaries of both the closed door and the canvas did little to shield her from the noise, which was loud enough that she almost thought the mallard had somehow stepped past the frame and onto her white living room rug. For a moment, she considered returning to sleep and ignoring the ruckus, but burying her head in the pillow only amplified the noise. Hooves crunched quietly in the snow.
Lola stormed into the living room. The doorknob of the bedroom door slammed hard into the wall behind her, casting aside any hopes of a safety deposit from the landlord. In the center of the living room wall, above the pastel blue couch, was the painting: the frozen pond, the clumsy stumbling duck, the silent staring stag. In the afternoon light, the mallard looked at Lola from his place in the center of the frozen pond and quacked twice.
“Shut up,” she shrieked.
She raced toward the painting and felt nothing as her left ankle crashed into the leg of the coffee table with a hard thud. The chill in her veins melted into a rage that was hot enough to melt the pond and snow.
“I hate you!”
Her knees found the soft cushions of the couch. She pulled the painting down from the wall and flung it across the room. There was solace in the panicked cries of the animals, who had no idea what they’d done to deserve Lola’s wrath. The mallard flapped its wings and slipped on the ice, losing its footing. It nearly crashed into the stag, who reared and kicked, warning the duck to keep his distance. A moment passed as everyone caught their breaths. Lola sunk to her hands and knees beside the painting, watching it just like it had watched her.
The mallard turned his gaze back to Lola and quacked and quacked, lecturing her. It flapped its wings, as if to prove the points it made in its angry tirade. She jabbed a finger at him and watched him flinch and race to the opposite side of the pond, half running and half sliding.
“You should have died in the fire,” she said. “It should have been you! Not her!”
Stillness returned and Lola gaped. The painting was just a painting. On its canvas was a delightful scene at a frozen pond tucked away in a forest. The mallard looked amused at its perch on the frozen pond, aware of the stag watching him in his predicament. For the first time, Lola noticed birds in the sky, squirrels peeking out of holes in trees, and a young fawn peering out at the lake from behind the stag. She hugged the painting close to her chest, finally embracing its painful chill.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”
-
Penelope Fielder’s painting found a permanent home above her granddaughter’s nightstand. Over time it blossomed. The ice melted, flowers bloomed, fawn played in the brush, squirrels gathered acorns, and strange brightly colored birds whizzed through the blue sky. Sometimes, if Lola listened for it, she could hear the distant quack of the mallard.
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