Third Coat

A short story in which Jesse does more than paint a bedroom in his family's house...

It wasn’t quite seafoam. More of a sage. Whatever it was, it held no sway against the bright orchid pink. Or maybe it was more of a magenta. Jesse had no idea. The paint chips were long forgotten, discarded when his parents had purchased the paint. That was three years ago, when this room was meant for another purpose. All he knew was he had to get these walls painted.

His mother hadn’t stepped foot in the room in three years.

That was a lot of time. He knew it. So did she.

No one blamed her.

He poured some paint into the plastic tray and attached the woven roller to the metal handle. The tarp underfoot crinkled agitatedly as he stood to assess the situation. Boxes of forgotten possessions and a small shelf with a tattered Bible and a Danielle Steel novel, spine uncracked, stood in the middle of the room. Next to them, a bed floated, with the same mattress from three years ago. That mattress. Jesse would do his best not to get paint on any of it. Out of respect.

The pink wasn’t as aggressive as a Barbie Malibu Cruiser. It wasn’t as dull as chewed gum, either. He squinted and saw mauve, turned off the overhead light and saw a pastel purple. It morphed and tricked his eyes, playfully, innocently. But like Herod before him, Jesse could take no chances with the innocent. He had to slaughter it, using latex paint where the Roman soldiers used swords.

He touched the woven roller to the paint and tried to cover it, but the white fabric and the cheap plastic tray connected feebly. The roller looked like a giant tampon with grass stains.

He touched it to the wall. And, as he imagined was necessary, he rolled it. His mother asked if he had painted a wall before, and Jesse lied that he had. The paint spat onto his bare forearms as the pristine walls—not even one nail to hang a portrait—began to transform. They never had a reason to hang a picture, though they would have eventually. He imagined something with the whole family. Forced smiles, but happy.

The green failed to cover the pink, but there was no going back now.

Sharon at Home Depot said there was primer in it. To just go for it.

Jesse went for it.

He applied more paint and smeared it onto the orchid pink or magenta or pastel purple walls. He attacked them. Splattered the paint onto the drywall. Rolled vigorously. Up and down. Side to side. The green latex paint began to do its work, to wash over the pink like a wave onto the sand. But within minutes, like the same sand in the sun, the wall began to dry and lighten.

Sharon was a liar. This much was true.

“Fucking Sharon,” he said to himself.

The pink poked through.

It giggled at Jesse from beneath the layer of sage that, they both knew, wouldn’t be enough to wrangle the pink.

“Nice try,” the paint said. Or wanted to, given its lack of laryngeal features.

“You need to go,” Jesse whispered to the wall.

He rolled the paint on more thickly, moving from wall to wall, stepping back an hour later and assessing the work. The pink bled through the sage like grease through a burger wrapper. He wanted to wipe it away but knew a second coat would be the solution.

His mother couldn’t see the room like this. It needed to change more fully before she could stomach entering it. It needed to evolve, move on, be functional again. Jesse dragged the tarp around the room and began to roll on more paint, slathering it on, thick like peanut butter attempting to corral jelly, little peaks of paint that he slowly razed with the roller.

Why wasn’t this easier?

It should have been easier. They should have paid someone else to do it. Years ago. Right away. The dust on the floorboards had grown thick. The cobwebs on the ceilings were giving haunted mansion vibes at odds with the still-vibrant orchid pink. It was the memories that hung the thickest, that chased them all away. The green was working. Almost. Resetting this place.

Giving it a new chance.

Something its previous occupant didn’t get.

Jesse felt his eyes begin to moisten, the tickling in his nose smelling like petrichor before a storm. He refused to cry. Not again. There was no reason. It had been so long.

“Fuck you, orchid pink,” he whispered to the walls as he piled on the second coat, begging the sage to work some magic, to cleanse the room, to live up to its namesake’s most mystical property. Jesse considered burning it all down.

Not an option.

He used the angled brush on the corners and along the edges, hoping and wishing and kidding himself into thinking the work was complete. The sun was setting now, the two windows going dim, and he relied on the 60 watts overhead to guide him.

Old incandescent bulbs, survivors of the recent bans, made it clear. Jesse poured more paint into the tray. The latex had hardened on the sides, and on his fingers. He peeled some of the splatters from his skin, little green pox, pulling hairs from his forearms in the process.

A third coat would be doable, but after that, there wouldn’t be enough paint left. If it didn’t work, Jesse knew what to do. He’d glue the door shut, with the bed inside. That way his mother wouldn’t have the option to see what a mess he made of it all. She had said not to paint it at all. To forget about it. They never used the room anyway, she said. They didn’t need the space.

They didn’t need to use the bathroom housed in the bedroom. The one they redesigned three years ago, the good bathroom. The one with the nice tiles. The new window. The one with the bars in the walk-in shower to support spindly fingers and emaciated arms.

Jesse froze. He knew now that he would be able to conquer the pink. The third coat would snuff it out forever.

But it would snuff out her, as well.

Someone had chosen it.

She had chosen it. Like so many cookie recipes and birthday gifts and unwittingly racist comments and secret candies and trips to the beach house in the summer, this was all her doing.

It was the last thing she chose. The last decision she made. A questionable one, but hers all the same.

One more coat and the reset would be complete.

She’d be forgotten.

Like the footprints they made when they teased the waves at the beach.

Or the hard candy wrapper that floated into the trash can.

Or the cookies they’d devour on Christmas Day.

Footsteps in the hallway creaked toward the room. The wooden door cracked open slightly.

“Jesus,” his mother said.

“No, mom, I’m Jesse,” he said.

“I know. I mean, geeze, it looks different.”

“She would have hated it.”

“She wouldn’t have known where she was anymore, as bad as she had it.”

“And she still would have hated it.”

“Thanks for painting it, Jesse.”

He could feel the sage cleansing the room, could nearly see and smell the filaments of earthy smoke chasing away the terrible final memories of his grandmother who inhabited the room until her last moments, when her mind had failed her, and her body inevitably not long after, as his mother struggled in vain to fix any of it. And Jesse’s innocence had died, too, knowing that one day he may also face a painted room that he simply would not be able to enter. But for now, the sage soothed the pain caused by that orchid pink, that color that Nana forgot she had chosen.

A legacy.

But not her only one.

“I need to do one more coat,” Jesse said.

“I think it looks fine,” his mother said.

“There’s some pink still showing in this part here,” he motioned with the roller.

“And hopefully there always will be,” she said. “We can hang a picture of her there tomorrow.”

Jesse put the roller down and understood his job was completed as he began to cry.